World of Warcraft Background
Just over 15 years ago, Blizzard Inc shook up the gaming world with Warcraft: Orcs Vs Humans, a real-time strategy game that combined innovative graphics, a deep storyline, the requirement to think about strategy more than ever, and games multiplayer. in one – a first in the gaming industry. You may be surprised to learn that the first version of Warcraft came before the hugely popular Command & Conquer franchise.
With the success of the first Warcraft release, Blizzard left, and a couple of years later Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness came out, expanding the universe, introducing new characters and species, and making the game more complex than ever. The central point of the game was Blizzard’s belief that multiplayer games were the wave of the future. Never before has a game paid so much attention to the multiplayer aspect. You have to remember that this was the late 90’s and even the concept of the internet was new to most people, so you can definitely say that Blizzard was at the forefront of the idea of multiplayer gaming.
Warcraft is one of the few games where the developers have spent time building a universe where the action takes place. In creating this universe, they have added a depth rarely seen in other games. At first glance the story might seem pretty basic, just think of Lord of the Rings with a mix of medieval technology and a healthy dose of fantasy. The result? Castles and wizards, swords and dwarfs.
Unlike previous versions of Warcraft, the game has changed slightly from a God-like role to you controlling a single character. To start you have to select if you are going to play as a member of the Alliance (humans and their allies) or the Horde (Orcs and their kind). Each species has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it’s up to you which one you go with. The character you control is known as your Avatar, which is your representation in the virtual world. The goal is to develop the attributes (known as leveling up) of your Avatar to become bigger, stronger, and more skilled to take on increasingly difficult quests.
You should keep in mind that World of Warcraft is completely different than other games you’ve bought in the past because instead of playing against the computer, you’re entering an online world (you can’t play it offline) where there are other real people to play with. . with and against. The game also differs slightly in that it operates a kind of ‘pay as you play’ scheme, whereby you have to pay a monthly subscription to keep logging in or buy prepaid game time; from a commercial point of view, Blizzard really succeeded. home run in this one!
Innovations in World of Warcraft
As I mentioned earlier, Blizzard has been committed to creating quality multiplayer games since 1994 with the original release of Warcraft: Orcs Vs Humans. They made the multiplayer aspect such an integral part of the games that this experience was not wasted when they created World of Warcraft because it is now officially recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the most popular MMORPG ever created and an estimate by mmogchart. .com puts its market share at 62% of the entire MMORPG industry.
When you play WoW for the first time, you can see why it took Blizzard almost 5 years to develop. There is a wide variety of innovations and features that could not be found in other MMORPGs at the time of their release. Even something as simple as Avatar reincarnation was revolutionized by Blizzard. In other games, when an Avatar died, it took a while for him to come back and get back to the same level he was before he died. Blizzard removed this and made reincarnation faster and easier to get players back into the thick of the action. The same concept applies to the damage an Avatar takes in battle, recovery is faster to help casual players compete on much the same terms as expert players.
Just like in the original Warcraft games, there’s still a sense of harvesting, building, and growing. In this case, 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, give you gold or weapons. WoW has been praised for the amount of variety in the quests, ensuring that players never get bored doing the same repetitive things over and over again.
You’ve probably played strategy games in the past and found that once you ‘got’ the system, it was pretty easy to beat the computer no matter what. Well, believe me, everything changes in WoW because you’re playing against the most ruthless opponents… other humans. You’ll 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 more successful.
The social aspect in particular mirrors the offline world because you can join different guilds that are set up to help gather resources and provide a level of protection from other players. Guilds tend to stick to geographical borders and you are unlikely to find a British player in an efficient German guild!
WoW in the real world
Just like in the real world, there is a thriving microeconomy both inside and outside of the game. Within the game you can collect resources such as copper and sell them at auction for gold. You can then use the gold to buy new weapons and allow your Avatar to survive in the virtual world. Much like an eBay for WoW, you can put any items you own up for sale and have people bid on them and buy them from you.
In a somewhat surprising twist, virtual goods and virtual money have acquired physical value in the real world. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to letting you buy items and gold with real money. The exchange will be arranged within the game, but the money changes hands in real life. Blizzard now strictly forbids doing transactions outside of the game, but that hasn’t stopped a lot of people from getting involved. To give you an idea of how much money is changing hands, if you wanted to buy 140,000g of virtual gold it would cost you $999.99!
Now, given the massive popularity of WoW and the legions of hardcore PAYING subscribers, it’s no wonder movie studios have sat up and taken notice, especially considering the commercial successes of movies like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. , who share many of the same fantasies. items. The Warcraft movie is still in the planning stages, and given the slow progress, many analysts say it probably won’t get off the ground. It was originally supposed to be ready for 2009, but don’t worry if you missed it because even now they don’t know who will star in it!
However, there are rumors that since Spider-man 4 has been shelved, director Sam Raimi has been hired to help spearhead the project. Any details at the moment are pure speculation and hyperbole, but it is said that the story will focus on the Alliance, but it will not be as epic as The Lord of the Rings. However, there is still plenty of real world material to satisfy the thirst of the most experienced players. A whole series of fictional books have been written about the Warcraft universe covering all points in its history and taking the point of view of both the Horde and the Alliance. New heroes and villains are introduced. If books aren’t enough, there are even Marvel comics, quarterly magazines, and Warcraft-inspired artwork.