World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the 4th game in the Warcraft series, excluding expansion packs and the canceled Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. The Warcraft games are set in the eponymous Warcraft Universe, a fantasy setting introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. World of Warcraft is set four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. As of January 2006, World of Warcraft is one of the most popular MMORPGs in the world, with more than 5.5 million active subscriptions. This level of popularity eventually led major MMORPG developers such as Sony Online Entertainment to re-think the way they are making games, even changing the gameplay of their past successful titles.

Characters

Characters in the World of Warcraft are tied to specific user accounts which can be used in all servers, or realms. Users can create up to 10 characters per realm which range from a diverse amount of races and classes. The two factions currently in the game are the Alliance and Horde, both consisting of different races.

Races and classes

Players create characters which serve as their avatar in the online world of Azeroth. When creating a character in World of Warcraft, the player can choose from eight different races and nine different character classes. The races are split into two equally sized factions, the Alliance and the Horde:

• The Alliance currently consists of Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes. An unknown race will be added in the upcoming Burning Crusade expansion.
• The Horde currently consists of Orcs, Tauren, Undead (a.k.a. Forsaken) and Trolls. Blood Elves will be added in the upcoming Burning Crusade expansion.
• Additionally, there are many NPC races such as Goblins, Ogres, High Elves, Murlocs and Nagas.

The nine available classes are Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock and Warrior. Two of the classes are faction-specific: Paladins for the Alliance, and Shamans for the Horde. Classes are also limited by race. There are 20 possible combinations of race and class for each faction, for a total of 40 combinations across both factions.

Classes

• Druid: Druids are one of the more versatile classes in the game, making them good for multiple play styles. Druids have the ability to transform into different animals with many different abilities. A smart Druid can therefore be very difficult to defeat, as he can change between taking damage as a Warrior, healing as a Priest or doing Rogue-like damage - but not quite as well as the original class.
• Hunter: Hunters specialize in ranged weaponry and are excellent for solo play. They can train wild animals as pets for use in combat, where the pet engages enemy targets in melee while the Hunter attacks from a distance. Hunters can also lay traps, cast self-buffing "aspects" to boost both combat and non-combat abilities, and increase their damage output with an array of magical shots and "stings". Hunters wear leather armor, and gain the ability to use mail armor at level 40.
• Mage: Mages are a very powerful spellcaster-type class. Mages specialize in ranged spell damage, often being able to kill the opponents before they reach the Mage. They rely on the ability to destroy opponents at long range, as they can only use cloth type armor and have low health. Mages also have a large amount of utility, such as conjuring water to allow party members to spend less time resting or creating portals to travel to cities far away. One of the biggest strengths of the mage is area damage. When specialised partly in the arcane tree (as most mages tend to be) they can do large ininterruptable area damage at point-blank range. Alternatively, they can specialise in the frost tree and do ranged area damage with a snare component, preventing the monsters or players from reaching the mage.
• Paladin: Paladins are a powerful combination of a warrior and a priest. Paladins are a hybrid class, not able to tank or deal damage as well as a Warrior, and not able to heal as well as a Priest. Paladins can use all armor types and most weapon types (but not ranged weapons). Paladins have seals, auras, and blessings to use in combat to buff themselves as well as other players. Paladins are able to make themselves immune to all damage, which gives them time to fully heal during combat, making them difficult to kill in Player versus Player combat. Paladins are a very good group-oriented class. Paladins are only available to the Alliance side.
• Priest: The Priest is the most powerful healer in the game, although specialisation into the Shadow talent tree allows them to become quite formiddable damage dealers and is therefore a popular choice of talents for Player versus Player combat. Priests are only able to wear cloth armor and only have access to a limited number of weapons. Priests are often found working in groups or teams with other classes in order to gain levels faster.
• Rogue: Rogues are assassins that prefer to fight quickly and discretely, often employing underhanded tactics. Rogues specialize in quick strikes from the shadows, and are very adept at stealth and poisoning targets, as well as lockpicking. Rogues mostly wear leather armor, yet they possess the ability to wear cloth armor as well. Every race has access to the Rogue as of January 2006, with the exception of the Tauren.
• Shaman: Shamans are a hybrid class combining melee and magical abilities. Shamans are basically the Horde's Paladin, capable of healing and fighting in melee combat. However, Shamans generally have inferior tanking abilities to a Paladin, compensating for this with higher damage. Shamans use totems in combat to heal or cure their parties, slow the enemy, or deal damage to them. Shamans can use mail armor once they reach level 40. A well played Shaman can be extremely adept at Player vs Player combat, with spell interrupts for casters and slowing spells for melee classes. The Shaman class is only available to the Horde side.
• Warlock: Warlocks, depending on how the user plays, can either do ranged burst-damage as a mage, or use Damage over Time (DoT) spells to defeat their opponent. Warlocks can summon demons as pets for various purposes: the Imp (magical ranged damage and stamina buff), Voidwalker (tank), Succubus (crowd control, melee damage), and Felhunter (anti-caster). At higher levels warlocks can summon more powerful demons such as the Infernal and Doomguard, which require the use of reagents bought from vendors and can turn on their casters if not carefully employed. Warlocks can only wear cloth armor, but unlike mages usually have much higher amounts of health. The bulk of the Warlock's spells do shadow damage, but some of their nukes (and both their area damage spells) do fire damage.
• Warrior: An adept mercenary type class that specializes in damage mitigation and keeping the focus of monsters on him or in doing massive amounts of damage. Warriors are very powerful in melee combat and can use all types of weapons except wands. Warriors can also use all types of armor. Because of these advantages, warriors are among the most common classes played in World of Warcraft.

