If first impressions are any guide, World of Warcraft is going to be a spectacular success. I first logged into beta a week ago, and I have hardly stopped playing since. This game is addictive, immersive, gorgeous, and just plain fun. As JustRPG’s Eric Arevalo said in his recent article on the WoW beta, this game will appeal to MMORPG veterans and newcomers alike.

Unwinding in the Stormwind Trade District.

Grotius’ pet goes for an early stroll.

Getting started

Gameplay begins, of course, with character creation. You choose a race and gender, and then a class. You also select skin color, hair color, facial hair, and facial features. The range of character appearances is quite wide, though not nearly as wide as in Star Wars Galaxies, where you could fuss with nose protuberance and freckles and whatnot. Anyway, I rolled up a Human Warlock with gray hair and olive skin. I didn’t get to make any attribute choices at character creation; Blizzard doesn’t want to force such decisions on you until you’ve had a little time to play your character. Some long-time RPGers may find this a bit disappointing, but you get plenty of chances to customize your character’s attributes and abilities once you start leveling up and earning “Talent Points.”

When I was done with character creation, I spawned in the gameworld, in the charming village of Northshire Abbey. I smiled as I took it all in: the majestic abbey, the towering trees, the busy wildlife – and my first quest-giving NPC, standing in front of me expectantly. Northshire Abbey has a backwoods charm reminiscent of the smaller villages from Dark Age of Camelot, but with that distinctive Blizzard touch. The buildings have a distinctive, stylized look to them, and the movements of NPCs and animals look fluid and natural. Screenshots really don’t do justice to the graphics.

Anyway, once I was done gawking at the graphics, I fussed a bit with the keyboard layout. The default setup actually suits me pretty well: you can move with WASD or the arrow keys, and you can put spells and abilities on a hotkey bar that, by default, is keyed to the number keys on your keyboard. The chat system is pretty intuitive, at least if you’ve played an online RPG before. The only things I changed were the autorun and strafe keys.

Questing: the heart of WoW

After remapping my keyboard, I took my first quest. It required me to help take care of a certain infestation problem in the village. The quest-giving system is itself pleasing: the text of the quest unfolds gradually, as if being written on paper in real-time, and is accompanied by the sound of parchment scribbling on paper. Once I had the quest, the game’s helpful tutorial system guided me through the basics of the interface. I had no trouble completing the quest. This quest, like almost every other quest I’ve done, proved to be both fun and rewarding.

In fact, the quest-driven gameplay is really what makes World of Warcraft different from any other MMORPG. In other online games, you kill monsters and glance rather frequently at your experience bar, looking forward to your next level. In this game, I spend more time looking at my quest log than my experience bar. As one tester put it, experience and levels are a byproduct of playing the game; you do your quests, and the levels sooner or later follow along.

There are a ton of quests in this game. Blizzard has promised at least 1400 at launch, and I believe it. I always seem to have a half-dozen or more pending quests. Quest-givers are everywhere: in shops, in towns, in dungeons, in barracks, in the middle of nowhere. I’ve even looted quests off monsters, and I’ve discovered other quests in unexpected places – places I won’t disclose for fear of spoiling the fun. I’ve gained almost all of my experience in the process of doing quests. Much of that experience comes from defeating monsters in the course of questing, but much has also come from the quest reward itself.

That’s not to say that all quests involve combat. I’ve had a rich variety of quests: delivery quests; conversation quests; quests requiring me to kill a certain number of mobs; quests requiring me to loot a certain number of items off monsters; quests to kill a particularly tough named monster; quests requiring me to find books and jewelry; quests to gain new spells; even a quest to find myself a nice bottle of booze.

Some testers have complained about “collection” quests, which require you to loot a certain number of items. These testers say these quests are too hard, since mobs don’t always drop the required items, and that they require too much mob-camping. Other testers don’t seem to like the “fetch” quests. Personally, I enjoy both those types of quests; I like the satisfaction of collecting items that don’t drop with every kill, and I enjoy the change-of-pace of FedEx quests. I also happen to like those two types of quest because they are often more solo-friendly than other quests. But the beauty of this system is that there are so many quests, you don’t have to do them all.

