World of Warcraft

From WoWWiki

World of Warcraft
WoW box art
Developer(s)	Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Vivendi Universal
Date published	NA - 23 November 2004 EU - 11 February 2005
Version	3.1.2 NA - 19 May 2009 EU - 20 May 2009
Platforms	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, (Linux via Wine or Cedega)
Genre(s)	MMORPG

World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) set in the Warcraft universe. It is developed by Blizzard Entertainment and contains 2 expansion packs including, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

In 2008 World of Warcraft received more than 11.5 million monthly subscribers, and currently hold the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG and world's largest MMORPG online games.^[1] It also continues its further story development throughout its franchising, other than online mediums, such as Warcraft Novels, Manga, RPG Books, TCG, and Board Games.

Features

Note the following are the pre-expansion details:

Uses and expands the storyline from the Warcraft series of games.
Customizable characters:
- 2 factions: Horde and Alliance.
- 8 races: Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Night Elf, Orc, Troll, Undead, Tauren (expansions: Blood Elf and Draenei).
- 9 classes: Mage, Warlock, Priest, Rogue, Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Warrior, and Paladin (expansions: Death Knight).
- 9 professions, enabling resource gathering and item crafting (expansions: Jewelcrafting, Inscription)
  - 3 secondary professions: Cooking, First Aid, and Fishing
  - 1 class-based profession: Lockpicking (expansion: Runeforging)
- The Talents and Glyphs system allows further customization of the character's skills and stats.

Gameplay System

General System

A casual-friendly character progression system.
- Quests occur frequently, and being offline (resting) increases your experience points gain.
In-game trading, mail service and auction system.
Four server types: Normal (PvE), RP, PvP, and RPPvP.

Quest and Honor Systems

A PvP Honor system, 3 Battlegrounds
- (expansions: Eye of the Storm, Strand of the Ancients)
- Upcoming: Azshara Crater · Gurubashi Catacombs · Isle of Conquest

Events

A variety of World Events including:
- (Darkmoon Faire, Children's Week, Scourge Invasion, and Midsummer Fire Festival)
67 Instanced Dungeons, ranging from The Deadmines to Zul'Gurub to Ulduar.

User Interface and Customer Support

Customize AddOn and Interface with some game commands support.
Client seamlessly supports both Mac and Windows operating systems. Linux users can play via Wine, however this is not supported and can be buggy at times.

Availability

Oceania (English - Australia, Hawaii, New Zealand)
North America (English - US & Canada)
Europe (English-UK, French, German, Spanish, Russian)
South Korea
China (Simplified and Traditional Chinese; including Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau)
Latin America^[2] (Spanish, English?)