World of Warcraft impressions

I've been playing the World of Warcraft beta I signed up for last week. This is Blizzard's first foray into the MMORPG market, and although they have managed some aspects of it better than I expected, there are still many issues they need to deal with. I do expect there to be problems similar to those in the US (e.g. insufficient server capacity) when the retail version is released in Europe.

Surprisingly, WoW runs OK on my ancient dual Pentium III 450 MHz machine (512 MB RAM, GeForce2 GTS 32 MB) albeit with minimum settings. This is very close to the minimum requirements. I know I'm long overdue for a new computer and plan to get one soon, but it's nice to see a game that is able to degrade gracefully on less capable machines.

The game design is hardly revolutionary but still good and there are some interesting ideas, for example the way PvP has been dealt with. I worry a bit about the in-game economy model and balancing, but haven't really played enough to have an informed opinion about the potential problems. Game play feels somewhat more action oriented than traditional computer RPGs, but that's typical for Blizzard and I find it enjoyable.

Most of the quests are of the deliver [important item] or kill [number] [monster] type and while they have been made less mind-numbingly boring through use of humor I honestly don't think that will be enough to keep me interested for months. There's also the problem of quests and instances that are too difficult to do alone; finding other people to play with is arguably the point of a massively multiplayer game, but it's not always possible to find a suitable group to join.

According to a recent Blizzard press release the release date is set to 11 February, at which time beta accounts will be wiped. Will I play the retail version? Maybe later this year. Like all MMORPGs it's highly addictive and I am curious about the higher levels and areas, but I'm not sure it's worth the time consumption and monthly fees.

Oh, and I should probably mention that the Blizzard Downloader worked considerably better when downloading the first patch, reaching about 800 KB/s. I can't say whether that was due to better seeding or just a case of closer peers, but at least it's not always slow.

6 February, 2005