Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Games - World of Warcraft Update

It's been a long time since my last post, and the blame can be layed squarely on World of Warcraft. It's absorbed every spare moment since the Thanksgiving weekend. This is a fantastic game! My favorite parts:
  • graphics - I really like to vaguely cartoon-ish look of the buildings, chars, and mobs. The towns are works of art - Darnassus in the night elf area is stunning.

  • quest system - absolutely brilliant! NPCs that can give you quests have a big yellow exclamation point floating above their heads. And once you accept the quest, it changes to a silver question mark; when you have everything you need to complete the quest, it changes to a yellow question mark. Every quest you accept is logged and tracked - if you need to kill 6 wolves, it keeps count for you so you know exactly when you've achieved the goal. And when you've killed your six wolves and head back to town, the quest-giver shows up on your mini-map - no more searching for that elusive NPC! Rock solid execution, too - I've been in the middle of completing a quest with the NPC and accidentally closed the window - and I didn't lose my quest items. I just re-initiated the conversation - no problems! Best quest system I've ever used - hands down.

  • down-time - almost none. My warrior occaisionally has to sit down for maybe 10 seconds to regen his health. My druid has never had to rest - ever.

  • resting xp bonus - a small bonus to your xp after logging in that's directly proportional to how long you've been offline. It's not earth-shattering, but it's a great gesture to us casual gamers

  • music - I love the music in this game! I've actually turned up the background music volume in the sound settings. Most RPGs I turn it off.

  • mail - there's an in-game mail system where you can send messages, money, and items to other players, and they don't have to be online when you send them. There's mail boxes in almost every town, so it's easy to use.

  • auction house - Each major city in the game has an auction house where you can bid on items put up for sale by other players, and vice-versa. Auctions last for 4, 8, or 24 hours, and if yours is the winning bid, you receive the item via the in-game mail system. Awesome!
Great game. Kudos to Blizzard!