World of Warcraft review (World of Warcraft (PC))

Member Name: NuclearPancake

Product:	World of Warcraft (PC)
Date:	05/09/09 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Raiding, massive world, large communtiy, guilds

Disadvantages: Becomes repeatative, most of your time will be spend gathering

World of Warcraft is a very well established game if you have been playing games for more than 1 month or have been on game forums, no doubt you will have heard of World of Warcraft or WOW.

Established as the first MMO of the Warcraft series, WOW came on the scene in 2004 and still refuses to budge anywhere, now currently the most played MMO having brought in new innovations to the MMO genre and has set the standard for all other MMOs.

Features:
Huge world that will take hours upon hours to traverse
Abundance of quests
Raids and instances (dungeons)
Huge community

Raiding is one of WoWs key features and is something that set it aside from other MMOs, instances can be done by 1 or 2 people or parties of 20, this interaction as well as the huge places that can be raided for loot brought in alot of interest and is once of the things that still defines WoW.

WoW has a loot economy which means that the most powerful and valuable items must be raided for and due to low drop rates, instances tend to get grinded until that person aquires their prize.

Although on release WoW was opposed to traditional grinding in MMOs required to progress your character, they still have monster grinding and the amount of quests that require you to kill so many monsters to aquire items means that people are now quest grinding to improve their characters.

The races:

Alliance

Human
Night elf
Dwarf
Gnome

Horde

Troll
Ork
Tauren
Undead

Each race has their own classes that they can be and home city (besides Gnomes) and very different mentality about the world.

Alliance and Horde fight continuasly and if you see someone on the opposite side, you best be wary of them as PVP can take place anywhere if both people have PVP enabled and if the other person is a higher level chances are your in trouble.

Classes:

Hunter
Shaman
Paladin
Warrior
Mage
Priest
Warlock
Rogue
Druid

Each class has their own advantages and disadvantages, that and frequent balancing updates from Blizzard means that no class is hugley more powerful than any other.

A quick run down:

Warrior:
Can take the most damage, can't deal as much as fast as other classes, melee

Priest:
Very good healer and support, can't take much damage, range

Rouge:
Fastest damage dealer, can't take much damage, melee

Paladin:
Mix of support and attack, not as good as others in either field, melee and range

Hunter: Can use pets as well as melee and range, requires pet for full effect, melee and range

Druid: Support and attack, not as good as others in either field, melee and range

Shaman: Support and attack, not as good as others in either field, melee and range

Warlock: Support and damage, not as good as others in either field, range

Mage: Minor support mostly attack, can take the least damage, range

Overall WoW is argueable the best MMO of yet and is definatley worth a play buy any MMO fan, it sets the standard.

Summary: If you enjoy MMOs, you need to play this game as it is one of the best