| World of Warcraft | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Blizzard Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Blizzard Entertainment |
| Designer(s) | Rob Pardo, Jeff Kaplan,Tom Chilton |
| Composer(s) | Jason Hayes Tracy W. Bush Derek Duke Glenn Stafford |
| Series | Warcraft |
| Version |
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| Release date(s) |
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| Genre(s) | Fantasy, MMORPG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer online |
World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. World of Warcraft takes place within the Warcraftworld of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous Warcraft release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Blizzard Entertainment announced World of Warcraft on September 2, 2001. The game was released on November 23, 2004, on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise.
The first expansion set of the game, The Burning Crusade, was released on January 16, 2007. The second expansion set, Wrath of the Lich King, was released on November 13, 2008. The third expansion set, Cataclysm, was released on December 7, 2010. At BlizzCon in October 2010, lead producer J. Allen Brack announced that there would be a fourth expansion set for the game, even though the developers don't yet know what it will be about.
With more than 12 million subscribers as of October 2010, World of Warcraft is currently the world's most-subscribed MMORPG, and holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG by subscribers. In April 2008, World of Warcraft was estimated to hold 62 percent of the MMORPG subscription market.
Gameplay:
Starting a character or play session
As with other MMORPGs, players control a character avatar (also referred to as a toon) within a game world in third- or first-person view, exploring the landscape, fighting various monsters, completing quests, and interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) or other players. Also similar to other MMORPGs, World of Warcraft requires the player to pay for a subscription, either by buying prepaid game cards for a selected amount of playing time, or by using a credit or debit card to pay on a regular basis.
To enter the game, the player must select a realm—sometimes referred to as a server. Each realm acts as an individual copy of the game world, and falls into one of four categories. Realms are either player versus player (PvP), where open combat among players is more common, or player versus environment (PvE), where the gameplay is more focused on defeating monsters and completing quests. Roleplay (RP) and roleplay-PvP (RP-PVP) variants of both primary realm types are also available. Realms are also categorized by language, with in-game support in the language available. Players can make new characters on all realms, and it is also possible to move already established characters between realms for a fee.
To create a new character, in keeping with the storyline of previous Warcraft series games, players must choose between the opposing factions of Alliance or Horde. Characters from the opposing factions can perform rudimentary communication, but only members of the same faction can speak, mail, group, and share guilds. The player selects the new character's race, such as Orcs or Trolls for the Horde or Humans or Dwarves for the Alliance. Players must also select the class for the character, with choices such as mages, warriors, and priests available. All classes, except for special "Hero classes", are limited to particular races.
Ongoing gameplay
As characters become more developed, they gain various talents and skills, requiring the player to further define the abilities of that character. Professions such as tailoring, blacksmithing, and mining can be learned. The three secondary skills, cooking, fishing, and first-aid, can also be learned by characters. Characters may also form and join guilds, allowing characters within the guild access to the guild's chat channel, the guild name and optionally allowing other features, including a guild tabard, guild bank, and dues.
Much of World of Warcraft play involves "questing". These quests, also called "tasks" or "missions", are usually available from NPCs.Quests usually reward the player with some combination of experience points, items, and in-game money. Quests also allow characters to gain access to new skills and abilities, and explore new areas. It is also through quests that much of the game's story is told, both through the quest's text and through scripted NPC actions. Quests are linked by a common theme, with each consecutive quest triggered by the completion of the previous, forming a quest chain. Quests commonly involve killing a number of creatures, gathering a certain number of resources, finding a difficult to locate object, speaking to various NPCs, visiting specific locations, interacting with objects in the world, or delivering an item from one place to another.While a character can be played on its own, players can also group with others to tackle more challenging content. Most end-game challenges are designed in a way that they can only be overcome while in a group. In this way, character classes are used in specific roles within a group. World of Warcraft uses a "rested bonus" system, increasing the rate that a character can gain experience points after the player has spent time away from the game. When a character dies, it becomes a ghost—or wisp for Night Elf characters—at a nearby graveyard. Characters can be resurrected by other characters that have the ability, or can self-resurrect by moving from the graveyard to the place where they died. When a character dies, the items equipped by the character degrade, requiring in-game money and a specialist NPC to repair them. Items that have degraded heavily become unusable until they are repaired. If the location of the character's body is unreachable, they can use a special "spirit healer" NPC to resurrect at the graveyard. When the spirit healer revives a character, items equipped by the character at that time are further degraded, and the character is significantly weakened by what is in-game called "resurrection sickness" for up to ten minutes, depending on the character's level. This "resurrection sickness" does not occur and item degradation is less severe if the character revives by locating its body, or is resurrected by another player through special items or spells.
Setting
World of Warcraft shares the Warcraft title with the Warcraft series of real-time strategy games, is set in that series' world of Azeroth, and has similar art direction. World of Warcraft contains traditional fantasy elements, such as gryphons, dragons, and elves; steam-powered automata and extreme engineering typical of steampunk; zombies, vampires, and other undead typical of horror; as well as time travel, spaceships, and alien worlds typical of science fiction.
A number of facilities are available for characters while in towns and cities. In each major city, characters can access a bank in order to deposit items, such as treasure or crafted items. Each character has access to personal bank storage with the option to purchase additional storage space using in-game gold. Additionally, guild banks are available for use by members of a guild with restrictions being set by the guild leader. Auction houses are also available for players to buy and sell items to others in a similar way to online auction sites such as eBay. Players can also use mailboxes, which can be found in almost every town. Mailboxes are used to collect items won at auction, and to send messages, items, and in-game money to other characters.
