World of Warcraft

Strategy/Info Sites	Maps Sites	Character Building Sites	Forum Sites	Quest Assist Sites
Third Party Programs Auction Sites

World of Warcraft is the most popular MMO to date and boasts the highest number of active players of any MMO ever. The cartoony graphics were at first a novelty, and quite unique but soon were surpassed by great graphics in future games. The hype was extraordinary and everyone was excited to try out the new Blizzard MMO in 2004. With players frantically doing quests and trying to level up, it soon became apparent that this game was focused around gaining levels and experience through questing rather than PVP. Much of the high end PVP gear was mediocre at best when compared to raid obtained gear of relatively low caliber. Patch after patch came, and WoW subscribers found more and more instances to spend hours raiding. Blizzard committed digital suicide in the eyes of the PVP oriented player-base, when just before release of their first expansion The Burning Crusade, battlegrounds were replaced by arenas, causing PVP to become at most, a 5 on 5 duel to the death. While this introduced many combat alternatives as Blizzard intended, PVP now favored classes that were clearly over powered, and became as heavily reliant on gear as individual skill. Because of the low head count PVP, succeeding in the arena now became a collective burn-fest, rather than a complex sequence of tactical maneuvers involving cooperatively executed macro mechanics. Rewards seen from PVP still fail to meet the amazing quality of high end raid gear. The majority of WoW’s player base are first time MMO players that were hooked by Blizzards massive marketing campaigns. WoW has one of the lowest system requirements of any MMO currently out, giving it an advantage over newer more graphic intensive games.