World of Warcraft

by Activision Publishing

Product Features

• An increase in the level cap to 70
• New spells and talents for each class
• Two new playable races - Blood Elves & Draenei
• Explore the entire new continent of Outland
• Many new zones and high-level dungeons

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B002AUE07C
• Item Weight: 2 pounds
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: May 20, 2009
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,044 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,338 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

World of Warcraft didn't invent the online role-playing genre, but it certainly benefits from the missteps of other titles that have come before. A mind-boggling array of improvements in graphics, gameplay, networking, and interface--really every category--makes this game the crown prince of the genre, a great starting place for newbies, and a challenge to any other MMORPG currently in the works.

The game's beautifully rendered locations are filled with small details, such as flying birds and flowing water.

A History of Conflict
WoW takes place just four years after the real-time strategy Warcraft series, which chronicles a 25 year struggle between the Alliance (humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves) and the Horde (orcs, tauren, trolls, and undead). Even though there's tons of accumulated story to the series, new players should not be daunted. The background is there for you to explore, but you don't have to tread a lot of Azeroth history to get into the action.

The makers boast 2,000 existing quests with more being added, many of them noncombat in nature.

The game looks magnificent. There's plenty of detail and variety to the landscapes and interiors, and the artwork has a refreshingly playful style. There's not a lot of variety in the character creation process, but with all the skills and proficiencies to combine in the game, WoW focuses its customization not on the appearance of your character but rather on the character of your character. The game lets you adopt any two trade skills, regardless of character race or class, and combine those skills in useful ways. If you choose skinning and leatherworking, for example, you can fashion bags from the carcasses of monsters you defeat, which will allow you to carry even more inventory items.

Expanded Commerce
You can sell the items you make, find, and loot through a variety of outlets. Like any role-playing game, WoW has merchants who will buy your cast-off items for fixed prices, but you can also sell to other players at your own price through in-game chat or by leaving it with one of the auction houses located across the map. This virtual free market is a game within the game, like Monopoly somehow inserted into the middle of Chess. Heck, you can even send items C.O.D. to other players via the game's mail system.

The game's Quest Log keeps track of up to 20 quests at a time.

In other online role-playing games, starting players have to invest dozens of hours whacking at small prey and doing other odd jobs one at a time to gradually "level up" to more interesting challenges. WoW lets players accept a variety of quests--up to 20 at a time without penalty for abandoning any of them before they're complete. The makers boast 2,000 existing quests with more being added, many of them noncombat in nature. Where some games only grant experience through battle, WoW grants experience for exploring and fulfilling quests too.

A Level Playing Field
There's also a built-in handicap for casual players where your character enters a rest state when you log off from the game. The longer you're logged off (up to a week), the bigger the experience bonus you'll get when you return to battle. An enemy tagging feature--the player who lands the first attack on an enemy claims the loot for himself or his party--prevents onlookers from swooping in and pilfering items from a monster that you brought down. That resolves a common complaint of other titles.

Icons and pop-ups help put complex controls easily within reach.

Most games severely penalize players when they die in-game, usually by shaving experience points, funds, or both. In WoW, death just relocates your ghost to the nearest graveyard, and the only penalty is the time it takes you to get back to resurrect your character's corpse.

All of this makes for a very complicated game, but the well-designed interface puts all the game's elements into icons either visible framing the action or within a simple keystroke. The enemy's artificial intelligence is quite strong too: Monsters will join nearby fights to aid their comrades, switch targets strategically midbattle, and ambush players. The map system fills in details on places you've visited, so you always know where you are and where you've been.

Overall, World of Warcraft is a game that's easy to learn, challenging to master, beautiful to watch, and tons of fun to play. --Porter B. Hall

System Requirements
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating System	PC: Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista (with latest Service Packs) Mac: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer
CPU	PC: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlong XP 1500+ Mac: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor	PC: Dual-core processor, such as Intel Pentium D or AmD Athlong 64 X2 Mac: Intel 1.8 GHz processor or better
Graphics Hardware	PC: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transfor and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce2 class card or better Mac: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better	PC: 3D Graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capabilities with 128 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better Mac: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better.
Memory	PC: 512 MB (1 GB for Vista) Mac: 1 GB	PC: 1 GB (2 GB for Vista) Mac: 2 GB
Hard Drive Space	15 GB of free space
All Platform Requirements	Keyboard and mouse, required for controls. Other input devices not supported. Active broadband Internet connection required to play.

