If you've been following the MMOG scene lately, you've noticed that replicating the success of a title like Everquest has proven to be a lot more difficult than expected. While there are a handful of MMORPGs that are doing quite well, such as Final Fantasy XI, Star Wars: Galaxies and City of Heros, just as many have either shut down or been cancelled in development. Nevertheless, I'm already hearing utterances that World of Warcraft, currently in beta, is poised to take the genre to the next level, and may eventually be the first MMORPG in North America to reach the coveted milestone of one million subscribers. Of course, there was similar talk about SWG before it was released.
Perhaps the most striking thing about WoW is how much the gameplay resembles that of its predecessors. Blizzard is not rewriting the book on MMORPGs. Create a character, kill monsters, do quests, level up, rinse and repeat, optionally going off to battle other factions when you're tough enough to land a blow. In short, if you've played EQ, or Dark Age of Camelot, or any number of other MMORPGs, you know the drill.
Given that everyone I know that put years into their EQ character has sworn, "Never again," what gives WoW so much potential? Well, for one thing, it's Warcraft. Millions of gamers are already engaged in the franchise through their highly-esteemed series of real-time strategy games. For another thing, it's being developed by Blizzard, a company which enjoys a stellar reputation in the game industry despite a major management shuffle a while back. They are not always the most innovative of developers, but they have so far been able to take proven game concepts, polish them to near perfection, and make them very accessible to the average gamer.
WoW appears to be no exception. The control scheme follows EQ conventions quite closely, with a few additions and improvements. If you don't like WASD keys, there is an option to move with mouse clicks, and the camera is handled by holding down the left mouse button, which is quite ingenious. While the default GUI layout works well, I would like to have a little more freedom to move shortcut bars and such around the screen, a small issue that will likely be remedied before the game is released.
The artistry in WoW is remarkable, and it captures the atmosphere of the strategy series beautifully. It is a noticeably low polygon world compared to other recent titles. Right now I can run the game at maximum settings and still get decent performance - something that is unthinkable with my modest system in a game like SWG or AC2. Unless there are more enhancements on the way, gamers with the very latest technology might be slightly disappointed by the limitations of the graphics engine. That said, it is a gorgeous game. Keeping the poly count down has allowed them to make extremely fluid animations, great spell effects, and it should reduce lag in big battles.
Character creation could be better. There isn't much more to it than selecting a race, class, and gender at the moment, with a handful of options for hair color and whatnot. It's quick and easy, but doesn't permit the degree of customization available in some MMORPGs. Fortunately, as well as the usual array of combat skills, WoW has a large variety of trade skills that include things like cooking, leather crafting, and blacksmithing. This should ensure that characters become sufficiently individualized over time.
Minor bugs aside, the quest system has been thoughtfully implemented. You will encounter some pretty routine FedEx deliveries and "kill 6 rats and report back to me" type missions, but you can take on as many quests as you like, allowing you to tackle several at a time. One nice addition is the ability to share quests with other players, sparing you a long run back to town.
Death is handled by transporting your spirit to the nearest graveyard, where you are given the option to be revived instantly for small XP penalty, or run back to your corpse and be revived without any XP loss. A reasonably large spawn radious around your corpse helps you avoid the critters that killed you.
Unlike EQ 2, which seems to be shying away from player vs. player combat, WoW intends to offer special Horde vs. Alliance servers right from launch. Obviously, there are still a lot of details to flesh out in this regard, and we've yet to see how territorial control will work on PvP servers, but it does look promising. It remains to be seen whether anything vaguely resembling "balance" can be achieved in this kind of game.
What it all amounts to is a quality MMORPG experience, even though the finishing touches are still being made. That applies whether you've been on the treadmill for years, or you're completely new to online roleplaying games. Judging from the current state of the beta, it's not a question of whether or not WoW will succeed, it's a question of how many other MMORPGs will go down trying to compete with it.
