Others say...

"Dollar for dollar... best entertainment value in a game"
MMOs are the future of entertainment. WoW has been one of the big innovators in this field.

Consider the price of the monthly subscription relative to the price of a movie these days. (Hours entertainment per month)/(Monthly subscription... WoW wins. I play an hour or so nearly everyday and get more fun from this then any other game I have (PS3/Xbox360 owner.) For a relative small price, you get to "play" in a large, complex fantasy world with a good deal of activities, as often as you care to.

Best PvP system.

I think many of the complaints about this game tend to be the "this isn't an RP game" (You can completely ignore the RP content and play). Perhaps a better description is MMORPGE (E=Ennvironment).

MINUSES?

This can be a huge time sink of a game. Much more so then others. I mean, no one is saying "Give us your money" but understand if you are looking to be a serious WoWer, you'll be spending a good amount of time parked in front of your screen.

If you are a parent, be mindful of your child's playtime; it's a fast paced game with a hyper reward system which encourages a player to continuously strive to "improve" one's character. This game really has no end, which is good for value, but not so good for moderation. Also, your kids will be hanging out with adults in a non supervised environment.

If you read the message boards on the official site, there seems to be a lot of complaints about the bias towards Player vs Player (PvP) content. I would say these complaints are unfounded; the PvP content is minimal relative to the other areas of the game. However, no other MMO has it beat yet.

My only "real" complaint is the graphics. They should be better considering average present day computing power. Graphics are slightly cartoony, especially considering other current MMOs. No, it doesn't get in the way of game play; I've played some of the other more recent ones and better graphics = more fun.

All in all: Good, cheap fun.

"Moving on................"
After eleven months of playing WOW my thoughts on it are somewhat mixed. Although I've enjoyed playing and developing a character, I'm starting to look to other games like Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings.

One of the biggest downsides to this game are the other players. I've met very few "casual" players. Most people I've interacted with range from immature teenagers to people so obbsessed with the game the suck all the fun out of playing. At lower levels there seems to be an abundance of people begging/mooching for money, water, supplies etc. At higher levels other players think they're so much better then you because they're five levels or so higher. And for a game with 8 million players you would think that it would be easy to find four other players for an instance. If you want to do an instance, just trying to get a decent group together can easily take an hour. Then you have five people doing an instance that can take a few hours to get a sword or some piece of equipment from a boss that has a 25 percent chance of dropping it in the first place. And if you get lucky enough for the boss to drop it, you have a one in five chance of getting it away from the other people in your group. That's pretty much the only way for you to get the good equipment.

I was in a guild that wasn't too bad. The people were pretty mellow considering some of the other hardcore players on the server. Then I find out the one day someone was stealing from bank which caused a HUGE fight between the guildies which split up the guild. I recieved a four page email from the guild leader pouring his heart out to me about how the other people from the guild are harrassing him and taking his loot everywhere he goes(I didn't think harrassment was possible in this game because of the "ignore" feature, apparantly I was wrong). For some reason he still had to change his name and pretend like he was someone else to avoid all the harrassment he was experiencing, despite whatever blizzard had built into the game to avoid that kind of nonsense. The guild that was formed out of that one was terrible. The people were such snobs because they were higher lvls then me. I then decided to start my own guild with two friends of mine, which is cool if we were going to be the only ones in the guild. But, trying to recruit people into the guild is extremely hard as I had to pay people just to sign the charter. Trying to get reasonable people in the guild is impossible(people just to bs with and be social).

Don't get me wrong it's still a good game. But be careful what kind of people you get mixed up with and what you say to them. And DON'T let it take over your life, because the fact that this game is addictive is both a good and bad thing.

"Just to show you how good WOW really is.."
Scroll through the 1/5 star ratings here, and most of the complaints are regarding how the game requires too much of your time once you get to level 60. How could you possibly play ALL THE WAY to level 60, yet still call this a 1 star game lol?

"The BEST multi-player RPG ever."
It doesn't get any bette then WoW. What Seinfeld was to sitcoms, what Star Wars was to sci-fi movies... Warcraft is to video games.

Ok, there's bad parts: you pay per month so this game will end up costing you a LOT of money. The game is designed to be addictive (just like cigarettes were)... it can be hard to stop playing. Ok, some people feel that way about games in general, but this game goes beyond that. I've heard people say with a straight face, "I don't think I'll ever stop playing WoW." And I'm talking about grown adults with kids and jobs and real lives.

This game is so far beyond any other online multiplayer RPG game it's not worth comparing them. And if the idea of playing with thousands of other people that know way more about the game and have been playing it much longer scares you, don't worry. The experts have no interest in picking on "noobs" and they are prevented from getting in your way or harming you by clever well done in game limits and controls.

That's not to say that people can't grab something just as you are about to pick it up, etc. But that's part of what makes it feel like a true virtual world. The virtual world aspect is empowered by a huge selection of fast easy ways to "express" yourself to others in the game in addition to voice and IM communication. This game takes the community aspect of 20th century online services like AOL and put them into a beautiful, fun, and incredibly huge 3D virtual world. The game has built in mail, auctions (like ebay), IMs, and chats, plus plenty of public meeting places in the big cities. You can walk, ride horses, travel on boats, fly bird-back, ride trams, fly in helicopters, swim under the oceans, climb the tallest mountains, you name it.

It will take you weeks to even start to understand how "grand" things are in this game. As you explore you will discover more and more aspects of the game that add to it's realism. The game does a very good job of introducing them to you slowly so as not to overwhelm you while you're getting up to speed with the way things work.

If you were curious enough to read this review, just buy it. You will not be disappointed. I've never heard anyone say, "I tried WoW but I didn't care for it."

"Kind of fails"
I'm going to get straight to the point about this game. At first, I thought it was pretty fun because there are plenty of quests to do, new things to get, etc. But after a day or so, the game becomes as repetitive as a damn wheel on your car. The same things happen over and over again. For example, you'll have a quest at level 5 or so telling you to kill someone. Later, at level 6 you'll get another quest asking you to kill someone. But, Blizzard reuses many of their graphics like simple dungeons in which they just change the color and add some rocks in. Basically, you're running around in the same rooms you ran around earlier. Sounds interesting? Along with this, you have to deal with some real **tchy people who blame their non existent social life on you. They will spend hours making stupid rascist jokes, and calling you a "noob" to make themselves feel a little more powerful. (Don't take this as a generalization as there are some decent people out there) To be honest, if you really want to play this game then just buy this CD, install it, then go on some website and download a server. This way you don't have to pay the dumb monthly fee of $15. Of course, this is assuming that you want to play at all.
I highly recommend that you do not buy this at all. Firstly, I don't know why but some people are as addicted to this game as they can be to drugs. Why? Don't ask me. And if you ask some of those people, they will not give you a reason. Try it out and save your own life or someone else's by not getting this game