Product Description

Blizzard World of Warcraft 14-Day Trial Edition

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

306 of 314 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent game, but use caution, read this post., May 11, 2009

By 

Kule Noorth - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: World of Warcraft Battle Chest (DVD-ROM)

This is a very long post, but well worth it if you're seriously considering this game.

Pros:

First and foremost this game is a milestone in the both the MMORPG and online gaming industry. With over 11 million subscribers, it's the largest online game to date, and for good reason.

The graphics, while cartoonish, indulge you in a moving work of art with flowing waterfalls, freezing tundras, and shadow-ridden caves. The world itself is simply huge (though surprisingly easy to navigate), spanning across four continents (one in outer space), and leaves the gamer with an unparalleled sense of citizenship. Once you log into World of Warcraft, you truly plug into a hidden universe.

The music is truly worthy of mention. When you first launch the game, you are met with a symphony of heart-pounding drums, violins, bassoons, or what-have-you. The music/ambience then changes frequently throughout the game depending upon your current location and really adds an element of class to the experiences of stepping into a haunted mine, or riding up to the gates of a citadel.

The gameplay ranges from simple to slightly complicated depending upon your class selection, but always maintains the smooth controls that are oh-so-user-friendly. You can select from 9 different classes at the start (another is available further on in the game), each of which have their own roles to fulfill by either Healing, Tanking (taking the hits for other less-hardy classes), or DPSing (DPS: Damage per second, a term used to explain classes adept at dealing damage). Also with the introduction of "dual-spec," a character is able to switch between two customizable talent builds (determines your main role: healing/tanking/dps, through the selection certain talents) at the drop of a hat.

The most basic gameplay consists of leveling your character from 1 to 80 via the completion of quests, invading of dungeons, and slaying of monsters, all of which grant "experience," and move you closer to the next level. If you grow wary leveling, it is possible to "que" into a battleground from anywhere in the world. There are four different types of battle: capture the flag, protect the resources, defend/attack the keep, and control the territory. You compete against real players controlling real characters on different computers, which is typically referred to as "PVP," or player versus player.

Once you have reached the maximum level, the fun has just begun. You will continue advancing your character by upgrading his or her equipment (or "gear"). Raids, dungeons and "heroics" offer thousands of powerful monsters that, when killed, give weapons and armor that strengthen your character. Dungeons and heroics are typically conquered by five players effectively working together to defeat the obstacles and creatures within. Raids follow a different suit, requiring 10 to 25 skilled players able to communicate and coordinate themselves in order to (hopefully) kill the most difficult monsters in the game.

Another option to the post-leveling stage (or "end game content") is coordinated PVP. Beside the four available battlegrounds, the game contains four "arena" maps offering extremely competitive play in the form of 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5. If you are successful, the rewards are some of the most powerful upgrades in the game.

Guilds, world events, seasonal events, mounts, professions, mini-games, parties, transportation and real-time economies are just a few more of the many other unnamed aspects to this game. Some things are simply best if discovered.

Cons:

In recent times, the game has found difficulties in PVP in terms of equality. Some classes seem to always be more powerful than others, however, the developers of the game promise that they're addressing this situation.

It is fairly expensive if thought of as simply a video game. The game runs at (I believe) $15 a month, or $12.99 if you pay for 6 months at once. By the time you've purchased the original game and the two expansion packs, you're out $100+, which doesn't include subscription fees. The cheapest route to take is to purchase the Battle-chest (the first two games), the second expansion pack (soon to be added to the Battle-chest) and a large chunk of game time.

A key thing to consider in terms of price is that you're buying much more than a game. You're paying for the new content which is released almost every two months, the server maintenance, and in-game customer support. Also, keep in mind, that this game will (probably) entertain you for much longer than a TV or DVD or Console game. Sure, an XBox game is only $59.99, very cheap compared to World of Warcraft, but within a few weeks/months the XBox game will become dull, whereas this game will have already released new content to be conquered.

