World of Warcraft (2004)
After the successful series of successes with the RTS Warcraft trilogy, Blizzard thought it well to give players the opportunity to immerse themselves completely in that world they created by continuing the story from where they left off in Warcraft 3. Play
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Settings Enter fullscreen “ Four years have passed since the deadly races came together to fight the danger of the Burning Legion.
Although Azeroth has been saved, the difficult coalition between the Horde and the Alliance is about to collapse. The war drums echo again. "
These are the words with which, in 2004, the cinematic of the game was opened and also gave the basis of the setting in which the game would have been set from there on. At this point, the players were asked one of the most important questions after choosing the starter in Pokémon: Alliance or Horde? On the one hand the typical assortment of fantasy breeds with humans, dwarfs, gnomes and elves and on the other those have always been the "monsters" faced by these breeds such as orcs, trolls, undead and tauren (let's say a kind of minotaurs). More than dividing them into good and bad, Warcraft has always aimed to emphasize that in a war there is not really this clear distinction but only different points of view and objectives.
What made it special
How does this translate into gameplay? A huge open world fully explorable and full of missions in which players collaborate for a single goal: reach the maximum level (60) and face raids to defeat dangerous bosses and conquer epic loots. The journey to level 60 was however a real undertaking where every little thing required time and above all grinding. This feature is at the basis of both the success and the bad reputation of the game (if I had a euro for every time someone said "eh but that game is a drug" now I would have no problem paying for my subscription), the influence of other mmo but above all of gdr like Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasyallowed Blizzard to create absolute depth and immersion for his missions: Are you a shaman in search of power? Go on a pilgrimage to the elemental land on the mountain top, do you want to face the dragon? Collect your set with fire resistance. Of course, in a game in which two factions waged war, a PvP component that was first "free" in the areas of the world where they met and then on the battlefields included in the following patches could not be missing.
Overall rating
The slow progress of the game, the time required and an internet still not as boundless as we understand it today made the completion of each quest or the level advancement a little epic moment and the journey towards the level cap a titanic feat along the which friendships and loves were born also in the real world, a real media phenomenon destined to become a real piece of nerd culture and not only.
Rating: 9
From here on we will call the base game Vanilla .
The Burning Crusade (2007)
As tensions between the Horde and Alliance continued to grow, the sworn enemy of Azeroth, the Burning Legion, continued to weave their plots beyond the Dark Portal. Play
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Settings Enter fullscreen After three years of perilous adventures on Azeroth, Blizzard is ready to take his players to the Outland, a puzzle of cosmic lands left over from what was once Draenor, the planet from which the orcs originate, now completely subjected to the fury of the Demons of the Burning Legion.
What made it special
The first expansion of WoW was a real bomb surprising the players with a series of even more epic contents and challenges such as new races, new areas, missions, flying mounts but above all the opportunity to clash against some big names in Warcraft history such as Archimonde, Kil'Jaeden and especially Illidan Stormrage .
The arrival of the new races was an excellent trick to give the respective factions what was missing both in an aesthetic sense and in class balance: For the Horde the Blood Elves, noble and graceful High Elves with the ability to be paladins and for the 'Alliance the Draenei, a mix between the genius of the lamp and the Protoss of Stracraft, perpetually chased by the Legion first on Argus and then on Draenor where the closeness to the orcs taught them the shamanic arts. In addition to new zones and missions, the level cap brought to 70 allowed players to have access to a new set of talents and abilities to experiment with new and powerful builds. But what most revolutionized the gameplay was the introduction of flying mounts, if previously having an epic terrestrial mount was a feat, being able to fly really meant being heroes because of the high cost in gold that this skill required.
Overall rating
The Burning Crusade was an expansion as literal as possible by expanding the already vast world of gameplay without radically distorting the gameplay previously proposed and going to improve the end game experience with a whole series of new activities and increasing even more success of the Blizzard title. Rating: 9Wrath of the Lich King (2008)
It didn't take long before Blizzard dropped another ace on the Warcraft 3 fan table by announcing Wrath of the Lich King. Play
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Settings Enter fullscreen In this expansion, players were sent north to the icy lands of Northrend, where the Lich King had restarted his undead army with which to subjugate Azeroth.
What made it special
The atmosphere of the second expansion was much darker and heavier than they had ever proposed before, the players embarked on a real crusade against the Scourge while the threat of the Lich King was present around every corner, almost as if Arthas himself was watching our every move. The narrative in this becomes much less dispersed by setting a goal in the minds of the players from the beginning and bringing them patch after patch to a real rise to power to defeat one of the greatest antagonists in the history of Warcraft.
If the hype generated by the return of the Lich King was not enough, what shocked the community at the time was the introduction of the first heroic class: the Death Knight . This class, rebelled against Arthas' yoke, was available for all races, started at level 55 and required at least one character at level 55 (or higher) to be unlocked. The Death Knight presented himself as the exact opposite of the paladin with necromantic magic instead of light and blessings with even the possibility of having a ghoul in tow. Of course, during the first months of its release, this class was disgustingly OP, it was not difficult to find groups of only Death Knights who cleaned the dungeons without the help of healers.
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Settings Enter fullscreen The whole game enjoyed a breathtaking landscape, far from the destroyed lands of Outland but above all a memorable audio sector between music and dialogues capable of making you feel the cold of those lands and characterizing every single boss to the maximum, especially JARAXXUS EREDAR LORD OF THE BURNING LEGION! Another important mention should be made to the use of cinematic with the game graphics engine within the quests themselves, such as that of the Wrathgate which appears during the leveling phase.
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Settings Enter fullscreen Overall rating
Wrath of the Lich King marked the peak of success reaching 12 million players worldwide, in 2008 even the stones had tried at least once the MMO of the Blizzard house. A linear and content-rich storyline, a villain with counter-bows and an unforgettable endgame experience. Rating: 10Cataclysm (2010)
"No King reigns forever" These are the words with which the father of Arthas accompanies the defeat of the Lich King almost as if to presage the progress of the following years. Play
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Settings Enter fullscreen After the success of WotLK Blizzard was faced with a question: "How do we go to meet the multitude of players who are approaching our title for the first time and at the same time satisfy that slice of playerbase that is clamoring for a return the "difficulty" of Vanilla? " The solution was literally the end of the world.
What made it special and what didn't
To rejuvenate his title and make it more attractive to the ranks of new players, Blizzard decided to anticipate the Mayan prophecy (do you remember that of 2012, right?) And to reinvent Vanilla's world, quests and way of playing forever. awakening Deathwing: a huge dragon, now corrupted by the Ancient Gods, which alters the balance of elemental spirits (and also burning everything in its path) leading to a series of catastrophes. Flooded canyons, burnt forests and old players who in trade chat wrote "here once was all countryside", the world of Warcraft as we knew it was gone. Despite this post-apocalyptic scenario, however, the whole series of quests from 1 to 60 were completely modernized by applying everything that the developers had learned from Wrath of the Lich King such as the use of vehicles and a greater use of in-game cinematic. The same goes for the new areas of Azeroth accessible from level 80 to 85 passing through the ancient slopes of Mount Hyjal to the deserts of Uldum to the depths of the world inside the Maelstrom. This new way of leveling, the introduction of the Worgen (werewolves) for the Alliance and Goblin for the Horde and new class / race combinations are perhaps the only positive aspects of this expansion.