Character types

There are two types of characters in the game: Player Characters(PC) and Non-Player Characters (NPCs), the latter having many different offshoots. Player Characters are people around the world actively playing the game. The color of a PC's name tag can vary from blue, green, yellow, or red depending on faction, location, and play combat status. NPCs are the characters that can only interact with player characters through scripted events or AI. NPCs have many types. First are the friendly NPCs, whose names are displayed in green. They will be found automatically in any city allied with your faction, as well as any city you have earned a reputation of friendly or better with. There are also several hostile NPCs, mainly the NPCs of the opposing faction and mobs (enemies controlled by AI). Any character with his name displayed in red is hostile towards you and should either be avoided or dealt with caution. There are also neutral NPCs that will only attack you when provoked, their name displayed in yellow. Early in the game, most mobs will be neutral. NPCs in major and minor cities can sell you merchandise, train you in your selected profession and class, sell you mounts, connect you to the Auction House (an eBay-like place to buy and sell items), and provide all services that are needed in the game. Some will merely offer advice or further the story, while others patrol around set paths to keep cities defended against overzealous players.

Professions

In addition to the character classes, a player may choose two primary professions and all three secondary professions that the game offers, if they so choose. Essentially, there are two types of professions: gathering and item creation. Many players choose to pair two related professions, thus allowing the character to gather the required materials for the crafting skill. The most commonly paired skills are as follows: Mining and Blacksmithing, Mining and Engineering, Skinning and Leatherworking, Herbalism and Alchemy, and to a lesser extent, tailoring and enchanting. Some players choose to select only "gathering" professions, opting to simply supply resources to players with item creation skills. These types of players will typically offer gathered items for sale in the game's auction houses. In the upcoming expansion, the Jewel Crafting profession will be introduced.

Attributes

Attributes are used by the game to calculate strengths and weaknesses for each character. They are as follows.

Strength (STR), Intellect (INT), Spirit (SPI), Agility (AGI), and Stamina (STA) are the attributes of World of Warcraft. These attributes hold a key role in determining a character's health (hit points), mana (is used up by casting spells), attack power (each point of attack power increases a character's damage per second by 1/14), armor (reduces the amount of damage you take), dodge chance, critical strike chances (a default of double damage with ranged and melee weapons, a default of 1.5 times with spells), health regeneration, and mana regeneration. For each class, different attributes are more important. For classes that rely on melee combat, strength is more important than spirit, while spell casters will benefit more from a spirit and intelligence boost than from a boost in strength.

Agility

Each point of Agility increases armor by 2 points, and ranged attack power by 2 points. Hunters, Rogues and Druids also gain 1 point of melee attack power per point of Agility, although Druids only get attack power when shape-shifted to a Cat. Agility is also linked to a character's chance to dodge and perform a critical strike with a weapon (although the degree of effect varies for each class). Hunters and Rogues generally need as much as an agility boost as possible from gear (in game equipment). It is said for example that a level 60 Rogue gains a 1% chance to get a critical strike for every 29 Agility, and a level 60 Hunter receives 1% for every 53 Agility.

Strength

Each point of strength increases attack power by 2 points for Warriors, Paladins, Shamans and Druids, while Priests, Mages, Warlocks, Rogues and Hunters get 1 attack power per strength. It is also linked to the amount of damage blocked by a shield. This attribute is generally important for all melee classes (Warriors, Shamans, Paladins, Rogues and feral Druids) although Hunters also benefit from strength.

Intellect

Each point of Intellect increases the character's mana by 15. It is also linked to the critical strike chance with spells (Crit chance varies for every class/level. A level 60 mage will gain a 1% crit chance w/ spells for each 59.5 int they have.). This attribute is very important for casting classes (Mages, Warlocks, Priests, Druids, Shamans), and is also used by the Paladins and Hunters, although it is not of the highest priority. Intellect is also used to determine the rate at which weapon skill increases.

Stamina

Each point of Stamina increases a character's health by 10. Stamina is especially important for Warriors and Warlocks, but is also important for any class that focuses on player versus player combat as the more stamina a player has, the longer the player survives.

