| Game Title: | World of Warcraft |
| Developer: | Blizzard |
| Publisher: | Activision Blizzard |
| Review Score: |   |
| User Score: |
|
World of Warcraft - Part 2 (PC)
By Tony "Rulke" Kustro - Wed Feb 16, 2005 12:00am
Allo again, people. Welcome to part 2 of the World of Warcraft review for Internode Games Network. As previously mentioned in part 1, I'll attempt to cover the rest of the incredible features that makes this game so darn addictive.
Before I continue, let me state for the record that up until 2 week ago WOW's server stability had become atrocious. Large amounts of lag, crashing servers, lost items in backpacks, servers coming down at infuriating moments (in the middle of quests you and your party have spent hours trying to complete) for yet another of the increasing number of server reboots, appalling lack of communication from the dev team, etc – ongoing and unresolved issues to the extent that many were threatening to cancel their subscriptions on the spot, and give it up as a lost cause. It became so bad that even the President of Blizzard Entertainment made a rare announcement on the community forums about the on-going issues. I had planned to become rather vicious in my appraisal of WOW in this 2nd review, but fortunately for you, for me and for those friendly possums living in my roof, the performance has improved to such an extent that the problems now seem like an indistinct and patchy memory - like running down a street drunk and naked for a dare, then waking up and trying to convince yourself it didn't happen. I heard that happened to a friend of a friend... honestly. One can only hope for the best and remain confident that Blizzard will learn from the past 2 months and keep feeding the punters with much WOW lovin'.
Anyway, now that's off my one-pack belly, onto the eye-candy.
Graphics
The one common complaint I hear from those lost and damned souls who don't like WOW is the cartoon quality of the graphics. Admittedly, when I glanced at an early screenshot of WOW, I thought it was quite strange. That said, I'm fairly certain many fans will be delighted to find that WOW's graphics remain faithful to the Warcraft series of games. It's refreshing to step into a world that has no interest in detailing every single leaf or rock. It's gorgeous in it's own right, with low polygon counts on objects making it much less taxing on low end computers, perhaps explaining WOW's very fast loading times and it's immense popularity amongst people lucky enough not caught up in the costly PC upgrade cycle. Of course, simplicity is a double-edged sword. With low emphasis on graphical realism come limited options. One such example is the character customisations. Personally speaking, I'd have preferred it if there were more options, such as being able to choose your height, more facile adjustments such as jaw and eye sizes, or even different lengths and styles of hair. I cannot help but recall the amazing character customisation within Eve-Online. One can hope a later expansion will make this possible.
Transitions from different zones are incredibly smooth. One moment you may be walking from a sparse and rocky desert environment, then with the subtlety of a soft beer burp on your right ear lobe, you'll find yourself in a lush and verdant tropical setting, complete with swinging vines and filled with creatures you expect to see in such surrounds. Depending on your initial race selection, you will find yourself starting in a unique location. From the haunted and eerie Undead forest of Tirisfal Glades (crazy folk running around thinking its cool being dead), the endless grassy plains of the Tauren Mulgore (no milking bucket anyway... shame), the rugged rocky expanse of the Orc's and Trolls in Durator (evil smelly place in fact), the snow covered peaks and valleys of the Dwarves and Gnomes (nasty small ninja looters), the romantic forests and impressive buildings of the Humans (silly humans), to my favourite Night Elf lands filled with magical beasts and colourfully enchanted forests (huzza!!). Each setting you find yourself exploring, whether it be an old well-travelled walkway, to a rocky path leading into strange new lands, you'll always find yourself stopping and just taking in the beautifully created world. Light reflecting off a lake surrounded by tall cliffs and massive trees, dark mountainous peaks slowly trailing down to grassy plains infested with monsters of all fantastic shapes and sizes – WOW has it all and it's done beautifully.
An incredible amount of effort went into the sound throughout WOW. Similar to the graphical diversity found in each zone, sound follows the same approach. Different zones such as the Undead forests have low haunting drones, occasionally interspersed with an evil growl or two from whatever creatures happens to be close by, compared to the Night Elf lands which hold dainty melodies, small snatches of nice ambience that fit nicely in each zone you find yourself. Combat sounds are adequately done, with the usual amount of weapon and spell sound effects present.
NPC and PC voices are very well done. Each vocal part plays out very convincingly and all races have their own specific set of vocal themes to enjoy. Raspy tones of the Undead, dignified and very dry voices of the Night Elf's and the happy grumbling of dwarves are just some of the examples on offer.
