World of Warcraft

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

World of Warcraft is a Massively-Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game created by Blizzard, based on their popular series of Warcraft real-time strategy games. It's also an avatar of what Blizzard games are all about: Expansions, expansions and expansions with minute changes from the original game. It is the most popular MMO of all time, with millions of players spread across multiple servers. The game costs US$15 a month to play and currently has a level cap of 85. The problem with this however is that unless you are willing to forge every last vapor of life within your body or spend around $300(not including the fee to play) to have it professionally done for you: it will take you nearly a year or more to cap the maximum level on a casual timeline for a single character and that's just the first part, the second part would be finding a guild competent enough to get help you get gear from instances which will start to feel repetitive around the second or third time you run through it......and boy will you run through it more than ten times.

The proof is in the black pudding.

With this, Blizzard makes an ECKSMETALBAWKS HUEG amount of money, just multiply 15 by the Oct 2010 number of 12 million (jesus fucking christ) subscribers. That number doesn't include their profits from in-game vanity items and other IRL WoW merchandise and novelties AND this is just their profit for a single month. 180 megadollars multiplied by 12 months -- and now a moment of silence for the death of what is sane and right in the world. In a year, they make a little over two billion dollars off of the monthly fee alone. The sobbing you hear in the corner is Scrooge McDuck crying from pure envy.

WoW is also the soul-sucking virtual parasite that leaves those who dedicate their lives fully to it to be no more than a mass of flesh of what once resembled a human, turning them into disfigured abominations living on instant noodles and chemical drinks and devolving them into socially retarded weeaboos living in quarters that makes shanties made in cities look like a 5-star hotel suite.

It is often suggested that Wizards of the Coast was strongly influenced by World of Warcraft (and possibly other similar MMOs) when designing the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons - in particular the power-based combat system. Whether or not this is a good or bad thing depends on what you think about World of Warcraft.

Playable factions and races

In WoW, you have the option of siding with either the Alliance or Horde. Since Blizzard ultimately wants to sever every last kind of social interaction between players, you cannot roll another character for the opposing faction on PvP servers and every faction does not have the same language. Ensuring that you cannot make friends on the other side and exploit the social function of the game.

Alliance

The alliance are portrayed as the "more-civilized-than-thou" in the game. They get castles/tree-forts and all other things you'd expect from a race who isn't based off an ethnic tribe. Races include:

Humans

Since we're playing an MMORPG, the squishy 'oomies can't be absent. Since humes are always the Mary Sue, their racial powers are overbalanced. They include: instant escape from any root effect (making them almost unstoppable in PvP), a +10% bonus for reputation gains (and the end-game is ALL about reputation grinding), and being better at using swords than non-humans (in a sword-and-sorcery game).

Ironforge Dorfs

The half of the good-guy dwarfs. They like shooting with guns and hitting stuff with hammers. Ohh and they also have characteristic noses, greedy sneers on their faces, and the passive ability to find treasure, which always ends up with jokes pertaining to a certain religious minority group.

Night Elves

Purple-skinned pansies. Essentially, their storyline is humorously based off the Elfdar, instead of hedonism, they delved in magic. The ones who clusterfucked the NE race by going rampant with magic became High/Blood Elves and the conservative, druid became the Wood el...I mean Night Elves. In game, 80% of them are ~~rogues~~ hunters and 90% of that population will have names that are related to ninja-themed animu and/or nite, bladez, nitebladez etc.

Gnomes

Like dorfs, but shorter, more agile, looks like toddlers and sounds like a 8-year old kid. Pedophile jokes ensue.

Draenei

Squid-faced, holier-than-thou hippie goats....IIIIINNN SPPPAAAACE!

Worgen

Cockney werewolves. While the image of Michael Caine transforming into a dire wolf sounds awesome, it's more along the lines of Dick Van Dyke's chim-en-ney sweep with some fur glued on. Though their racial ability is called "flay," which is weird for one of the 'good' races.

The Horde

The Horde are primarily portrayed as the antagonists of the series, as if them using the color red as a standard color for their banners and tabards along with often portrayed as being a faction of warlike savages (Except for the BEs anyway), wasn't enough of a dead give-away.

Orcs

Not to be confused for the WH40K Orks, who are made for fighten' and winnin', nor the awesomesauce Orcs of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, where they were shamelessly ripped-off from. Now, the Orcs are a prime example how Blizzard totally ripped-off GW, down to the character design, the only difference is that these Orcs think and don't reproduce by scratching themselves or getting killed. They're a shamanistic bunch who... ahh screw it, Waaaaaaagh!

