World of Warcraft Review

This review is going to be difficult for me. I always liked Blizzard and the Warcraft games; DotA is my favourite mod, and I listen to Basshunter (a little too much), and now I have to tear down one of the most acclaimed games to ever come from Blizzard. That's right; WoW is going down.

Now you may wonder if I can possibly bring anything new to the table. Well my answer is short and sweet: no, I can't, but your still going to read this. You see those of you who enjoy WoW will read this because you want someone to confirm that it is “TEH BEST GAME EVAR!!1!” and those of you who don't enjoy WoW just want to know that there are critics out there who agree with you. Basically you're looking for validation.

So basically I'm going to lay my phat reviewer beats (far, far too much Basshunter) down on this game and you're going to pay absolutely no attention and think whatever you want to. This is an exercise in futility. Understood?

WoW is an MMORPG and because of this its gameplay boils down to: go to a certain place, kill some stuff until your powerful enough to go to the next place, so you can kill some more stuff to get to the next place... you get the picture. I personally find this a mind-numbingly dull experience, especially when the fact that the player isn't rewarded with anything more than becoming a generic action hero at the end of the process is taken into consideration. I mean at least with Final Fantasy there is a plot (of sorts).

I suppose I could take all of this in stride if the other aspects of the game were any good, but they aren't. The graphics are awful, and believe me when I say that this is still a valid point because Blizzard are still updating the game frequently (more on this later). Everything looks like some form of cartoon mush – to the extent that I have difficulty telling what the difference between an Orc and a Dwarf is. I know this may seem like a minor thing when the game highlights enemies in giant red circles for all the world to see, but it's just shoddy art design – something which the Warcraft universe has never suffered from before-hand.

Sound is used in the game to appalling effect, with most battle sounds coming from the “generic sword strike” school of gaming, and all music sounding like Beethoven having a stroke. I suppose my main problem with this is that none of the sound effects help to draw me into the game, they pull me out of it and hit me in the ears for ever even thinking of being immersed in the game.

However the presentation isn't all awful, most of it is, but not all. There is admittedly a varied amount of scenery, most of which is distinctive and unique, which it has to be because of the game world's sheer size. Players do need to know where they are (looking at you Morrowind).

Speaking of players, has anyone but me noticed how annoying everyone in WoW is? For example, a simple walk through Goldshire (the human starting area) can result in about 5 duel requests from level 70s with nothing to do, followed by hours of flaming if you choose to decline. I mean come on, if you've got nothing to do but pick on lower level players for fun – turn off the game! Assuming you still know that WoW is a game.

I know that every MMO game has to have a certain number of creepy people who do nothing else playing it, but the amount of level 70's simply standing around in WoW is phenomenal! I suppose this is why I'm really getting at WoW, it is far too popular, and Blizzard will just not let it die. Patches are released every month or so (they often do nothing other than make the game more unbalanced), which leads me to believe that WoW isn't actually a finished project, or Blizzard are really good at milking the cash cow.

I know that WoW being popular shouldn't affect its score, but it does. The gameplay itself is only average at best, the graphics quite clearly aren't good enough, and the sound is truly awful at times – but WoW would still be passable if it wasn't for it's fan base. In truth the game should have died a couple of years ago. There are far better MMO's out there, to name one: EVE Online, which has more depth and strategy in its first 20 minutes than WoW does in all of the game.

Ultimately this review matters to no-one but me. Those of you who support the game will pick up on any of the positive things I've mentioned (or alternatively flame me to death), and those of you who hate WoW will pick up on the negative. Think whatever you want, one lousy critic doesn't matter right?

5/10 – WoW is average, yet horribly overated.

P.S. - To any annoyed WoW fans out there, please spam the following email address (bytesmedia@live.co.uk) and leave it at that.