So wrote William Shakespeare in his play, Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene I. At the time of course he wasn’t referring to the long running RTS series of games called WarCraft by Blizzard but the conquest of the Known World by the Roman Empire. Nevertheless the phrase is sometimes uttered when players of WarCraft unleash their mass of grunts onto the opposing players heavily defended base that prove utterly useless when faced with 50+ low units hence giving birth to the phenomena that is the ‘Grunt Rush’. But this article isn’t about the RTS games which Blizzard are so praised for creating. This article is a preview of the European release of World of WarCraft (WoW). Blizzard’s first ever foray into the incredibly competitive arena of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG’s).

Righto!

WoW is set on the world of Azeroth, the world inhabited by humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls and whole bunch of other critters normally found in your average fantasy based RPG. Blizzard broke from the pack when it made the original WarCraft game in 1994 which was an RTS game in a similar style to Dune II only with swords and spell casting wizards as opposed to machine guns and giant sand worms.

With this is a backdrop against which to set WoW in the people at Blizzard did not want for any material for a vibrant world within which players can run around in hitting rats...no wait, that doesn’t happen in WoW, oh no. Grinding is a dirty MMO word and Blizzard have put a lot of effort in making their game fun. But more on that later!

Zug zug!

So with the history of 11 years of RTS games behind them Blizzard can now progress the story of Azeroth further by letting players be mere civilians of Azeroth rather than some ‘hand of God’ like commander overseeing a battle. Of course these players start off as mere civilians but soon grow into something far greater!

The game starts with a menu showing the available character race which dictates which side in the never ending war between good and evil you wish to choose. On the good side AKA Alliance there is the Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes. On the evil AKA Horde side there are the Orcs, Trolls, Undead and Taurens. These are all races drawn from the ranks of the armies found in the WarCraft series so should be familiar to fans of those games.

Once the race is chose a class is selected. These range from warrior right though to mage and priest with a bunch of other RPG classes in between. Most classes can be chosen by either side with the exception of Paladin which is Alliance only and Shaman are unique to the Horde. Once both race and class are selected the player is prompted to select their appearance and name of their chosen avatar. After this the game begins proper.

Is there no one else?

WoW is structured in a similar vein to every other MMORPG. The player starts off with next to nothing but the odd useless weapon that can barely squash a rat....which you never get to kill in WoW anyway so it’s really useless and the only way to progress in the game is to carry out tasks for local dignitaries in the starting area AKA ‘Noob zones’. These areas are havens from the nasty outside world which is quite vast and will have new players huddled close to their starting town killing monsters in exchange for weapons, money and food. As quests are completed experience is earned at an exponential rate initially which rapidly trails off at around level 10. Again this is all typical MMORPG fair with a training area higher level characters never venture in unless a quests leads them there.

Quests in WoW come in three types. First there is the ‘One Shot’ type which requires one task to be done and the quest is complete. These normally have the player killing something or collecting things from the monsters they kill and deliver back to the character that gave it to them. The second type is the ‘When will this actually end?’ type which has the player complete one section of a quest only for them to be passed on to the next section in a almost never ending trail. These quests form part of a greater story line and actually have definable arcs which the player can follow making the game that more engrossing. The third type is a similar to the second type only they are class specific. The rewards are great and can actually grant the player additional abilities. For example the paladin can only resurrect other players once they complete a certain quest.

Zohtar!

Combat in WoW is again almost exactly the same as any other MMO. You initiate combat by right-clicking on the intended target and you can then select special abilities while the automated attack continues on. MMO’s follow this system as it is narrowband friendly. It is a turn-based combat system that requires a minimal amount of data need to be exchanged between the players PC and the game hosts servers.

Death in WoW is rather different to most MMO’s. Traditionally dying is a very bad thing in MMO’s with experience points normally being deducted from the player forcing them to replay the same part of a quest of kill yet more of the same creature for the millionth time. Blizzard has taken a different view on this and has decided that the worst that will happen is that you get teleported ghost like away from your corpse which you have to retrieve but all of the items the player is wearing suffer damage which can easily be repaired for a small fee at a local shop. That’s it. No experience points loss, no level drop, nothing. You can even not worry about actually getting the corpse and take a 25% damage to your gear if you can’t be bothered to run. Blizzard have done this for two reasons. They want to make their game fun and they want to make sure people can carry on the fight during Player vs Player (PvP) encounters.

Yes me’lord

WoW is split into two sorts of play. There is the Player vs Environment (PvE) and PvP. PvE has players take on computer controlled monsters which is what makes up the entire game in titles like City of Heroes and EverQuest 2.

