Gameplay

Ok, so the character is made and it’s time to jump into the game world. The first thing you’ll notice is how colorful and cartoony all the settings are. This may sound like a drawback but the art direction for WoW is really clever and moody. The different areas of the game range from lush forests to sun-scorched deserts and everything in between.

Instead of going the uber-technology route, Blizzard decided to follow the WarCraft III theme with a cartoony and vivid style instead. This has a sort of dual bonus for a lot of gamers. First there’s the fact that the art direction in WoW is quite beautiful and secondly it will play on a wide range of hardware. Whether it plays well or not is another story, but it will indeed play.

The sound is also rather inspired with some great voice commands and a really nice musical score. Background noises are very fitting and oftentimes tranquil. All in all, we'd say that World of WarCraft's effects are quite natural, which is possibly the best compliment you can pay a game.

So, after looking around a bit, your character will most likely begin his first set of quests. The quest system in WoW is, hands down, one of the best implementations of questing for any game to date. In the early game especially, the quests are designed to be a sort of tour of the world. Each quest will take you to different parts of the map and when you’ve reached a level that isn’t as beneficial to you any more you’ll get a quest that leads to a higher level area. Later quests serve as good experience and money outlets as well as offering a few nice items here and there, but they really shine at lower levels.

Each quest has different goals but they do usually fall into certain categories that most people are familiar with. There’s the “kill a certain amount of monsters” quests and the delivery quests, but also there are quite a few that don’t fall quite as easily into those categories. Quite a few are listed as “Elite” as well, which means you either need to be higher level or have a group to complete them.

Other than the quests, there’s always just exploration and killing throughout the world. Whenever you discover a new area you’ll gain a bit of experience and it will be revealed on your over-world map. There’s really quite a bit to find and there are certain bonuses to being in an area that is less populated than some others such as mining and herbalism.

World of Warcraft offers a few professions that most anyone can take to supplement their income or create useful items for use in battle and otherwise. The upside of a crafting in this game as compared to others is you can easily find a lot of the stuff you need by yourself and if you can’t or won’t you can easily purchase it in the cities auction houses. This, combined with a little bit of patience, can end up being very beneficial for you as well as friends and guild mates.


The large cities, which quests lead you to, will end up being a hub for quite a few players. These are the places where a player can find most anything he needs. Other than the vendors and trainers, some of the large cities have access to the auction house.

The auction house is sort of like WoWs version of EBay. As a player, you can go in and browse or search through the database of items currently being offered by other players and bid on them or, if the option is given, buy them outright. Other than being a very convenient way to purchase items you’d want or need, it’s a great way to gain some extra cash for that equipment you don’t need or those extra items you’ve scrounged up using your profession.