Tauren

Minotaurs that were getting beat up by centaurs until the Orcs took them on as a welfare case. A vehicle for all the "noble savage" crap they couldn't crowbar into the Orc story. Culture is a ripoff of Comanche native Americans, right down to the NPCs greeting you with "How," which they changed to "How may I aid you?" after they got complaints.

Forsaken Undead

They're zombies who regained their free will from Arthas' mental grip on them, and now rally to kill him for vengeance. Akin to Khorne's fluff in the 4th edition Chaos Codex, courtesy of Gav Thorpe, after the death of Arthas, they're now just a mob of loonies who live to commit genocide. They have a boner for chemical warfare, medical experiments(like the Dark Eldar) on their POWs, and committing other war crimes.

Trolls

No, no, not the internet kind, these mythical trolls. The guys are ugly as fuck with canines bigger than their own heads, but the girl models are just humies with bigger booty and petite tusks (this retarded gender dimorphism brought to you by Blizzard's QA team). They're all exaggerated Rastafarian Jamaican/Haiti, in case you didn't get enough of that from Jar-Jar Binks. Did I mention that they're ugly as fuck? Still, their voiced by Steve Motherfucking Blum, though he did sound very disinterested when he did them.

Blood Elves

As stated above, much like how the Eldar fucked up everything, the Night Elves became the present day Elfdar and the BEs became the Dark Eldar, but instead of wanting to get higher than high while being high with sex and drugs, they now want magic just as much as a DE would want sex and drugs. They originally wanted to side with the Alliance, but the Alliance are dicks, and so refused. Ergo, the rest of the events followed. They're now pale-skinned pansies who looks more like humans than wood elves. They're the only race in the entire Horde which don't get stereotyped for being a race of bloodthirsty monsters, they're just homosexual heroin-addicts instead. If you meet a femme Belf in the game, there's actually a 50/50 chance the player is a girl, because the other races are "too icky," and belf girls look exactly like the fucked-up self-image that women's magazines are pushing on teenage girls. Much like the Night Elf, more than half of them are ~~rogues~~ hunters (the rest are paladins), and 99.9% of that population's name will be based off from some animu or LoTR.

Goblins

Imagine dorfs, but green, slightly shorter and 200% more Jewish stereotype than usual. Also, were 99.9% ripped-off from WH40K Grots and 100% from Warhammer Fantasy Battle Goblins (Grots and Goblins are natrually good at inventing and sell stuff?). Having one Shylock character in the story can be good, but when you have a whole goddamn nation of them? Emperor, save us.

Classes

Just like every other RPG, you must choose a career when you create a character. The distinction is often minor, since the only classes that matter are "tank," "ranged-dps," "melee-dps" and "healz," and the latest patches have eliminated the distinction between buffs and conditions so they act the same, just different names. Each of the following classes can take ~~feats~~ talents to specialize, but everyone takes the "maximize damage output" ~~feats~~ talents when they level up, which is why it'd fukkin hard to find a not-retarded tank or heals for your pick-up groups.

Warrior

You're mediocre in DPS and tanking and you run on rage (No seriously, they even have a "rage counter" in-place of mana) to generate most of special attacks, which you gain as you take damage and/or attacking someone, which prevents you from unleashing the fucking fury as fast as every other DPS class. In short, you're a meat shield for the real DPSers. Troll spell casters and especially Paladins by rolling for spell-damage gear and saying "I can use it, can't I?" during raids.

Paladin

You can heal, DPS AND tank better than a warrior. Can't hold two-weapons at the same time, but who gives a shit about dual-wielding for plates? It's either one-hander and shield or two-handers these days anyway.

Death Knight

Now the DK is what you get if you combined the Paladin and Warrior. A lulzy combination of spell-spamming and melee-skill spamming, all the while having damage that would put the two classes to shame, the only difference is that you can only heal yourself. You can now also tank without using shields.

Hunter

Premier ranged DPS that combines physical durability, role flexibility, and strength, ohh yeah, and you also get a pet. Troll Rogues, Shamans, Druids, Warriors, and Paladins in raids by rolling for their epic DPS gear and saying yelling "It's hunter gear noob", even though you could have had better performance by rolling for two-handed DPS gear. Normally used by newbies who's playing the game for the first time.

