Calling All World of WarCraft Players!

[game_fanatic]

hey guys, first, an explanation: this year at school I've decided to leave my PS3 and Xbox 360 at home in order to concentrate on my studies, leaving me with my PSP and Macbook. I will be getting involved in WarCraft III, Diablo 2, StarCraft and StarCraft 2, but the replayability of some of these games might prove a tad repetitive; I am considering becoming involved in World of WarCraft, since I am a great fan of the universe, but I know very little about the World itself, so I had a handful of questions!

1) Do I need to play with teammates? I'd almost prefer going through the quests and whatnot on my own, since I may be playing in sporadic intervals, and it seems making allies would be too costly and time-consuming. I was just hoping to putt around the world, complete some major quests, and gain some background on the WarCraft universe. Is that possible in WoW, or should I stick to reading the books?

2) What is the general cost of playing WoW? I noticed there are 60-day passes you can buy for $35 or something, but is that the CAG-way?

3) Is the interface overly complicated? Again, I won't be playing too often at school, just something to change it up a bit, so if the interface takes a week to learn, and I take two weeks off from playing, I'd hate to have to re-learn the interface every time I jump back into it.

That's basically all the questions I had, but the main one is the concern of completing quests on my own; I love games like Fable 2, KOTOR, Mass Effect, etc., so having a game similar to those in the WarCraft would be amazing. Thanks guys!

(P.S., if fellow CAGers actually played WoW, then I wouldn't be opposed to playing with you guys whatsoever!)

[Jbently]

Former WoW player here, I'll try to answer as best I can.

1. You are most likely going to enjoy the WoW experience a lot more if you play with others. At the very least, you should try to find a guild with people levelling at the same time as you. While levelling up, you will most likely have a hard time finding people to go to the lower level dungeons as most people play at max level unless levelling alts. I found playing it as a solo game got boring fast, but that could also be due to me not being a huge RPG fan.

2. My best guess is the best price would be getting the WoW Battle Chest for $40 at EB right now, which includes the original game, the first expansion Burning Crusade and 30 days of gameplay. Since you would be just starting out, I probably wouldn't get the Lich King expansion just yet since you'd have to get to around level 68 before you'd need it. So wait for a sale on it, lowest I've seen recently was $30 US at Amazon.com. 60-day gamecards would be good to get since if you intend to only play once in a while. If you know you'll be playing for a long stretch of time, $78 US will get you 6 months worth of game time directly from Blizzard.

3. I didn't think the interface was overly complicated myself. When I played, I used the default interface and just used all the available action bars with spells hotkeyed to the number keys and misc. items linked on the right side of my screen. If the default interface doesn't suit you however, there are tons of addons you can get to customize pretty much anything you'd want.

On a final note, if you take your time to read the quest descriptions etc. you will find the lore in the game is really good. It's just that many players nowadays just power through the lower levels to get to 80 and get their "epicz".

Hope that helps!

[EchaniDrgn]

1) I agree with Jbently. There is a reason that WoW is called an MMORPG, not an RPG. I think the tasks and such get rather repetitive as many of the quests fall into two categories, Kill and FedEx. You will get a lot of quests that are "Kill X Animal A, Y animal B, and Z animal C." If you are that lucky. Some of them are "Get X items from animal type A." But in that case the item doesn't always drop so you end up killing alot more mobs than you do in the first case.

The FedEx quests are usually interspersed with the aformentioned quests but they do tend to be a bit more story driven. They're called FedEx because they are delivery quests.

2. Also I agree that the Battle Chest with 30 days free is a good deal, but I would suggest something else. If you know someone that plays get them to send you an invite to play for free, that'll get you 15 days free, and when you pay for your subscription they get nice little goodies. Also, for the first 90 days, whenever they group with you you get triple experience. This'll give them an incentive to play with you when you are on. Even if you don't know someone you can still get 15 free days by playing the free trial... That's like $7.50 :-P

3. The interface is pretty easy to work with, and as you start out you don't have that many spells and abilities anyways. So you'll generally be limited to five or six buttons plus moving.

Have fun. :-)

[TripleQ]

(...) decided to leave my PS3 and Xbox 360 at home in order to concentrate on my studies (...) considering becoming involved in World of WarCraft (...)

Ummm....

[game_fanatic]

Haha yeah I know TripleQ, sounds completely counter-productive, but given my computer is not a high-powered gaming machine, and you can chip away at WoW (as opposed to, say, the online component of Halo 3) I feel like I might be able to have short spurts than marathon sessions. From the sounds of it though I might be sticking to reading the books and playing some WarCraft 3/StarCraft/StarCraft 2...it's only 8 months :S

[Afrodiziak]

1. If you're going to school DO NOT play World of Warcraft. I know of like 5 people who dropped out of university because of it.

Seriously though, it's a great game.

[Jucifer]

It's already been said here but it deserves repeating: DO NOT play WoW while you are in the midst of a post-secondary education.

Don't think you'll be able to strike a balance between the two, because I'm pretty sure it's impossible. You may just say "whatever" to these warnings now, but I assure you that when you look back on it you will regret it. Speaking from experience here :)

Edit: I should also say that I think it's a great game, but the cost/benefit trade-off is simply not worth it for someone in your position.

[game_fanatic]

Alright guys, you've convinced me; StarCraft will have to be my gamer partner for the next little bit heh