Some testers also say the quests tend to be too simple, but higher-level players say that the quests grow more complex as you gain levels. At level 13, my quests are sometimes a bit more involved than they were at level 3. And Blizzard does plan to include “life” quests (i.e., epic quests). Still, I’m a bit surprised that I have not yet had any quest related to my trade skills. I wouldn’t mind seeing more complex quests, too. And increasingly I find that I can only solo the “green” (easiest) missions, which occasionally means that I out-level the usefulness of the quest reward. On the whole, though, I really enjoy the quest system. I always feel like I have something interesting to do. The robust quest system distinguishes World of Warcraft from every other MMORPG on the market.

Character development and combat

So far I’ve played only a Warlock, so I am no authority on what it’s like to play a character that relies more on swordplay or backstabbing to make his way through the world. My Warlock has gained new spells every other level since level 2. His starting loadout included a couple of damage-over-time (“DoT”) spells, a defensive shield-and-regeneration spell, a damage debuff, and a direct-damage spell (“nuke”). But later I did a quest to get a little pet, a rather amusing little demon named Grimnar who mocks me and periodically asks me to release him from service. The pet wasn’t much of a tank, but he was a good nuker. Still later I received a Fear spell; a Lifetap spell, allowing me to transfer my health to my mana; a soul-drain spell, which has the side effect of producing a “soul shard” that is used as a reagent for pets and other spells; better DoTs; a spell that funnels my health to my pet; and, best of all, a quest to get a pet who really can tank – a pet with more than twice my hit points.

Now that I’m level 13, I’ve accumulated a number of Talent Points, but I’ve been reluctant to commit them because you can’t un-train them. I put a few into health and mana regeneration, and a little into my Shadow Magic specialization. I’m still sitting on the rest.

As I said in my preview, the pace of combat is faster than that of EQ but slower than that of SWG – and much slower than that of Diablo. It reminds me most of the combat in DAOC. In WoW, I don’t find myself spamming the same hotkey over and over again in combat. I actually have to make decisions. It’s fun.

Fighting against a snow leopard...

…and a frostmane troll.

There are a number of different tactics for a soloing Warlock. Now that I have a pet who can tank, I typically start by sending him in to gain “aggro” – i.e., to make the pet (rather than me) the focus of the mob’s anger. Then I cast my three different stackable DoTs on the mob. The order in which I cast these might vary, since some have higher initial damage output than others. If the pet’s taking a lot of damage, I funnel some of my health to him; if not, I might put an item-based debuff on the mob; or I might just start nuking it; or I might close and use my staff in melee; or, if I need a soul shard I might cast Soul Drain to finish the mob off. If I get an “add” – a second mob that runs up and starts pounding on me – I may just tank it myself a bit until the pet finishes with the first mob, healing myself with a potion; or, if the add is too tough, I’ll cast “Fear” on it, which sends it scurrying away for about 30 seconds. The trouble with Fear is that sometimes the frightened mob runs into its friends and brings them back to me. The trouble with potions is the long cool-down period; you can only use one per battle, so you’ve got to make it count.

My role in a group varies too. If everyone else in the group is a melee, I might focus on nuking to cut down mobs running away. Sometimes I focus on casting damage over time spells, if we’re fighting a mob with a large number of hit points; sometimes I will do poor-man’s crowd-control with Fear. Grouping is very pleasant in this game. Everyone has a distinct role. No class seems to be disfavored in a group. Not surprisingly, though, you’ll occasionally hear a group looking for a healer.

