World of Warcraft Beta 2

By Holliday

I know there was quite a delay between this and the last one (mainly because I was playing the game more than writing about it). Also I have recently purchased Burnout 3 for the Playstation 2 which keeps me doubly occupied.

Anyways back to business. I will start this section with a bit about the engine and sounds then move onto our hero’s exploits in the world.

Visuals
World of Warcraft came under much scrutiny when it showed off screenshots of its graphic engine. It looked rather primitive with huge out of scale textures and odd geometry. It looked, over-all, like a step backwards for any genre. Star Wars Galaxies was using “bump mapping” and heavy foliage and water effects and Lineage 2 was running on the Unreal Engine which builds gorgeous terrain and highly detailed architecture.

While Blizzard has never really pushed the graphics barrier with any of their games it was still a bit of a let down. I myself was highly unimpressed with the screenshots provided and with a release date so far in the future I figured the game would look ancient by the time it was released.

I didn’t exactly put my foot in my mouth upon playing, but very close. To look at World of Warcraft in stagnant screenshots does not do the game any justice at all. It deserves to be seen in motion. The graphics engine itself is a new kind of “pretty”. It nearly feels like a whole other class of graphics much like cel-shaded graphics.

There is a draw to the game visually. Something makes you enjoy what you look at. It has an oversized cartoon nature about it but never too childish. The Undead Lands are dark and dismal but at the same time beautiful. The world feels very full of life and more importantly, character. World of Warcraft excels at character in so many levels.

With the cartoon fantastical nature of the universe the developers had a good deal of freedom to flex when designing things. You never see a building as walls with textures on them, the textures seem to be custom fit to every part of the world, like they aren’t even textures themselves but the material the structure was built out of. You can see this in this screenshot, look at the building behind my character. It just seems so solidly placed in the world rather than just textures applied to polygons.

The other thing that makes World of Warcraft a pleasure to look at is detail. Detail detail detail detail. Its everywhere in the world. From abandoned shacks full furnished to all the buildings in a city, everything is just loaded with items and other things to make the world feel alive. You can see a good example of this in the followed three screenshots of a Tavern in the Undead city of Brill.

Tavern 1
Tavern 2
Tavern 3

And yes I am rockin’ out playing the air guitar in one of those screens. I told you the game was full of character.

Now for the best part of the visuals, animations. The character and world animations in this game are just incredible. It is what really establishes the charm and makes me say that seeing it in screenshots just doesn’t do it justice. The Undead move in a desperate but relentless motion, Orcs have their brute strength and characters of magery flow and float. It is all something you have to see to understand I guess.

The engine is also very versatile. When you want to get around the world quickly you can pay for “rides” on respective animals. The Undead ride on bats, the Orcs on Wyverns and the humans on Gryphons. There are others for the other races but I am not going to bother with them all. But when you hitch a ride like this, it isn’t some loading screen then poof you are there. You climb aboard the mount in real time and take off. You swoop low over the valleys and you can see the detail of the world under you. You can see other player characters battling monsters below and most anything else as the land flies by. It is quite a seamless and amazing experience. I took 3 flights in a row the first time I did it just because I was so impressed. You can also use zeppelins to get across the oceans. You just walk right onto the zeppelin and it leaves the continent. There is an Indian Jones style map with dotted red line loading screen when you travel the oceans but just looking at endless sea forever would be rather boring so it is well used.

Audio
Audio is where World of Warcraft excels among its MMORPG brethren. A MMORPG is a game that a player is going to spend a lot of time in. He is going to visit the same cities many times and see the same areas quite a few times as well. Because of this, music is often a downfall for most of these games. It becomes repetitive very fast and most of the music seems like an after thought.

Now if any of you own the Warcraft III soundtrack, you know Blizzard doesn’t put out any half assed musical scores. You’ll also be happy to know that a good majority of that soundtrack is working into World of Warcraft. The music in the game is just phenomenal. Every race/area/city/event has its own music pieces for it. I say pieces because there are actually more than one at times. I have heard 3 distinctly different pieces of music played upon entering the Orcish city of Orgrimmar at different times throughout my adventure, quite a welcome surprise.

