World of Warcraft review

Memnoch

Well I woke up an hour ago and my server is still down for maintainence! So i thought i might as well write this review while I've got nothing else to do.

Overall first impression - WoW!!! (pun intended). I'm as, if not MORE impressed with WoW as I was with guild wars. What a wonderful game, and really so so so much fun. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun in an mmorpg. I remember when I started playing SWG, even thoguh I enjoyed it then because it was new and fresh, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as i'm enjoying this.

Graphics - The game is graphically wonderful. Some people have said that the graphics are cartoony. But TBH i didn't feel like that. I felt the graphics were very appropriate and fitting to the warcraft universe. You REALLY get a feel for the game world. Gone are the endless generated terrains of SWG. In its place is a beautiful lush and vibrant world, painstakingly hand crafted. As you explore the towns and landscapes you will become familiar with landmarks and terrain, a real sign of just how much attention has been given to building the world. The charecters all look very nice. The best thing however is that all this coolness doesn't come with a "must get new pc" price tag attached. It seems even machines a couple of years old don't have any slowdown in FPS while running at normal graphics. I think the fact that the game can look so great and still run so smooth is just a testament to the talent of blizzard's artists.

Charecter customisation - this isn't as extensive as was in SWG but neither is it as limited as it was in guild wars. It strikes a happy medium in my opinion.

PvE - this is really fun and fast paced with almost 0 downtime. You can get numerous foods and drinks to quickly regain your health and mana. It does take time however to explore the world. But once you have been through an area once you just activate the "wind rider/gryphon" master and can happily fly around to anywhere that you have discovered a flight path to. This is akin to horses etc in other games, the difference being that you are actually flying over land and boy is it fun!
The combat itself is a lot of fun. Each class has a whole host of spells and abilities and they are quite varied. The great thing is that soloing is a very viable option in this game, though grouping does allow you to finish quests faster.

Oh yes quests!! Thats the coolest thing, you don't actually have to spend any time just hunting random monsters to level up. You can spend the entire game doing quests and constantly leveling through them. The great thing is that this makes the exp grind fun, and not feel like a grind at all! All the quests have interesting stories behind them to for those more of the role playing persuasion.

Sound - Beautiful, the in game music is so great, kinda reminds me of how much i enjoyed FF7's music. If you have seen the intro cinematic of wow you know what i'm talking about. Before i got my account I would just start up the game to listen to the intro music sometimes, its that great. All the other sound effects and emotes are really cool as well, and add to an already great atmosphere.

Class balance - This is one area where there is still some work left to be done. Although BY AND LARGE classes are well balanced, some classes like warrior need a bit of love to be more viable in solo exping. That being said at higher level's a warriors damage output is scary. Most of the nerf crys you see on forums are from newbs that would suck no matter what class they played ANYWAY.

Charecter progression - apart from the standard LEVELING up and getting new items etc there is a very cool feature in this game called Talents. Each charecter class has 3 talent LINEs. When you hit level 10 you start gaining talent points by 1 per level to spend as you choose in any line with a total of about 50 talent points to spend by level 50. This allows for customisation and specialisation. Think of it a little like DAOC's spec lines. The coolest thing here however is that there is no one overpowered line for any single class. In the end its down to playstyle. As a paladin for example you have holy, protection and retribution. Want to be a tank that can really heal his friends? concentrate on holy, want to be a true unkillable terminator like machine? go protection! Want to be able to deal damage up there with any other class in the game while still having the ability to heal and tank a bit, then focus on retribution. Each line is balanced and has counters, and in the end its just about your personal playstyle. This not only adds to diversity but also to the fun and balance of the game. not happy with your template? for a fee your class trainer will allow you to respec your abilities (i'm sure the dragon raid fiasco's of DAOC come to mind). The only downside is the price of respecing scales up the more you do it. Which IMO is a GOOD thing as this allows people that messed up or are unhappy to try out different tempaltes but prevents everyone flocking to whatever they think the newest FOTM is.

