I have been playing the World of Warcraft (WoW) beta for several weeks now. My experience with MMORPGs to this point has not been fantastic, but I think World of Warcraft is going to be successful. The newest incarnation of the Warcraft universe has some excellent new features, and fixes many common problems with MMORPGs.

One of the most important parts of a MMORPG is the questing system. Anyone that has played an RPG will tell you that killing rats for gold pieces gets dull very quickly. WoW has a very impressive questing system allowing users to have 20 quests at any given time and also give the player a chance to choose their rewards. Also there is a share quest function that lets you actually do quests together very easily.

A huge hurdle that very few MMORPGs have gotten over is the leveling treadmill gameplay. Often in RPGs the gameplay at higher levels turns into camping monster spawn points and a lot of mindless button clicking. WoW has conquered this problem by giving experience points for completed quests. This does not sound like a new idea but it works quite well. The only real way to increase your level in WoW is to do quests, killing monsters gives you a fraction of the experience that questing does.

WoW does a good job fixing the many problems in MMORPGs but there are also many things that are very attractive about the game. This was probably the first MMORPG I have ever felt totally involved in. The scenery and world of the game are downright breathtaking and it is actually very fun to just travel the world exploring the different areas.

I would recommend WoW to any gamers that are looking for a new and compelling MMORPG. Even though it is still in closed beta the game will most likely hit the shelves this holiday season.

- Seth (22-Oct-2004)

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