| Game Reviews From a Parental Perspective! | |
|
|
|
| Home | Forums | Review Archive | Columns | Feature Articles |
|
Home >
Review Archive >
Video Games
> Results: World of Warcraft
Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Scroll down for our Kid Factor. 
From the earliest mainframe computers, people have been making and playing fantasy games of swords and sorcery. The computer commands to place a cursor anywhere you want on the screen were initially developed in order to create the first graphical fantasy adventure game, Rogue. Consisting entirely of letters and characters found on your keyboard, Rogue was a complex dungeon exploration game. It is even recognized by the creators of Diablo as some of their inspiration for that title. Leap forward 25 years to the present and the concept that started out as a simple, single-player ASCII exploration game has blossomed into an explosion of color, features, and options in today's Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (henceforth termed MMORPGs). Blizzard's World of Warcraft is one of the newest entries and could be safely labeled a true 2nd generation MMORPG. The world of WoW is colorful, fun, and very user friendly making it the most accessible MMORPG currently available. If teaming up with real people as a wizard or warrior and fighting monsters for good (or evil) is your cup of tea, you shouldn't overlook this title.
From the moment you install and boot up the program, Blizzard's trademark polish and user-friendliness shines. While all MMORPGs require some patching once they're operational, the install and character creation for World of Warcraft is one of the easiest to use while maintaining a fair degree of flexibility. Just install (on your choice of a Mac or PC), choose a server, make a few choices about what race and class of character you want to play, and youre off and running. Each server is its own little world, so be sure to choose the right one if you want to play with friends who already have the game. There are two sides to the world, the horde and the alliance. Your choice of race decides which side you are on, and you arent able to communicate or play with each other.  Once you've created your character, you are introduced to your immediate environment with an in-game rendered cut scene giving you a brief overview of your starting area with narration providing a background on your races history. The scene ends by zooming in to your character and setting you free to explore. Handy tips pop up occasionally to help you learn how to interact with your environment. Any character willing to give you a task appropriate to your level is easily spotted by the gold exclamation point above their head. When the quest is complete, it turns into a question mark to help indicate it is time to come back for your reward. White exclamation points are a hint that a quest will be available from that person once you become just a little more powerful. Quests are one of the best ways to gain experience, and there are plenty of quests to be found. Quests themselves are extremely varied and consist of simple deliveries, fetch and return, or more complex things such as the assassination of a high ranking corrupt government official or escorting a wayward soul back to safety. Even simple things such as a grave marker or a found item such as a book can initiate one or more quests in a series. Keeping track of your quests is a breeze using the quest log which contains an exact duplicate of your last conversation for each quest you currently have active, up to a total of 20. There are far more quests to do than any one character can accomplish, so playing multiple characters to experience new areas of the world is a common occurrence. There are many areas and zones to explore. To assist in travel, boats and dirigibles quickly escort characters between the two main continents. There is also an elaborate system of flying travel. Once you visit a city and meet the local stable hand, you can then pay a small fee to return there via the flying routes on each continent. Players at level 40 gain the ability to buy (or quest for) a mount which allows them to travel at much greater speeds. There is an improved mount at the highest level, 60, for those dedicated few who reach that high. Gaining levels in World of Warcraft is much faster than most MMORPGs, and even the death penalty is minor. Your equipped items lose a small amount of durability which can be repaired for a small fee in town, and you are forced to run back to your corpse from a nearby graveyard. Nothing is lost except for a little time. If you simply refuse or are unable to return to your corpse, you can choose to be restored to life at the graveyard but a much harsher durability penalty is applied to all items carried. For those players who aren't able to be online all the time, characters that are offline earn a small amount of experience bonus. This bonus effectively increases the experience gained for killing monsters and enemies when you come back. The bonus is accumulated at an even faster rate if you log out while you are in a major city or an inn, which means most players go to an inn before logging out. If you are in a hurry, Blizzard has kindly provided a hearthstone in your inventory which, once per hour, can instantly teleport you to an inn that you have previously established. This is great if you are exploring a new area and find you must suddenly hop back offline.  While Blizzard did so many things right, there are just a few things that are problematic. Since it is such a popular game, there are many, many servers available. If you have more than one friend already playing, chances are they are on different servers, so you will be unable to play with both of them with the same character. Even though leveling is easier and kinder in World of Warcraft than in most any other MMORPG, most players have widely different play styles. You may find yourself or your friends quickly out-leveling each other. Once a character gets too far ahead, there isn't a way to join forces without having the higher level player pretty much be wasting their time. One solution is to play different characters with different friends, but many people constantly strive to hit that high mark of level 60 so would find that unappealing. As in all MMORPGs, the higher your level, the slower your progress, but the experience curve is kind enough so that even casual players can hope to eventually reach the higher levels. In the end, World of Warcraft is much better than most of the MMORPGs out there, and different enough to be clearly labeled as a 2nd generation title in the genre. Even new players to the genre should find it fairly easy going, as Blizzard has made a sincere effort to make the game enjoyable to those who are hardcore players as well as the casual player with just a few hours to spend each week. Some might find the monthly fees annoying, but they are low enough to be compared to buying a new computer game every few months. If World of Warcraft is continued to be played regularly, it still comes out as a good buy. 
Massively multiplayer online games can easily become addictive as there is always something more to do or to see. The temptation to play just a little more may be too much for younger kids who are inclined to be a bit obsessive about their entertainment. In addition, the game is a way for hundreds of people to mix and interact in the impersonal setting of the internet. While there are some nice filters to prevent most obscene language, they aren't going to be perfect. The game itself is quite tame with very little blood and gore, even though killing humanoids or animals play a large part of the game. Female characters tend to show an unrealistic amount of skin when armor-clad, and the night elf women have somewhat suggestive dancing animations, but for the genre the graphics are rather tame. Due to the unknown of playing with internet strangers and the danger of addictive play habits, I'd recommend the game to kids high school or older. If a child is supervised, such as playing along with a parent or older sibling, there shouldn't be too much problem with the game at even younger ages.
Buy it from Amazon and support GamerDad Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "World Of Warcraft" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: World of Warcraft |
Read the GamerDad 2007 Holiday Guide!
|
Please Note: GamerDad is not intended to be read by anyone under 18. We stay clean, but be warned! Content Management System developed by Redbird Solutions. |
