World of Warcraft (PC, 2004)

Husband loved the game and was very upset when couldn't play anymore. It's alot of fun...hope all you fans out there enjoy!

This game is one of three in the Power of Chaos computer game series.

Learn to play the hit Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game with Yugi! Featuring stunningly detailed graphics, card artwork, and dueling fields, prepare for the most intense Yu-Gi-Oh! duels ever. Power of Chaos is an essential learning tool for beginners who want to learn and understand how to play the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game like a master. The game also features a Tutorial mode that teaches the basics of summoning, tributes, and more. Duel against Yugi to collect cards and build up your collection and marvel at the beautiful card artwork faithfully recreated from the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game.

First and foremost this game is a milestone in the both the MMORPG and online gaming industry. With over 11 million subscribers, it's the largest online game to date, and for good reason.

The graphics, while cartoonish, indulge you in a moving work of art with flowing waterfalls, freezing tundras, and shadow-ridden caves. The world itself is simply huge (though surprisingly easy to navigate), spanning across four continents (one in outer space), and leaves the gamer with an unparalleled sense of citizenship. Once you log into World of Warcraft, you truly plug into a hidden universe.

The music is truly worthy of mention. When you first launch the game, you are met with a symphony of heart-pounding drums, violins, bassoons, or what-have-you. The music/ambience then changes frequently throughout the game depending upon your current location and really adds an element of class to the experiences of stepping into a haunted mine, or riding up to the gates of a citadel.

The gameplay ranges from simple to slightly complicated depending upon your class selection, but always maintains the smooth controls that are oh-so-user-friendly. You can select from 9 different classes at the start (another is available further on in the game), each of which have their own roles to fulfill by either Healing, Tanking (taking the hits for other less-hardy classes), or DPSing (DPS: Damage per second, a term used to explain classes adept at dealing damage). Also with the introduction of "dual-spec," a character is able to switch between two customizable talent builds (determines your main role: healing/tanking/dps, through the selection certain talents) at the drop of a hat.

The most basic gameplay consists of leveling your character from 1 to 80 via the completion of quests, invading of dungeons, and slaying of monsters, all of which grant "experience," and move you closer to the next level. If you grow wary leveling, it is possible to "que" into a battleground from anywhere in the world. There are four different types of battle: capture the flag, protect the resources, defend/attack the keep, and control the territory. You compete against real players controlling real characters on different computers, which is typically referred to as "PVP," or player versus player.

Once you have reached the maximum level, the fun has just begun. You will continue advancing your character by upgrading his or her equipment (or "gear"). Raids, dungeons and "heroics" offer thousands of powerful monsters that, when killed, give weapons and armor that strengthen your character. Dungeons and heroics are typically conquered by five players effectively working together to defeat the obstacles and creatures within. Raids follow a different suit, requiring 10 to 25 skilled players able to communicate and coordinate themselves in order to (hopefully) kill the most difficult monsters in the game.

Another option to the post-leveling stage (or "end game content") is coordinated PVP. Beside the four available battlegrounds, the game contains four "arena" maps offering extremely competitive play in the form of 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5. If you are successful, the rewards are some of the most powerful upgrades in the game.

Guilds, world events, seasonal events, mounts, professions, mini-games, parties, transportation and real-time economies are just a few more of the many other unnamed aspects to this game. Some things are simply best if discovered.

Word of Warcraft by Blizzard. A Review.

World of Warcraft is Blizzard's very popular Massive Multiplayer
Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). This game is a 3D game set in
the Warcraft universe. This title is the 4th installment in the
Warcraft games.

In this game you control a character that you create in an online
world. You have two main factions to choose from. The Alliance
(Night Elves, Dwarves, gnomes, and Humans) or the Horde (Tauren,
Undead, Orcs, or Trolls). Once you create a character using a
highly evolved creation sim (pick your own mohawk!) you are
immersed inside the world.

You have to choose a class and a profession now young player (or
noob as you'll be called). You can choose from the nine available
classes Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman,
Warlock and Warrior. Two of the classes are faction-specific:
Paladins for the Alliance and Shamans for the Horde.

You also can choose to have a couple of professions inside the game
to help you make items to use or sell. You can only have two
at a time, but you can always drop one and get another. Skinning,
mining, blacksmith, and engineering are just a few.

The world is highly evolved with oodles of quests to fill your time.
The graphics and sounds are incredible and the game play is fun.

If questing is not your main goal you can participate in player vs.
player combat (PVP). This can be accomplished in the open world
or inside the many battlegrounds. The advantage of the battleground
is you are grouped within a 10 level grouping to avoid being 'ganked'
by a level 60 player, when you are only level 15!

You can group up with players and even form a guild. Grouping can
last for 30 seconds to as long as 6 hours to do instances like the
Molten Core. The nice thing is that with every major upgrade Blizzard
releases some sort of instance.

Cost:

World of Warcraft costs about $15 dollars to purchase. You have to have
high speed internet to play and a decent computer with memory/video card.
You also have to pay a subscription fee per month (or pick a 6 month rotational
plan).

Drawback:

WOW tends to get a bit tedious at the best of times. I'm currently in
the process of dropping my subscription (playing it out until January).
There is only so many times that I can "farm/Grind" (kill the same critter)
for hours on end before I feel like throwing my monitor out the window. You end up doing the same silly types quests over and over again. And if you
don't have time to spend 6 hours at a crack to go inside an instance most
of the neat equipment will be totally out of your reach.

Not to mention the fact that this game tends to suck all of your social life
out of you. If you happen to get inside a great raiding (instance) guild
you will almost be spending every night at 6 hours a crack running these
with them.

