anastacya's Full Review: Yu Gi Oh: Poc Yugi The Destiny for WIN 98SE, W2K, ...
My first adventure into the world of online gaming was through Ultima Online in the summer of 1999. 5 years of that game consuming my soul did a lot to shape my views and perceptions of what an online role playing game should and should NOT be. During one of my "hmm, I wonder why this game frustrates me now?" sessions, I realized that an online game is broken down by roughly five categories:
1) The in-game economy
2) The variety of character classes
3) A nicely explorable world that is colorful and interesting
4) Developers that keep to their promises without selling out
5) New content and quick fixes to in-game problems
Over the years, Ultima Online broke several rules, and finally, sold themselves out to the whiney kids and players. That being said, I ventured tentatively into the World of Warcraft, after a week roughly of my husband's whining about missing his old character.
Installation and Setup
As with any game, the package comes with the necessary items to install the software. In this case, you also get an instruction manual (which does have a nice overview of the entire game and how to play, assuming your eyes won't glaze over at the text), 5 CD-ROM discs (yes, 5), 2 10-day guest passes for your friends, and an installation code which will give you 30 days free. Beyond that, you will need to shell out $14.99/month to keep your addiction going.
After installing the game (which takes a bit of time), you must setup your payment account. The part of this which aggravated me the most was the fact you were required to enter a credit card number, and must remember to cancel the account after the 30 day trial period if you decide not to pursue the game. Once you have committed this information to the payment databases at Blizzard (the company which develops WoW), you can then log into the game.
And wait for the patches to download. If you have never played an online game, you should be aware that any new install will usually require you to download the content updates, in the form of "patches". With my particular box, it took about a half hour to download everything (on a cable modem). So the breakdown is: $19.95 for the software, the first 30 days of unlimited online play for free, 10 free days each for two of your friends, and then $14.99/month thereafter. You can buy the months in bulk, to get a discount, however, I would imagine most people cannot afford that kind of financial commitment for what is in reality, a game.
Once you finally log in, you select the Realm you would like to play in (your server). You will be prompted to select which type of server you would like to play on, be it Normal (meaning consentual player-vs-player fighting), PvP (you can be attacked by anyone at anytime), or RPG (players stick to strict roleplaying, think "Dungeons and Dragons"). The system will assign you an open server, however, you are free to choose any from among a list. Be warned: some of the servers are full, and you may experience a log-in time delay during peak times.
Finally, you can then create your character. Be it Alliance (good guys) or Horde (bad guys), each group has a set of 4 races to choose from. Each race has their own strengths and weaknesses. Within each race, you are able to select a profession. However, not all professions are available to all races. It is up to you, as a player, to pick which is best for your playing style. Here, the instruction manual will provide a lot of help.
Graphics and Sound
If you want your characters to be anatomically correct (although, I do not know anyone that can accurately depict a gnome or an orc), this game it not really for you. You may want to go to City of Heroes or even Ultima Online for that. The animations and movements of the characters are somewhat chunky and comic-book quality. For instance, the Night Elf character that I created certainly has a curvaceous character, however the overly-muscled legs and physics of the... er, endowments, are often dramatic and overly-stated. Still, if you don't mind this, they are interesting.
That being said, characters are not overly varied in their design. With roughly 5-6 choices for customization in regards to hair color, facial expression, tattoo, facial hair, skin color, and hair style, you will undoubtedly run into a doppelganger at some point. The saving grace to all of this is the fact that new armor can result in your character having a different look. While the armor is not highly textured (leather armor looks melded into the skin), it is varied and colorful. The naming system is even reminiscent of Diablo 2, with different quality items of the same style of armor having vague names such as "Cracked" or "Rough".
The environments are large and detailed, with modest colorations. They are not bright, however, and are rarely neon. Earthtones rule the day, but building and monster designs are impressive.
Sound can range from epic to mediocre. It tends to go unnoticed most of the time. There is some voiceacting, however, a lot of the conversations with NPC's is text-based. It scrolls down a parchment paper that appears on your screen when you right-click the character. It is slow and you cannot speed it up at all. However, reading the text and talking with NPC's (Non-Player Characters) is the crux of this online world.
Gameplay
World of Warcraft is formed on one principle: quests. From the moment you appear in your designated starting spot on the map to level 60, NPC characters have tons and tons of objectives for you. Whether it be killing so many of a certain type of monster, collecting mushrooms, filling a vial with water, finding a certain type of loot, or delivering a message, you will be doing lots of it: over and over again. The manual even goes so far as to tell you that you will level up much faster by questing and killing monsters together, than by running around killing baddies alone.
Every character also has a specific class, three mutually learned skills (that is, everyone, regardless of their character type, can learn them), and two trade skills. To learn anything in the game, you have to pay for it. To learn more, you have to reach the next level within the skill. No matter what you want to do, you have to pay for it in this game. Pay for training, pay for items to make things, pay to repair your armor, pay for new recipes to make new things; either way you will need the money. Which, conveniently enough, you can obtain through quests OR by selling the loot from the monsters. You get more from quests, though.
How does this all play out? Fun. I have enjoyed the game thus far. With interesting combat and a variety of characters online to converse with, there is always something to do. Whether it is to sign in and complete a quest, or maybe just stand by the water and cast your fishing line to level up that, you have options. Need to sell some rare loot to other players? There is that, too.
The economy in this game is balanced, at least, from what I know thus far. Players cannot own houses, and you are restricted to what you can carry on your person or your bank box. This restricts a lot of people camping out at a certain monster spawn just to stock up on loot. Plus, quests are only completeable once; so you cannot farm a quest reward over and over. This helps to balance out the play somewhat. Like any capitalist economy you will have super rich players, however anyone can get there, too, if you work at it.
Levelling in the game is easy, and with the variety of tasks to do, you will have many different ways to gain new weapons, armor, trinkets, or items to sell. As with any RPG-style game, half the fun of creating a character is levelling to gain new skills. As long as you have the money, you can buy a new skill the moment that you level. Skills and abilities are moderately priced, too, so you will not have to go bankrupt everytime something new unlocks for you.
World of Warcraft has a rabid following, and after playing up through level 14, I have begun to understand why. There is plenty of challenge, but enough variety to keep it all interesting. Lots of exploration, and lots of items to find. When you die you don't lose items, heck, you don't really lose anything except time (unless you resurrect yourself instantly at the graveyard, then you will lose experience points), and unless you are on a devoted PvP server, you don't have to worry about griefers (players who live to solely ruin other player experiences) killing you at every turn.
I could go on forever explaining everything in detail, but that would drag this out forever. In short, if you have enough time and money to devote to this game, you will soon find yourself roaming among the orcs, taurens, or maybe even the elves and dwarves, learning what it means to play WoW with the 7 million other people around the world.
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