Spirit

Spirit increases the rate at which you recover health and mana. Each point of spirit increases the amount of mana regenerated by 1/8 and health by 1/9 per tick (every 2 seconds). Regardless of how high your spirit is, your health does not regenerate in combat. Mana does, but it is important to take the "5-second rule" into account. This says that spirit will not regenerate mana until 5 seconds have passed since the last spell cast - which effectively nullifies mana regeneration if you cast continuously. Healing rotations can be used to counter this, though. Trolls have an inherent passive racial ability that keeps 10% of their health regeneration active during combat. Additonally, the formula to calculate the amount of mana regenerated per second varies depending on the class.

Mounts

World of Warcraft offers different types of mounts that move players faster around the world. The first is availible at level 40 and gives a 60% increase to movement speed, while the other mount (commonly referred to as an "epic" mount) becomes available at level 60 and gives a 100% bonus to movement speed. The Warlock and Paladin classes gain access to free mounts at level 40, and a cheaper mount at level 60, whereas every other class needs to pay 90 gold for their standard mount, or 1000 gold for their epic mount. In addition, if you are not a Paladin or Warlock, you must learn the riding skill before you can use a mount, which costs twenty gold. That said, the price is subject to discounts for honored reputation with your faction or attainment of rank three (of fourteen) in PvP Combat.

There are several other ways to acquire a mount as well. Players who reach PvP rank 11 gain access to cheaper versions of the epic mounts. Additionally, Baron Rivendare in Stratholme and Bloodlord Mandokir and High Priest Thekal of Zul'Gurub have a low chance of dropping epic mounts, unique to each individual, as well. Popular rumor has it that there are insectoid mounts as fast or faster than the epic level mounts of other species in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj instance, added in January 2006.

Lastly, there are quests that are not very well known that can be done by each faction to gain a unique mount. These special raptor and tiger-type mounts are very rare and take hours of game time to earn.

Items and equipment

There are various types of items in World of Warcraft, ranging from axes to flowers to animal organs.

Attributes: Some items carry bonuses to a character's attributes. Some armor also can grant increases to critical hit percentage, dodge percentage, etc., and some grant unique abilities. Weapons may also boost attributes in a similar faction. A weapon or piece of armor that boosts attributes will have its name written typically in green, blue, or purple, depending on how high the boost is. The deeper the color, the higher the rarity, and the higher stat boost it will grant.

Rarity: The rarity of an item may be noted by the coloring of the item's name. An item with a gray name is often worthless. These items are often known as "Vendor Trash" or "Vendor Fodder," as they are easily sold for a moderate amount of money to any vendor. Grey body parts from beasts are surprisingly lucrative, selling often for several times what other grey items of similar level would sell for; this is to compensate for the fact that beasts do not drop cash. An item with a white name is often useful to someone. An item of Green rarity is uncommon, and can be very useful. Green items often carry a suffix with an animal name, such as "Of the Bear" or "Of the Monkey." These tell what attributes the item carries. For example, items with the suffix "Of the Bear" carry Strength and Stamina boosts. An item of Blue rarity is powerful, and is classified as rare. Blue items are usually dropped by enemies in instances, and usually have better attribute increases than green items. Blue items, too, sometimes carry an "Of the..." suffix. An item that has its name written in purple is extraordinarily powerful, and is referred to as an "epic" item. With an exceptionally low drop rate, these items are hard to come by, and they are usually limited to boss drops or quest rewards. Orange items, referred to as "legendary" quality, are the most powerful and rare in the game with only two weapons, and a necklace classified "legendary". A special mount, given to the one who opened the gates of Ahn'Qiraj, is also a legendary item. This is believed to be a one-of-a-kind item, even though some speculate that it may be a very rare mount drop in AQ as well, such as the mounts found in Zul'Gurub and Stratholme. There is speculation that the legendary mount has a faster speed than the standard epic mount.

Bags: Bags allow players to carry items. They come in numerous carrying capacities, starting with a 4 slot bag, and increase in increments of two, up to 18. Every item occupies one slot in a bag, unless it is "stackable." Stackable simply means that several items will occupy one slot in a bag. Not all items are stackable, and the maximum stacking number varies from item to item. For example, twenty Silk Cloth can occupy one slot, meaning Silk Cloth can stack up to 20, while a bolt of Linen can stock up to 10. There are also two types of special bags: Ammo bags and the new soul shard bags, introduced in patch 1.9. Ammo bags have more slots than normal bags, however only ammo, such as arrows and bullets, can be put into them. They also increase your firing speed. Soul shard bags have more slots than other bags as well, but only carry soul shards. These bags are unique to warlocks, who have always had trouble with having to carry so many soul shards. Any soul shard collected is automatically put into the soul shard bag.

Materials: Materials, or "mats", are the components to make an item through a profession. For example, ores and stones are materials for several Blacksmith and Engineering recipes. Tailoring materials are usually some form of cloth, such as linen. Enchanters require essences, dusts, shards, crystals, etc. that can be made by disenchanting green or better quality items. Leatherworkers require skins and pelts to create items, and Alchemists require herbs and flowers.