When I first started playing, I thought the death penalty was too light. In theory, you have three choices: (1) revival by a fellow player, with temporary resurrection sickness; (2) respawning at a bind point, with experience loss; or (3) running back to your corpse as a ghost, with no XP loss. (My Warlock apparently will get a self-resurrection spell of some sort later in his life; that spell apparently leaves you with resurrection sickness, so it may not always be practical to use.) In practice, almost everyone at my level seems to choose option (3), the corpse run. I always have. At first, this penalty was trivial: if you die only a hundred yards from your bindstone, as tends to happen when you’re young, a corpse run is nothing. In that case, it was almost irrational to quaff a potion to try to avoid death; why waste a precious potion when you can run right back?

But now that I’ve had to travel further, the corpse runs have become more of an irritation, and I most certainly do fear death; I don’t hesitate to expend potions to try to avoid it. On one occasion, I died deep inside a mine, and I died twice more trying to resurrect myself near the body. The first time, I ran the wrong direction. The second time, I made it to the mine entrance before succumbing. I found that particular incident more amusing than annoying, but since then I’ve had less patience with corpse runs. I still wonder whether experience debt might be a better system, but it’s too early to tell for sure.

I have two other lingering concerns about character development. One is whether my character is distinctive enough. As far as I can tell, every level 13 Warlock has the same spell-set I have. We may have different Talent allocations, but those differences aren’t readily observable. That said, it is true that different Warlocks play their characters differently: some Warlocks lean on Fear more than others; some prefer DoTs to nukes, or the other way around. In addition, Blizzard has hinted that high-level “hero classes” might provide for much more radical differentiation. We’ll have to see if that comes to pass.

My other concern is the speed of leveling. There have been vigorous disagreements about this on the beta boards, with some people insisting that leveling is too slow, and others insisting that it’s too fast. Initially, I was worried that it was too fast, but it slowed down considerably after level 10, and now I’m not so sure. Testers are posting their time /played, so we should have some objective data to compare leveling speed here with leveling speed in other such games.

The larger gameworld

So far I’m really impressed with the gameworld. It’s not just that it’s gorgeous and immersive. It’s also coherent. Things fit together naturally. People navigate not by shouting coordinates at each other, but by making reference to landmarks. “Head west along from Goldshire,” they might say; or, “check the buildings near the pumpkin patch.” Nor is there a lot of empty space. The countryside is packed full of landmarks, micro dungeons, mob camps, houses, farms, and interesting terrain. You don’t see the vast expanses of featureless land you see in some other online RPGs.

That’s not to say the World of Warcraft isn’t large. In 40 hours of gameplay, I’ve still only been to two or three of WoW’s many “zones.” I’ve just been too busy with quests there to get anywhere else! Note that I speak of “zones.” I said in my preview that WoW was seamless, without any zones, and that is true to a point: you don’t experience any real delay when you cross from Elwynn Forest to Westfall, as contrasted to switching zones in EQ. But when you cross zone boundaries in WoW, you are passed off to a new “general” chat server, which does give the sense that this is indeed a new “zone.” Judging from the in-game world map, there appear to be several dozen zones, but not all are active in this stage of beta. Given that I haven’t explored all of Westfall and Elwynn Forest, and given that they’ve kept me busy for 40 hours and 13 levels, it seems fair to say that WoW’s gameworld is pretty extensive.

The city of Stormwind deserves special mention. This has to be the most stunning city I’ve ever seen in a MMORPG. It’s divided into a number of districts that have their own distinct flavors: the Mage Quarter, the Cathedral Square, the Trade District, the Old City, the Dwarven Quarter, and so on. It looks and feels alive. Teachers lead little kids around the Cathedral; guards patrol the main thoroughfares; beggars hunch over in tiny little alleyways; merchants hawk their wares. The city is jammed with shops and facilities, almost all of which have a useful game function. The city is especially important because it’s a hub for griffin transport between cities, and because banks are found only in major cities like Stormwind.

