World of Warcraft

Other products by Vivendi Universal

Product Features

• This game requires a monthly fee, and an internet connection to play
• Create and customize your own hero from the unique races and classes of the Warcraft universe
• Explore an expansive world with miles of forests, deserts, snow-blown mountains, and other exotic lands
• Visit huge cities and delve through dozens of vast dungeons
• Adventure together with thousands of other players in an enormous, persistent game world

Product Details

• Our recommended age: 12 - 20 years
• Manufacturer recommended age: 0 months and up
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000067FDW
• Item Weight: 1 pounds
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: November 23, 2004
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #443 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)

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  #3 in	Video Games > PC Games > Online
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Product Description

Edition: Full Standard

From Amazon.com
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
World Of Warcraft lets players experience the lands of Azeroth from a newer, in-depth perspective. They'll discover new lands and take on epic quests and challenges in massive online multiplayer action. Adventure together with thousands of other players simultaneously A monthly subsription fee is required to play online

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

517 of 581 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Game, Even For Older Players, September 15, 2004

By	Walter Milford (Vancouver, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This game is, quite simply, the best Fantasy MMORPG I have ever encountered. Having played during the entire 11 day Stress Test, I can honestly say it will probably be around even longer than EverQuest. This work of art has all the magic of EQ, without the many frustrations that finally caused me to give up on EQ (such as extreme grind, a very punitive death penalty, and being forced to group at high levels).

The graphics in WoW are awesome. Some people complain about the "cartoonish" colors, etc. I find these graphics to be very pleasing to the eye, and extremely well detailed and arranged. Guess this just shows that it isn't possible to please everyone, particularly those who go out of their way to find a flaw in other people's creations. To me, it is just right.

I won't elaborate on the basics of the game, such as the 8 races and 9 classes. Others have already covered them. Rather, I will focus on some other areas that are important to older players (I will soon be 60 years old, and no longer have the lightning-fast hand to eye coordination and sharp vision I once enjoyed).

There appeared to be no need for extremely quick reflexes in this game, but instead a player needs to use strategy and planning to avoid getting in over one's head. The wonderful hotkey bar across the entire bottom of the screen was very helpful and well thought out. Kudos to Blizzard for making such a great interface. The screen is not all cluttered up like it is in most games.

The game runs on a 24-hour clock, so it is dark nearly half the time. Blizzard wisely chose to not make the game black as night in most locations. It is possible to play effectively in caves and other usually extremely dark areas, without benefit of an external light. I thought this was a very wise decision and really enjoyed playing in those locations for the first time ever in an MMORPG. Some players complain that it is too bright. I would say to them: Turn down your Gamma control in the game if you like. Many of us do not have your young night-vision, and we are paying customers too. I think that Blizzard got this part just right.

The quest system in this game is better than I have ever seen. I actually liked doing quests, something I haven't previously enjoyed. Also, quests give lots of experience, and since they can usually be done on a casual basis, they don't require the same level of one-track focus that they do in other games I have played.

During this "way too short" Stress Test, I decided to try a variety of different characters and locations, so played the following characters: Night Elf Druid, lvl 12; Tauren Hunter, lvl 13; Human Mage, lvl 8; Human Warlock, lvl 6; Gnome Warlock, lvl 6; Troll Shaman, lvl 6. Unfortunately, I have a full-time job and could only devote about 40 hours a week to the game. The initial leveling rate is quite quick, with it slowing down a lot at about level 12. Just about right, IMO.

The game is bug-free, for the most part. It is way more bug-free than SWG is even today. I would be willing to pay a subscription now, if it would "get me my game back!". There are only two problems I see with this game:

1. Even though the Stress Test ended at 6pm Sunday evening, three days later I am still going through withdrawal and still have no desire to play on my two City of Heroes and three SWG accounts.

2. World of Warcraft is still not out, so my pre-ordered copy hasn't arrived, nor do I know when that will happen. The sooner, the better, IMO. There is no doubt in my mind that this game will be way more popular that EQ2, which I also plan to try. Hopefully WoW will arrive first.

I for one really appreciate these Reviews that Amazon has. I find them very helpful. The only problem I see with them is that there are only FIVE stars in the rating system. This is a shame, for World of Warcraft certainly deserves a TEN.