Miscellaneous Items: These items include balls that can be tossed back and forth between two people, snowballs, fireworks, alcohol, and many other novelty items (such as a flute that makes people dance). Around major holidays (Christmas, Halloween, Chinese New Year, etc), special holiday-specific items and decorations appear in the game. Another set of miscellaneous items purchasable are non-combat pets, often stored in a crate in the player's inventory. A few of the many available include: rabbit, parrot, snake, or chicken.

Types of Armour and Requirements: There are several different types of armor in the game, but not every class can wear every kind. Mages, Priests, and Warlocks are restricted to Cloth armor. Hunters, Shamans, Druids, and Rogues are restricted to Leather and Cloth armor; however, the former two can upgrade to Mail at level 40. Warriors and Paladins can equip Cloth, Leather, and Mail armor prior to level 40, at which point they can upgrade to Plate armor. Armour is used to reduce damage taken from melee attacks, with cloth providing the least protection and plate providing the most. Armour can be equipped to the head, shoulders, back, chest, wrists, hands, legs, waist, and feet. In addition, two rings, two trinkets, and a neck piece can be equipped to the character. these usually provide no additional protection, instead boosting attributes or granting useful, sometimes bizarre abilities.

Weapons: Every class can equip a melee weapon, while most can equip a ranged weapon such as a bow, wand, crossbow, or gun. Warriors can equip every weapon available in the game with the exception of wands. Some classes rely more heavily on weapons than others, the Warrior relying on weapons the most heavily while the Mage hardly ever engages in physical combat. Better weapons have a higher DPS (damage per second) and grant better increases to the player's attributes. Some even grant a chance-on-hit ability, like the chance to spin the weapon wildly (damaging every hostile in the area) or hurl a fireball at enemies.

The world

Geography

The current virtual world is built around two main continents: The Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. The new World Tree of Teldrassil is off the northwestern coast of Kalimdor. While not all of the history of the four years between the end of The Frozen Throne and the start of World of Warcraft has been revealed, it is known that the conflict between the Horde's forces and the marines of the Theramore Isles at the end of the Orc mini-campaign were the kindling for the current conflict. This forced the Horde to mainly reside in Kalimdor, and the Alliance to settle predominantly in the Eastern Kingdoms.

Some of the notable landmarks and locations in the game that were featured in previous Warcraft games, namely Warcraft III, are featured in the game. They are:

• The Undercity, which resides under the Ruins of Lordaeron, is the main city of the Undead, ruled by Sylvanas Windrunner and Varimathras. Here they are engineering a new plague to wipe out the Scourge and all humans in Azeroth.
• The Eastern and Western Plaguelands, including places such as Andorhal, the place of origin of the Scourge and the Plague of Undeath, and Stratholme, the site of Arthas' initial fall into insanity.
• The Blasted Lands, home of the original Dark Portal out of which the Orcs first came into Azeroth.
• Kalimdor, home to the Tauren, Orcs, Trolls, and Night Elves. Areas to the north include Ashenvale Forest, Felwood, Winterspring, Azshara and the Moonglade. These regions surround Mt. Hyjal, where the final battle against Archimonde was held and the fall of the Burning Legion's Second Invasion took place.

As of early 2006 a number of areas in the virtual world have yet to be implemented. Some examples of this are:

• In Kalimdor: Mount Hyjal (south-west of Winterspring) and the Caverns of Time and Uldum (both in Tanaris).
• In Lordaeron: Gilneas (south of the Greymane Wall), Quel'Thalas (north-east of Stratholme), and Zul'Aman (east of Quel'Thalas).
• In Khaz Modan: Grim Batol (in the far east of the Wetlands).
• In Azeroth (confusingly both the name of the eastern continent and the name of the world): Medivh's Tower (in Deadwind Pass).

It is possible to enter these zones, either accidentally or intentionally. It is however not advised as it is a bannable offense.

• Several islands named on the map cannot be reached, such as Kul Tiras, Tol Barad, Zul'Dare, Crestfall, and Sunwell Grove.

• One portal, the Dark Portal, is present but currently serves no purpose. There are four other portals, located in Duskwood, Ashenvale Forest, Feralas, and The Hinterlands that are the sites of four extremely powerful green dragons.

Information released recently says that, come the expansion, The Dark Portal will lead to Outland. It is thought that this portal will be opened when the expansion set is released. Some speculate that this portal will be opened when a player acquires the Book of Medivh. This book might be found on Kel'Thuzad who ought to be found in the Naxxaramas Necropolis, above Stratholme. The Naxxaramas Necropolis is not yet implemented, although you can see an inactive portal deep inside Stratholme. (Note: This is speculation based on lore; there may be more to opening the portal than just acquiring the Book of Medivh.)

