Blizzard's World of Warcraft—or WoW, in the Internet vernacular—is a MMORPG that has evolved into a cultural icon over the past 12 years. The list of accolades that WoW has accumulated since its release is simply staggering. While it is certainly not the first or only entry in this particular genre, WoW is the standard by which all other MMOs are compared. People have made up their minds about whether or not to participate in this global phenomenon, but with the recent release of its latest expansion, Legion, and the game's quickly approaching 12th anniversary, I feel now is as good a time as any to take a look at the franchise. WoW is a rich and rewarding experience, one that's paired with a level of freedom that is seldom seen in most PC games.
Welcome to the World of Warcraft
Fortunately, Blizzard has made accessing World of Warcraft relatively easy. The game itself is free to play until level 20, and while this locks you out of some features and most of the end-game content, it's enough to give new players a fairly decent vertical slice of what the game has to offer.
If you choose to stay on board and continue past this level cap, you must purchase the starter game client for $20, which includes all of WoW's previous expansions except the most recent release, Legion, an extra $49.99 investment. The first month's subscription is free, however if you choose to continue past that, expect to pay $15 per month, with bulk rate plans available should you decide to remain invested for 3- or 6-month stretches. For the purposes of this review, I took several characters up to the starter level cap, doing my best to experience everything available to me in terms of races, classes, quests and professions.
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There's an almost daunting amount of choice that you're presented with upon booting up the game. There are a total of 13 different races spread across WoW's two warring factions—six for the Alliance, six for the Horde, and one race that can cast its lot with either. Within that, you then choose from one of the game's 12 classes. You're then dropped into a part of the world that is specific to your race, meaning that someone playing as an Undead Rogue will start in a completely different part of the world than, say, a Human Paladin. This ensures a variety in starting experiences, and encourages you to sample more than one character. However, WoW does a poor job of informing you about how the classes differ. Each class has a broad stroke synopsis, but I would have appreciated knowing exactly what abilities would be available to my character's class over the long term.
Why You Should Game on a PC
For the Horde!
WoW has an incredible amount of freedom, exploration, and character progression, but provides enough guidance to make that openness accessible. Shortly after beginning, you are instructed on how to retrieve and redeem quests from NPCs in the game world—the main way WoW guides the player experience. The Breadcrumb quest system ensures that there is always something to do that rewards your character in some meaningful way, while also delivering bits of the emerging story and slowly revealing the world's massive scope. I appreciated always having several quests available to me; this ensured that I never ran out of new or interesting ways to level my character while constantly being drawn towards my next milestone, whether that was a new area to explore, or a new piece of loot.
Combat is the main way you interact with the world. How you approach combat varies from class to class, with different resources to manage and roles to fill. Additionally, you can regularly switch between class specializations, which let your character fill different roles as the need arises. WoW's action may not be as frenetic or immediately satisfying as the combat in Blade & Soul ($0.00 at NCSOFT West) or Elder Scrolls Online ($14.00 at Amazon) , but what's there is a little less hack and slash and more subtle and nuanced. This does take a little getting used to, as WoW's combat has a tendency to move at a more deliberate pace, especially at earlier levels, but it still requires you to remain keen and intelligent.
Plays Well With Others
As an MMORPG, World of Warcraft is a social experience. Engaging with other players is certainly encouraged and made simple by the game's interface. Clicking the name of a person that you'd like to play with sends her or him a request that, once accepted, lets you tackle missions together. Even exploring WoW's dungeons, an activity that generally requires a five-person team, is made easy with the in-game matchmaking. WoW never makes interacting with other players a barrier to higher level activities. Simply put, whenever you need help with specific challenges, it's never more than minutes away.
While playing with others is encouraged, it is by no means necessary. Killing monsters is not the only way you can interact with the world. For those taking a more pacifist approach, you can engage with any of WoW's 15 different professions. These let you gather materials, craft items, or enhance existing ones for fun and profit. More than just mere distractions, these skills give each character additional functionality and roles to fill. This also has the added benefit of making WoW feel like a true, living world that's inhabited not just by heroes and adventurers, but by people with skills that are integral to the function of society.
War Rig
WoW is not very demanding from a hardware standpoint, and includes a variety of scaling graphical options to accommodate systems of various performance levels. This makes WoW accessible to a far larger player base than if Blizzard made it a more technically demanding game. Even the recommended specs are relatively modest; apart from a stable internet connection, the specs include a 3GHz Intel Core i5-3330, at least 4GB of RAM and 45GB of free storage, as well as an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti or AMD Radeon R7 260X GPU or better, all running on Windows 10. My test PC handsomely exceeded the recommended requirements, and experienced virtually no hit to the frame rate unless the draw distance was set to maximum, or I was in a particularly populated area. Even then, the change was slight, rarely dropping below a silky 60 frames per second.
WoW is easily one of the most visually distinct and stylized MMO's I have ever played. Whatever shortcomings that the game may possess in terms of technical performance are counterbalanced by the aesthetics. Instead of preoccupying itself with stretching your hardware to its breaking point with a hyper-realistic art style, Blizzard decided to focus on making characters with unique, borderline exaggerated profiles and environments with bright, visually distinct palettes. This makes WoW a striking and attractive game, even at lower benchmarks. This art style also has the added benefit of aging exceptionally well, lending it a long term visual appeal. While nobody remembers WoW for its remarkable textures or high-poly character models, the environmental palettes make this game a far more memorable experience. It has a more stylish look than the free-to-play Onigiri.
Jobs Well Done
A large part of WoW's remarkable staying power comes from the massive amount of post-release content that Blizzard's produced. There are presently six expansions, including Legion, the most recent release. Each of WoW's major expansions have offered large doses of extra content including new races, classes, and areas to explore. Whether that's the ranked PvP arenas of Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King's achievement system, or the garrisons introduced in Warlords of Dreanor, WoW has always given plenty of reasons for new and returning players to remain invested. Additionally, every release has been punctuated by several smaller, free updates which have included balance updates and new dungeon bosses. Currently, all of the updates seen in WoW's previous five expansions have been rolled into the starter version of the game; making it a fantastic value for the amount of content you are given.
Reviewing a game as established, loved, and vast as WoW is no small task. Exploring a world of this magnitude is not a question of trying to reach the ends of the earth, but rather how far are you willing to venture from shore. WoW certainly provides you with the compass to take whichever path you feel is most comfortable, and in many ways, the journey is the destination, the world is what you make of it. Whether that's tackling massive raids, exploiting the dense economy, or simply exploring the massive world, what matters most is your individual experience. Herein lies one of the core design tenets that makes WoW appealing to so wide an audience. Blizzard has carved out a niche for just everyone, developing a bevy of profitable activities for players of any level and capability. World of Warcraft is a game that has come to define a genre, and will likely continue to do so long after people have ceased playing it.
World of Warcraft is a rewarding and beautiful game that's set the MMORPG standard. The fun combat and exploration make this classic PC game one that's more than worth the time investment.
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