My Lord?
Perhaps the key to understanding why World of Warcraft is proving so popular in beta form, and tops a lot of gamers' most wanted lists, however, is nothing to do with anything we've just written. (Which, in hindsight, is a little exasperating for our half-frozen fingers.) Instead, it seems to be a similar mixture of things for most people. For a start, most people accept that World of Warcraft isn't a revolutionary MMORPG, but it's an MMORPG that makes a lot of sensible decisions, and adheres to the right conventions. Along with this, it still manages to capture the look and feel of an existing mythology with passion and expressiveness, as if the words of our dog-eared Warcraft II manuals had leapt off the page and assembled themselves polygonally in front of us. Then there's the magnificent degree of polish and forethought evident even in the beta state, from the shine of the instantly familiar menus to the logic of having rules to govern the looting of downed carcasses in group-play (the default is a round robin system); and the sense of imagination and liveliness, borne out most effectively in the various interactions and gestures each character is capable of performing.
The game lacks the much, er, 'quoted' and fondly remembered expressions of the troops in Warcraft ("What eeeeez it?"), but even though there's no Orcish "Who wants to sing?", that hasn't stopped Blizzard from injecting some of its trademark humour - it's perfectly common to wander into an area of town somewhere and find a huge group of characters dancing, like they're at some sort of otherwordly disco, and we wonder just how long it'll take most people to memorise all the various salutations. We were already /growling at cabbies on the way back from our trip to meet Blizzard on Monday.
We touched on the instantly familiar menuing system earlier, but it's the game's integration of what Warcraft fans have come to expect overall that will probably help most of Blizzard's many fans make the transition. You'll journey into Titan dig sites, you'll visit places that look exactly as you'd expect them to, and find the things you'd expect to find - and because you've never actually seen them before outside the realms of your imagination, they're fresh and new as well as comfortingly anticipated. It's this garnishing around the edges, equally prevalent in smack-your-head obvious inclusions like the postbox mail system (for sending messages, money and items) and auction houses (where an NPC takes your unwanted gear and spends 24 trying to offload it to other players, with items and cash delivered via post), that contributes more than anything to the world's sense of depth.
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