Some of the challenges in World of Warcraft require players to group together to complete them. These usually take place in dungeons—also known as "instances"—that a group of characters can enter together. The term "instance" comes from each group or party having a separate copy, or instance, of the dungeon, complete with their own enemies to defeat and their own treasure or rewards. This allows a group to explore areas and complete quests without others interfering. Dungeons are spread over the game world and are designed for characters of varying progression. A typical dungeon will allow up to five characters to enter as part of a group. Some dungeons require more players to group together and form a "raid" of up to forty players to face some of the most difficult challenges. As well as dungeon-based raid challenges, several creatures exist in the normal game environment that are designed for raids to attack.
Subscription
World of Warcraft requires a subscription fee to be paid to allow continued play, with options to pay in one month, three month or six month blocks, although timecards of varying length are available both online and from traditional retailers. Expansion packs are also available online, and are also available from traditional retailers. As the game client is the same regardless of the version of World of Warcraft the user owns, the option to purchase the expansion online was added as it allowed for a quick upgrade.
Expansions
Three optional expansions are currently available: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, released in January 2007, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, released in November 2008, and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, released in December 2010. Players are not required to purchase the expansions to continue play. However, the expansion packs allow further leveling of characters beyond level 60 and access to newer content and areas. Characters cannot enter the additional regions without their respective expansion packs.
Sales of virtual goods in the real world
As with other MMORPGs, companies have emerged offering to sell virtual gold and associated services. After Blizzard started offering free trial gameplay accounts, players noticed an increase in spam from bots advertising these services. One study shows that this problem is particularly prevalent on the European realms, with gold being over 14 times more expensive to buy on US realms than their European counterparts.
In patch 2.1, Blizzard responded to this by adding additional anti-spam mechanics including whisper throttling and the report spam function. Additionally, trial accounts are prevented from speaking in the public chat channels (although they may speak to players within range or whisper to other players that have first whispered to them), participating in in-game trades, and using the Auction House and the mail feature, among other limitations.
As characters progress in World of Warcraft and take on some of the toughest challenges, many of the rewards received are bound to that character and cannot be traded, generating a market for the trading of accounts with well-equipped characters. The highest noted World of Warcraft account trade was for £5000 (€7000, US$9,900) in early September 2007.
The practice of buying or selling gold in World of Warcraft has generated significant controversy. On February 21, 2008, Blizzard released a statement concerning the consequences of buying gold. Blizzard reported that an "alarmingly high" proportion of all gold bought originates from "hacked" accounts. The article also stated that customers who had paid for character leveling services had found their accounts compromised months later, with all items stripped and sold for virtual gold. The article noted that leveling service companies often used "disruptive hacks ... which can cause realm performance and stability issues".
Community
In addition to playing the game itself and conversing on discussion forums provided by Blizzard, World of Warcraft players often participate in the virtual community in creative ways, including fan artwork and comic strip style storytelling.
Blizzard garnered criticism for its decision in January 2006 to ban guilds from advertising sexual orientation preferences. The incident occurred after several players were cited for "harassment" after advocating a group that was a gay-straight alliance. Blizzard later reversed the decision to issue warnings to players promoting LGBT-friendly guilds.
In other media
World of Warcraft has inspired artists to satirize it and acknowledge its mark in popular culture. One example is the Emmy Award winning South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft".
The game has also been used to advertise unrelated products, such as Toyota trucks.
World of Warcraft has inspired two board games: World of Warcraft: The Board Game (including Shadow of War and The Burning Crusadeexpansions) and World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game, produced by Fantasy Flight Games. There are also a trading card game, and a collectible miniatures game on the market, both formerly produced by Upper Deck Entertainment, now produced by Cryptozoic Entertainment. Cryptozoic has indicated that they have no plans to continue producing sets produced earlier by Upper Deck, but has released an "Archives" set which contains foil reproductions of older cards.
In November 2007, DC Comics published the first issue of the World of Warcraft comic under their Wildstorm imprint. Currently, the comic series is on hiatus.
In July 2007, a web series called The Guild parodied a generic MMORPG, although the inspiration for this was creator Felicia Day's attempt to turn her hours spent playing World of WarCraft into something productive.
System Requirements
Minimum System Requirements
Windows® XP/Vista/7
- Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+
- 1 GB or more of RAM
- NVIDIA® GeForce® FX or ATI Radeon™ 9500 video card or better
- 25.0 GB available HD space
- 4X DVD-ROM drive (Downloadable Installer also available)
- Broadband Internet connection
- Keyboard/mouse
Mac® OS
- Intel processor
- 2 GB RAM or higher
- 25.0 GB available HD space
- 4X DVD-ROM Drive
- Broadband Internet connection
- Note: Due to potential programming changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.
Recommended System Requirements
Windows® System Vista64/Windows 7 OS
- Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2
- 2 GB RAM
- 256 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600 or ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 or better
- Multi-button mouse with scroll-wheel
Mac® OS X 10.6.4 or newer
- Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor - NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GT or ATI Radeon™ HD 4670 or better
- 4 GB system RAM
- Multi-button mouse with scroll wheel
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