World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft
North American and Europe box's arts
Developer(s)	Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Vivendi Universal
Release date(s)	NA - 23 November 2004 EU - 11 February 2005
Version	5.2.0
Platforms	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, (Linux via Wine or Cedega)
Genre(s)	MMORPG

World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW (refer to the game without expansions: vanilla, classic, pre-tBC or pre-BC), is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) set in the Warcraft universe. It is developed by Blizzard Entertainment and contains 4 expansion packs, including World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

As of 2010, World of Warcraft reportedly had more than 12 million monthly subscribers, and currently holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest and most popular MMORPG. It also continues its further story development throughout its franchising, other than online media, such as Warcraft novels, comics, manga, RPG books, TCG, and board games.

Features

Note the following are the pre-expansion details:

• Uses and expands the storyline from the Warcraft series of games.
• Customizable characters:
  • 2 factions: Horde and Alliance.
  • 8 races: Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Night Elf, Orc, Troll, Undead, Tauren (expansions: Blood Elf and Draenei, Goblin and Worgen, Pandaren).
  • 9 classes: Mage, Warlock, Priest, Rogue, Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Warrior, Paladin (expansions: Death Knight, Monk).
  • 9 professions, enabling resource gathering and item crafting (expansions: Jewelcrafting, Inscription)
    • 4 secondary professions: Cooking, Fishing, First Aid, Riding (expansions: Archaeology)
  • The Talent (and Glyph) system allows further customization of the character's skills and stats.

Gameplay System

General System

• A casual-friendly character progression system.
  • Quests occur frequently, and being offline (resting) increases your experience points gain.
• In-game trading, mail service and auction system.
• Four server types: Normal (PvE), RP, PvP, and RPPvP.

Quest and Honor Systems

• A PvP Honor system, 8 Battlegrounds
  • Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch (expansions: Eye of the Storm, Strand of the Ancients, Isle of Conquest, Twin Peaks, Battle for Gilneas)

Events

• A variety of World Events including:
  • (Darkmoon Faire, Children's Week, Scourge Invasion, and Midsummer Fire Festival)
• 88 Instanced Dungeons, ranging from low-level dungeons like The Deadmines to full 25- or 10-man raids such as Bastion of Twilight or Blackwing Descent.

User Interface and Customer Support

• Customize AddOn and Interface with some game commands support.
• Client seamlessly supports both Mac and Windows operating systems. Linux users can play via Wine, however this is not supported and can be buggy at times.

Availability

• North America (English-US - US & Canada)
  • Oceania (English-US - Australia, Hawaii, New Zealand)
  • Latin America (Spanish)
  • Brazil (Portuguese-Brazilian)
• Europe (English-UK, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese-Brazilian, Italian)
• South Korea
• China (Simplified and Traditional Chinese; including Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau)

Video

• World of Warcraft Trailer
• World of Warcraft Gameplay 1
• World of Warcraft Gameplay 2
• World of Warcraft Gameplay 3
• World of Warcraft Gameplay 4
• World of Warcraft Gameplay 5
• World of Warcraft Gameplay 6
• World of Warcraft Gameplay 7
• World of Warcraft Cinematic
• World of Warcraft TV Spot
• Onyxia Trailer
• Darkmoon Faire Trailer
• Arathi Basin Trailer
• Patch 1.5.0 - Battlegrounds
• Patch 1.6.0 - Assault on Blackwing Lair
• Patch 1.7.0 - Rise of the Blood God
• Patch 1.9.0 - The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj
• Patch 1.10.0 - Storms of Azeroth #1
• Patch 1.10.0 - Storms of Azeroth #2
• Patch 1.11.0 - Shadow of the Necropolis
• Patch 1.12.0 - Drums of War
• 8 years of WoW

Notes

The gameplay video displayed is the first, released on November 23, 2004. Other videos were also made before the European release.

See also

• Loading screen
• A listing of World of Warcraft-related sites.
• World of Warcraft Mac OS X Icons
• Timeline (World of Warcraft) for a timeline of game milestones since its announcement.

Trivia

The original WoW is sometimes referred to as "vanilla World of Warcraft," "pre Burning Crusade (Pre BC)," or "classic World of Warcraft".

External links

World of Warcraft Community Site Official World of Warcraft website

World of Warcraft Community Site World of Warcraft F.A.Q.

World of Warcraft Europe Official World of Warcraft European website (en)

World of Warcraft Europe World of Warcraft F.A.Q. (en)

Wikipedia World of Warcraft

winehq.com The Official WineHQ website with info about World of Warcraft 4.2.x running with Wine.

groups.yahoo.com World of Warcraft in the Yahoo groups directory