If you didn't notice the poison in your food, which you failed to mention, then they weren't as newbly as you thought. Merely dedicated.
Seriously though, World of Warcraft is a pretty good game, despite a few minor problems.
Overview:
When you first enter the world of Warcraft, you’ll be completely immersed (depending on your graphics card) in the 3d world. While the environments and player models aren’t the best ever, or even realistic; they don’t try to be. It looks like Warcraft has always looked, Just much, much bigger.
At the start of the game you’re prompted to create a character from one of 8 races and a slew of classes. You can be the mighty humans, the stoutly dwarves, the quirky gnomes, the mysterious night elves, the brutish Orcs, the gentle tauren, the voodoo slingin’ trolls, and the corrupt undead. Each race has it’s own benefits compared to other races. Dwarves for example are better with guns, while humans are better with swords.
As for classes you can be a rogue, who excels in quick combat and out maneuvering the enemy, the mage who is apparently designed to freeze and enemy in place and nuke them with 6 damage over time spells, the druid who is able to change into various animals and summon nature to combat foes, warriors who use rage for abilities (sort of a reverse mana), warlocks who summon beasts to assist in their battles, hunters who attack from afar while sending in tamed animals for close combat, priests for support, paladins for both tanking and buffs, priests for support, and shamans, for totemic rituals and automaton spell casting.
There are also professions, such as blacksmithing and herbalism. However, these trades can be tricky. While hunting for mineral veins I have come across what I have dubbed “trick stones” which seal you permanently into the crouching animation as you glide cleanly across the landscape, and restrict you from mining from that vein again. Though as soon as you start using these skills, right from level 1 they’re usefull to you, and you’ll find that it’s much better having them. Leatherworking and blacksmithing, for example will generally give you better armor than you would have otherwise.
Pvp is set up as two factions: the horde and the alliance. The alliance consists of humans, midgets, smaller midgets, and pointy eared scoundrels. The horde is made up of sickly looking humans, Jamaicans, zombies, and bulls. Each side has their own areas, and attacking one of these areas will send an alert to everyone in that area, who will flock to the location, and in turn more of your team will come to assist, sometimes triggering a huge battle.
Dieing is like Diablo II, where you run back to your corpse, which is unlootable in WoW (thank god).
Graphics: 9/10
On a high end computer and at night, these graphics can literally dazzle you with ships coming into the glistening harbor under the moonlight, sails at full mast. On a lower end computer they’ll still run, just not as well. Though well enough to entertain and satisfy most. And it’s simply impressive to walk into a night elf city and watch the 20 foot guards walk around like they own the place (which they probably could)
Sound: 2/10
This is the category is where blizzard could have done much, much better. Many of the sounds are stock from Warcraft 3. None are imaginative, and when quests are given all you hear is pen scrabbling in a notebook while the words appear. Swords and spells sound lackluster and the music in the game is neither epic nor atmospheric. Overall, it just detracts from the game play.
Game play: 8/10
A lot of work went in to making this RPG seem less like what it is. The battle system reminds me of City of Heroes, with your spells on an action bar with corresponding numbers while your character battles it out on the screen. When in a party and rolling across the landscape killing all in your path it feels more like an action game than anything else. Definitely a plus.
Replay value: 9/10
The graphics and the game play will keep you coming back for more, and the allure of the level cap will attract you for months on end, or at least until your subscription expires. And the entire game is different when running it again as a different class or race. Much replay can simply be gained by playing as opposite factions since enemy quests are unavailable to you.
Community: 7/10
Plenty of players no matter what server you’re on. Usually people will be willing to party or tell newbs what to do. Many times, however, when I cried for help or advise my voice was left on the wind.
OVERALL: 9/10 (not an average, tardbucket)
If not for sound issues it would be an amazing game, worthy of playing for years on end, which I’ll probably end up doing anyway. It changes many things in the genre, and fixes many annoying things that never needed to be in games in the first place (exp loss, etc)
And if anyone decides to pick up the game based on this review, join up on server Gorgonash (Yeah, I know) and give me a ring. I'll be on my characters Kairen and Aspersio.
-Scodo
amused