Be warned. WOW can be fun at first. It is by far the best MMORPG out there.
At any time there can be over a few thousands playing at a time. Ah heck,
probably a few hundred thousand. *laugh*. Yet. This game can be really
monotonous, boring, and frustrating. Yet the graphics can be pure
eye-candy.

Play it, Enjoy it, but remember to go out in real life also!

As the game tip says. Meet your friends in the land of Azeroth. But
don't forget to meet them outside of Azeroth also!

4 stars out of 5.

Latsyrhc
Tamarack Collectibles

Graphics/Style:

The graphics in this game are, quite simply, amazing. Your jaw will drop as you gaze out across the moonlit desert, or see the sun shining off the waters of a tranquil bay. Plus, the quality of the graphics is not dependent upon high-polygon models, but on expertly crafted textures. What this means is that even basic graphics cards can handle this game, still looking good with a decent frame rate!

A high point of this game are the incredible visual styles Blizzard has achieved. From the creepy forests of the Undead, to the rolling grasslands of the Tauren lands, the game never ceases to look fresh and exciting as you travel across Azeroth. Of course these environments are not uninhabited - the monsters you fight range from the unusual (the frog-like Murlocs, with their distinctive gurgles) to the terrifying (60ft ancient gods of fire and earth). The cities scale from tiny settlements to sprawling metropolises, hubs of trade and industry.

The characters are nicely presented as well. Ragged Undead, purple Night Elves, noble Humans, doughty Dwarves, massive Tauren, fierce Orcs, stringy Trolls and cute Gnomes; each race looks interesting and exciting. The customisation options with each character are about average - more ability to design your avatar would be nice, and hopefully we'll see more scope for personalisation soon.

Sound:

World of Warcraft has an excellent musical score, from the foreboding title music, to the tension-building strings of a spooky cave, to the military drums of a vast city. The only complaint I have is that there could be more music in the game. However, this could reduce the pulse-raising impact of a track suddenly starting up when you discover a new area.

Sound effects are good as well; roars, the crunching of bone, the ring of steel, the crackle of powerful magic all sounding believably realistic. Speech is well-recorded and professional-sounding.

Gameplay:

What separates this game from other online role-playing games is the focus on quests and story. Rather than killing random mobs in order to make your character more powerful (very boring), in World of Warcraft, questing is the key to progress. Everything you kill, everywhere you explore, should be part of a specific mission. These quests vary from race to race, with each race having its own distinctive flavour. You might find yourself hunting down thieves for the local militia, collecting mushrooms to make a poisonous brew, following tribal visions to hidden caves or seeking ways to cleanse tainted magical forests. Quests keep the levelling curve constantly entertaining. I found I wasn't just questing in order to level-up, I was actually levelling-up in order to complete my quests! Quests reward players with experience and new items, as well as giving them reasons to travel to new areas.

Overall I think the game is great.

My rating would have to be a good 4/5

Though massively multiplayer online role-playing games have been around for years, it has taken this long for the genre's breakthrough hit to finally emerge. Here is the online role-playing game you should play, no matter who you are. This is because World of Warcraft brings out all the best aspects of this style of gaming, if not many of the best aspects of gaming in general. It also features many of the specific characteristics that have made Blizzard Entertainment's previous games so entertaining, memorable, long-lasting, and successful. Of course, the company's past track record did not guarantee that World of Warcraft could have turned out this well. Such high quality simply cannot be expected, nor should it be missed.

In World of Warcraft, you create your alter ego by choosing from a variety of colorful races and powerful classes, and then you begin exploring, questing, and battling in Azeroth, the fantasy setting featured in Blizzard's Warcraft real-time strategy games. Fans of those games (especially Warcraft III and its expansion pack) will spot tons of references here, and they will be impressed at how faithfully World of Warcraft translates so many of Warcraft's little details and even some of the finer points of its gameplay into such a seemingly different style of game. Meanwhile, fans of other online role-playing games will be impressed at the sheer breadth and volume of content on display in World of Warcraft, whose setting seamlessly connects a bunch of wildly different-looking types of places and somehow makes them appear as if they all belong as parts of a whole.

World of Warcraft is superficially similar to numerous other games that came before it, and it clearly draws inspiration from some of them. The fundamentals are all here, such as fighting dangerous creatures (optionally including other players), exploring the countryside either alone or in the company of other players, undertaking various quests, gaining experience levels and new abilities, and acquiring powerful items. However, directly comparing World of Warcraft with any of its predecessors would be almost like pitting a professional sports club against a school team. With all due respect to the other online role-playing games out there, World of Warcraft is in a league of its own. The game clearly benefits from not being the first of its kind, as the design issues that plagued previous online role-playing games are handled extremely well in World of Warcraft. In addition, the game's own subtle innovations turn out to have a dramatic impact on the flow of the action from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, and beyond. So the particulars of the game's design--along with its incredibly vast, beautiful, majestic world--translate into a one-of-a-kind experience that seems fresh and original in its own right.

Fortunately, the game is very approachable. World of Warcraft is a complex game whose complexity is carefully disguised by a simple, highly legible, uncluttered interface and an impressive 3D graphics engine, which delivers high performance on a wide range of systems while not skimping on pure flash. The game's interface is so slick and easy to learn and understand, and the gameplay itself is so quickly intuitive, that there isn't even a tutorial to wade through; there are just some helpful, optional pop-up tool tips, as well as an excellent printed reference manual that goes into specific detail about most of the various aspects of play