everytime i feel like im in the absolute peak of a depressive spell i go and look the video on youtube dot com titled "Asm-ng-ld's Lair" and proceed to realize that The Pression is not a one-size fits-all ailment, and comes in many different shapes and forms, at least im not breathing in hella mold spores from the soda cups i got a few months ago at the Watered Burger down the stroad.

played for about 2 months back in like 2010ish because i had a few friends who themselves fell victim to this peice of software for a little bit (they are not still playing it today, thankfully). every time i played with them i just kept saying to myself "I really could just be playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup instead and not have to be a 15 bucks a month sucker".

A pioneer of the 3D MMO genre, fusing the best elements of games that came before it with a unique, stylistic flare that embodies Blizzard's Old Guard's penchant for Heavy Metal, Tolkein and Comic Books.

Whilst the 2004 release is a tale of iteration, it shipped with a strong core that fundamentally enabled a player-led experience without worry of loss of progression, frustration at a need to grind (In comparison to it's contemporaries, anyway) and fear of losing ones way, drastically increasing approachability for those new to the genre to grapple with the MMO staple features of the 1990's.

WoW's legacy as a social dynamo retains it's roots here, whilst giving plenty of nail-biting challenges for the seasoned and ambitious to dive into, whether that's taking down legendary foes with up to 40 allies or brawling with the other faction in the vein of the classic "Orcs and Humans" approach.

In fact, it's this faction-based gameplay that helps bring the high-fantasy of Warcraft 3 back to the ground, reminding us that through our adventure, the world is more than gallant heroes and moustache-twirling villains.

Preserved forever with an abundance of options including private servers run by shady communities, local-only emulated servers and a slew of official, Blizzard helmed 'Classic' servers, the original game is out there ready to explore.

Review #28 - 2020

This is one of those games I've always wanted to dedicate myself to, but the subscription fee alone is enough to keep me from diving in too deep. Whenever I have played it though, it's given me everything I could ever want to see in a high fantasy setting video game. The world is beautiful, the lore is deep, and the gameplay is delightful, where exploration is a key part of your questing experience. I usually play solo, for I love adventuring on my own so I can take in all the nuances and enjoy at my own pace. Maybe someday when I'm made of money, I'll be able to afford paying for this game regularly, so me and my wife can embark on adventures together, and create amazing memories in this world of warcraft.

I had a subscription for ~3 months (45$) and probably played ~15 hours. With a game as foundational as WoW, I feel playtime is essential knowledge for understanding a review. The level of accomplishment I reached is extremely miniscule but I can't ignore how much fun playing with friends was. I loved exploring the world and seeing how the npc's interacted with it. The missions themselves began to feel the same as each other with a new coat of paint. Gearing/levling up was very satisfying and a great way of teaching me the oh so many types of attacks. I really dislike the pricing model, primary because not only do you have to pay a subscription but also buy expansions. I would like to play more to give a better review but the price is unjustifiable, even if it's always been that way.

I stopped playing with Cataclysm, so I guess this is for the vanilla. I care less about the fact of WoW's place in gaming history than about the qualities that made it so appealing to so many gamers and non-gamers alike in the first place. It's a rare case of more involved and accessible playstyles coexisting, and where a huge scale is carefully filled with details orienting players to an acute sense of place. Every location has its own distinct look and feel, but they're also organised such that you can see how one unfolds into the other. The skies change, or the design of rocks and trees, or a subtle transformation occurs in the colour palette, or the texture of the paths. Changes in the continent's climates and geologic features cause the design styles to mutate and hybridise, leading naturally to the kaleidoscopic heterogeneity of port cities. It feels lived-in, believable, because the settlements seem to have emerged to suit the landscape and not vice versa.

Blizzard's clumsily physical character and building designs encompass WoW's topography, which exploits a dynamic vertical axis with quick descents into craters and forests, and dizzying mountaintops overlooking desert stretches and floodplains. The thrill of discovery is just endless, and this is helped by the rather reserved achievement system and unobtrusive maps. Other games of this scale load these things with achievements and filled-in mini-maps such that watching the HUD takes precedence over the experience of physical traversal. WoW is all traversal, all cliffs and boulders and things to scale and jump off for no reason other than to do it. It doesn't really tell you much, but it makes not knowing intrinsically enjoyable, and a perfectly viable way of existing in the game. Happening across the zeppelin in Tirisfal Glades, totally by accident, and realising with a rush just how big this thing is on arriving at Orgrimmar is a feeling I won't forget. I had spent weeks just wandering around those undead forests, taking in every hill and lake and cabin, and now here the horizons rolled out to the infinite, with people spilling everywhere across the glowing yet formidable desert landscape.

This is -the- lightning in a bottle video game of my lifetime. I'm not an MMORPG fan at my core, but my love of the Warcraft universe and the accessibility this game provided gave me a clear on-ramp to my most played game of all time.

Truth be told, I spent almost all of my time chronically leveling and re-leveling as opposed to throwing myself at the endgame hamster wheel that has characterized the game for the better half of two decades at this point, and not once did I ever feel I was missing out on anything. Vanilla WoW will always hit different.

Was soll ich sagen? Ich habe World of Warcraft insgesamt 10 Jahre nahezu durchgängig gespielt.

Es hatte und war alles was ich damals wollte. Das interessante und epische Setting, welches ich aus den Warcraft Strategiespielen kannte. Die Rollenspiel-Elemente und das Loot-System ähnlich zu einem Diablo II.

Dazu kommt der wohl wichtigste Part: die soziale Komponente. Ich bin mit einer Gruppe an Schulfreunden in das Spiel gestartet, später in eine der Top-Gilden des Servers gekommen und habe nach meiner Pause eine eigene kleine Gilde aus den gewonnenen Freunden gegründet und unzählige schöne Stunden und Erinnerungen gesammelt.

World of Warcraft und Blizzard mögen sich verändert haben, aber ich würde alles genau so wieder tun.

One of those rare transcendent pieces of media that has the gravity to pull in people who usually wouldn't be interested in that type of thing. World of Warcraft is up there with the likes of Harry Potter and Game of Thrones in terms of cultural impact. I can't tell you the number of people I met during my time with the game who didn't play video games at all before deciding to play WoW. What was a pretty geeky fantasy game that you expect to be populated by 99% teen boys and men in their 20s ended up drawing in peoples parents, peoples wives, even some peoples grandparents played it. I can't think of many games that had this type of wide spread appeal to non gamers and that has to count for something.