The other four portals, in Ashenvale, Duskwood, Feralas, and the Hinterlands are connected to the Emerald Dream. Ysera or the Dreamer is one of the five Dragon Aspects that watch over the world of Azeroth. The green dragon and younger sister to Alexstrasza, she was empowered by the titan Eonar to be bound to the Emerald Dream in an eternal trance to forever watch over the wilds and the Druids. It is also thought that the Essence of Eranikus trinket quest will be continued and will include Emerald Dream content. The current quest chain ends when you talk to Umbranse the Spiritspeaker. He says that Eranikus is not dead and he can contact him, but he needs a powerful augur device that was stolen from him. It is unknown where this device is, how to acquire it, or whether its currently in the game right now at all. The second-to-last content patch (1.8) introduces Emeriss, Taerar, Ysondre, and Lethon, four outdoor raid encounter dragons that protect the four portals to the Emerald Dream, and hints at further development of this storyline.

The 3rd major continent, Northrend, which was featured in Warcraft III and The Frozen Throne expansion, does not appear in the World of Warcraft at all. Given that every game like World of Warcraft has had new content sold as a new game expansion, this might be added in a future expansion for this game.

Instances

World of Warcraft also features instances. Instances, or "Instanced dungeons", are dungeons that have been designed and tailored specifically for certain sizes of groups and are duplicated for each group that enters it. This way a party can experience a dungeon without interference from other players, and cannot zerg it by bringing in outside help to overwhelm the opposition. Instances will allow only a certain maximum group size to enter, ranging from 5-man groups in some small instances, to 40-man raids. As of late 2005 there are four instances which allow for a maximum of 40 people: Onyxia's Lair, Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. These are the toughest areas in the game and success in these four instances is virtually impossible without great organization and good equipment. The recently added Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj instances allow for a maximum of 20 people and offers a more casual gameplay experience.

Typically, instanced dungeons are more elaborate and require more steps to be taken in a particular order for successful completion than are necessary in the main world. For example, requiring that a large group of enemies be defeated so that one can pull a lever to rotate a bridge in order to access a new section of the map makes sense when one group is traversing the dungeon linearly; it makes far less sense in public areas where hundreds of other players might be in the same area. Therefore, instanced dungeons tend to be much more interesting than normal areas, in which quest requirements are very simple (e.g. kill a certain number of enemies, or collect a certain number of objects).

Instances in World of Warcraft also feature many more rare item drops than just the world itself. Some rare items such as armor sets, epic weapons, rare mounts, etc. Instances are very elaborate dungeons that require good skills and organization to conquer. One of the more elaborate instances being RFD, otherwise known as Razorfen Downs, which consists of many hallways and rooms, and houses a long, elaborate spiral in the center, requiring users to fight everything in the way to advance.

Virtual community

Community

In addition to playing the game itself and conversing on discussion forums provided by Blizzard, World of Warcraft players often participate in the World of Warcraft virtual community in creative ways, including fan artwork, comic strip style storytelling or even recording songs devoted to deleted NPCs such as Captain Placeholder.

Another popular phenomenon in the community is a video starring a player named Leeroy Jenkins, intended to provide publicity for Leeroy's guild. Leeroy's popularity is even present in other games such as Guild Wars, where an NPC named Kilroy Stonekin rushes into battle, disrupting a perfectly good plan, while yelling his name in a direct reference. Or, in Adventure Quest, where a direct tribute to Leeroy Jenkins is replayed by players in the Vamprook Spyre. Also, there is a similarly reckless Arachnos Soldier NPC in the game City of Villains by the name of "Jenkins." In an amazing sign of the prevalence of the Jenkins joke, he was even part of a clue on the November 16th, 2005 episode of the TV game show College Jeopardy!.

On some servers and to a lesser extent, YTMND, has become a popular meme. There are various other memes, including "Face Melting", a reference to a very long thread on the priest forums on the World of Warcraft website which consisted of players saying "You will melt faces as a Shadow Priest in PvP" in different ways. These memes gain notoriety through postings on the World of Warcraft Forums.

Problems

As World of Warcraft is a constant work in progress, there are a number of issues affecting it.

