World of Warcraft is made up of many fundamentals from familiar MMO games, and borrows the distinct style and existing lore of previous Warcraft games. As with any other MMO game, you’ll be required to fulfil quests, which typically range from standard fetching quests or defeating large monsters by yourself or in a group, and player versus player content (PvP). In addition, you have your typically Western RPG dungeon exploring and item recovery to boost your character’s abilities and visual appearance. This is all in the name of gaining experience points to level your character, which, in the case of World of Warcraft, is capped at level 60. In addition to allowing you to use new items and abilities as you grow in level, you’ll be able to discover and explore new areas in the world, providing new quests and enemies to tackle. Naturally, the further you grow, the larger and meaner the enemies will become.
You are able to choose from nine distinct classes (healing, damage dealers, spell casters and tank classes) depending on which race and faction you decide to play as. Certain races can only house certain classes (For example: the Druid is an exclusive class for Taurens and Night Elves) and even some classes are faction exclusive. Rather than being based off personal preference, each race provides unique racial benefits for your character. Dwarves come with a +5 increase when using guns, making them a good choice for hunters, meanwhile Undead have a racial ability that allows them to dine on dead creatures, regenerating their health and making them a good choice for rogues. These are not the only differences when choosing a character either. Further on you’ll be given class, race or faction exclusive quests, and on some occasions you’ll be venturing off into new areas at differing levels (For example: quests in one area may start at level 20 for Alliance, but may begin at level 25 for Horde).
After choosing your character, you’ll begin the game in your race’s starting area, which is ideally an introduction for what gamers can expect to experience the further they explore the game. For the first dozen levels you’ll remain within your race’s close quarters, only making contact with other players from your race. But as you continue to level you’ll be able to run, fly or ride boats into new areas that intertwine with the other players from your faction, and even opposing factions, which spices the game up for a number of reasons.
It's a long road ahead.
The game is broken into two factions – Alliance (Night Elves, Humans, Gnomes, Dwarves) and Horde (Orcs, Trolls, Taurens, Undead) - with a number of areas being faction-exclusive, as well as there being a number of dungeons exclusive too. Each area is typically built around a single hub area (usually a town) where gamers can gather quests, items or repair their broken items. From there gamers can read quests from their log book and venture off into the wilderness fulfilling their quest by killing the enemies populating the area or by finding certain quest rewards scattered throughout the large areas.
Some areas even have dungeons embedded into them, which generally need a group of 5 or more members to accomplish. Dungeons are a great place to gather rare items from tough boss encounters and quest rewards, meanwhile they are also a great way of extending the game’s story. Dungeons are built in a number of ways depending on their location. Some are built into caves where you’ll need to swim to new areas within the dungeon, while others are structured into huge lairs. There are a variety of dungeons that are evenly spread throughout the level range up to level 60, meaning that you’ll be able to explore various dungeons as you level. Once hitting level 60 though, the toughest and longest dungeons become available that requires groups of 20 or 40 members to successfully accomplish, but the rewards are generally a worthwhile incentive for tackling these dungeons.
There’s a handful of Player versus Player content that is definitely worth exploring too. If you roll a character on a PvP server, where opposing factions can kill one another on sight, you’ll be running into PvP action constantly. However, for those of us who only enjoy their PvP in patches, Blizzard has provided several ways of enjoying this side of the game. Besides duelling, entering world PvP areas and invading opposing faction cities, you can also involve yourself in the game’s battleground instances, which are areas that are based off PvP action but also require objectives to be fulfilled. At this stage, there are three different battlegrounds, which all have different objectives to accomplish. One is a capture-the-flag scenario, another is a capture-and-hold scenario, and meanwhile the final battleground area is a full scale battle where each faction is fighting to control ground and are ultimately trying to kill the opposing faction’s leader to win. These are played against other players on other servers, so joining a battle is relatively quick.
Unfortunately, Blizzard has sort of gimped the PvP content in a number of ways. Three battleground arenas is terribly small and restrictive, and grows tiresome extremely quick, since the rewards provided after winning a match aren’t particularly worth the time needed to obtain the superior ones. World PvP is also another area that feels terrible unutilised due to these events taking place in high-level areas that people rarely frequent, nor are they particularly well-structured.