Music is incredibly lavish in WOW. Again, each zone has its own theme and this works very well. Elwynn Forest, the starting area of the Humans, has a grand and noble orchestral number, very similar to the Lord of the Rings soundtracks. Another perfect example of how the music fit's into the game play so well is a zone called Duskwood, which music reminds me of the Aliens soundtrack, with its chilling combination of deep drums and haunting chants. It's perfect for the setting. For those players willing to try out something different, I suggest upon entering each new zone, stand somewhere without risk of being attacked, turn up the music and turn down the sound effects and close your eyes. You'll be pleasantly surprised. One measure of the quality of the music is its replay value. No matter how many times you hear it, it's still remains as evocative as the first time and continues to blend in perfectly to the zone you find yourself in.
Combat
One of Blizzard's main objectives for WOW was to make it easily accessible to a point where a MMORG novice would be able to easily and quickly grasp the basics - essentially without a steep learning curve. This is evident in the way combat is presented. Mind you, don't make the mistake of thinking you can attack, waltz off to the local for a nice bevvy or 6.
Simple put, once you have clicked on your target to attack, your character will continuously attack until you are dead, or by some strange coincidental planetary alignment of Uranus and Neptune, your target is dead. Combat in WOW comes into its own via a variety of special abilities or spells available whilst in combat. I think it's fair to say that the combat system, while both fun and quite fast in comparison to other MMORG's on the market (and thank the gods we are no lumbered with the eternal clicking while in combat), does not break any new ground. But I guess the one thing to remember is simple equal's ease of use and increased enjoyment.
Frankly, it's been a battle trying to decide what not to include in this part 2 review of World of Warcraft. I wanted to cover absolutely every aspect of WOW, from the in-game mail system, crafting, details of the pvp system (or rather lack thereof...), much more detail on the interface, information on guilds, intricacies of the Auction House plus a whole load more. You know what? I won't. I won't be found guilty of ruining the enjoyment for those unfortunate few lost souls who haven't yet ventured into the WOW. The voyage of discovering new things to do, new places to visit, new quest's always just around the corner, new ways to improve your character and most important of all, meeting a bucket load of new mates to share the road with, makes this such a worthy title.
Well, that's it. Thanks for sticking around to the end folks. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed reading my take on World of Warcraft. If you happen to see a Night Elf happily travelling across the countryside on the Proudmore server, atop a very shmick black cat, shout out and we'll swap the latest joke about them foul horde monkeys.
Cheers,
Rulke
Before I continue, let me state for the record that up until 2 week ago WOW's server stability had become atrocious. Large amounts of lag, crashing servers, lost items in backpacks, servers coming down at infuriating moments (in the middle of quests you and your party have spent hours trying to complete) for yet another of the increasing number of server reboots, appalling lack of communication from the dev team, etc – ongoing and unresolved issues to the extent that many were threatening to cancel their subscriptions on the spot, and give it up as a lost cause. It became so bad that even the President of Blizzard Entertainment made a rare announcement on the community forums about the on-going issues. I had planned to become rather vicious in my appraisal of WOW in this 2nd review, but fortunately for you, for me and for those friendly possums living in my roof, the performance has improved to such an extent that the problems now seem like an indistinct and patchy memory - like running down a street drunk and naked for a dare, then waking up and trying to convince yourself it didn't happen. I heard that happened to a friend of a friend... honestly. One can only hope for the best and remain confident that Blizzard will learn from the past 2 months and keep feeding the punters with much WOW lovin'.
Anyway, now that's off my one-pack belly, onto the eye-candy.
Graphics
) I keep telling them to stop lining up for the Titanic... They dont listen! |
The one common complaint I hear from those lost and damned souls who don't like WOW is the cartoon quality of the graphics. Admittedly, when I glanced at an early screenshot of WOW, I thought it was quite strange. That said, I'm fairly certain many fans will be delighted to find that WOW's graphics remain faithful to the Warcraft series of games. It's refreshing to step into a world that has no interest in detailing every single leaf or rock. It's gorgeous in it's own right, with low polygon counts on objects making it much less taxing on low end computers, perhaps explaining WOW's very fast loading times and it's immense popularity amongst people lucky enough not caught up in the costly PC upgrade cycle. Of course, simplicity is a double-edged sword. With low emphasis on graphical realism come limited options. One such example is the character customisations. Personally speaking, I'd have preferred it if there were more options, such as being able to choose your height, more facile adjustments such as jaw and eye sizes, or even different lengths and styles of hair. I cannot help but recall the amazing character customisation within Eve-Online. One can hope a later expansion will make this possible.
