Warcraft
What is that phrase about a certain path is paved with good intentions? Hmm, does it matter? The path to Stormwind City is paved with statues of the heroes of Azeroth who have come before. Perhaps that is something to aspire to – but don’t put it at the forefront of your plans. You will be kept rather busy doing a myriad of other things in the amazing realm that is World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft is the pending massively multiplayer online roleplaying game from Blizzard. The developers of this game are, from an inside source, MMP addicts. This game shows that. WoW is immersive and will allow players to tailor the gaming experience to his or her taste. Not that fond of hunting? That’s fine, become one of the top craftsman in the realm. (Yes, you will have to do some leveling to get the skill points to improve your trade, but that can be handled in a group setting.) Want to become the most proficient warrior? You can do that as well. The game has a dueling system and there will be PvP areas.GameZone.com was invited into the beta of this game, during the first wave, and eagerly accepted. The NDA has been lifted, which means we can now talk about this game. To do it justice, we will break this preview into two parts for now. Part one will give an overview of the game, and discuss the quest system and control elements. Part two will tackle combat, crafting and some other wonderful little bonuses within the game.
It should be mentioned that WoW, in its current form is in the Alliance push, meaning only Alliance races are available. And not all the classes are in yet. When the Horde races and classes are available, that will lead to yet more stories about the game.
Overview:
The setting for World of Warcraft is Azeroth, four years after the time frame depicted in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. The races are recovering and trying to piece back together their lives and the world about them. But new evil is edging in, and players will soon find the idyllic setting shattered.
There are two factions and four races per clan. The Alliance has the humans, night elves, gnomes and dwarves. The Horde is comprised of the Taurens, Undead, Orcs and Trolls. The two factions cannot ally with each other and fellows or hunting parties cannot be comprised of Alliance and Horde races.
It seems likely that this is one of the lines that will be in place when it comes to the PvP zones.
There are a variety of skill classes within the game – nine in all: druid, hunter, mage, paladin (Alliance only), shaman (Horde only), warlock, warrior, priest and rogue. Each class has attributes unique to the class. Some classes are restricted to a certain race, but for the most part, this is a game in which players are given a free hand to create the game experience they want.
Like most games, you level by gaining experience points. Experience points (xp) can be garnered through hunting monsters (mobs), or by doing quests. When it comes to quests, this game has 1,600 currently in place. When one levels, they are awarded training points and skill points. Training points can be used to elevate attributes - such as agility, hit points (in addition to the gain through leveling), resistance to magic, or weapon proficiency – independent of visiting a trainer. As you increase the rank of attributes, the cost in terms of training points goes up. But as you get higher in rank, you receive more training points per level.
Each class has trainers and you will have new special abilities become available as you level. However, trainers will teach you these skills but it costs coin of the realm to purchase them.
You also get skill points, one per level. Skill points can be used to purchase ability in a different weapon or armor, or to train crafting skills. We’ll go into more detail on that in the next article.
Classes
As mentioned, there are nine classes in game. Of those, during the current push, only the warrior, warlock, priest, paladin, mage and rogue were available. Each class has different attributes and fighting styles and the game interface looks at each differently.
For example, a warlock specializes in shadow magic. All the magic he or she can get is on the darker side of the realms magic. By level 4, if the warlock has done the skills available, you should have skills like contamination (which does damage over time) or incineration (fire- damage over time), and should be able to summon an imp, which has a ranged fire attack. The warlock (and other classes) use mana, so the bar right below health indicates the amount of mana the magic user has.
But for the warrior it is different. The attacks he or she has are based on rage. The bar below health is rage and is slowly built up during combat. That means the warrior must engage in combat first to build up the rage to unleash the power attacks. Paladins are different in that they have buffs, which use mana. But being a paladin also means being a holy warrior, so they can buff players with protective skills such as Holy Word.
The rogue is in a different class altogether. Theirs is a world of stealth, and some of their most powerful attacks are along the lines of backstab. Rogues can also dual wield weapons.
As players use a weapon, their skill goes up in that category. A rogue, pulling off a particularly nasty combination attack, may see skill levels go up in daggers, dual wield and assassination. Warlocks will have skill advancement is shadow magic, and warriors will improve battle stances, shield as well as melee weapon skills. Warrior is also one race that arrives in Azeroth with the ability to wear chain armor. A paladin has to train that particular attribute. It seems likely that while other races have to wait until level 20 to attain bow skills, the hunter will arrive with that skill.
As one can probably imagine, playing a certain class means understanding its capabilities and use that when fighting. Blizzard has done a very good job of creating separation in the classes in terms of combat abilities.
The warlock cannot wear a lot of armor, nor can the mage. The hit points are lower than melee, so the last thing a magic user needs is to engage in face-to-face confrontation with an enemy. There is always kiting an enemy (hitting it and running to get separation to turn and hit it again), but the mobs in WoW won’t pursue forever, and some have stun attacks which will slow you. For the warlock with an imp, the solution is easy. Use the player interface and pet keys to order the imp to attack, then draw the mob within your range. Until you launch an attack, the mob will attack the imp. If you have a big damage spell, the mob will switch to you, but the attacks from your imp will buy you time and allow you to whittle down the mob’s HP a bit.
The rogue has an attack that will stun its foe briefly. If you are quick enough, stun, run behind and backstab.
The class you play has wonderful and unique attributes, and part of the joy of this game is in learning to use them to your advantage.
Controls and gameplay
The game’s controls are based on hotbar and mouse-and-keyboard movement and combat. But here is a cool thing. The keys are bindable, meaning that you can open up the options and reconfigure the keys any way you want to. The initial configuration is very nicely designed, but each player may have ways they wish to set up their game.
Skills can be dragged into the hotbar at the bottom of the screen for instant use in-game. You can create one hotbar for combat skills and another for crafting and moving skills around is very easy. That is one thing that really impressed about this game: this is a very player-friendly experience, not only in terms of the gameplay, but in terms of the player interface.
The chat interface offers a variety of ways to communicate. There are tells, a general chat channel, a trade channel, and other ways to communicate – within your party, or clan.
Transition from one area to the next is seamless, and even in entering most of the dungeons, you have no load times. The only time there was a pause was when moving through a force field into the prison area beneath Stormwind City.
Graphically, this game has style and character and is lushly rendered. While other games may be pushing more realistic graphical elements, the developers at Blizzard stuck to the Warcraft style and with remarkable results. The dynamic lighting features, the animation, even environmental effects like the smokiness of the dwarven district (dwarves are engineers and build machines) are delightful treats for the eyes.
