[GTB]

So i’ve been playing the beta of World of Warcraft for a while now, so I think its about time I did some kind of review. Keep in mind that it’s still in beta, so who knows what the final product will look like.

THE GOOD:
- The quest system is easy to use and understand. The npcs who have a quest for you have a very clear “!” symbol floating above their heads, which changes to a “?” when you have accepted the quest. The instructions they give you are (with a few exceptions) very easy to understand and carry out. You can access your quest log which lists your current quests and objectives. When an objective is completed, a large text message appears at the top of your screen to let you know.

- Control is very intuitive. Similar to most other games from blizzard, you can just right-click on something to automatically interact with it however you are able. For instance, right-clicking on a chest or box opens it, right-clicking on an npc brings up the “talk” menu, right-clicking on an attackable npc initiates attack.

- The graphics are very nice. I had initially thought the graphics would be too cartoony for my taste, however after playing the game, I think they’re just more vibrant than im used to. All the colors are very rich and well used, reminding me of a cell-shaded comic rather than the normal rendered light-tracing. Water looks very realistic, ground texture is very sharp and clean. Characters are more 3d than normal, with lots of jutting features rather than just a texture map of characteristics. I think the polygon count is lower, but the graphics team at blizzard has used them far better than other games with far more, and the trade off in speed is more than worth it.

- Lag, at least in the beta, is very low. Even on my low end machine (which by rights shouldn’t even be able to run the game) I never experienced any lag at all except in the main cities of each race, where huge congregations of players were gathered, and even then, it was tolerable. Admittedly, there are fewer players currently than there will be when the game is finally released, however, even during the crazy open server stress test when there were thousands of fuckers running around, it was still the same.

- You can tell that blizzard set out to make this a more “physical” feeling game from the beginning. There are places where you will need to jump around and climb the sides of mountains to get to your destination. The physics engine wasn’t an afterthought, it was fully implemented from the beginning. Scaling cliffs can lead you to shortcuts and secret trails to new zones.

- What classes I have played (warrior, warlock, paladin, mage) seem balanced as far as “cool shit” goes, though my experience with PVP is very limited, so I can’t tell if they’re really balanced. I can tell you that each class is unique, with very little cross-over powers, with the exception of the fighter classes, which have similar combat techniques based on weapon. (unfortunately).

- Leveling is fast enough to keep me interested…. so far. Reaching level 10 was fast and somewhat fluid, gravitating through the storyline from quest to quest was entertaining. Hopefully it holds up. So far each level has gone about as fast as the previous, as long as you advance through to the next harder quest.

- It is possible to kill the leaders of each race if you manage to invade far enough. And in fact, your faction (alliance or horde) recieves bonuses for you doing so. As far as I can tell, there are no barriers between each faction, except that npc guards get progressively higher level and more frequent the closer you are to the border of “disputed lands.”

- You are not AS limited in your selection of skills and abilities by your class. By visiting various trainers scattered around your homeland (and beyond) you can learn two different trades (Blacksmithing, enchanting, mining, herbalism, tailoring, alchemy, and probably some im forgetting) and as many “profession” skills as you want. These include fishing, skinning, cooking, and a couple others I don’t remember either. You can also learn to use different weapons than you begin with, for instance, my undead warlock up there started with the “dagger” weapon skill, but as you can see I learned “big sword” as fast as I could find the trainer. As a result, not only do I do a fuckton of damage with my pet and offensive spells, but im not too bad in melee either.

(theres probably some good shit im forgetting, and will add later, but for now…)

THE BAD:

- Quests, while being easy to follow and easy to get, are also incredibly generic. There are really only three types of “quests” and they are as follows:
QUEST ONE: Kill “X” number of “Y” monster and return.
QUEST TWO: Collect “X” number of “Y” item and return.
QUEST THREE: Talk to (and often travel to) “X” npc.

Thats it. At least, so far. I have yet to encounter anything different, but I am still low level, so who knows really.

- While for the most part, you must gather the componants of each crafting “formula” before crafting an item, you can also just purchase a good deal of it from crafting supply merchants (trade skill merchants). Which is unfortunate. It would be way better if you had to find ALL of this shit. Some trades, like alchemy, require you to find 90% of your base materials, so thats good. And again, it could be that later you must find everything for higher level stuff. I don’t know.

- The level of monsters seems to be radically different from the level of players, or at least the system is different than normal. Because so far, every class i’ve played has been able to take 4 or 5 of the same “level” of monsters with no problem. My Tauren warrior could take monsters equal to his level all day without resting, all at the same time. This was a little goofy to me. I can also almost always take monsters three and four levels higher than me with very little problems. It could be that their system is based on groups of 4 monsters I guess.

- Monsters are encredibly generic. At level one, i fought monster X. At level two, I fought larger versions of monster X that looked no different except for size. At level ten, having traveled accross the damn world, I am again fighting the same fucking monsters with a different name which are different only in that they are larger than before. Sort of boring.

- The enemy AI appears to be retarded. Again, this could just be because i’m low level still, but so far the enemy AI has been “rush-at-player” and thats pretty much it. Occasionally one will pull out a bow, or some monsters will cast spells, but for the most part, once you draw aggro, you’re in melee. I can only assume this changes as you get more powerful?

- Weapons and armor, at least store-bought ones, are very very limited. Generally, you move to the next town, buy the one new set of armor from the armor vendor there, and then move on to the next town once you are high enough level, where you then repeat the process. This leads to a lot of guys looking exactly the same, wearing exactly the same shit. I suppose it could just be because its in beta, but I would really like a choice once in a while…. which brings me to…

- Character creation is really really gay. Everyone starts with the same stats and you have a very limited selection of custom features for your character. I may have just been expecting too much after playing City of Heroes, but it seems like they’ve taken a step back as far as uniqueness of character appearance goes.

- While they have all the good parts of current mmorpgs, they lack anything “new” or “different”. Nothing really innovative here.

- The chat system is TERRIBLE! But maybe thats just me. It just seems really clunky. I think there are ways to customize it, but I really haven’t investigated that much.

- Other races don’t really react to you any differently. As a member of the undead race, my faction with my own “horde” member races is much lower than normal. Orcs and shit still don’t like undead very much I guess. That being said.. it doesn’t seem to matter, since Everyone is just as helpful. I still get the same quests as orcs from orc npcs, I get the same prices (as far as I can tell) from orc merchants, nothing is different. Im not sure whats bad about having a “lower” faction.

- At specific locations throughout the lands, the ground texture is fucked up. Where two “zones” meet, there are definate “lines” in the ground texture. Im hoping this is just from still being beta, because its really sort of lame.