World of Warcraft (Mac/PC)

World of Warcraft is a massive multi-player, online role-playing game set in the Warcraft universe. In it, thousands of players will be able to adventure together with a new, in-depth perspective on familiar lands, former battlefields and heroes from the legendary universe. In addition, World of Warcraft will introduce new, uncharted territories and new deadly foes.

World of Warcraft takes place four years following the aftermath of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, where a great tension has settled over the ravaged world of Azeroth. As the various races begin to rebuild their shattered kingdoms, new threats, both ancient and terrifying, have arisen to plague the world once again. Players must explore the lands of Azeroth, forge fellowships with other players and build their strength in order to prevail.

An action-packed combat system delivers fast, furious combat against multiple opponents, while minimising delays between battles to keep players on the move. A rich, evolving story and questing system will keep players engrossed as the world is regularly updated with new content.

Fully customisable character classes, innovative races, and thousands of weapons allow for a truly diverse gameplay experience that will appeal to both hard-core and novice gamers alike. A simple, intuitive user interface will allow players of various skill levels to easily join the adventure. World of Warcraft also features support for advanced graphics hardware, giving the player superlative graphical enhancements, as well as a sophisticated, massively multiplayer network architecture capable of supporting thousands of players in a world simultaneously.

• Adventure together with thousands of other players in an enormous, persistent game world
• Create and customize your own hero from the unique races and classes of the Warcraft universe
• Explore an expansive world with miles of fo

I am a veteran of Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest 2, and World of Warcraft beats them both hands down.

Galaxies was basically just plain boring, not enough content, too much of a grind, and Developers who just didn't care about their players, World of Warcraft has none of those complaints.

Everquest 2 was too much of a system hog (VERY high end system required just to run the game on medium settings), too elitist according to player grouping, and basically just too serious for it's own good, it kind of felt like Everquest 2 was a second job rather than a game. Once again World of Warcraft has none of these complaints.

Warcraft runs fantastic on a medium spec system, and it's absolutely flawless on mine (1GB ram, 128MB Geforce FX5700 ultra, and a 512k B/B connection) there is no lag whatsoever, and no slowdown even when many players are gathered together spellcasting and fighting etc.

The game is colourful, amazingly well drawn (the scenery is literally breathtaking at times) the quests are fun and actually yield good rewards for your chosen class (no 3 hour questing for something you can't even use and can only sell for 2 copper coins in this game!).

All in all a brilliant game, and the best MMORPG I have ever played.

Kudos to Blizzard on this one!

If you are anything like me however TAKE CARE. This game is very hard to put down and VERY time consuming. Most of the decent things (dungeon raids etc) take a long time to organise (some needing 40 people to be in the same place at the same time), and a lot more time to do. You CAN log on and play for a bit, but to get most things done will take a solid 2-3 hours playing, and thats at a minimum.

This game is so addictive that I recommended it to an acholoic friend and he has now become totally immersed. It has really helped his drink problem and now he spends most of his time glued to the PC instead of drinking. He used to go straight from work to the pub, now he goes straight home to play. The game really is that addictive. You can't stop, and there is ALWAYS something new to do, or better to get.

I have now managed to stop playing, but only until the expansion comes out, and I still dream of WOW regualarly.

In summary; An excellent game, way ahead of any of it's competition. But if you are into your fansy/MMorph and often find yourself spending more time playing than you should then HANDLE WITH CARE.

The game itself is a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), which means that you play in with hundreds of other players being in the world with you. They're not from around the globe though - there are special European servers. I haven't tried other MMORPGs, so I can't compare - but it gives a great game dynamic to play with lots of others. There are enough to choose your friends from, but not so many that you won't begin to recognise some after a while (unlike, e.g. Diablo where the chances of running into the same person twice are slim). The one big disadvantage to MMORPGs is that there's a monthly FEE for playing the game. As you install it you need to type in your credit card number. No withdrawal will happen until you've played a month, but each month after the first will cost around £8.

The world has two warring factions that you need to choose between: The Alliance (Human, Night Elf, Dwarf and Gnome), and the Horde (Undead, Troll, Orc or Tauren). You can choose to play in a PvP world, where alliance players can attack horde players and vice versa, or in normal and roleplaying worlds where you can only be attacked by other players if you agree to it (creatures in the world will not extend you the same courtesy, though).

The gameplay is very easy to get into, and quite hard to fully master - but you'll learn as you go. Thousands of skills, items, talents, monsters, quests and environments give the world a depth and near endless possibilities, but you won't feel overwhelmed, as you don't need to use or understand them all to be an efficient player. The graphics are very smooth and pretty. Enjoy - but watch the time! Set an alarm clock to remind you that you have a real life too :-)