631 of 714 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WoW is more than it's cracked up to be, September 14, 2004

By	Seth Mclagan "Bullroar" (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

I just spent the last week playing the World of Warcraft Stress Test Beta, and I can tell you that it was better than I expected. Even though the game wasn't finished, it still has many features that make it head and shoulders above every other MMORPG I've played.
Now, I, like many others, have been waiting in ancicipation for this game to come out, and when I had the chance to play the stress test, I was elated. Considering the majority of my MMOG experience is in EverQuest, I will list a few of the improvements (at least what I see as improvements) over the MMORPG "norm."

1) Experience from completing quests is noticable, and the rewards from completing them are worthwhile. I was always frustrated with EverQuest's quest structure, and the only reason to do a quest was for the item quested for, not for the experience gain. In WoW, it is possible to gain more experience from completing a quest than from killing a monster.

2) Experience progress is anything but vague. Every time a character kills a monster or completes a quest, the experience points are clearly given, and a meter with the character's progress within a level is clearly marked with numbers. So it's impossible not to tell how much experience killing a monster was worth. No more questionable meters with random values.

3) The world is easy to get around in. And it doesn't take an hour to get where you need to be, if you know where you're going. This was one of my biggest problems with EverQuest, because, as a semi-casual player, sometimes I don't have the time to run for an hour to complete a quest, or, in some cases, die, then have to make a corpse run and take twice as long as it originally was supposed to take. Which leads me to my next point.

4) Death is reasonable. If your character dies, its ghost spawns at the NEAREST graveyard, so there is no need to manually bind your character somewhere. Also, there is no XP loss if you choose to run your character over to its corpse. In my opinion, the death system is one of the best, as you can choose to lose XP by ressurecting right at the graveyard, or just run to your character's corpse and revive there with no experience loss. And before you can ressurect your character in a graveyard, it will let you know exactly how much XP will be lost. This replaces the 3 hours of grinding time needed to replace the lost XP.

5) An XP grind is perfectly possible, but not necessary. It is very possible to level up consistently without having to play for 5-7 hours a day. Between XP from killing monsters and the great quest completion XP, I was able to level a character to 17 in 3 days of semi-casual play. Now granted, those were the first 17 and the easiest, but it's also possible to gain a level a day, almost unheard of in EverQuest.

To make a long story short, this will be a great game, but there is still a lot of work needed to make it release-ready. Since there is no official word yet on its release, I wouldn't hold my breath, but it's certainly something to keep an eye on.

-Bullroar

81 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly good game!, September 19, 2004

By	BlindTyldak (Watertown, SD United States) - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

I've played by subscription or beta tested ten MMO's now, and I was very shocked to find that World of Warcraft blew them all out of the water. I seriously only checked the game out at first because a friend of mine was going to play, but the more I read into it, I was hooked (so much so, that I now work of the Stratics staff for this game!). I was lucky enough to get into the stress test, and I do not believe I am exagerating when I say that every other MMO out there is going to have a serious run for its money.

Even in Beta, this is the single most stable, lag-free game I have ever played, and I am on a three-year old gaming system. I did find the learning curve a little steep for first timers, but I think that will be rectified with a manual. The questing system is so far beyond any other game, it is truely in a class by itself. Grouping is optional, and does need some work (its actually harder to get XP in a group than soloing) but the implementation of all group members receiving quest items practically eliminates the need to camp an area to get your quest drop, if everyone in the area is smart enough to group up, that is! And as items only drop if you have the quest, there's no people hanging around just to make money.

The PvP system is INCREDIBLE, and this is coming from someone who completely avoids PvP unless there is a true point to it. WoW has implemented a full ranking system with real rewards, such as special mounts, titles, weapons, even elite barracks for high-ranking PvPers. There's even a useful honor system, where you are punished in rank for killing people below your level, or non-violent NPC's. You're a jerk? No goodies for you!

This one will be very worth checking out. A word of warning, the newbie zones get very crowded when a new phase starts and its easy to give up at first based on that. If you are planning on checking this game out in open Beta, wait two days, THEN log in if you think this will be an issue. You will get a much truer population level to play with at that point.

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