Recent Articles



Subscribe to RSS feed

WoW Introduction

April 4th, 2007 by Shenron

World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW ) is a MMORPG ( Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game ) which has been developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth game of the Warcraft series, excluding the cancelled Warcraft Adventures : Lord of the clans and the expansion packs. World of Warcraft is the MMORPG which you can play by subscription and it lacks an offline mode. World of Warcraft’s release celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise.

The Warcraft series of games are set in the fantasy setting introduced by Warcraft: Orcs and Humans in 1994 and is called Warcraft Universe. World of Warcraft itself takes place within the world of Azeroth which is four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard Entertainment’s previous release, Warcraft III : The Frozen Throne.

It would be interesting to note that the initial release of the game was hampered by server stability and performance issue. But the game now has become extremely popular and a financial success. It is now the world’s leading MMORPG based on subscription.
On March 7 , 2007, Blizzard Entertainment announced that the players subscribing for World of Warcraft have now reached a new milestone, with more than eight and a half million players through the world. There are more than two million players in North America, three and a half million players in China and two million players in North America. The game has won numerous recognitions and awards. It was given the Gamespot’s Game of the Year Award for 2004. The first official World of Warcraft expansion pack was released on 16th January 2007 and was called The Burning Crusade.

There have been some of the fangames released too. The World of Warcraft Board Game published by Fantasy Flight Games and a World of Warcraft Trading Card Game published by Upper Deck Entertainment are one of the popular ones.

Contradicting previous games in the Warcraft series the World of Warcraft game is not a real time strategy one, but is a MMORPG. As with most of the MMORPGs like EverQuest, Ragnarok, Gunz, Knights Online, etc. , in World of Warcraft too , players control a character avatar within a persistent and a virtual gameworld. The players through their avatars fight monsters, explore the landscape and perform quests on behalf of computer controlled characters ( also referred to as NPCs – Non Playing Characters ).

The majority of the quests in the World of Warcraft game, which can be taken during the early and middle stages of the gameplay, can be completed without the help of other players easily, especially when the player is of higher level that what the quests suggests. Other portions of the game, such as dungeons, which are also referred to as instances, are designed to require other players to work together for success. Dungeons are designed for parties (also called groups ) ranging from two to five players , up to a maximum limit of forty players for significantly more difficult raids ( Raids is a term originating from the EverQuest gameplay ). The dungeons and encounters of the highest level, which are most complex, are designed so that the raiding takes months of playtime and numerous attempts before they succeed.

In particular, the game areas designed specifically for sixty level and above characters are generally much more raid dependent and are time consuming than the relatively more casual experience of advancing one;s character from levels one to seventy ( seventy is the new level cap , since the January 16th release of World of Warcraft : The Burning Crusade ). The majority of World of Warcraft’s endgame content (which means the content designed specifically for level sixty and higher characters) requires raiding , with raids making up the bulk of the game’s development since release, closely followed by the Player versus Player aspect.

The game rewards success through items, money and experience, which in turn allows the player to improve his avatar’s skill and power. In addition to this , players have the option to take part in battles against other players, including both duels and fight against player characters allied with an enemy faction.

With the latest release of the expansion pack, Blizzard Entertainment has attempted to create endgame content more accessible to casual players by reducing the amount of required preparation to do these. The original ( level sixty ) endgame dungeons involved gather rather large amount of supplies before the dungeon attempt, such as doing long ‘attunement’ quests, which is a requirement for almost all of the raiding guilds in the game. The attunement quest enables the player to easily enter a particular raid dungeon, and for some of the dungeons, players cannot enter without completing the quest. Blizzard Entertainment claims to have made these quests shorter in the expansion, but since not many of the people have reached the endgame level, this is still unproven.

Posted in General, World of Warcraft | | 0 Comments

Next Entries »

Categories

Archives