Gaming Signal: REVIEW: World of Warcraft

REVIEW: World of Warcraft

Due to the nature of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, a standard review isn't really possible. There is huge amounts of content that not all players will see, and because developers can change the game through online patches, gameplay can change radically. As a result, you won't see the traditional rating system or review format here. So here is a record of my opinion of Blizzard's hit game, World of Warcraft.

Was it the tie into the Warcraft franshise that has catapulted this game into history? Certainly that pulled people in, but it can't be that fact alone that has WoW pushing 10 million worldwide subscribers. No, WoW has many, many other things going for it that have made it a 'must play' for anybody who considers themselves a PC gamer.

Style baby!
One of the most noticeable aspects of WoW is the graphics. They are cartoon-like to be sure, and surprisingly low resolution. This is a concession to the wide array of PC hardware that the game wanted to support - it won't run on that embedded Intel nonsense, but it will run on almost any home PC made in the last 3 years. But the game has an art style that immediately hearkens back to the Warcraft games, especially Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. I had grown used to the awesome graphic seen in Star Wars Galaxies and Far Cry and was put off a bit by this at first. I still feel it's one of the poorer game engines out there, however I tip my cap to all the things they have been able to do with the constraints they are operating under.

However these graphics make the game very accessible. The UI itself is simple and uncluttered. The complexity and depth is there, but you generally won't find it causing trouble for the UI. For example, my 7 year old has no trouble understanding what is going on with the display of a level 1 character. The game has a gentle learning curve, letting you get the hang of one capability or tactic before introducing you to the next. It isn't quite as good as Everquest 2's starter island, but it's much better than most other games.

Game On!
This MMO benefits greatly from the experiences had by others in games like Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot and of course Everquest. If you have played one of these games, you'll find lots of similarities here. However I honestly feel they took a hard look at all these games and took the very best and most fun elements while leaving the worse behind.

For example, mechanics like creating groups, chatting with friends, and building a Guild (a group of like minded folks who want to play together regularly) are all MMO staples that WoW does quite well. There are also plenty of unique areas with creatures to do battle with and interesting things to see.

And there are major improvements in several areas. Where in games like Everquest the actual questing part was often times secondary to advancement, in WoW the quests are of sufficient interest, variety, and reward to keep you always looking out for that next quest. There are few loading screens - only when changing continents or entering instance dungeons will you see a delay. Otherwise, you're free to roam the huge countryside without any pauses. And death - always a challenge - seems far friendlier than in other games. You can run back to the scene of your death as a ghost and resurrect there, have a friend resurrect you in place, or even resurrect in the graveyard and suffer a slight delay before you can return to action. This penalty is minor in the short run, but just enough to make death something to be avoided without adding making it feel frustrating. In my opinion, Blizzard gets that the time penalty for taking risks and being killed ought not to outweigh the rewards for success - a learning I hope other game developers take to heart.

There are also some major innovations. The combat is fast-paced and exciting - keeping you on your toes through a battle without making it become a slug-fest. Even boss fights, which can take much longer to complete, often mix things up to keep it interesting. For example, most of the large raid-level bosses change forms and thus require different tactics to kill during the middle of the fight. And the game offers an experience point boost to those who aren't able to play 24x7 - allowing you to more easily catch up to your friends if you happen to miss a week or two of play.

The game also rewards you well - keeping your sense of achievement high throughout. This is the area that many of WoW's predecessors have struggled with. They seem determined to doll out rewards as slowly as possible in order to keep you paying that monthly fee. Clearly WoW has demonstrated that this isn't want motivates people to play, and instead gives you a sense of forward progress at nearly every turn. It isn't just the cool quest rewards, or the quick level advancement, but also the changing skill sets presented as you advance as well as the unique areas you progress in to.

The game has changed in many ways throughout the two years of its existence. Mostly game balance issues have been addressed, but there are also major improvements in the addition of Player-Vs-Player options and rewards, and the addition of new areas to explore. Most recently, the game added all the new talents that will show up in the eagerly anticipated January expansion, The Burning Crusade.

Getting to the highest level - 60 at this time - doesn't take a tremendous amount of time. I recently completed it in 240 hours played and I know that many others have done it in as few as 175. If you can play 4 or 5 days a week that has you getting there in under 3 months - far less time than in many other games. But the game doesn't end at 60 - instead, that's where a pretty major portion of the contents starts, giving you plenty of other things to work towards besides just leveling up. All told I find this great - letting people feel a major sense of achievement yet giving them plenty of fun things to do.

Flaws
It is not without its faults, however. The game world is big and travel options are limited. Certain classes (Mages in particular, but a couple others as well) have some form of teleportation to help, but all players will find themselves spending plenty of potential gaming time on foot or on a horse running around the game world. And while there are flying stations to move you between major areas, even here we see major delays. I imagine that most players setup a flight destination and get up and walk away - not exactly the best use of 10 or 15 minutes of my gaming time.

And WoW suffers from another problem seen in other games - requiring 20 or 40 person groups to complete large amounts of game content. And although it seems this is something which is changing in the expansion, it is really unfortunate today. Finding 20 or 40 people who can work together and can get together at the same time for 4 or 6 hour sessions is hard, but requiring that to see the best content it unfortunate. And its here that the reward level given seems to drop off. I was on a recent 40 person encounter (Onyxia) that met with success. It was great to win, however she rewarded us with a mere 4 pieces of treasure. One of them was for a class we didn't have (Shaman because we're Alliance) but ignoring that, rewarding at most 10% of the group for a 40 person success seems pretty poor. That means we'd have to do this 10 more times before everybody got to enjoy in the success. I don't know about you, but that just doesn't seem to be the right reward for the time invested.

Where is the scaleable content? Why isn't the same instance available for a group of any arbitrary size - say 13 or 7? And definitely scale the rewards to match - make 10 treasures drop in a 40-man raid and one drop if you decide to do it as a 5-man, but at least let me have a chance to see the content. At the very least, make the loot drop appropriate to the classes who attend - it's frustrating to see the top treasure drop off the hardest boss and nobody in the group can even use it.

Bottom Line
All told, WoW has a lot going for it - don't let the few negatives keep you from giving it a try if you're one of those users who has avoided it. Most of the things I consider issues don't show up until level 60, and you could get many, many hours of enjoyment from it without ever encountering them. The developers are investing heavily in making the game experience better - from improving the hardware performance to adding game content.