Memnoch

lets see whats left.. oh yes the PvP. This is really cool in terms of what is implemented THUS far, but still the reward system needs to be implemented. A bit like what daoc was at the very start. Still the PvP is fun and in my view there is no point playing on the PvE servers but then i've always been a non pve'er.

I haven't really PvP'd much at this stage as i'm still very low level, so I'll have to get back to you more with details about this at a later stage.

Crafting - the crafting system is really great. You can have two primary professions and countless secondry professions. Want to make leather armor? take leather working and skinning as your primaries, skin monsters you kill for their hide and use the hide to make the armor. its very cool. Another neat feature is crafting queues. Say you have enough material to make 100 pink shirts, and thats what you need to make to level up your crafting. Well now you don't have to make each one individually. You can craft as many as you want. Just queue up a 100 shirts, go to the bathroom get a drink, call your friends and let them know you are still alive. Come back and hey PRESTO! 100 pink shirts, all pressed and ready to wear. Herbalism and alchemy are great too. As you wander the country side you can search for herbs in the foliage that you can harvest to make all sorts of wonderous magical potions. Want to make armor? well find some copper veins, get your trusty pick axe and start mining. Just be careful though as the mine may be surrounded by dangerous creatures.

Well looks like my server is back up!! If you have any questions that i failed to answer or if i missed something then let me know and i'll post more info later on! Some people might say its too "simple", but really if you are looking for a hardcore never-ending pve grind then perhaps wow isn't for you. On the other hand if your looking for a beautiful fun game that is enjoyable and truly challenging (pvp), then I'll be waiting for you on Eredar!

Drakar

I'm guessing since you didn't mention it that the loot lag is fixed? I quit playing beta (shock horror) because I found it so annoying to wait a number of minutes (literally) for the loot to complete. If this is fixed, then WoW is indeed an excellent game (all the official European preorders are sold out already).

Ivan

Sounds Great!
Might look into this for christmas...

Dustaz

Drakar wrote:

I'm guessing since you didn't mention it that the loot lag is fixed? I quit playing beta (shock horror) because I found it so annoying to wait a number of minutes (literally) for the loot to complete. If this is fixed, then WoW is indeed an excellent game (all the official European preorders are sold out already).

The loot lag was only an intermittant issue during beta i found. I was able to play pretty much nonstop for a week and not be affected by it. I imagine its similar now in retail.


One thing that memnoch didnt mention was the fact that when your on a gryphon flying to another city, the game happens live right undearneath you, You pass people killing monsters and going about thier business as you fly over. That really impressed me

Tusky

This was the first MMORPG to really impress me since DAOC. I cant wait for the european release date. Maybe we could start a boards guild ?

Playboy

There is a lot of us in a lan in galway who are going to be transfering to WoW after 3 years of DAoC. Will probably be making a horde guild as soon as game is released. Will post details of server etc when game goes live so watch this space if interested in joining a good Irish Guild

P.S will be a PvP focused guild on a PvP Server probably

Static M.e.

Aye, should be a good fun Irish Guild when it gets going

Plans for Teamspeak etc when up and running.

Any dates yet for official OBeta ?

Playboy

Static M.e. wrote:

Aye, should be a good fun Irish Guild when it gets going

Plans for Teamspeak etc when up and running.

Any dates yet for official OBeta ?

I think around the 17th of December. There are final beta keys w8ing for u and brian

Tusky

Playboy wrote:

I think around the 17th of December. There are final beta keys w8ing for u and brian

Any chance I could get one ? Were you on Excaliber in DAOC ? You werent in Na Fianna by any Chance ? I was for a while years ago but then I joined Terra Dominus and finally Vengeance.

Id prefer to be in an "alliance" Guild though.

Static M.e.

We were both Albion,
Statix Xitats <Merc> RR7 (legion of Darkness \ Black Falcons )
played since release (if not Beta cant remember)
Stopped serious playing about 2 years ago tho, still have acc etc tho. hopefully WoW will cure me of Daoc and I can finally /del /sell account :rolleyes:

Playboy played Tean another High RR Merc in Guardians of Light + Misc other chars I cant remember, sorry :P

Preorder and get your key ! beta is perfect for deciding the char you want for release.