While you aren’t killing enemies, fulfilling quest, killing other players or running through the game’s dungeons, there are a number of additional skills players can learn and level up that help towards earning money and having access to powerful items. Players are able to choose two primary profession skills, such as skinning, alchemy, blacksmithing or engineering, which enables you to gather items found off enemies or scattered throughout areas to sell or go towards making more powerful items. In addition to these skills, players will also be able to learn to cook, fish, ride a mount and first aid.
Thousands of gamers are waiting for you.
World of Warcraft is built in such a way that it feels in everyway like a living and fully active world. There are locations that are in the mountains with snow knee-deep high, gloomy marshes and dark forest areas with gorillas roaming around each corner. All of this is perfectly occupied by weather effects and other characters, helping to create an illusion of a life-like world, which you can easily lose yourself in. Some areas are truly captivating in their size, while others ooze sheer brilliance because of their likeable surroundings (jumping into a town that is in everyway a direct copy of Star Wars’ Mos Eisley or running through a jungle with dinosaurs are great retreats for gamers).
The life-like world doesn’t stop at the visuals though. There are plenty of features within the game that are used to make a real life society inside this fantasy world. There are guilds that are used to form a group of players together to tackle content with one another, auction houses where you can buy and sell items found in-game, fishing competitions where you can leisurely sit back and catch a few rare fish and even seasonal events such as Christmas and Halloween popping up for good cheer. World of Warcraft portrays a real-life world so well that you can simply lose an hour just by talking to someone in a city, much like real-life.
After looking pass the pure addictiveness of World of Warcraft, you begin to realise that there isn’t enough content or balancing to keep the most casual of gamers occupied once hitting the level cap. Rather, World of Warcraft eventually becomes like a full time job, requiring hours and hours of dedication before tapping into the benefits the game offers. Most of the enjoyment is found within the end game content, but just how much time are you willing to devote just to reach that point? Unfortunately, the game’s problem is just that; lack of content for all gamers. Once hitting level 60, there isn’t nearly enough to explore, unless you’re in a guild and are willing to devote several hours a day to explore the content.
See, content virtually becomes to a halt once hitting level 60 for any average gamer. There are a handful of extra quests to explore, a few 5/10-man dungeons to tackle and further reputation to gain. After that though, there’s nothing. Unless, of course, you are willing to drop yourself into a guild or aim high in the game’s battlegrounds, which requires more work than what most of us can deliver. However, if you can clock in several hours a day then you have 20/40-man dungeons and world bosses to conquer, such as Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Naxx and a few dragons spread throughout the game that are great incentives on their own, allowing gamers to experience some of the toughest and most exciting battles and scenery that World of Warcraft has to offer.
"Hey mum".
On the scaling side of things, in regards to class abilities and balancing between classes, there are a lot of rough edges that haven’t been addressed since the game’s 2004 release. Certain abilities are often near useless in all situations, while others are clearly overpowered in others. These issues are more apparent during the game’s PvP content, where the scaling between certain classes isn’t equally matched. Other issues persist from item scaling and the reputation grinding you need to do to reach certain areas or to obtain items. Grinding is all you’ll be doing later in the game – enter a 20-man dungeon and grind your reputation by killing enemies, obtain quest rewards by killing thousands of zombies and be given access to certain areas by doing similar objectives.
There is going to be plenty of things you’re going to hate about this game, but the good certainly outweigh the bad quite significantly, making the game still highly addictive despite its problems. An example being the lack of content at level 60, which can easily be overlooked by simply re-rolling a new character, a new class or even a new faction to experience the game from a different perspective. Equally, instead of focusing on PvE, you can decide to enjoy the PvP content by jumping into the few battlegrounds, world PvP or even duelling against other players. There’s a lot of flexibility in how you can approach your game time in WoW, so it certainly isn’t all doom and gloom once hitting the brick wall that is level 60 if you don’t have the time to commit to reaching end-game goals.
While the game is a massive life drainer, requiring you to sit behind your computer several hours on end, the attractive and expansive world that is provided is a welcoming one. Whether you’re a hardcore or casual gamer, there’s enough content to indulge yourself in, making World of Warcraft by far the single greatest and most addictive MMORPG available. Beware of its addictiveness.