Rogue

2nd most overused class (second to the hunter). You get to cloak, you wear dark-colored leather gear, you ambush opponents, you get to use poisons, and go mad fast with attacks. Basically, they're neenjahs.

Druid

You're a hippie who gets to morph into different aspects to suit your spec, either into a cat for Feral DPS, a bird-bear thing hybrid (Yes, Blizzard thought ripping GW wasn't enough and decided to include an owlbear) for balance spellcasting, a bear for tanking, and a walking tree-like thing for healing. Basically, the Paladin version of rogues, but you can only play with either the Indian Cows or Wood El...I mean Night Elves. Blizzard later gave the druid class to the Worgen because they were halfway there anyway and the Alliance needed another druid race and also to the trolls hordeside because why the fuck not?

Shaman

You're a spellcaster who can go melee like a monster while doing relatively decent ranged DPS, can sport mail armor, and you can heal. Flexibility at best.

Priest

The least played and most demanded class of all, owing to the fact that it's fucking hard to level a priest to 85. You're more really just expected to heal in raids, don't bother to spec for DPS. A lulzy character to fight when using melee classes.

Mage

Has the ability to negate stuns, enhance their armor with skills, and be an overall bitch to anyone that really needs to get close to them to do damage, but casting silence spells on this will ensure hilarity on them. Frost-spec'd mages are the trollface of cloth-wearers.

Warlock

Like the mage, but is fully optimized to nuke the shit of whatever it's giving a mean look with AoE and DoT spells.

Game and expansions

WoW is notorious for sustaining their game with expansion packs, which really doesn't do anything but further clusterfuck the game and ruin it as it goes by, along with inducing filthy rape on lore since Blizzard is too pants-on-head retarded to keep things coherent.

Vanilla

Vanilla WoW was when WoW was still a somewhat timeless adventure game since you actually had to work like a bitch to get anywhere, and the areas were relatively good. The game was dead 'ard overall and relied a lot on raiding different long, hard and yet still entertaining dungeons and instances as end-game content. But still, the game was overrated.

Burning Crusade

BC was the first expansion of WoW and was centered around a couple of quasi-goat-alien creatures known as the "Draenei", a race of peaceful, holier-than-thou squid-faced goats who were devout to the Light but mutated whenever constantly exposed to Demon-energies. The other race was the "Blood Elves", a race of magically addicted, metro-sexual elves, who crave magic like a crack-whore. It also featured Outland, a world of floating rock after a giant explosion that ripped the planet apart. So after too many fillers, Kil'Jaden gets banished back to the Twisting Nether, Illidan actually may NOT be dead, Kael'thas and Lady Vash'j are both dead, Maiev Shadowsong is free again and appears to have schizophrenia, the Blood Elves can now draw light energies from the Na'aru themselves and everyone lived happily ever after as the Alliance and Horde made peace......well, that was until the new retarded king of Stormwind named Varian Wyrnn decided that war should continue between the Alliance and Horde, and so attacked the Undead city of Undercity for some reason, thus, causing another generation of bloodshed.

When BC was released, it was when the loreraep came into play. BC practically abused the lore, pinned it down, had dirty BDSM-themed buttsecks with it, and threw it aside like a used glove. The game also become IMMENSELY easier with numerous aspects of the game revolving around points and badges, rather than raiding for actual gear. Basically, re-tuned for casualfags. That is, right up until you had to grind for your netherwing drake because that shit takes months.

Wrath of the Lich King

WotLK was the second expansion of WoW and centered around the North po....I mean Northrend, tons of undead gubbins, Norse mythology, and Death Knights. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Oh yeah, and the Lich king is defeated and Bolvar becomes the new Lich King, because the undead are actually sentient beings and will start ravaging Azeroth without a leader to keep them in line, despite the fact that they're docile and feral without any kind of intelligent leadership to command them.

Cataclysm

Cataclysm is the third expansion of WoW and centered around the revival of a brood of EEEEEEVVVIL dragons known as the Black Dragonflight. And also, induced even more lore-rape that you couldn't believe half the BS they thought of making official. Now includes the "Worgen", a race of furries and the "Goblins", a race of money-grubbing midget furries.

Mists of Pandaria

Not a lot is know about this expansion so far, excepts that it brings a new furry class, the Pandaren which will be playable by both horde and alliance; and a new class, the monk, which is going to be a wuxia based melee dps/ healer / tank and a new zone, Pandaria.

Anonymous

Search