Alright, World of Warcraft for the PC, one of the most popular modern MMO's out there (though I don't know why). I actually own this game and I am writing this for the people I hear might be thinking about trying it. As much as I would love to be selfish and say, 'Yes! Come suffer, I mean play this game with Meeee', I'll do the right thing and say DON'T. Be very very very careful not to get distracted by this game's spiffy graphics and fun play(at first). If anything, get a 15-day trial but do NOT buy this right away. In my opinion, Blizzard has great art in their environments, characters, and other graphics, good story, and addicting gameplay; but their major downfall is they make the buggiest games of all time. Not talking about their small bugs like a character won't interact with you which you can easily get around, I'm talking about bugs that ruin all your hard work. You are jipped a reward, instantly killed by an enemy, attacked by invisible enemies, etc.
Let's talk about the good. The googly eye shinies of this game, the graphics. The environments are beautifully done and you would probably find yourself being a photographer and taking screenshots wherever you go. The characters have a great look with many uniquely style weapons and armor once you find the good stuff. You can truley look bad @$$. You may not enjoy them as much as others because the art is more cartoony than realistic looking. But I find it to be the most impressive item of this game.
Another thing good about the game is that it's quest oriented and not grinding-oriented like the EQ lineage. You probably won't ever sit around and do repititious slaying of the same area to level up because the quests push your levels much easier along with appropriate rewards. This keeps you from being bored as your quests all seem to keep a uniqueness factor and mix of types so you don't quit. But then again, maybe you will do some grinding. See, WoW sometimes has 'drop quests' where you need to collect X amount of some quest item that drops at random rate from enemies. Well, blizzard has always been bad at math it seems because a 40% drop item will drop 2 in 15. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that is nowhere close and this could just be a problem with their game but it is VERY common and will make you think they can't do probability.
This game hosts a ton of great adventures where you can run off into challenging instances, take down huge raid bosses the size of a castle, and even some treasure hunting and ryddle solving! The fun factor sure is present in this game but there are some outweighing flaws to this game in my opinion. One, this game started off as designed only for the no-life players. You would literally need to play it 10 hours a day to keep certain bonuses available or obtained bonuses from decaying. With some changes from patches they really redid the game so that you can actually play very little of it a day and still get somewhere, so that's good. But the main problem still exists: In my opinion, Blizzard is a 100% money-oriented company and you can see evidence of this as to their game dynamics. If you don't think you can sit down on the weekend on this game for two to three hours in one sitting, you will be missing out on quite a bit of this game. There are events you can do that take a minimum of that time to complete or you'll have to start all over. This bites @$$, especially if you can't stand playing it for that long.
Of course there is PVP in this game where two factions are hostile towards another. You can play on a server that does not have open hostility and still enjoy PVP at your own wishes when you join Battlegrounds. Or you can go kamikaze and join a PVP server where you are painted with a big bullseye on your rear and get shafted one by a level 70 player while you're doing your level 1 quests. Either way, battlegrounds are more fun where you get to play capture the flag, or stake claims of resource nodes like gold mine and lumbermills, or have a gigantic battle race as to who can kill the other's commander first. Maybe they did that part right too as no matter what kind of player you are and if you like PVP or not, you can play on an appropriate server. Bad news for any PVPers out there though: if it wasn't bad enough that WoW is tuned to give the most help out of the players that spend the most time, but they actually make items that are made specifically for PVP players to own you with. If you take a player with no life, throw in a way to get godly items for certain levels, you can get one-shotted with a player equal to your level. Most games just have class imbalances, well WoW has both...even though I believe they tried to negate the class imbalance and failed miserably. What they tend to do is listen to the players that bitch the most, and help out whatever classes they have. Something like that because some patches make the overpowered classes more powerful...lolz.
I really do not recommend this game to anyone because I know if you're even half interested in it, you'll get suckered in and possibly regret it later. I know I do!! Blizzard is more concerned about making more money by immediately spending 80% of their company budget and hours creating the NEXT expansion or next game, than actually being useful and fixing the MYRIADS of errors/bugs that the game has. Once in a while they will however release a patch to 'fix' things, but most players know Blizzard patches are crafted from fail. They create more bugs than they fix, but sometimes are tollerable when they make the game better for average players (players with lives, jobs, family, etc). Sometimes not even bugs can make you say WTF?! For instance, how would you like to play a game where anytime you are in a fair fight, an extra mob comes out of nowhere to kill you? Play World of Warcraft. Would you like a game that gives you no chance of running away by allowing ANY creature (even a level 1 rat) STUN you 50% of the time when you run? And when the enemies run, you have 75% less chance to hit them so that they run into a mob of enemies which turn on you to kill you? Play World of Warcraft. I'm guessing they do this for difficulty or maybe on accident, but either way, it is WORSE than I can describe. You'll find many of these conveniences of how enemies walk your direction and find you even though they don't see you...it's great fun when you're equally matched against something else you're fighting. I wrote enough already, but I could go on and on about some of the bugs/errors you see like getting attacked by invisible enemies has got to be my least favorite ><. Basically, there are a lot of rules in here saying..YOU DIE!
Great scenery, great character designs, amazing equipment, awesome real-world events like sun-down/night/weather, appealing environments and civilizations! I knock it down a notch for any non-fantasy real-life looking seekers out there. Some people just don't like the cartoony look of it.
Sound: 7/10
Nothing fancy here, some typical music that fits. Sound effects work nice, but again no composure that makes you rate it any higher than a 7.
Gameplay: 7/10
Okay okay, I know it can be VERY addicting especially to some gamers, but I have an extremely hard time enjoying any of the game once you start running into familiar Blizzard work...it just doesn't win.
Overall: 6/10
Ha! My scores may average higher but the CONs I have listed FAR outweigh the PROs of this game. Do NOT buy it...I am going easy on the score 6/10!! Either Blizzard being money-oriented or that they simply do not have the capability of making full-functioning games, I don't know, but it sucks. Really really sucks. I'll try to be fair though, if you can withstand the bugs and getting killed just because the game decides you will, and have some friends you would like to play this game with, go for it! With the crap aside, you can have an absolute blast with your friends playing this game and that is the only reason I have not taken my 12guage to this POS as well. Just keep in mind the cost of the game, and the $15 a month you have to dish out for them NOT to fix their junk. Besides that, you could love this game! I am certain there are much better MMOs out there for much less that blow this out of the water, so please please don't buy this off the shelf...trial it first. It may be a multi-million selling game but it is VERY hit or miss. For me? MISS! You did not sink my BattleSh!T!
Meth
bravenet.com