World of Warcraft, also called WOW by gamers, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). About twelve years ago, Blizzard Entertainment developed a game called Warcraft, a single and multiplayer adventure game, which became so immensely popular that they added two more Warcraft games, and World of Warcraft is the fourth game in the series. As of May 2006, World of Warcraft had over 6.5 million active users who each paid around $17 a month to play it. That equates to over $110 million a month in subscriptions!
How World of Warcraft works
The World of Warcraft game takes place in a virtual game world called World of Azeroth. The story is fantasy driven, and as with fantasies, there are many colorful and quirky characters in the game. To play the game, you must choose a character from a variety of races (humans, night elves, orcs, dwarves, trolls, and more), and once your race is chosen, you must decide which profession to take (hunter, paladin, rogue, shaman, warrior and more). Once you enter the game you are at Level 1, the goal is to reach Level 60 while having a lot of fun adventuring and gathering the best possible armor and weapons in the process. To add to the fun, there are friendly and hostile non-playing characters and also player characters who give you quests, and then of course there are the enemies you have to kill to level up.
world of warcraft gameplay
World of Warcraft isn’t ranked as the number one MMORPG game in the world for nothing. It features two main varieties of gameplay, which are: (1) Player vs. Environment – When a player ventures out to level up, they encounter game-generated enemies as well as other players who are against their race. (2) Player vs. Player – This is played only in specific areas where players can fight other players, and said areas are level specific. For example, there may be a player-only area on levels one through twenty; if you are on a higher level, you cannot enter.
Criticism
Some players try to misuse the game: in one case, a transgender player formed a transgender guild and was banned by Blizzard Entertainment. People for and against the action expressed their protest and the game became an unnecessary controversy. In another case, around June 2005, a child died from addiction to WOW. According to a leading psychologist, around 40% of WOW players are addicted. Well, regardless of the criticism, World of Warcraft is getting stronger by the day.