While the music is incredibly good, it isn’t used enough. It feels like Blizzard knows the music in these games gets repetitive so they don’t have a constant track playing in the background. Often it is just the sound of the world around you. Which I admit is very well done with crickets in the forests and desolates winds on the barren deserts. But the music is just such a rich treat to hear I would actually like to hear it more often.

Sound effects are right on the money. All the sword swings and spell effects are near perfect. Your character even has his or her own voice which they will often respond to you when you try to do something you can’t (much like a Warcraft unit in the RTS games). Again, more character. Filth always sounds angry, might be because he lacks a jaw.

The Story of Filth Part 2

We left our hero freshly awoken from the grave and wandering around his new home.

The man I spoke to was apparently a servant of this Lady Sylvanas person. He asked me for scavenge around the area and look for some goods that might be salvageable for our newly awakened undead army. He promised me a reward in exchange for the did so I accepted. Wandering around looking for things didn’t sound too dangerous or anything I couldn’t handle anways.

I ran a circle around the town to check for anything on the outskirts; I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for looked like, but its best to start somewhere. I moved into the town and found my first pile of goods in the form of boxes that I rummaged through and pulled some stuff out of, it said I needed 4 more. The others lay around the town in different locations. Some were inside houses which proved to be more of a challenge because those mindless zombies liked to dwell in there and sneak up behind you. Eventually I got all I needed and returned to the man for my reward. He gladly paid me and I was just about to go on my way thinking I was done. But he continued on, he had more work for me to do, more money said I, and accept. This was a mission of death, my favorite.

Those zombies and corpses I had to knock around to get to some goods now seemed to be the target of my next assignment. I was just about to go kill some when something in an old chapel caught my eye. A little devil hopping around some lady’s feet. I wanted one, and knew I could have one for I was a Warlock. So I talked to the lady and she explained what the little devil was (an imp) and what I needed to do to get one. The target was to kill these armored skeletons on the outskirts of town by the Blacksmithy. They were not as easy as the zombies I had been smashing but I lusted for a fiery companion so I accepted. I decided to hone my skills killing the zombies before I took on the skeletons.

After a couple battles around town I had killed enough zombies to please my first employer and was also learning the ropes of my profession. I found a letter in my backpack that must have been there since I awoke and it told me to see some guy in town. I found the guy and he explained that he would be my trainer to increase my skills or learn new spells and abilities.

Around every other level (usually the even levels) you have some abilities or spells to learn. It depends on your class what you will learn and you get to pick from a variety of categories. To learn things it costs money. In the case of a warrior you learn combat stances, attacks and abilities like battle shouts and bleeding cuts. My Warlock would learn spells and ‘curses’.

The trainer taught me a new spell, Immolate. This spell looked extremely devastating. It was spark of fire that would ignite the enemy and deal damage to him over time. I also learned a curse of weakness to low an enemy’s attack power.

With new spells and more knowledge I set out to take down those skeletons and get my imp friend. It wasn’t as difficult as I had thought and after I had set the demons ablaze I found no trouble going toe to toe with them in combat. I killed the required amount and headed back to get my Imp. The lady taught me how to summon him and explained more about him. There are trainers much like the guy who trained me in new spells, but for your summoned accomplices.

Your summoned pets level up right with you and can learn new abilities or increase ones they already have. While not as frequently as you get new skills, its good to keep your pets up to date.

I experimented with my new friend for a little bit around town and then decided it was time to move on. Another person in town advised me to seek out a specific person in the neighboring village of Brill; he also gave me a package to deliver there as I was headed there anyway. Once outside of the little town I had already gotten to know I realized that it was completely surrounded by high impassable mountains. And checking my map I realized just how small it was, compared to the vast lands I had before me to explore.

Next time: The Journey to Brill and beyond