World of Warcraft
- December 05, 2004
- 7 comments
I broke down and decided to buy World of Warcraft on Friday night. I had seen the excellent reviews from many different sites. I’d read what some others who have played the game for a while had to say about it. I hadn’t read hardly anything negative about it. I had been wanting to join a MMORPG for a while, but there wasn’t a Lord of the Rings one available yet. World of Warcraft was the closest thing, so I sprung for it.
Let me start off with the one bad thing I’ve found about the game, so we can get that out of the way. The minimum requirements say you only need 256MB RAM to play. Well that’s what I’ve got and the game has to constantly utilize virtual memory which slows the game down BIG time at certain points. One time it happened while I was fighting and I ended up dying because of it. I thought my enemy (an Elder Nightsaber in this case) was gone, but because of the lag in gameplay, he was actually right next to me kicking my ass. I couldn’t figure out why my health kept dropping until a second after I died. All of the sudden the Elder Nightsaber showed up right next to me! So, if you want to REALLY play the game, then you’re going to need at least 512MB RAM.
Now that that’s out of the way, we can concentrate on what’s great about the game. Let’s start with scenery.
The above screenshot is a sample of some of the amazing scenes that unfold in the game. It’s of the entrance to the main city of the Night Elves, called Darnassus. It’s pretty large and it’s hard to find your way around at first. That Ent-like creature in the screenshot is at least 15x taller than me and a heck of a lot more powerful. I’m a level 10 hunter. It’s level 62. Anyway, I’ve never been in a game where I felt like taking so many screenshots before. It’s like you’re on a vacation or something. There are amazing scenes all over the place.
There are a lot of things to keep track of with your character like weapons, skills, professions, loot, etc. The sheer number of buttons on the screen is intimidating at first, but it’s fairly easy to figure out what everything does and how to use it. And luckily, everything has a hotkey associated with it for easy and quick access. This really comes in handy when you’re fighting.
Fighting isn’t boring like in other MMORPGs I’ve seen. You select what you want to fight and when you get near enough, the battle is on! In a 1-on-1 fight, there’s still the each-person-has-their-turn feel to it, but it never gets boring. In group fighting, it doesn’t feel choreographed at all. Everyone’s shooting and swinging at the bad guys in a free for all. When you defeat an enemy, you gain experience points. After so many experience points, you advance a level. Each level gets progressively harder to advance.
But the game isn’t all about fighting. You can learn skills. For example, I’m learning skinning and leathermaking so I can make my own clothing and armor. There are several skills to choose from some of which are more helpful to you than others depending on your class.
Another great thing about it is interaction with other players. I teamed up with a female Elf named Briel to kill some enemies who were more powerful than either of us by ourselves. However, together we were effective against them. After we finished that quest, we travelled around together hunting, buying and selling things and going on other quests, all the while chatting and having fun. Before I logged out, I found out she lives in Hong Kong. How cool is that? Someone in Hong Kong and I, half way around the world from each other, team up to play a game and have fun together! I took a screenshot of Briel while we were sailing from one island to another. We’ve now added each other to our “Friends” list so we can find each other again in the future.
That reminds me, another really cool feature is you can send and receive mail in the game. You go to these little post office box things and check your mail or send some. You can even send someone money!
There are too many features to list in this post, but needless to say I really like the game. In fact, I think I’m addicted! If I had some more RAM, the game would be just about the best game I’ve played… ever. When the Lord of the Rings MMORPG comes out, I will most certainly try it out since I’ve been waiting for a LoTR MMORPG for a couple years now. Until then, I will be happy playing World of Warcraft.
Here’s some links to a couple more screenshots. The first is of a lake in the northern part of the Night Elf island. The second is inside of the temple in the main Elf city of Darnassus.
I got a great deal ($35) on a 256MB stick of PNY RAM yesterday at Office Depot. I added it to my PC and tried WoW again, and the changes are drastic. There are no longer any skippings or interruptions at all. So I then bumped up the graphics options so now the game looks 10x better than it did before. I think it’s safe to say I really, really like this game now. Oh… and I made it to level 11 last night as well.
I didn’t know you were an addict fan too! What race are you? What’s your character’s name? I imagine you’re on the West coast server too.
I was thinking we need to get Lisa, Chris, Nevin, Leslie and Rick on as well and then form a pMachine guild. Les, you and I are already addicted. Of course, if that happens, then pMachine will probably fold within a couple weeks since nothing will ever get done.
Paul Burdick
December 5, 2004
Syrius
December 29, 2006
I stopped playing WoW a few months back. I got bored with the end-game content and constant raiding. I tried replacing WoW with City of Villains and Lineage 2, but both were nowhere near as polished as WoW.
I don’t think I’ll be playing WoW again, even after the expansion pack comes out. It’s just going to be more of the same.
You fool! Don’t you know that once you start playing, you’re hooked and will be unable to stop?!