Transitions from different zones are incredibly smooth. One moment you may be walking from a sparse and rocky desert environment, then with the subtlety of a soft beer burp on your right ear lobe, you'll find yourself in a lush and verdant tropical setting, complete with swinging vines and filled with creatures you expect to see in such surrounds. Depending on your initial race selection, you will find yourself starting in a unique location. From the haunted and eerie Undead forest of Tirisfal Glades (crazy folk running around thinking its cool being dead), the endless grassy plains of the Tauren Mulgore (no milking bucket anyway... shame), the rugged rocky expanse of the Orc's and Trolls in Durator (evil smelly place in fact), the snow covered peaks and valleys of the Dwarves and Gnomes (nasty small ninja looters), the romantic forests and impressive buildings of the Humans (silly humans), to my favourite Night Elf lands filled with magical beasts and colourfully enchanted forests (huzza!!). Each setting you find yourself exploring, whether it be an old well-travelled walkway, to a rocky path leading into strange new lands, you'll always find yourself stopping and just taking in the beautifully created world. Light reflecting off a lake surrounded by tall cliffs and massive trees, dark mountainous peaks slowly trailing down to grassy plains infested with monsters of all fantastic shapes and sizes – WOW has it all and it's done beautifully.
) Guild group shot... Spot the waggers from school. |
An incredible amount of effort went into the sound throughout WOW. Similar to the graphical diversity found in each zone, sound follows the same approach. Different zones such as the Undead forests have low haunting drones, occasionally interspersed with an evil growl or two from whatever creatures happens to be close by, compared to the Night Elf lands which hold dainty melodies, small snatches of nice ambience that fit nicely in each zone you find yourself. Combat sounds are adequately done, with the usual amount of weapon and spell sound effects present.
NPC and PC voices are very well done. Each vocal part plays out very convincingly and all races have their own specific set of vocal themes to enjoy. Raspy tones of the Undead, dignified and very dry voices of the Night Elf's and the happy grumbling of dwarves are just some of the examples on offer.
Music is incredibly lavish in WOW. Again, each zone has its own theme and this works very well. Elwynn Forest, the starting area of the Humans, has a grand and noble orchestral number, very similar to the Lord of the Rings soundtracks. Another perfect example of how the music fit's into the game play so well is a zone called Duskwood, which music reminds me of the Aliens soundtrack, with its chilling combination of deep drums and haunting chants. It's perfect for the setting. For those players willing to try out something different, I suggest upon entering each new zone, stand somewhere without risk of being attacked, turn up the music and turn down the sound effects and close your eyes. You'll be pleasantly surprised. One measure of the quality of the music is its replay value. No matter how many times you hear it, it's still remains as evocative as the first time and continues to blend in perfectly to the zone you find yourself in.
Combat
) Apart from the hair, me and my pussy make a fine duo. |
Simple put, once you have clicked on your target to attack, your character will continuously attack until you are dead, or by some strange coincidental planetary alignment of Uranus and Neptune, your target is dead. Combat in WOW comes into its own via a variety of special abilities or spells available whilst in combat. I think it's fair to say that the combat system, while both fun and quite fast in comparison to other MMORG's on the market (and thank the gods we are no lumbered with the eternal clicking while in combat), does not break any new ground. But I guess the one thing to remember is simple equal's ease of use and increased enjoyment.
Frankly, it's been a battle trying to decide what not to include in this part 2 review of World of Warcraft. I wanted to cover absolutely every aspect of WOW, from the in-game mail system, crafting, details of the pvp system (or rather lack thereof...), much more detail on the interface, information on guilds, intricacies of the Auction House plus a whole load more. You know what? I won't. I won't be found guilty of ruining the enjoyment for those unfortunate few lost souls who haven't yet ventured into the WOW. The voyage of discovering new things to do, new places to visit, new quest's always just around the corner, new ways to improve your character and most important of all, meeting a bucket load of new mates to share the road with, makes this such a worthy title.
Well, that's it. Thanks for sticking around to the end folks. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed reading my take on World of Warcraft. If you happen to see a Night Elf happily travelling across the countryside on the Proudmore server, atop a very shmick black cat, shout out and we'll swap the latest joke about them foul horde monkeys.
Cheers,
Rulke
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