World Of Warcraft: New WoW Preview @ Gamona.de with 11 new screenshots

Please note this is not a perfect translation as an online translator was used. Go Babelfish! =)

In the year 2001, Blizzard Entertainment got ready to strike fear in the heart of the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer on-line Role Playing Game) developers and showed a video announcing their new game at ECTS. The project was "World of WarCraft". A shockwave went through the gaming world, because both players and competitors know, if Blizzard makes a product, the Midas effect occurs: it becomes gold.

The category MMORPG is older and more popular than you believe. Many players know of such classical titles such as "Ultima Online" or "Meridian 59" but never dared to play them. Perhaps these titles were too complex, very few players dared to venture into the various and detailed (gameplay-wise, not graphically) Fantasy on-line worlds.

Since it is so near to real life, there is so much to experience in these virtual worlds. One meets friends in the tavern, forges, etc and becomes acquainted with fellow humans while basilisk hunting - and does a lot of what one does in the real world. Playing MMORPGs seemed to many like a very strange form of escaping reality into a world without ties to our own, and in the meantime games like "EverQuest" continue to grow and have a strong playerbase.

The question is, what would make Blizzard's MMORPG different from the rest? Obviously there were many MMORPGs being announced, but many had not been very successful. Some titles offered beautiful landscapes, but which were comparatively empty. Others had much content, but only if you spent several hours a day playing. Beginners were overwhelmed by a tide of windows with values and tables that they did not understand. Others suffered from the nature of the MMORPGs that more people were in some places than others, "farming" mob spawns.

And in some, one could solve Quests only with great difficulty, since you were forced to wait AFK for simetimes hours to find a party strong enough to slay said boss mob. One of the most serious problems in these games that needs improvement is the interface, which Blizzard has made very intuitive and has proved to be very well created, simple enough for a child to use it.

Blizzard has coded it now so that the problems typically associated with death in other games have been solved, to deliver play that is simply fun! The well-known Warcraft series already offers enough atmostphere, history, and background to attract an enormous number of players. Practically everyone which has played the current hit Warcraft 3 will be interested in also playing WoW. The idea is therefore to conciously build upon the sucess of previous Blizzard titles.

The designers do not want at all to create a photo-realistic appearance of the world. Already one can say the graphics look breathtaking. It is very detailed and colorful, with landscapes that strongly differ from each other, but each area flows into one another seamlessly. People have said the game has a sort of comic look to it, which the developers take with much chagrin.

To further increase the atmostphere Blizzard wants to have different forms of conflict in the game, which reflects the war of the alliance against the horde. On sides of the Alliance right now are humans, dwarves and Elves as confirmed races in the game. The other faction are the Horde, which will consist of the Orcs and Tauren, a kind of bull race. There will still be additional races for the game, Blizzard mentioned.

The California company Blizzard, which draws among other hit titles like "StarCraft", says they develop their titles a little like chess: "They are easy to learn, and hard to master". This is also what WoW will be like. Even a total beginner will already know after a few minutes what to do. Other online games often desparately are in need of a better learning curve.

In "WoW" a large exclamation mark over a NPC (Non Player character) is how quests will come to your attention. The interface is so unbelievably simple that one will probably constantly ask oneself, why hasn't this been possible in other games as well? Well, in older games, one had to release pedantic combinations of keys to only examine the statistics of an item. In "WoW" all you do is mouse over the item. Of course here equipping your character is as easy as drag and drop.

Perhaps the most important innovation in "WoW" is however Instancing. Important places in the world are generated specifically for each party, so that one will not have to wait for a particular boss monster to respawn in order to complete the quest. And so thousands of players could solve at the same time the same Quest in their respective "Instance" the world. In the quest log one constantly has an overview of the progress of each Quest, which helps keep track of all your quests very well. Of course, Blizzard would naturally not want only players with lots of time to be sucessful in the game, so there are many contents and tasks that can be done for hardcore and casual gamers alike.

Accordingly there are many different variations of character customization, but you can further specialize by choosing a race and class. The classes available, so far that we know of are: the nature-connected shaman, the hunter, the druid which can shapeshift, and the dark Warlock. You can see these new classes recently in screenshots and gameplay trailers. Still even more classes will be added for variety later.

The entire gameplay of World of Warcraft is fun. Drastically different from WoW's competition, there will be no boring times waiting for your character to heal between battles. Also, fights are substantially faster paced, since a battle against a monster of equal level should take from 30 to 60 seconds. Also, finally the player is able to feel from a hero from level 1 onwards, able to do heroic things! Even after death one will not lose experience.

It is not yet decided what the final death pentalty will be. Currently it is a temporary reduction to your characters statistics. That is to say, the fact that one wants to avoid death should be in the game, to respect the game world. But also, not to become frustrated and want to destroy your keyboard when you die because many hours was lost in vain. Journeys were and are in many other MMORPGs still a problem. Either one must be limited to walking forever on foot, or one teleports simply around the world. Naturally WoW will also have teleportation also but the transports are far more varied.

First of all players can get a mount which is totally controllable. Thus one enjoys the liberty exploring the world much faster than on foot. Further there is Griffon transport, and from these one flies over the world in a spectacular view of the landscape and the fights that other players are doing below can be seen. There are also zepplins and boats, which connect the continents so long as you have visited there before. The boats, however, can be attacked during the trip and so caution is thus required.

One of the substantial fun factors of RPG's is the collecting of items. "WoW" orients itself in this point from learning from Diablo, which as is well known was also developed by Blizzard. Therefore the player will find the popular Unique and set items also in the MMORPG, which made the hunt for monsters so exciting.

A completely special incentive for participating in planned events is the prospect of recieving truly unique items. These events can be invasions by the undead or the siege of a city - with catapults, steam tanks and everything about seiges that we love. Blizzard has the power after such large battles to hand out to particularly deserving players rewards which are absolutely unique in the entire world.

Already one can probably say judging from the alpha version that WoW will revolutionize the genre. The gameplay, the atmosphere, the friendly community, the variety, everything they have done recieves the best possible evaluation and praise from the gamers.

Already in the alpha stage the game is packed with so much content and quests, the competition is being left out in the cold.

And no worries, Blizzard is very attentive to supporting the players which is very important within a MMORPG. Blizzard's sucess is guaranteed in this "full service" game.

Copyright 2003 Gamona.de