WoW has an RTS history to it which Blizzard could not ignore. Two definitive opposing sides that the players could choose to play was too good an opportunity to pass up. This has resulted in players having the ability to attack opposing faction players at will. Well I say at will it really depends on what sort of server you are on. PvE servers AKA ‘Normal’ servers have the requirement that people wishing to fight other players must either flag themselves by typing ‘/pvp’ or kill an opposing faction’s Non Player Character. In ‘PvP’ servers are free of such restrictions.

During my time playing WoW I have only encountered 3 opposing faction players. It was a tense moment. There was I, a level 23 paladin, 4 levels below them and they were flagged as PvP, allowing me to attack them. I however was not so they could not attack me. So I stood there and looked at them while they looked at me. One waved at me. I waved back. Another stuck his tongue out...well what was left of it (they were undead) at which point I decided to withdraw. Granted I was a paladin and as such I had some pretty hefty anti-undead spells at my disposal but I couldn’t take three of them on.

Just as I ran on a level 40 paladin rode passed me. Moments later I heard the sound of some combat. I ran towards it and saw my three possible assailants lying dead (well I say dead, more like dead again) on the floor and the paladin I saw run past me moment earlier ride off into the distance. If ever there was a case for the ‘wrong place in the wrong time’ that was it!

Zwarboo!

The one thing WoW does well is the level progression. At no time do you feel that you are working at making your character stronger. There is no real grind as such as there is always a reason why you are attacking creatures. Whether it’s for a quest or to get basic supplies for crafting items there is always a point to taking down creatures.

Some quests go one stage further by becoming ‘incidences’. These are long haul quests that require a great deal of time to complete. Players enter them knowing that they and their group will be the only ones there thus removing the risk of other players ‘kill stealing’. Monsters do not respawn either apart from the patrolling ones. During these quests there are also a series of ‘boss’ creatures that must be taken down all of which have good loot which players can either use or sell on.

At once sire!

I could go on about the group dynamic, the travel between areas, the lack of ‘zones’ and the way in which NPC’s have floating icons above them to indicate they have a quest or you need to speak to them to complete/continue a quest. But I won’t for fear of sending you, the reader to a very deep sleep! Instead I’m going to bang on about the sound and graphics!

Graphically WoW has come in for a lot of criticism. The player models have a very low poly-count and environment is similarly modelled. In the days of post Halflife 2, Doom 3 and, more appropriately EverQuest 2 with the high detailed models people cry of ‘cartoony’ and ‘outdated’ which to my mind is somewhat unfair. WarCraft 3 has a similar engine only not so detailed and the WoW engine is a natural progression from the Wc3 one. It’s very forgiving to PC’s meaning you don’t need to spend a large chunk of money to upgrade just to play the game. The engine also allows for many players to fill an area with little to no affect on dreaded lag. This is important during large PvP battles as the game engine must be able to handle so many players in order for it to work.

Dharboo!
Sound wise the game really does excel with it being one of the few MMO’s I’m forced to shut the music down on. Music shifts depending on which area the player is in and actually changes in tone reflecting the danger the player is in.

Spot effects are also excellent with key events such as gaining a level being heard not only by the player but also those in the immediate area which is a nice touch. There is also the voice effects which much more limited to those found on EverQuest 2 are enough to encourage a sense of immersion.

FEMALE PERSPECTIVE

Speaking as a male this is a tad hard for me but I’ll give it a shot. MMO’s have traditionally been rather popular with female gamers due primarily to the social side of the game. I know I’m not generalising too much here as it is a proven fact that women sight this as the main source of attraction to the game. The number of female players of Planetside (an MMOFPS) is testament to this which many would regard as a rather male orientated game. Then again what is a ‘male orientated game’ anyway?

WoW does a good job of maintaining social aspects of play with group creation being relatively easy and guild creation and management being quite easy to fathom.

DEAF GAMER PERSPECTIVE

WoW is awash with text. Every character communicates with the player via this medium as do other players. The only exception to this is when a guild decided to take up voice communication tools like TeamSpeak but that is not a key feature of WoW so should be discounted.

There are also a plethora of visual clues as to what is happening to a players character. As items are collected in a quest for example a figure saying ‘3/10 of [Item Name]’ collected’ appears on the screen. Spell effects and on screen action is also well represented meaning that in theory it is possible to play the game in complete silence.

Summary

Bearing in mind this article is a preview only as it is based on someone’s experience on a beta server issues such as lag will play a small part in the players experience. Nevertheless a good chunk of the gameplay can be described and what I have tried to portray here is a very well crafted (if you can excuse the pun) MMO. Every blade of grass, monster eye ball, beer barrel has been made with care and it shows. For me WoW is shaping up to be an amazing MMO. We can only hope that once the game does finally reach the shores of the Old World it can live up to the reputation Blizzard have so carefully maintained over the past 11 years.

Crafted by Chris O'Regan aka Kropotkin