• Lag: The popularity of the game means that at times, so many people are on-line that the servers become overloaded and very slow. Serious lag — or slow operation — often occurs on weekend nights, and in the central cities of the Warcraft world, such as Ironforge and Orgrimmar (sometimes nicknamed "Lagforge", "Laggerforge" and "Lagrimmar"), where large concentrations of players congregate. This may no longer be a serious problem, especially since changes were made to the Auction House. The Auction House, the trade channel, and the group channel are now linked with every capital city since the patch 1.9 updated 2005-11-23. This way the people will be spread among these cities instead of lagging one correspondent area.
• Population: Some World of Warcraft players created characters on servers with medium to low populations. Certain low population servers are experiencing a vast number of players leaving the servers, making it harder for people to find groups, and affecting the in-game economy. Blizzard has taken certain measures to alleviate this problem by allowing character transfers on certain servers, but it is still something of a problem. The opposite of this is also true; some servers are too overpopulated and are hard to play on because of server load and long queues to log in.
• Lopsided Horde to Alliance ratio: Many of the servers are becoming outnumbered, with many servers suffering a 2:1 ratio of Alliance to Horde. This affects PvP and the quality of gameplay for some players. This issue will possibly be addressed in the expansion, where it has been announced that the Blood Elves will be a new playable race for the Horde. This will provide the Horde with a so-called "pretty race," which is one of the previous reasons a player might choose Alliance over the Horde races.
• Unbalanced classes: Many people tend to believe that certain classes or races are over- or underpowered. Blizzard periodically releases patches which, along with adding features or fixing bugs, also attempt to balance gameplay by updating the class skill trees and spells. This balancing action is sometimes called 'buffing' or 'nerfing,' depending on whether the change strengthened or weakened the class.
• Long time online required at high level: High-level dungeons can take many hours of party finding, strategy discussion, and battles. The Molten Core (a commonly run, high-level instance usually referred to as 'MC') can usually take as long as six hours to complete. However, Blizzard has made it so that the instance does not have to be done in one, large chunk. Once a group of players kill the first boss, their future progress is saved and stored for one week from the first boss kill, or to when the weekly server maintenance takes place, whichever happens first. This means that none of the bosses will spawn again until after that time period is up and the entire instance resets itself.
• World of Warcraft is not playable offline: As with other online games, server and network stability is critical. Due to failures in these, there have been times when the game has been unplayable by a large number of players. For example, in September 2005, Blizzard gave all European players two free days of play as compensation for repeated network failures. The issues were suspected to be Blizzard's upstream Internet service provider [1].
• Focus on PvP (Player versus Player) combat: Issues with balance in the game have put off many players, especially with the game's focus on PvP combat for developing content. Many players become irritated with issues like 'ganking' (one or often more players of the opposing race repeatedly killing a character), quests which involve traveling through hostile lands (relates to ganking problems), and the collection of Honor Points (gained from killing hostile players) to earn special items.

Advantages

• Since the game is based on a community of players with the ability to interact in many ways, the gaming experience is always evolving and new. Players can experience the questing content alone, with friends, or with a gaming guild. In addition to playing the "actual" game, players can interact socially, explore the various landscapes, or participate in the game's virtual economy.
• Classes are generally balanced, though specialization in some of the talent trees is generally not practical. In recent patches Blizzard has revamped certain classes to make them more viable and playable such as Hunters and Druids, which were revamped in patches 1.7 and 1.8, respectively. Lately, significant changes to the Paladin have been made in patch 1.9. The Priest class will be revamped in the upcoming patch 1.10.
• The epic nature of some instanced dungeons provides a more content-rich and interesting experience for those who wish to immerse themselves in the world for the amount of time required to complete such instances. Rewards for completing such challenges are in the form of better character equipment, which makes for a better experience when attempting other quest or PvP content.
• With the financial resources and investment Blizzard has in making their customers happy, they appear to address issues quickly and effectively when compared to other online games. Other popular online games such as Diablo II (which was made by Blizzard), Neverwinter Nights, and Counter-Strike often lack the dedicated support, server resources, and consistent additions of new content seen in WoW.

Deviance from the MMORPG archetype

Blizzard has used World of Warcraft to make some changes to the typical MMORPG in response to the common complaints received from players about other games in this genre. In particular the game play has been changed to make it more even and fair for both hardcore and casual players. For example, players gain similar experience overall from completing quests as by only killing monsters ('grinding'). Many players find grinding uninteresting and opt instead to continue to do quests.

The other system used by Blizzard to help the casual player is the "rested state". While in rested state, a character will earn twice as much experience as would normally be gained from killing monsters, but will gain the standard amount of experience from completing quests and exploring. This feature allows someone who has been away from the game for a period of time to double his leveling capability until he leaves the rested state, providing a "catch up" incentive upon returning to the game. However, in order to prevent players exploiting this by leaving one character logged off in an inn while playing another, the maximum amount of rest a character can accumulate is capped at 1.5 levels' worth; the quantity of experience this represents varies depending on the character's level. Players can increase the rate at which their characters gain rest by a factor of four by returning to an inn or capital city to log off. Rest increases whether or not a character is logged in, but slowly enough (10 days to reach a fully-rested state in an inn) that it is most easily noticed when a character is first logged in after not having been played for several hours or days.

General information

Launch and sales

The game was simultaneously released on both Windows and Macintosh computer systems in North America, Australia and New Zealand on November 23, 2004. Blizzard released two versions of the game upon its launch. One was the regular CD edition, and the other was the limited Collector's Edition. The collector's box contained the following items:

• The entire game on both one DVD and four CDs.
• A One-month subscription to the game.
• A guest pass to the game, providing a player's friend with 10-day access.
• A Behind the Scenes DVD.
• A Collector's Edition Soundtrack.
• A Collector's Edition manual.
• The Art of World of Warcraft (Hardcover book).
• A cloth map of Azeroth.
• An exclusive in-game pet for every character, chosen from a Zergling, Panda, and Mini Diablo.

