World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game).It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy "Warcraft Universe".The first one was "Warcraft: Orcs & Humans" released in 1994, followed by "Warcraft World of Azeroth",approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous Warcraft release "Warcraft III : The Frozen Throne".Blizzard Entertainment announced World of Warcraft on September 2, 2001. The game was released on November 23, 2004, on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise.
The first expansion set of the game, "The Burning Crusade", was released on January 16, 2007. The second expansion set, "Wrath of the Lich King", was released on November 13, 2008. The third expansion set, "Cataclysm", was announced at BlizzCon 2009, and entered into closed beta testing in late June 2010.
Starting a character or play session
As with other MMORPGs, players control a character avatar within a game world in third- or first person view, exploring the landscape, fighting various monsters, completing quests, and interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) or other players. Also similar to other MMORPGs,
World of Warcraft requires the player to pay for a subscription, either by buying prepaired game cards for a selected amount of playing time, or by using a credit or debit card to pay on a regular basis.
To enter the game, the player must select a realm—sometimes referred to as a server. Each realm acts as an individual copy of the game world, and falls into one of four categories. Realms are either player versus player (PvP), where open combat among players is more common, or player versus environment (PvE), where the gameplay is more focused on defeating monsters and completing quests. Roleplay (RP) and roleplay-PvP (RP-PVP) variants of both primary realm types are also available. Realms are also categorized by language, with in-game support in the language available.
Players can make new characters on all realms, and it is also possible to move already established characters between realms for a fee.
To create a new character, in keeping with the storyline of previous "Warcraft series" games, players must choose between the opposing factions of Alliance or Horde. Characters from the opposing factions can perform rudimentary communication, but only members of the same faction can speak, mail, group, and share guilds. The player selects the new character's race, such as Orcs or Trolls for the Horde or Humans or Dwarves for the Alliance.
Players must also select the class for the character, with choices such as mages, warriors and priests available.
All classes, except for special "Hero classes", are limited to particular races.
Ongoing gameplay
As characters become more developed, they gain various talents and skills, requiring the player to further define the abilities of that character.
Professions such as tailoring, blacksmithing, and mining can be learned. The three secondary skills, cooking, fishing, and first-aid, can also be learned by characters.
Characters may also form and join guilds, allowing characters within the guild access to the guild's chat channel, the guild name and optionally allowing other features, including a guild tabard, guild bank, and dues.
Much of
World of Warcraft play involves "questing". These quests, also called "tasks" or "missions", are usually available from NPCs.
Quests usually reward the player with some combination of experience points, items, and in-game money. Quests also allow characters to gain access to new skills and abilities, and explore new areas.
It is also through quests that much of the game's story is told, both through the quest's text and through scripted NPC actions.
Quests are linked by a common theme, with each consecutive quest triggered by the completion of the previous, forming a quest chain. Quests commonly involve killing a number of creatures, gathering a certain number of resources, finding a difficult to locate object, speaking to various NPCs, visiting specific locations, interacting with objects in the world, or delivering an item from one place to another.
While a character can be played on its own, players can also group with others to tackle more challenging content. Most end-game challenges are designed in a way that they can only be overcome while in a group. In this way, character classes are used in specific roles within a group.
World of Warcraft uses a "rested bonus" system, increasing the rate that a character can gain experience points after the player has spent time away from the game.
When a character dies, it becomes a ghost—or wisp for Night Elf characters—at a nearby graveyard.
Characters can be resurrected by other characters that have the ability, or can self-resurrect by moving from the graveyard to the place where they died. When a character dies, the items equipped by the character degrade, requiring in-game money and a specialist NPC to repair them. Items that have degraded heavily become unusable until they are repaired. If the location of the character's body is unreachable, they can use a special "spirit healer" NPC to resurrect at the graveyard. When the spirit healer revives a character, items equipped by the character at that time are further degraded, and the character is significantly weakened by what is in-game called "resurrection sickness" for up to ten minutes, depending on the characters level. This "resurrection sickness" does not occur and item degradation is less severe if the character revives by locating its body, or is resurrected by another player through special items or spells.