*This is why I only gave it 4 stars*
The game is addicting. Extremely. Dangerously. No, seriously, if you have any history of alcohol/drug/gambling abuse, you should reconsider, or at least be informed prior to purchasing.

I offer to you this solution: first, download the 10 day free trial. Next, keep a log of the amount of time you spend on the game during these 10 days. It's expected that you will 1-3 hours a day initially, but will quickly fall into the 4+ hours as your trial nears its end. After the 10 day trial, take a look at how much time you've spent on this game. Some might find themselves in "good shape," with only a couple hours of play time. Most will find that they've spent an upwards of 30 hours (or much more) on the game in only 10 days.

Determine for yourself if you truly have that much free time to spend on a video game. If you do, wonderful, then this is the game for you, and I hope you enjoy your experience. If you believe this is too much time to spend on a game, don't fret! Within the account creation process, you will be able to set up "parental controls" for the availability of play. It is in this device that you can limit your playtime to a healthy and sustainable amount.

I hope this was helpful.

134 of 140 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful especially for adding a new account for a family member., December 4, 2007

By 

Mitchell M. Tse "mitchelltse" (Antioch, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: World of Warcraft Battle Chest (DVD-ROM)

I bought this for my son, since I had only bought him WoW without the expansion.
With the assumption that you've decided you want to play WoW, all the way through to lvl 70, this is the pack for you. You get WoW and expansion, which would cost 50 bucks if bought separately. You also get two strategy guides, but the strategy guide for the expansion (see my review for it here World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Official Strategy Guide (World of Warcraft)) is terribly lacking, so we're really looking at one valuable guide, one crappy guide. What you also get, and not even the box mentions this, is the game on DVD! Oh, how many times I've installed and reinstalled the original WoW on multiple computers at home and at my friends place, swapping disks. Well, no more! Unless you were lucky and bought the original Collector's edition World of Warcraft Collector's Edition and World Of Warcraft Burning Crusade Collector's Edition, you're stuck with 4 CDs each instead of 1 DVD.
Overall, I would buy (in fact, I did).

Update December 2009:
I've bought my 4th copy of this battlechest (yeah, I try to enlist friends and families to play WoW, so call me the Wow drug dealer....), which arrived the week before Thanksgiving 2009. Instead of 2 DVDs (one for WoW and one for The Burning Crusade), you now get everything in one DVD, with the two activation codes both printed on separate labels on the DVD cardboard sleeve. Not very different, but it's nice that they at least save a bit of plastic by packing it all in one disc. Still comes with one month of play included, contrary to what the one comment on my review claimed.

And until they release a new battlechest that will include Wrath of the Lich King (which I doubt Blizzard will do until right after they release their next expansion [to be titled Cataclysm {which I preordered my max of 3 from Amazon already!}]) this battle chest is still the deal to buy. Also, in my opinion, including the Burning crusade makes sense, since it does include 2 new player races as well as their corresponding zones in Azeroth, which can be played from the beginning, whereas pretty much all of Wrath of the Lich King isn't available until you're at least lvl 55, and then Blizzard sinks in the extra hook. Would have been nice if there was a battlechst that included all 3, since that would have potentially saved me money, but oh, well....

Still greatly recommended for the person wanting to start playing WoW.

52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Suprisingly addictive, December 29, 2007

By 

K. Smith (ME, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: World of Warcraft Battle Chest (DVD-ROM)

I got this after doing a free 10 day trial from Blizzard. After about 3-4 days of the trial I was pretty hooked and decided it was worth the money to get the full version of the game. (Very limited differences in the trial version so it's definitely worth testing out before you buy the full version.)

I'm not usually into long play games like this, but after seeing a bunch of different things about the game (including a very funny South Park episode) I decided to check into it a bit further.

I will say the game is much more fun if you can play with people you know, but you don't have to. I've found almost every person I've met in the game to be very helpful and understanding to new players so it makes it easy to get into the game and get what you want out of it.

I'd encourage people to definitely do the trial software and see how you like it, but I'm confident most people that play video games will find some portion of this entertaining.