My only complaint about Stormwind is that it can be hard to find things. The city does feature very helpful signs pointing the way to each quarter, but more specific guidance is still needed. A related issue is NPC chatter. NPCs don’t say much yet, unless they are a quest-giver, trainer, or merchant. I assume Blizzard does plan to make its NPCs more talkative – though I haven’t heard any plans to use voice-overs, as will be used in Everquest 2. There is, however, some voice already in the game. Each player character has a limited set of voice commands. For example, if I type /v oom, I say loudly and clearly, in a rather sonorous baritone, “I am low on mana!”

I have been in two or three “micro dungeons” – dungeons that are seamlessly integrated with the rest of the gameworld. I even got to go inside one as a level 2 newbie, on a quest to investigate nefarious doings in a mine. The dungeons my low-level character have seen have all been pretty small, but they are hand-crafted layouts, not clones of one generic dungeon. Kill-stealing can be an occasional problem in these dungeons – and, for that matter, in the broader world – but Blizzard says it’s about to add some anti-kill-stealing code. It hasn’t been a big problem for me, in any case.

The gameworld also features a few huge “World dungeons,” major portions of which are “instanced.” I think I wandered into one by mistake on my very first day in the game. I didn’t live long enough to form any impressions of it; I was in way above my head. Two words describe the result: corpse run.

I am a big fan of the “24-hour time” in the game. It’s just a hoot to hear crickets in-game when I play at night, and to see sunshine when I play during the day. It’s simply more immersive to see day and night pass as gradually in game as they do in real life. Among other things, the game sun rises and falls realistically. I play mostly in the evenings, but this hasn’t bothered me at all: the night-time gameworld in WoW is just as much fun to play in as the day-time world. Besides, you can always select a server that is on a different time zone than you are. For example, the beta server is set to West Coast time, but I’m on the East Coast. So I do see “day” if I start playing at, say, 7 p.m. Eastern time. I was skeptical about this system until I tried it; now I really hope the developers keep it. The only odd thing about the day-night cycle is that Blizzard hasn’t yet added weather effects. Those are coming, though.

Tradeskills

So far I’ve had fun with the tradeskill system in WoW. This game is refreshingly free of the crafting “grind.” The only question is whether the system will provide a means for crafters to distinguish themselves from the crowd.

There are actually two types of trade-related skills in WoW: gathering skills and crafting skills. My Warlock has chosen one gathering skill (Herbology) and two crafting skills (Alchemy and Tailoring). To learn a trade, you expend “skill points.” You accrue one such point every time you gain a level. The first “rank” of each trade costs just a few skill points. For me, that meant one or two points to get Apprentice Alchemy and Apprentice Herbology. I had to wait until I was level eight before I had the skill points to buy Apprentice Tailoring.

The tailoring interface.

The trade district in Stormwind.

Once you have that first “rank” in a trade, it’s pretty easy to level up to the maximum tradeskill for that rank. In the case of Herbology, I’m almost at my cap as an apprentice – Herbology skill of 75. I got there by plucking herbs in the countryside in the course of my adventures. I find this trade to be an amusing change of pace while out questing. (“Wait, don’t attack that gnoll! I see a Peacebloom flower!” ) Moreover, harvesting herbs can be risky; monsters have a way of wandering by just as you start plucking the plant. In the case of Alchemy and Tailoring, I’ve gained skill simply by making potions and cloth armor. The interface for creating things is simple and intuitive. If you’ve got the requisite materials in inventory, just click “Create” and you’ll make your item – and, quite often, you’ll get a skill increase.

Blizzard has eliminated the grind by imposing level caps on trades. I don’t have the skill points to buy the second (of three) ranks in Herbology. I need to make another level or two before I can afford it. Even then, I may be more tempted to buy the second rank in Tailoring or Alchemy instead. That will be an interesting choice: if I go with Herbology, I can gather the raw materials I need for better potions – but I’ll have to wait longer before I can actually make those potions. If I go with Alchemy, I’ll have the potential to learn better potions – but I may not be able to do so since I won’t yet have the Herbology skill to gather the requisite raw materials. You can buy some ingredients from merchants or players, but for the rarer stuff, you’re on your own.

