damicatz's Full Review: Yu Gi Oh: Poc Yugi The Destiny for WIN 98SE, W2K, ...
World Of Warcraft
Update : July 2005
I am changing my review from 5 stars to 1 star. After playing the game for months after this review, it is painfully obvious that Blizzard does not care about it's customers.
Much of what I said about the game is still true; for beginning and mid-level characters. Once you hit level 60, the game becomes decidedly non-friendly to casual players; as the only thing left to do is raid for "phat lw3t". If you do not have the time to organize 40-person raids or spend 5 hours on a Saturday night raiding, then you will not like the end-game.
Furthermore, most of Blizzard's employees, save for their creativity people, have lost all competence. Every patch that Blizzard releases to the game makes things worse. For every one bug that Blizzard fixes, they introduce 2 new ones.
Take 132 errors. These are errors that a lot of people are getting that cause the game to crash. Every patch, more people get them and Blizzard continues to blame it on people's computers. They have gone so far as to tell computer novice's to flash their motherboard BIOS with no instructions as to how to do it; only a link to the program. I doubt they'll replace someone's motherboard if they end up frying it due to their instructions.
Also, Blizzard's community representatives have established a reputation for deleting any posts on the offical message boards that make them look bad; constructive or not. No longer do they simply lock the threads; they just get deleted.
PvP (Player Versus Player) has gone down-hill since the introduction of Battlegrounds. In concept, arenas for members of the horde and alliance to fight were good; but the implementation is horrid. In order to play, you must wait in a queue for sometimes up to 24 hours in order to play; and even then, you aren't assured an even playing field.
In order to maintain your rank in Player versus Player combat, you must continue to make kills every week, or your rating goes down.
With 3.5 million subscribers and about $45 million a month in earnings, Blizzard and Vivendi have no motivation to fix anything about the game. Everquest II is having content added at an alarming rate and yet Blizzard in the six months the game has been out has added 3 or 4 major things.
Original Review
Minimum Requirements
Windows
800 MHz or higher CPU
256 MB or more of RAM
32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware transform and lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better
4 GB or more of available hard drive space
DirectX® 9.0c or above
A 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection
Mac
933 MHz or higher G4 or G5 processor
512 MB RAM or higher; DDR RAM recommended
ATI or NVIDIA video hardware with 32 MB VRAM or more
4 GB or more of available hard drive space
MacOS X 10.3.5 or newer
56k or higher modem with an Internet connection
I Recommend
Windows, Macintosh or Linux Based Computer
2 ghz Processor or Higher
128 mb Geforce FX 5950 or Higher
1 gigabyte of RAM
Historically, MMOGs or Massivly Multiplayer Online Games have been aimed at the power gamer; someone who has 4 or more hours a day to play the game. One of the first mainstream MMOGs, Everquest, required the player to invest hours upon hours of playtime if they wanted to keep up with the rest of the players.
One of the biggest turn offs for casual players was the amount of grinding required. Grinding is killing monsters or running the same missions over and over again, sometimes for hours at a time, in order to gain experience.
World of Warcraft aims to change the notion that MMOGs can't be enjoyed by casual players. World of Warcraft is Blizzard Entertainments brand new Massivly Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game that is set in the Warcraft Universe that Blizzard created in 1994.
Installation
Installation of World of Warcraft is a breeze, albeit a little long. World of Warcraft is an enormous game and spans multiple disks. Even with a fast CD drive, expect to spend about 30 minutes to an hour installing the game and swapping disks. I did not encounter any problems during installation.
Gameplay
Upon first launching World of Warcraft you are greeted with a cinematic sequence that rivals the quality of some Pixar movies. You can tell that Blizzard spent a lot of time polishing the game as high quality cinematics are something of a novelty with massivly multiplayer games.
After setting up your account online at Blizzard's World of Warcraft site, you are able to log into the game. The first time you log into the game, you are presented with a list of realms to choose from.
World of Warcraft is a massivly multiplayer game. Players play in a persistant world where everything they do persists from one gaming session to another. However due to the enormous amount of players, most MMOGs split up players into seperate persistant worlds called servers, or in World of Warcraft's case, realms.
Once you choose a realm, you are taken to a list of characters you have on that realm. Each account can have around 50 total characters, which is more than enough for most people.
Character creation is kept simple, which is a good thing for some and a bad thing for others. On one hand, it is less daunting for new and casual players, however more experienced MMOG players may not like the lack of customization options.
The first step is to pick your race. Your race determines what racial abiltities you have as well as what side you are on and what your mount will look like. You can choose from Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Night Elves on the Alliance Side and Orcs, Trolls, Undead, and Tauren on the Horde Side.
Once you choose a race, you are then asked to pick a class. You can choose from one side specific class for each side and 6 universal classes.
Classes :
Druid :A jack of all trades, the Druid can shift into various animal forms each with their own set of abilities.
Warrior :Warriors do not deal the most damage, however they are very good at absorbing it. Warriors generate rage with each hit, which can be applied towards special moves. Some people think that warriors are underpowered.
Rouge :The Rouges are the fastest damage dealers and have the ability to wield two weapons at once. Rouges are not very good at taking damage however, so they rely on stealth and taking down their enemys fast.
Mage :Mages are general spellcasters with a wide variety of damage spells and buffs. Mages have the ability to summon food and drink, which can be used to replinish health and mana
Warlock :Warlocks deal with dark magic. Besides having the ability to summon a player from anywhere in the world, warlocks have a variety of damage spells and have a pet that can help them against enemies.
