List Price : $19.99 Price : $8.75
Product Description
Vivendi (72212) World of Warcraft PC
From Amazon.com
World of Warcraft didn't invent the online role-playing genre, but it certainly benefits from the missteps of other titles that have come before. A mind-boggling array of improvements in graphics, gameplay, networking, and interface--really every category--makes this game the crown prince of the genre, a great starting place for newbies, and a challenge to any other MMORPG currently in the works.
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| The game's beautifully rendered locations are filled with small details, such as flying birds and flowing water. |
WoW takes place just four years after the real-time strategy Warcraft series, which chronicles a 25 year struggle between the Alliance (humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves) and the Horde (orcs, tauren, trolls, and undead). Even though there's tons of accumulated story to the series, new players should not be daunted. The background is there for you to explore, but you don't have to tread a lot of Azeroth history to get into the action.
| The makers boast 2,000 existing quests with more being added, many of them noncombat in nature. |
The game looks magnificent. There's plenty of detail and variety to the landscapes and interiors, and the artwork has a refreshingly playful style. There's not a lot of variety in the character creation process, but with all the skills and proficiencies to combine in the game, WoW focuses its customization not on the appearance of your character but rather on the character of your character. The game lets you adopt any two trade skills, regardless of character race or class, and combine those skills in useful ways. If you choose skinning and leatherworking, for example, you can fashion bags from the carcasses of monsters you defeat, which will allow you to carry even more inventory items.
Expanded Commerce
You can sell the items you make, find, and loot through a variety of outlets. Like any role-playing game, WoW has merchants who will buy your cast-off items for fixed prices, but you can also sell to other players at your own price through in-game chat or by leaving it with one of the auction houses located across the map. This virtual free market is a game within the game, like Monopoly somehow inserted into the middle of Chess. Heck, you can even send items C.O.D. to other players via the game's mail system.
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| The game's Quest Log keeps track of up to 20 quests at a time. |
A Level Playing Field
There's also a built-in handicap for casual players where your character enters a rest state when you log off from the game. The longer you're logged off (up to a week), the bigger the experience bonus you'll get when you return to battle. An enemy tagging feature--the player who lands the first attack on an enemy claims the loot for himself or his party--prevents onlookers from swooping in and pilfering items from a monster that you brought down. That resolves a common complaint of other titles.
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| Icons and pop-ups help put complex controls easily within reach. |
All of this makes for a very complicated game, but the well-designed interface puts all the game's elements into icons either visible framing the action or within a simple keystroke. The enemy's artificial intelligence is quite strong too: Monsters will join nearby fights to aid their comrades, switch targets strategically midbattle, and ambush players. The map system fills in details on places you've visited, so you always know where you are and where you've been.
Overall, World of Warcraft is a game that's easy to learn, challenging to master, beautiful to watch, and tons of fun to play. --Porter B. Hall
| Minimum | Recommended | |
| Operating System | PC: Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista (with latest Service Packs) Mac: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer | |
| CPU | PC: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlong XP 1500+ Mac: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor | PC: Dual-core processor, such as Intel Pentium D or AmD Athlong 64 X2 Mac: Intel 1.8 GHz processor or better |
| Graphics Hardware | PC: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transfor and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce2 class card or better Mac: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better | PC: 3D Graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capabilities with 128 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better Mac: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better. |
| Memory | PC: 512 MB (1 GB for Vista) Mac: 1 GB | PC: 1 GB (2 GB for Vista) Mac: 2 GB |
| Hard Drive Space | 15 GB of free space | |
| All Platform Requirements | Keyboard and mouse, required for controls. Other input devices not supported. Active broadband Internet connection required to play. | |
Amazon.com Product Description
For the first time, players can experience the lands of WarCraft's Azeroth from a new, in-depth perspective. As heroes, they explore familiar battlefields, discover new lands, and take on epic quests and challenges in Blizzard's massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Blizzard has taken care to make the game accessible and fun both for hard-core 60-hour-a-week players and for more casual adventurers.
- This game requires a monthly fee, and an internet connection to play
- Create and customize your own hero from the unique races and classes of the Warcraft universe
- Explore an expansive world with miles of forests, deserts, snow-blown mountains, and other exotic lands
- Visit huge cities and delve through dozens of vast dungeons
- Adventure together with thousands of other players in an enormous, persistent game world
World of Warcraft Reviews
World of Warcraft Reviews
| 541 of 608 people found the following review helpful  Awesome Game, Even For Older Players, By = Fun: This review is from: World of Warcraft (DVD-ROM) This game is, quite simply, the best Fantasy MMORPG I have ever encountered. Having played during the entire 11 day Stress Test, I can honestly say it will probably be around even longer than EverQuest. This work of art has all the magic of EQ, without the many frustrations that finally caused me to give up on EQ (such as extreme grind, a very punitive death penalty, and being forced to group at high levels).The graphics in WoW are awesome. Some people complain about the "cartoonish" colors, etc. I find these graphics to be very pleasing to the eye, and extremely well detailed and arranged. Guess this just shows that it isn't possible to please everyone, particularly those who go out of their way to find a flaw in other people's creations. To me, it is just right. I won't elaborate on the basics of the game, such as the 8 races and 9 classes. Others have already covered them. Rather, I will focus on some other areas that are important to older players (I... Read more 632 of 715 people found the following review helpful WoW is more than it's cracked up to be, By = Fun: This review is from: World of Warcraft (DVD-ROM) I just spent the last week playing the World of Warcraft Stress Test Beta, and I can tell you that it was better than I expected. Even though the game wasn't finished, it still has many features that make it head and shoulders above every other MMORPG I've played.Now, I, like many others, have been waiting in ancicipation for this game to come out, and when I had the chance to play the stress test, I was elated. Considering the majority of my MMOG experience is in EverQuest, I will list a few of the improvements (at least what I see as improvements) over the MMORPG "norm." 1) Experience from completing quests is noticable, and the rewards from completing them are worthwhile. I was always frustrated with EverQuest's quest structure, and the only reason to do a quest was for the item quested for, not for the experience gain. In WoW, it is possible to gain more experience from completing a quest than from killing a monster. 2) Experience progress is... Read more 33 of 35 people found the following review helpful Best MMORPG Ever -- Buy NOW!, By Dmg (Southern California) - See all my reviews = Fun: This review is from: World of Warcraft (DVD-ROM) World of Warcraft is simply put, the best MMORPG ever created. Blizzard spent a good amount of time creating and testing this masterpiece, and it shows off. No matter what type of games you like to play, you'll like playing WoW. Even if your PC isn't blazing fast, you'll get perfect quality out of WoW. Everything in the game just feels right.Let me split my review into sections; GRAPHICS -------- The graphics in WoW are a splendor to behold. The textures and geometry are excellent and really show how much detail Blizzard put into this game. The visuals aren't DOOM 3 or Half-Life 2 in extreme quality, but this is a MMO with quite a bit of people and low system requirements. The shadows, weather and particle effects, and 'bonus' graphical work (such as footprints in the snow, etc) are above average. With all the visual settings maxed out, along with my graphic card's hardware AA/AF maxed, the game does not stutter, even on my mid-range PC. I'm... Read more |
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