World of Warcraft Short Review

It’s me again with another short look at a game. Today, we have World of Warcraft to be reviewed (short review).

World of Warcraft

Sadly, World of Warcraft Open Beta (North American) closes today (11/18/04), yet it is still online at the moment. It’s been a great beta, mostly bugless, the only complaint being lag due to so many people playing. This won’t change my opinion on the game, because it was a beta, it should have bugs, they will most likely resolve the problem by retail.

World of Warcraft is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Game — I think), where you play a character of your choosing. There are many different classes (like in most MMORPGs) to choose from and many races. Races include human, dwarf, night elf, gnome, orc, undead, tauren, and troll. Classes include warrior, rogue, mage, warlock, paladin, preist, hunter, and more.

As you being your character, you meet a man hwo gives you your first quest, which is rewarded much more generously than Final Fantasy XI would reward. I won’t go off into FFXI’s problems with not rewarding enough, that’s possibly another blog post. Anyways, my character is a mage and he is currently level 11. In WoW, you gain levels just as you would in other ones. You fight. You have a health bar and another bar which varies in what it shows depending on your class. My additional bar displays mana, since I’m a mage. I can cast fireballs and missles at the enemy, both of which can be upgraded, are long range, and use different amounts of mana. There are also healing spells, which, surprisingly, the mage doesn’t obtain from what I have heard. However, the mage does have conjure food and conjure water, which do what they say. Water restores mana and food restores health (muffins to be exact). The one downfall to the two aformentioned spells is that after 15 minutes of being logged out, they disappear.

The interface is very nice in the game. Unlike FFXI, where you must go to the menu to find out how far away you are from the next level, you just need to look at the bottom of the screen, which displays shortcuts for spells, attacks, etc. which you set yourself by a drag-and-drop interface. Minor features that I depend on a lot are windowization and autorun, both of which it has.

Rating: 10/10 (note that I have not played the game but for only a few days, so I have not found many things that I dislike)

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