For mmorpg enthusiasts and novices alike, World of Warcraft takes you on epic journeys through expansive ever-changing virtual landscapes totally immersing you in the lore and legends that is Warcraft.

-Seemingly endless quests can overwhelm you AND envelope you into the world, helping you learn about the game storylines as well as leading you to explore further and further out into the world.

-Your character can be totally customized to your own gameplay or personality. Whether you are 'in you face' or 'support only' or mixed there is a Server, Race and Class for you with additional options for even more customising.

-The world itself is huge. You could play the game for months without ever fully exploring every beautiful bit of computer generated pixel.

-Social interaction and teamwork is the ideal as you get higher up the ranks. This can be a bad thing when these servers are US based and their game times are different to ours. You could find you don’t have a lot of choice in getting into groups on less-populated servers.

-AI are predictable enough in lower levels, but things can get hairy if underestimated as they get higher. 'Mobs' have physical, magic attacks and debuffs like any normal player but occasionally even I am surprised on what they are capable of.

-The best (and some of the time worst) thing I find about Wow is there is one challenge that always keeps you on your toes. The player vs player aspect of the game is always extremely competitive as human foe (or prey) make for more intense and emotional battles.

On the downside, Wow totally blew the expectations of the world at large and the developers. This does occasionally show in lag, server downtime and patch update time.

Coming from Guild Wars this feels fresh and new. If you are a PvE player the lush environments, sweeping music and hours of entertainment will quickly see you hooked. The gear advantage does unbalance PvP a bit when compared to more skill based PvP games like Guild Wars, but the non instanced world PvP option certainly adds to the general dread you feel when wandering into contested or enemy territory.

Criticism is often levelled at the grinding nature of quests, the time consuming walks between zones and so forth and if you are not looking for an immersive experience this game will probably not appeal as much to you. But allowing yourself to be swept along by the World of Warcraft creates a wonderful game that will soon have you longing for more hours behind the keyboard.

The subscription model is one of it's hindrances, but becomes a cost/benefit comparison. Spending $49.95 (See Game Card here) every two months for what amounts to at least a hundred hours of entertainment seems more than reasonable, but this is a value judgement that every consumer will need to make for themselves.

Overall, if you have the time, patience and funds to play the game I would definately recommend it.

This is an amazing game from Blizzard; it combines the already established legendary status of WarCraft and puts it into the MMO scene. It uses low-polygon models so that load on the graphic card is reduced when viewing massive amounts of people, which only works to some extent, I had to upgrade my 128mb vcard to a 256mb vcard just to enjoy the game without low frame rates, although its still not enough! The most amazing thing and that separates this from many other Asian MMORPGs is that you don’t have to GRIND all the time! You can do quests with teams of small size to a really huge team, which is really nice. Although the level cap is at 60 and at 70 in burning crusade, it is still easy to reach those levels which are a big advantage because some other MMORPGS have levels that seem just about impossible to reach. The gameplay is of a high standard as that is expected from Blizzard in most games. When the game got released, I was disappointed to hear that game features that were advertised were not implemented, which is usual of a game that had an early release, but that did not stop the hordes of people coming to World of WarCraft.

I remember playing in Beta, it was hella fun, but when it got released, the flocks of people started to pile in, now the game is filled with kids, adults, and a variety of people from all different kinds of age groups, its fun and all, but it has totally ruined the game. Heh, who would of though that you'd be killing someone’s mom or dad or little sister? This is an amazing game, for kids and MMO beginners, but not for veterans.

WoW, Is a highly addictive and enjoyable MMO. But with several flaws:

Without getting into too much detail, the game unforunately dies at level 60. The endgame content is very repetitive, and no Solo content. Early Level 60 dungeons require 5-15 players depending on which one your running. The very high end content, (Molten Core, Black wing Lair), can only be played by a very small percentage due to:

-Requires a group of 40 players
-The difficulty level means you will have no chance if its a Pickup group, It needs to run with an experienced Guild.
-Very time consuming. (People can spend up to 10 hours in MC)
-Being on a US timezone server makes it even harder to get into an endgame guild, and there are no Auz/NZ servers

Im in a NZ/Auzzie guild for MC. We run it once a week. And I have lost intrest, Its very slow and thus rather boring.

If your into PVP, there are also far too few servers for the PvP Battlegrounds, and thus you cant simply log-on and join. You could spend 2 hours in a waiting cue.

The gameplay and solo experiance is great up to 60, but to if you want to keep playing post 60 prepare to waste your weekends, as there's not much for a level 60 from NZ to do at night after work.

Also, Blizzards support is horrible! The game has many bugs and server crashes which need to be addresed, but Blizzard seems to think introducing new content like fishing competitions is more important. Having the Server crash during a boss fight in MC after being in there for 4 hours is beyond a joke. The amount of server issues and lack of support makes this game not worth the montly fee.

World of Warcraft has been the only online RPG that has kept me amused for more than a month. Taking the elements that made games like EverQuest great, Blizzard has successfully removed much of the tedium and frustration associated with other MMORPGs.

Naturally, the replayability is huge as the game features several races and classes to choose from, each combination offering a distinctly different gaming experience (especially for the first 20 levels or so). Characters can be levelled to a maximum of 60, which will take most players several months at least. The recently released Battlegrounds expansion promises to add more content for players at a high level.

The World of Warcraft itself is vast and features many locations - the forests of the elves, barren wastelands of the orcs and glorious cities of humans and dwarves. The graphics, whilst not realistic in style, are still glorious to behold and the art direction is outstanding. The game's musical score helps even more to create a feeling of immersion.

Highly recommended.