World of Warcraft

   
World of Warcraft

	
		
		
	
	
WoW box art
Developer(s)
Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher(s)
Vivendi Universal
Release date(s)
NA - 23 November 2004
EU - 11 February 2005
Version
3.3.5a
Platforms
Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, (Linux via Wine or Cedega)
Genre(s)
MMORPG

World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) set in the Warcraft universe. It is developed by Blizzard Entertainment and contains 2 (and soon 3) expansion packs, including World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, and soon World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

As of 2008, World of Warcraft had more than 11.5 million monthly subscribers, and currently holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest and most popular MMORPG. It also continues its further story development throughout its franchising, other than online media, such as Warcraft novels, comics, manga, RPG books, TCG, and board games.

Features

Note the following are the pre-expansion details:

• Uses and expands the storyline from the Warcraft series of games.
• Customizable characters:
  • 2 factions: Horde and Alliance.
  • 8 races: Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Night Elf, Orc, Troll, Undead, Tauren (expansions: Blood Elf and Draenei, Goblin and Worgen).
  • 9 classes: Mage, Warlock, Priest, Rogue, Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Warrior, and Paladin (expansions: Death Knight).
  • 9 professions, enabling resource gathering and item crafting (expansions: Jewelcrafting. With patch 3.0.2, shortly before Wrath of the Lich King, Inscription was introduced)
    • 3 secondary professions: Cooking, First Aid, and Fishing (expansions: Archaeology)
    • 2 class-based professions: Lockpicking (expansion: Runeforging)
  • The Talents and Glyphs system allows further customization of the character's skills and stats.

Gameplay System

General System

• A casual-friendly character progression system.
  • Quests occur frequently, and being offline (resting) increases your experience points gain.
• In-game trading, mail service and auction system.
• Four server types: Normal (PvE), RP, PvP, and RPPvP.

Quest and Honor Systems

• A PvP Honor system, 3 Battlegrounds
  • Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch (expansions: Eye of the Storm, Strand of the Ancients, Isle of Conquest)

Events

• A variety of World Events including:
  • (Darkmoon Faire, Children's Week, Scourge Invasion, and Midsummer Fire Festival)
• 67 Instanced Dungeons, ranging from The Deadmines to Zul'Gurub to Ulduar.

User Interface and Customer Support

• Customize AddOn and Interface with some game commands support.
• Client seamlessly supports both Mac and Windows operating systems. Linux users can play via Wine, however this is not supported and can be buggy at times.

Availability

• Oceania (English - Australia, Hawaii, New Zealand)
• North America (English - US & Canada)
• Europe (English-UK, French, German, Spanish, Russian)
• South Korea
• China (Simplified and Traditional Chinese; including Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau)
• Latin America (Spanish, English?)

Video

Official trailer

See also

• Loading screen
• A listing of World of Warcraft-related sites.
• World of Warcraft Mac OS X Icons
• Timeline (World of Warcraft) for a timeline of game milestones since its announcement.

Trivia

The original WoW is sometimes referred to as "vanilla World of Warcraft," "pre Burning Crusade (Pre BC)," or "classic World of Warcraft".

External links

WorldOfWarcraft.com Official World of Warcraft website

WorldOfWarcraft.com World of Warcraft F.A.Q.

WoW-Europe.com Official World of Warcraft European website (en)

WoW-Europe.com World of Warcraft F.A.Q. (en)

Wikipedia World of Warcraft

SciFi.com Sci Fi Weekly article "Warcraft Conquers The World"

winehq.com The Official WineHQ website with info about World of Warcraft 3.0.x running with Wine.

groups.yahoo.com World of Warcraft in the Yahoo groups directory