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World of Warcraft

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World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft box art
Developer(s)Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher(s)Vivendi Universal
Platform(s)Windows, Mac OS X
ReleaseNovember 23, 2004 (US), (CA), (AU), (NZ)
January 18, 2005 (KR)
February 11, 2005 (EU)
June 6, 2005 (CN)
July 21, 2005 (SG)
November 8, 2005 (TW), (HK), (MO)
Genre(s)MMORPG
Mode(s)Multiplayer
WoW icon
WoW icon

World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW) is a race/class-based 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 cancelled 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 December 2005, World of Warcraft is one of the most popular MMORPGs in the world, with more than 5 million active subscriptions.

Virtual world

Characters

Characters in the World of Warcraft are tied to specific user accounts. Users can choose from a variety of races and classes. Players can create 10 characters per server with a total limit of 50 characters on all realms per account.

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:

See also: Races in the Warcraft universe.

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. Template:World of Warcraft classes

Professions

Template:World of Warcraft professions

Main article: Professions (World of Warcraft)

In addition to the character classes, a player may choose two primary professions and as many secondary professions as they wish. The professions consist of two types: gathering and item creation/service. 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 or 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. This type of player will typically offer gathered items for sale on the game's auction houses. In the upcoming expansion there will be one new profession: jewelcrafting.

Attributes

Attributes are referred to as "stats" within the game.

Strength (STR), Intellect (INT), Spirit (SPI), Agility (AGIL/AGI) and Stamina (STA/STAM) are the attributes of World of Warcraft. These attributes hold a key role in determining a character's health (hit points), mana (mana is what 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, and critical strike chances (a default of double damage with ranged and melee weapons) health regeneration, mana regeneration, and critical strike chance with spells (a default of one and a half damage with spells). For each class, different attributes are more important. Classes that rely on melee combat, strength is more important than spirit and benefit more from an increase in that particular area.

Agility

Agility increases armor by 2 points, and ranged attack power by 2 points for each level of agility a character has. Druids, Hunters and Rogues also gain 1 point of melee attack power per point of Agility. Agility is also linked to a character's chance to dodge and critical strike with a weapon (although the degree of effect varies for each class). Hunters and Rogues generally need as much agility as possible from gear (in game equipment).

The amount of the increase is dependant on both class and level. For most level 60 character classes, approximately 20 points of AGI will increase your critical hit chance by approximately 1%. As with all attributes, some classes benefit differently from high attribute statistics. Rogues require 29 AGI for an additional 1% critical hit chance, and Hunters require 53 AGI for an additional 1% critical hit chance, but both of these classes also gain attack power from agility and the items available to them typically have much higher amounts of AGI.

Strength

Every 1 point of strength increases attack power by 2 points for most classes and is linked to the amount of damage prevented when blocking with a shield. This attribute is generally important for all melee classes (Warriors, Shamans, and Paladins,) although Rogues, Feral Druids and Hunters also benefit from strength. Rogues and Hunters gain 1 attack power for every Strength point they get.

Intellect

Intellect increases the maximum amount of mana a character can attain by 15 points per level. It is also linked to the chance to critical strike with spells (Crit chance with spells is different for every class/level. A level 60 mage get 1% crit 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 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

Stamina increases the amount of hit points a character has by 10 per point of stamina. Stamina is important for all classes but especially important for Warriors, Warlocks, Shamans, and Paladins.

Spirit

Spirit increases the rate at which you recover (regenerate) health and mana. A point of spirit increases the amount of mana regenerated by 1/5 and health by 1/9 per tick (every 2 seconds). Spirit does not regenerate health while in combat; it only regenerates mana. 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.

Geography

File:World of Warcraft World Map.jpg
World of Warcraft World Map

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 assumed that the conflict between the Horde's forces and the marines of the Theramore Isles at the end of the Orc mini-campaign were at least the kindling for the blaze of the current conflict.

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

As of mid-2005 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), Ahn'qiraj (south of the Scarab Wall in Silithus), 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 southern 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.

File:World of Warcraft Portal.jpg
An example of a portal from World of Warcraft.
  • One portal, the Dark Portal, is present but currently serves no purpose. There are four other portals, located in Duskwood, Ashenvale Forest, Ferelas, and The Hinterlands that are the sites of four very powerful green dragons.

The Dark Portal will lead to the Outlands. It is possible 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.) Information released regarding the upcoming world of warcraft expansion pack indicate that the dark portal will provide access to the new Outlands area.

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 in the Emerald Dream. 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 recently released 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

Main article: Instance (World of Warcraft)

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. 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).

Template:World of Warcraft instances

Virtual community

Community

File:Videogame warcraft screenshot 2.jpg
Resting World of Warcraft party

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, and in Adventure Quest, where a direct tribute to Leeroy Jenkins is replayed by players in the Vamprook Spyre. 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!. There have also been multiple remixes by artists of the audio. The most popular is a remix by someone known as ColdBlooded Killer on Soundclicks.

On some servers and to a lesser extent, YTMND, this 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.

Another meme involving "Holy" Priests, happens to be "Steamrolling", which is a reference to a Holy Priest being on a "Kill First" priority. Again, this was gained through the World of Warcraft Forums

Problems

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

  • 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 on one faction side or the other. 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 reasons previously a player might choose the 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 that the instance does not have to be done in one, large chunk. Everytime the group of players kills a boss, their progress is saved and stored for one week. This meaning that none of the bosses will spawn again until after that time period is up and the entire instance resets itself. Blizzard is also implementing this process into future high-end instances as well.
  • As with other online games, server and network stability is critical (World of Warcraft is not playable offline). 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.

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 are 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. Significant changes to the Paladin class will be made in patch 1.9.
  • The epic nature of some instanced dungeons provide 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 Halo 2, Diablo 2, 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 their leveling capability until they leave 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

File:Wowcollectors.jpg
Box shot of the World of Warcraft Collector's Edition

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.
  • One-month subscription to the game.
  • A guest pass to the game providing ten days of access.
  • A Behind the Scenes DVD.
  • Collector's Edition Soundtrack.
  • Collector's Edition manual.
  • The Art of World of Warcraft (Hardcover book).
  • A cloth map of Azeroth.
  • Exclusive in-game pets (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. This is typically caused by poor hardware and/or extra programs running in the background such as spyware/adware.

File:Zergling Panda Diablo.jpg
The three exclusive in-game pets as seen in the Collector's Edition. A Panda, Mini Diablo and Zergling.

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.

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:
    • 6 GB or more of available hard drive space.
    • 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection.

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.

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

File:Original – modified UI – World of Warcraft.jpg
On the left is the original user interface, on the right is a highly customized one.

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 [3].

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" [4].

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.

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 (examples are |-| () \/\/ |2 U? (how are you?) 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 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 this kind of activity. Blizzard takes action against anyone who exploits the game by temporarily and permanently suspending accounts. So far, Blizzard has banned well over 18,000 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.[5] 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 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.

Expansion Pack

Main article: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

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 (remnants of the High 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.

See also

References

  • ^ "Conqueror in a War of Virtual Worlds", The New York Times: September 6, 2005; by Seth Schiesel in "The Arts" section [6]
Wikibooks has more on the topic of: World of Warcraft

Official websites

Useful resources

Reviews

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