The game sold more than 240,000 copies in its first 24 hours on the market, more than any other PC game in history. Though not officially released in South Korea until January 18, 2005, it had been found on store shelves since November 2004. The game was released in Europe on February 11, 2005 with English, French and German language versions. On March 2, 2005, 100,000 testers signed up for China's WoW beta test within the first hour. The game was released in China on June 6, 2005. The game won high praise at E³ in 2003, including Gamer's Pulse's Best of Show award. World of Warcraft was declared by many in the computer gaming industry, including GameSpot and GameSpy, as 2004's game of the year. And, as with any game, it has its own terminology.

As is common with the launch of a MMORPG, World of Warcraft had its share of problems at first. Partly because of the huge number of people who bought the game, along with server instability, Blizzard chose to stop selling copies of the game some time after the launch. Sales were limited accordingly until more servers, called worlds, or realms, could be assembled. Due to the massive initial sales, there were also periods where players had to wait in queues before playing, as some realms were at their maximum player limit. When more servers were added, these queues became less common and sales of the game resumed. Still, in certain high population areas (like Ironforge or Orgrimmar), players continue to experience game performance delays.

As of December 2005, World of Warcraft has more than 5,000,000 players worldwide, making it the most popular MMORPG in the world. Over 1 million of these players live in the US. 1.5 million of these are from the Chinese launch on July 7, 2005. These numbers exclude all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or canceled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Blizzard also stated that at any given time at least 500,000 subscribers are online. Due to World of Warcraft's high sales it has been described as a "runaway success" with "overwhelming popularity", which other games, like The Matrix Online, blame for their lackluster sales. ^[2]

On August 3, 2005, China implemented legislation which forbids minors from playing games in which players kill each other. The impact of this on Blizzard's revenue is still to be determined.

World of Warcraft won critical acclaim in 2004 and achieved many awards as a result of this, some which can be found at the official World of Warcraft list of awards.

On February 2, 2006, the game won the "Grand Prix" award at the 2006 Imagina Games Awards. [3]

System requirements

World of Warcraft runs natively on both Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms. Boxed copies of the game use a hybrid CD to install the game, eliminating the need for separate Mac and Windows retail products.

The following requirements are as stated on the official World of Warcraft website, but generally players believe that these specifications are too low for the game to be played enjoyably.

• General requirements:
  • 5 GB or more of available hard drive space.
  • 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection.
• Mac OS X:
  • 933 MHz or higher G4, G5, or Intel processor.
  • 512 MB RAM or higher; DDR RAM recommended.
  • ATI or Nvidia video hardware with 32 MB VRAM or more.
  • Mac OS X v10.3.9 or newer (see note below).

• Windows 98/ME/2000/XP:
  • 800 MHz or higher CPU.
  • 256 MB RAM or more (512 MB recommended, 1 GB for comfortable play).
  • 32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware transform and lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better.
  • DirectX 9.0c.

World of Warcraft allows all users to play together, regardless of their operating system.

As of July 2005, Blizzard has no immediate plans to release a Linux version, but there is an online petition aimed at convincing Blizzard to release a true Linux port. However, support for World of Warcraft is present in Windows API implementations Wine and Cedega, allowing the game to be played on Linux. FreeBSD users have also been successful in using Wine to run the game.

Furthermore, they have not yet considered making it possible to play WOW as single player/Offline, that is: you play alone against the computer controlling NPCs. This is discouraging for those who are not on an unlimited internet usage plan.

Note: In the patch notes for version 1.9.0, Blizzard announced that the operating system requirement for Mac OS X will increase from 10.3.5 to 10.3.9 in a future (beyond 1.9.0) patch or expansion. This is being done to help support upcoming x86-based Macs. The upgrade from 10.3.5 to 10.3.9 is a free download from Apple.

Modifications

Modifying the user interface (UI) of a game is nothing new, but Blizzard has included exceptional support for modifications. At a simple level it allows full control over the content of toolbars and hot keys, as well as macros to automate sets of operations and the ability to script much more elaborate tools.

The range of modifications that are available can be anything from ways to control Winamp in-game, to adding extra rows of button bars for spells, skills and more. There are also various cosmetic mods, including one that reproduces the infamous 'Leeroy Jenkins' sound [4].

All addons are created using the Lua programming language and XML, and images used for any modification are created using the .TGA (Targa) and .BLP image formats. Blizzard has released a User Interface Customization tool which they call "Cui" [5]..

Some programs that operate stand-alone, independent of World of Warcraft may be considered exploits, especially if they automate operation beyond that made available using the built-in macro functionality, or pass information in or out of the game. Use of these is against the Terms of Service agreed to when playing the game, and as such, may lead to possible suspension or closure of accounts. Blizzard has stated on the official forums that any modification that uses the Lua programming language will not be considered an exploit, though Blizzard reserves the right to change information available via the Lua language if the modification changes the nature of encounters in the game.

