World of Warcraft Phenomenon
World of Warcraft Background
Just over 15 years ago, Blizzard Inc rocked the gaming world with Warcraft: Orcs Vs Humans, a Real Time Strategy game that combined ground breaking graphics, a thorough story line, the requirement to think about strategy more than previously and multiplayer gaming all in a single - a first for the gaming industry. You is likely to be surprised to find out that the initial version of Warcraft arrived before the hugely popular Command & Conquer franchise.
With the success of the initial release of Warcraft, Blizzard went away and a couple of years later came out with Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness which expanded the universe, introduced new characters and species and made the game more involved than ever before. Central to the game was Blizzard's belief that multiplayer gaming was the wave of the future. No time before had a game title had so much attention added to the multiplayer aspect. You need to remember that this is back in the late 90's and even the thought of the Internet was new to the majority of people, to help you definitely say Blizzard were in front of the curve on the notion of multiplayer games.
Warcraft is one of the few games where in fact the developers have spent time creating a universe in that the action takes place Buy WoW Classic WotLK Gold . By creating this universe they have added depth rarely noticed in other games. Initially glance the story might seem quite basic, imagine Lord of the Rings with an assortment of medieval technology and a wholesome dose of fantasy. The end result? Castles and wizards, swords and dwarves.
Unlike the last versions of Warcraft the game play has changed slightly from a God like role to you controlling an individual character. To begin you have to pick whether you are likely to play as a member of the Alliance (humans and their allies) or the Horde (Orcs and their kind). Each species has a unique strengths and weaknesses so it's down to you which one you go with. The type that you control is recognized as your Avatar, that is your representation in the virtual world. The aim is to build up the attributes (known as leveling) of one's Avatar to become bigger, stronger and have more skills to battle ever harder quests.
You need to observe that World of Warcraft is totally different to other games you may have bought in the past because in place of playing contrary to the computer you are entering a world online (you can't play it offline) where there are other real individuals to play with and against. The game also differs slightly in that it operates a type of 'pay as you play' scheme so you have to either pay a monthly subscription to help keep logging in or buy pre-paid playing time - from a business perspective Blizzard really hit a house run using that one!
Innovations in World of Warcraft
As I mentioned earlier, Blizzard have now been devoted to building quality multiplayer games since 1994 with the original release of Warcraft: Orcs Vs Humans. They made the multiplayer aspect this integral part of the games that this experience didn't head to waste if they created World of Warcraft because now it's officially recognized by the Guinness book of records as typically the most popular MMORPG available and one estimate by mmogchart.com puts their market share at 62% of the whole MMORPG industry.
Once you play WoW for the very first time you will see why it took Blizzard nearly 5 years to develop. There are always a huge array of innovations and features that couldn't be within other MMORPG's at the time it had been launched. Even some thing as simple as Avatar reincarnation was revolutionized by Blizzard. In other games when an Avatar died it took a little while to allow them to come back and be back at exactly the same level they were before they died. Blizzard did away with this specific and made reincarnation swifter and easier for players to have back in the thick of the action. Exactly the same concept pertains to damage an Avatar suffers in battle, recovery is quicker to simply help casual gamers compete on nearly exactly the same footing as hardcore gamers.
The same as in the original Warcraft games, there's still an expression of harvest, build, grow. In cases like this your Avatar needs to earn gold to buy weapons, eat, sleep and generally survive in the virtual world. This is made easier by completing 'quests' which once completed offer you gold or weapons. WoW has been praised for the amount of variety there are in the quests which ensures players never get bored doing exactly the same repetitive things over and over again.
You have probably played strategy games in the past and discovered that when you 'got' the machine it had been fairly easy to beat the computer no matter what. Well trust me that all changes in WoW because you are playing against the absolute most ruthless opponents...other humans. You will find that WoW is literally a virtual community that mirrors much of the real world. You need to earn gold to survive, you need to buy weapons and items with the gold and you need to interact with others to be successful.
The social aspect particularly mirrors the offline world since you can join different guilds which are create to simply help pool resources and provide a level of protection from other players. Guilds often adhere to geographical borders and you are unlikely to get an British player in a predominantly German Guild!
WoW in the Real World
The same as actuality, there's a thriving micro-economy both inside and outside the game. Inside the game you can collect resources like copper and sell them at auction in trade for gold. Then you're able to utilize the gold to buy new weapons and enable you Avatar to survive in the virtual world. The same as an eBay for WoW, you can put any items you own up available and have people bid on them and purchase them off you.
In a somewhat surprising twist, virtual goods and virtual money has taken on an actual value in the real world. You can find a huge selection of websites focused on letting you buy items and gold for sure money. The exchange is likely to be arranged within the game but the amount of money changes hands in real life. Now dealing outside the game is strictly prohibited by Blizzard but that hasn't stopped many people from taking part. Just so you will get a notion of much money is changing hands, if you wanted to buy 140,000g of virtual gold it would set you back $999.99!
Now given the massive popularity of WoW and the legions of hardcore PAYING subscribers it's hardly surprising the film studios have sat up and taken notice - especially thinking about the commercial successes of films like Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia which share many of the same fantasy elements. The Warcraft movie is quite definitely still in the planning stages and given the slow progress many analysts are saying it probably won't log off the ground. It had been originally allowed to be ready by 2009 but don't worry if you missed it because nevertheless they don't know who's planning to star inside!
You can find rumours though that since Spider-man 4 has been shelved, the director Sam Raimi has been brought in to simply help spearhead the project. Any details right now are pure speculation and hyperbole but it is stated that the story will give attention to the Alliance however, not be quite as epic as Lord of the Rings. However, there's still plenty of real world material on the market to satisfy the thirst of the hardcore gamers. An entire group of fictional books have now been discussing the Warcraft universe and cover all points in its history and take on the perspective of both the Horde and the Alliance. New heroes are introduced in addition to villains. If the books are not enough there are even comics from Marvel, quarterly magazines and artwork inspired by Warcraft.