I like this system because it requires you to make hard decisions about which trade to get when. You can’t be a master of all trades. (As the saying goes, jack of all trades, master of none.) As currently configured, you can master maybe three trade or gathering skills, out of about fifteen choices. You can always un-learn a trade, regain your skill points, and buy a new trade. If you do this, though, you will un-learn the proficiency in your old trade. That’s the price you pay for freeing up skill points.

My main reservations about this system relate to the high-end crafting game. How will master crafters distinguish themselves from the masses? In Star Wars Galaxies, you distinguish yourself by using the highest-quality materials, and by discounting items on which your experimentation fails. In WoW, my guess is that Blizzard will set crafters apart by making the ingredients for the best items very hard to come by. Already I have to adventure to get herbs for my low-level herbology and alchemy operation. I imagine the very best herbs will be growing only in the most dangerous spots, and then only sporadically.

Another long-term concern is whether the economy has enough “money sinks.” For now, the economy seems well-balanced to me: I have to scrimp and save for every spell, and I still have only about 20 silver to my name. Money is tough to come by, as it should be. But MUD-flation is a fact of life in these games, and I hope Blizzard has planned for it. If players get too rich, they enrich (or “twink”) their lower-level friends, and the money-management side of the game disappears. If you’re a rich newb, you no longer have to make the interesting choices that have confronted me: do I buy a new staff or a new robe? Do I buy a new spell or a new Alchemy recipe? Blizzard does seem sensitive to the issue, and testers have suggested a number of creative ideas for money sinks.

My final crafting-related concern is that Blizzard has not yet implemented a good marketplace. Right now we just use a dedicated Trade chat-channel, on which people hawk their wares. Blizzard says it’s developing a marketplace system to replace Trade-chat; the company promises that it will be a big improvement. We’ll just have to see. Fortunately, WoW already has implemented HTML-style “links” to item descriptions and stats, in the style of Anarchy Online and Everquest.

Different rule-sets?

Blizzard has hinted that they may give us a second beta server – this one with a PvP focus. I’m wondering whether that implies that we might get different servers with different rule-sets in Live. I could imagine PvP servers; “hardcore” servers in which one or two deaths mean you start over from scratch; “power” servers with a tougher experience curve, or a tougher death penalty, or both; “casual” servers with easier requirements for leveling; “roleplaying” servers, maybe with only one character per player allowed on that server; and “Alliance and Horde” servers, in which players can play characters from both factions. But this is just my speculation. Blizzard hasn’t committed itself to different Live rule-sets yet.

Speaking of PvP, it’s not really in the game yet. I have seen a few duels in Stormwind, but that’s about it. Blizzard has ambitious plans to create “instanced PvP zones” – Warcraft 3 meets Battlefield 1942. I’m looking forward to trying it when it arrives.

Conclusion

I don’t want to raise expectations too high about this game. It’s not a life-altering experience, as some on the WoW boards seem to hope. It’s just a game. As Penny Arcade put it, it’s “merely excellent.”

But excellent it is. This game is already more polished in beta than most games are Live. And Blizzard has announced that it plans to add content for another five or more months of beta! This surely must violate some unspoken cartel rule: MMORPG developers aren’t supposed to spend half a year adding content in beta! But that’s Blizzard for you. This game oozes quality. It already has more content than most Live MMORPGs.

I suppose it’s possible I’ll burn out and grow bored with this game before I reach level 30. But somehow I doubt it. There’s a huge Warcraft world, and I’ve only seen a small corner of it. There are seven other races and eight other classes to play. There are a dozen other trade skills to try. There are hundreds and hundreds of quests to take. I’m guessing that I’ll stay addicted for a while to come. Let’s just hope that the rest of the game is enthralling as my first week has been.