Hunter :Hunters are a ranged attacker that can use both bows and guns. Hunters have the ability to tame a wide variety of animals found in the wild to have as pets.
Priest :The Priest is a healing class with the most powerful healing and a wide variety of buffs. The Priest is not very good at fighting.
Paladin :The Paladin is an Alliance only class. Good against Undead, the Paladin sports both good tanking and healing abilities.
Shaman :The Shaman is a Horde Only Class. Like the Druid, the Shaman is a jack of all trades. The Shaman relies on poles called totems that are dropped on the ground. Totems can do things like heal the Shaman and attack enemies, but are easily destroyed.
After choosing a class, you can customize your character further by selecting a gender, skin color or other race specific trait, and a hairstyle. Now you are ready to enter the game world. There is a short introduction to your races background including a flyover of your race's capital city. Other players can be seen during this cinematic if they happen to be around the area of the capital city.
Gameplay revolves mostly around quests at first.
When Blizzard said on the game's box that there were over a thousand quests, they were not kidding. One of the areas where World of Warcraft shines is keeping the game interesting. Whereas in other MMOGs you spend most of your time killing rats or skeletons to level up, in World of Warcraft around 80% of your leveling is done through quests.
Quests range from delivery quests (commonly known as Fed-Ex Missions) to killing quests to the elite quests. Some quests come in a series, where you get the quests sequentially, which means that you may be following the same plot line for multiple levels. Elite quests are quests that have generous rewards and are designed to be completed in groups.
Quests are obtained by talking to Non-Player Characters throughout the game world. When you click on a Non-Player Character or NPC you are greeted with a short spoken greeting, ala Warcraft III and Starcraft. Long time fans of Blizzard will soon discover that if you click on an NPC more than 3 times in a row, they will say funny phrases. This has been a Blizzard easter egg in every one of their Warcraft and Starcraft games.
Combat is kept interesting through special combo moves. Even melee fighters, such as warriors, have combo moves that prevent combat from being a random click-fest.
Graphics
World of Warcraft does not have the world's most advanced graphics engine. In fact, the polygon count (a lower polygon count means blockier models) of the objects in the game is equivalent to the game Quake III, which came out in 1999. This doesn't detract from the game however.
Even though the graphics engine isn't the most advanced, the art direction in World of Warcraft is amazing. The art directors and artists paid an amazing attention to detail. For example : In cold environments, characters breath is visible as fog, NPCs and characters leave footprints in snowy and sandy environments, characters will do their own thing when idle as opposed to standing still (such as twitching), and each area has it's own unique appearance as well as a graceful transition to the next area, making the geography realistic.
Sound
Just like the art direction, the aural direction in World of Warcraft is superb. Every environment has ambient sound and the sound varies based on the time of day. For example, in the forest you might hear birds chirping during the day and at night you'll hear crickets chirping. Ambient sounds are consistent with what you would expect for each environment.
Sound effects in World of Warcraft are plenty. You will still hear some sound effect reuse, as is common with MMOGs, but it is not as bad as previous MMOGs.
In most MMOGs, I end up turning off the music. It ends up getting repetitive and dull. This was not the case with World of Warcraft. Blizzard made the decision to use music sparingly. For example, when you first enter an area, the music for the area blares loudly, however as you wander farther in, it gradually goes down in volume so that it is in the background. Some of the music sounds like it could have been composed by an orchestra; especially the music in Stormwind, the human capital. The music also always relates to the area you are in.
In Stormwind, the music takes on a Tolkien theme mixed with Christianity with a choir singing in the background. In the Night Elf Homeland, the music is mystical and happy. In Duskwood, a land overrun by Undead, the music is dark and forboding.
Community
Probably the only thing negative thing I can think of about World of Warcraft is the community. A lot of people came to World of Warcraft from Battle.net and anyone who knows about Battle.net (Blizzard's Other Online Gaming Service) knows that it is ripe with immaturity. Sadly this is the case with World of Warcraft as well, moreso than most other MMOGs.
Problems range from people spamming the online discussion boards to people just downright attacking people with childish insults, to people thinking that they are expert server administrators trying to tell Blizzard how to run their servers. It is possible to avoid these types of people by turning off general chat in game and not visiting the forums.
Alternative Operating System Support
This isn't being counted as part of the final score, but it might be nice to include information about how World of Warcraft runs on operating systems other than Windows and Macintosh.
Linux
World of Warcraft is currently supported by Transgaming's Cedega. In my experience, your mileage may vary but on my setup I get better framerates than in Windows.
BSD
Until Cedega is available on BSD or Wine works with World of Warcraft, you will not be able to play World of Warcraft under BSD.
Conclusion
World of Warcraft is the first MMOG that really should appeal to casual players. No matter how long you spend playing it, you can always log off feeling that you've accomplished something. Despite the somewhat immature community, I would recommend this game to both MMOG veterans and people wanting something new.
Enter the world of Azeroth and join the adventure that has made Blizzard’s MMORPG World of Warcraft such a hit with customers across the world. Sta...More at Newegg.com
Blizzard's second expansion pack to its massively popular World of Warcraft MMORPG, Wrath of the Lich King centers on the harsh and forbidding contine...More at eCOST.com
The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. With the armies of the undead and the necroman...More at J&R Music and Computer World
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.