World of Warcraft contains a variety of mechanisms for PvP (player versus player) play. Players on PvE (players versus environment) servers can opt to "flag" themselves, making themselves attackable to players of the opposite faction.
Depending on the mode of the realm, PvP combat between members of opposing factions is possible at almost any time or location in the game word – the only exception being the starting zones, where the PvP "flag" must be enabled by the player wishing to fight against players of the opposite faction. PvE (called normal or RP) servers, by contrast, allow a player to choose whether or not to engage in combat against other players. On both server types, there are special areas of the world where free-for-all combat is permitted. Battlegrounds, for example, are similar to dungeons: only a set number of characters can enter a single battleground, but additional copies of the battleground can be made to accommodate additional players.
Each battleground has a set objective, such as capturing a flag or defeating an opposing general, that must be completed in order to win the battleground. Competing in battlegrounds rewards the character with tokens and honor points that can be used to buy armour, weapons and other general items that can aid a player in many areas of the game. Winners get more honor and tokens than losers. However, you also earn honor when you or nearby teammates kill players in a battleground.
Settings
World of Warcraft shares the
Warcraft title with the
"Warcraft" series of real-time strategy games, is set in that series' world of Azeroth, and has similar art direction.
World of Warcraft contains traditional fantasy elements, such as gryphons, dragons, and elves; steam-powered automata and extreme engineering typical of streampunk; zombies, vampires, and other undead typical of horror; as well as timetravel, spaceships, and alien worlds typical of S-F (Science Fiction).
World of Warcraft takes place in a 3D representation of the
Warcraft universe that players can interact with through their characters. The game world initially consisted of the two continents in Azeroth: Kalimdor
and the Eastern Kingdoms. Two separate expansions later added to the game's playable area the realm of Outland and the continent of Northrend. As a player explores new locations, different routes and means of transportion become available. Players can access "flight masters" in newly discovered locations to fly to previously discovered locations in other parts of the world.
Players can also use boats, zeppelins, or portals to move from one continent to another. Although the game world remains relatively similar from day to day, seasonal events reflecting real world events—such as Halloween,
Christmas, Children's Week,
Easter and Midsummer—have been represented in the game world. Locations also have variable weather including, among other things, rain, snow, and dust storms.
A number of facilities are available for characters while in towns and cities. In each major city, characters can access a bank in order to deposit items, such as treasure or crafted items. Each character has access to personal bank storage with the option to purchase additional storage space using in-game gold.
Additionally, guild banks are available for use by members of a guild with restrictions being set by the guild leader.
Auction houses are also available for players to buy and sell items to others in a similar way to online auction sites such as eBay.
Players can also use mailboxes, which can be found in almost every town. Mailboxes are used to collect items won at auction, and send messages, items and in-game money to other characters.
Some of the challenges in
World of Warcraft require players to group together to complete them. These usually take place in dungeons—also known as "instances"—that a group of characters can enter together. The term "instance" comes from each group or party having a separate copy, or instance, of the dungeon, complete with their own enemies to defeat and their own treasure or rewards.
This allows a group to explore areas and complete quests without others interfering. Dungeons are spread over the game world and are designed for characters of varying progression. A typical dungeon will allow up to five characters to enter as part of a group. Some dungeons require more players to group together and form a "raid" of up to forty players to face some of the most difficult challenges.
As well as dungeon-based raid challenges, several creatures exist in the normal game environment that are designed for raids to attack.
Subscription
World of Warcraft requires a subscription fee to be paid to allow continued play, with options to pay in one month, three month or six month blocks, although timecards of varying length are available both online and from traditional retailers.
Expansion packs are also available online, although are again available from traditional retailers. As the game client is the same regardless of the version of World of Warcraft the user owns, the option to purchase the expansion online was added as it allowed quick upgrade.
Expansions
Main articles: "World of Warcraft : "The Burning Crusade", "World of Warcraft : Wrath of the Lich King", and World of Warcraft : Cataclysm".
Playing World of Warcraft on private servers can be different than Blizzard