For US beta I played a Orc Warrior lots of fun to play but they have got nerfed already which is a bit crap, but I think Blizzard will fix them soon enough, they are still great fun anyways.
My fav. Command is DEFINATLY /train ..hilarous stuff

The Irish guild could easily join an allaince once its gets going i doubt that would be the problem

quozl

Static M.e. wrote:

The Irish guild could easily join an allaince once its gets going i doubt that would be the problem

I think tusky meant alliance as in the good guys not the horde.

Teethy, Memnoch and me are alliance on eladar, a east coast pvp server. I was horde during the beta but those damn do-gooders went alliance

Greg

Tusky

Yea I want to play as the good guys

I pld DAOC for a long while - 50 HERO Tusk. among other characters.... hoping WOW will fill the void that daoc left ! Are yea in the Euro Closed beta ? I got in... do you know if I can use the US Beta Client to play the EU beta ? Would save me downloading 2/5 gigs....also what servers are yea on for the closed beta ?

Static M.e.

"I think tusky meant alliance as in the good guys not the horde."

lol, cant beleive I missed that !!

Yeah I wouldn't mind that much being alliance either but at the same time I DONT want to be on the same side as some of the lamers that were on Alb excel, that will decide totally whcih way I go. You wouldn't beleive how many times I have wanted to get on a plane, get a cab to their house and beat them to death with their own keyboard !!!

Now its seems in WoW I will have my chance !
<Excellent! Monty Burns Style>

No didnt get closed beta

Tusky

Static M.e. wrote:

"I think tusky meant alliance as in the good guys not the horde."

lol, cant beleive I missed that !!

Yeah I wouldn't mind that much being alliance either but at the same time I DONT want to be on the same side as some of the lamers that were on Alb excel, that will decide totally whcih way I go. You wouldn't beleive how many times I have wanted to get on a plane, get a cab to their house and beat them to death with their own keyboard !!!

Now its seems in WoW I will have my chance !
<Excellent! Monty Burns Style>

No didnt get closed beta

Why would an Irish player play in Albion anyway ? its obviously Britain where as Hibernia is Ireland !!!

Trebor

i got my pre-order key so i wouldn't mind teaming up with you lot! i'm cool either way regards faction, i just what to start playing!!!

Whack

Am in Euro beta, char name Zerg - lvl 20 Tauren Druid if fanyone wants to give a shout.

Static M.e.

"its obviously Britain where as Hibernia is Ireland !!!"

Aye I Know, unfortunatly I didn't find that out untill too late, when I started playing a friend had already begun a week before me, so the logic was that because he already knew the land, it would be easier for me to play on albion where we could all help each other out. it wasn't untill much later that I actually worked out that about Albion + hibernia, never looked at the other realm maps really till I went RvR <about lvl 30 or I think> so by then it was too late.

On another note, the reason my char was a fighter was because I couldn't work out a Mage, I first rolled a wannabie wizard but I couldn't get past lvl 2 or 3 or something, I thought that once you used a spell once it was gone
So I would cast my 1st spell at the mob and procede to club it to death with my staff......Unfortunatly the mob always won! so I said fnk this and rerolled a Merc

Dustaz

We have a more or less Irish guild up and running on the US retail. Warsong server, Sons of Elysium.

BKtje

Have ordered this from the states and will have tomorrpw (as long as UPS shows up again). Was playing the beta in a friends house and id ecided to get it.

I played DAoC but quickly got bored, same with CoH. None of em matched Asherons Call in the versatility and uniqueness of each character (ie spending exp points on over 30 skills and then also using skill points to get new skills).
WoW looks like it has a chance of competing in my mind with AC (dunno why i quit playing it tbh ). First glance ( and this is only a quick 15min game mind) was a mix between AC type and DAoC type.

Ill see tomorrow when i get to play it for a nice loooong period on the US servers. Unfortunately m8s of mine playing on Cen<something> so ill be heading there.