World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massive MMORPG made by Blizzard that was launched on the 23rd of November, 2004. The game now features eight massive expansions which fuel the game with an extra storyline, new quests and mobs to defeat and a new world to visit. WoW is a free to play game up to level 20, after this level it becomes a subscription-based game where you'll have to pay a sum of money every month. With this, the level cap also increases so you'll be able to achieve a higher level, more loot and do more challenging quests and reach better regions in Azeroth, the world you play in. World of Warcraft has a PG-13 rating because of the extended sequences of intense fantasy violence, and the ESRB rating is T for teen.

Azeroth is split into two continents. The actual continent is called Azeroth (I know, a bit confusing) where the humans, dwarves and gnomes live and the second continent is called Kalimdor. Here, the trolls, orcs and tauren live. Players can travel between the two continents by zeppelin for the Horde and by boat for the Alliance. There are also mounts that players can use to travel around. Moreover, there is an underground train between Stormwind, the capital of the humans and Ironforge, the capital of the dwarves. Players are taken all across the world while completing quests and trying to find the best possible loot for new mob fights and defeating stronger bosses. You'll have to grind your level a bit while playing WoW because when you enter a high-level area, you'll probably get stomped on by the mobs.

World of Warcraft allows for group play. You and your (higher level) friends can team up to fight stronger bosses together which can thus drop better and more powerful loot to build better armor, potions and weapons. This is something that WoW does differently compared to other MMORPGs. They don't force you to grind the same boss over and over again, hoping for that one unique drop to make that one powerful weapon. Instead, the game has a random drop system, you'll just need to fight some mobs, mostly different mobs, before getting the items and with the ability to team up, this goes even faster. This makes the game just a tad more fast-paced to play and makes it seem less repeatable and actually fun to play.

There are three different types of quests to complete. Kill quests, collection quests and delivery quests, each with a different purpose in the game. For example, delivery quests are done to discover a new area of the world. This means that you won't have to go someplace you already know, deliver something and then walk the exact same way back. You'll discover a new part of the world and at the same time earn loot for completing a quest. Kill quest require you to, of course, kill something and hope a particular type of loot drops. It does sometimes feel a bit like you're grinding and killing the same mob over and over again. However, the loot and experience that drops from the mobs paired with the rewards for completing the quests make it worth it. Then the collection quests are a bit of a drag. This is because they often require you to find a specific item with a low drop percentage. Players can be lucky and find the item after defeating just one mob or be extremely unlucky and spend half an hour fighting mobs just to get that one item. You'll be looking for certain mobs that drop the specific item, and when you finally do, the work only begins. However, the item that you're looking for is always very valuable in crafting and can often lead you to get some more powerful armor and weapons.

QUALITY

World of Warcraft is an astonishing game, it features tons of levels and quests to complete, and the developers at Blizzard have put their utmost best to create on of the most amazing MMORPGs of the decade. The storyline is perfectly explained and thrilling to play in it as a character and follow through it while fighting mobs. In some cases, for beginning players, the game might come off as quite challenging. There is a high learning curve for new players, and getting used to it will take a couple of hours, possibly some days. However, once you've mastered this, it won't take long before you go out with your team to defeat some of the strongest mobs in the game.

The graphics of WoW are very decent, they feature many particles and effects, but it is of course, still an MMORPG. It was made in 2004, but it doesn't look like that. Over the past couple of years, the developers have made some significant changes to how the game looks, and it does make it more enjoyable to play. This does, however, also affect the requirements for your PC because currently, the recommended requirements are relatively high in order to play WoW, more about this later.

In terms of music, Blizzard made some excellent choices. They put amazing sound effects in the game, when you enter a new part of the world or when you fight some bosses or when you're in a pub having a drink with your friends and trading some items. The entire soundtrack of the game is featured on Spotify, and most songs have millions of streams. When our team was listening to the soundtrack while fighting a strong mob, we felt more empowered and felt drawn into the game.

Some of the key features of World of Warcraft is the character customization. When you play the game for the first time, you'll be asked to choose race and class etc. Players can choose between druids, humans, blood elf, dwarf and many more, 24 in total. Other MMORPGs don't have this big of a selection and being able to fully customize what you look like is a fantastic asset to the game.

REQUIREMENTS AND COST

World of Warcraft was made in 2004. However, the developers at Blizzard have made countless updates over the past 16 years. Currently, the recommended hardware is quite high, an Nvidia GTX 1080 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 64, AMD Ryzen 7 2700x or Intel i7-6700k and 8GB of ram. These requirements are fairly high, considering the graphics of the game. Most laptops don't have this unless you bought a specific high-end gaming laptop. Moreover, these are only the recommended settings which means you'll play without any fps drops at a minimum of 60 fps on high settings. So, you don't need all this. You can easily play the game on the lowest possible settings and a bit fewer fps. For this, the requirements are lower, Nvidia GTX 760 or AMD Radeon RX 560, Intel i5-3450 or AMD FX 8300 and 4GB of ram is enough to play this game. Of course, when you spend around 12 euros every month for a game, you'll want to be playing it with some decent graphics and fps rate. This also means that the game can only be played in Windows PCs and Macs.

The cost of playing Wow can differ for every player. You can play for free, but that means only until level 20. After this, you have the option to buy a monthly subscription plan. This could either be 10.99€/month for six months, 11.99€/month for three months or 12.99€ for just one month. On the other hand, next to this subscription model, players can also buy expansion packs, such as the Shadowlands pack in addition to tons of cosmetic items such as mounts for around 25.00€ per item but also pets such as the Cinder Kitten for 10.00€ per item.

Blizzard is also doing something interesting that other companies aren't doing. They are charging players money for game services. For example, if you want to switch race, then you'll have to pay 25.00€, or if you want to change factions, it's 30.00€. Blizzard charging customers for features like this is something unseen. It can get quite expensive over time playing World of Warcraft, having to pay the subscription every month and buying every expansion pack. On the official Blizzard forums, people have discussed this and often, the price they have paid for around a decade or less of gaming is about two grand. However, the players on those blogs mention that it was totally worth it because World of Warcraft is an amazing game worth spending on.

World of Warcraft also features an in-game economy where players can buy and sell items from the market for gold. It feels a lot like a society, sometimes certain items are priced higher, and other times they are not as desirable and thus priced lower. It all depends on what the faze the game is going through and if the item is wanted. The developers at Blizzard have also built a trading system where players can trade items with each other without having the expense of gold. This trading system is adequate as long as the game assets keep circulating within the game world. If something goes wrong, such as an item becoming too desirable or the opposite, the developers change it.

CONCLUSION

Overall, this video game provides many fun moments. The quests and storyline offer an interesting way to play the game and without realizing you'll be playing the game non-stop. This is maybe the reason why 108 million players have played the game as of 2020 since launch and why there is a daily player base of more than 4 million. It is an addictive game and definitely worth trying out. The graphics have received multiple updates and will continue to be the best among other MMORPGs. The only issue with this game is the expense, with monthly subscriptions and expansions packs, it can become quite expensive but still definitely worth playing.

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