Crafty
It's Blizzard's aim to produce the sort of MMORPG that the average gamer can find themselves getting lost in. Curmudgeonly aficionados of the genre might peer down their noses at some of the reaction to World of Warcraft, but the depth and attention to detail is understandably alluring. The transitions between zones are seamless, it looks and feels vast, but not to its detriment - and, on the most basic level, the Warcraft art style, wonderfully extended for WoW, has always been comfortable and engaging enough to capture people's attention and hook them in. It's not going to trouble Doom III in terms of technical expertise, but then neither does Paper Mario 2 - it's what you do with the material that's most important, and it doesn't take much more than wandering down the streets of Stormwind, or a few minutes on the back of a griffon admiring the scenery as you jump between locations you've explored, to be convinced that World of Warcraft has a lot to offer.
Check back later this week for more on World of Warcraft, including a chat with Blizzard's Chris Sigaty and George Wang about the forthcoming launch of the European beta, the recent stress test, and more colourful tales from California. World of Warcraft is due out on the PC in Europe in early 2005 (yes, we checked).
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