WoWWiki [6] has several resources for information about WoW User Interface customization.

Exploits

As with all massively multiplayer online games, World of Warcraft has had its share of players who exploit the world of Azeroth. Such abuse ranges from gold farming to selling accounts on eBay. One common exploit was the use of leet (an example is '|-|()// |2 U?', read as 'how r u?') to communicate between the Horde and the Alliance, since symbols and numbers were left unmodified in otherwise scrambled communications. This has since been stopped by modifying the linguistics engine to remove punctuation and numbers from the text.

Known types

• Speed Hacking/Teleporting/subterrain travel – Since character position in World of Warcraft is determined by the client side, it is possible for players to send out artificial positional data and be instantly transported to any part of the world (even underground) or used to speed up traveling speed by increasing positional deltas.
• Botting – A player who runs a third party program to control their character. The bot will kill monsters, loot gold, mine ore, collect herbs or gain levels automatically without the player having to be in front of the computer.
• Game Mechanics Exploits – There are also other exploits involving the physics of the game, sometimes in conjunction with items. This includes using wall-walking (removed in patch 1.9) to get into unfinished areas or abilities like the Sentry Totem to make one's character unattackable by other players. These exploits are usually not discovered right away and are allowed to be used (though typically thought of as unfair) until stated otherwise by Blizzard.
• Data Mining – This is typically most common around the time that a patch is released on the public test realm. Players will try to access files not yet in game and then host them on websites to expose content not yet released (usually new zones, items, and graphics).

Legality

The World of Warcraft End User License Agreement specifically forbids these kinds of activities. Blizzard takes action against anyone who exploits the game by temporarily and permanently suspending accounts. So far, Blizzard has banned well over 25,000 players from the game. Blizzard makes heavy use of a system known as The Warden on the Windows version of the game in order to detect third-party programs, such as botting software. There has been some controversy as to the legality of The Warden, since it allegedly uses techniques similar to spyware in order to analyse other running software on the players' PCs, as well as the file system.[7] However, software such as anti-virus software loosely falls into this definition as well. Debates regarding the game's EULA as well as the rights of the players continue.

Defenses against banning

Although Blizzard continues to ban players when they are detected as cheating, many players have found ways to escape detection. In particular, Blizzard relies heavily on a technology known as The Warden which can detect some botting and cheating programs. However, such anti-cheat software can only follow a set of rules, so there follows a cat and mouse game as the game developers and cheat programmers attempt to circumvent each other. In November 2005, it was proven that the XCP rootkit secretly included with Sony music CDs in the US for the purposes of copy prevention could be used to disguise cheat programs from The Warden. In November 2005, Blizzard introduced patch version 1.8.3 which added the Blizzard Launcher application. The Launcher was designed to report cheats that would be considered a bannable offense to the user so they may avoid starting the game (and Warden) before removing them. The Blizzard Launcher is automatically opened by default desktop and start menu shortcuts. However, it is possible to launch World of Warcraft without the Blizzard Launcher by opening WoW.exe (typically found at C:Program FilesWorld of WarcraftWoW.exe).

Expansion pack

On October 28, 2005 Blizzard revealed that the first expansion pack will be called World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. It will include an increased level cap of 70, a new crafting profession, and two new races, one of which being the Blood Elves for the Horde. The expansion will also feature Outland as a new playable zone, as well as a new flying mount, usable only in Outland, for high-level players. Some of the expansion's features will be available to all players, though the most significant additions – visiting Outland, creating characters of the two new races, and so on – will require the Burning Crusade to be installed.

Realms

World of Warcraft also uses servers, known as 'realms' to allow players to choose their preferred gameplay type, and to allow the game to support as many subscribers as it does. Users may have up to ten characters per each realm, up to a maximum of fifty characters per account.

There are four different kinds of realm. Normal, Player versus Player (PvP), roleplaying (RP) and roleplaying player versus player (RP-PvP). On a PvP or RP-PvP realm certain areas known as "contested areas" allow players to freely attack members of the opposing faction. On a Normal or RP realm, players can only attack opposing faction members that willingly choose to "flag" themselves. The RP and RP-PvP also have naming and chat rules to encourage roleplaying.

Criticism

Blizzard garnered criticism for their decision in January 2006 to ban mention of homosexuality in-game. The incident occured after several players were cited for "harassment" after advocating a group for gay-straight alliance[8] [9]. Blizzard have responded by outlining the policy they based this decision on, "To promote a positive game environment for everyone and help prevent such harassment from taking place as best we can, we prohibit mention of topics related to sensitive real-world subjects in open chat within the game, and we do our best to take action whenever we see such topics being broadcast."

Further criticisms have focused on the addictive nature of WoW. The game has been blamed by many educators for a fall in performance in school.^{[citation needed]} The game is indeed so addictive that it has been nicknamed WarCrack, in a manner like EverQuest named EverCrack.