Why not to play World of Warcraft

So...I know what you're thinking - this is going to be another person dissing the game and saying that it fritters your life away and all you players out there (and I know you're out there) shouldn't bother...well- sort of...This is more of an ironic rant in which I will review the game for all you non-warcrackers and slag it to all the players in equal measure.

First - if you had heard this game was addictive you heard right. Hours burn up on the clock - just evaporate into thin air - when you sit down at your PC and click 'play'. Overall the game has a cartoony-type feel to it (which puts a lot of people off) but hey; you're in a fantasy world with fantasy species and magical powers...poetic licence and all that. In the original version there are two continents to the fictional world of Azeroth; and they.Are.Huge. There are also two expansion sets so far with more in the pipeline and numerous islands, new species and new lands and even an extension to the maximum character level added since the games release.

I started playing 4 years ago, a year after the game came out and after falling out with Runescape. Character creation was easy (and still is although nowadays names are hard to come by because of character volumes) and I took the option of playing with friends on a normal server (as opposed to a role-play or player-versus-player server as is optional). I logged in and away I went. The first thing I noticed was the broad expanse of options in the audio/visual settings. To this day I find these useful as the older my PC gets the less she can take, and so it is good that with this game you can turn up or down the visuals to match your graphics card. I run mine on an outdated, 10 year old PC with Nvidia Geforce (go me LOL) and the most redeeming feature about Warcraft to me is that it still runs on it - even when old games like Neverwinter Nights, Black & White and even Vampire:the Masquerade simply don't. So we like the minimum system requirements.

But within hours of starting it I was beggining to realise that this game was going to eat my life - and it has ever since...It is a combination of vastness, choice of gameplay, endlessness of quests and other things to do and multiple characters to play with different starting quests for each that made it so highly addictive. But times have changed, I am sad to say, and the innocent joy of the game is no longer such a fascination to me.

In trade chat people constantly try to sell you in-game money, people swear at each other and are rude just for the sake of it. Few seem helpfull anymore and a good guild is hard to come by. Nowadays I can't play it without at least one person swearing at me (generally when I tell them I'm a girl they drop it but still...its just bad manners) or randomly being mean - it sucks. Methinks perhaps that Blizzard have become victims of their own success a little; and maybe I'm just a little hurt that non-gamers are beggining to join 'cause it's cool'. While we're on the subject of bad points what's with all the patches and updates? The game now takes up 14 gig on my poor, overworked PC's hard drive so if you don't have a lot of free space I wouldn't bother. Then there's money; forty quid for the game when it was new, twenty for eack expansion set AND £8.99 a month just to play the damn thing...in essence Blizzard have been robbing me blind for years!

Overal the support and GM's are great, helpful and generally roleplay their part (which is fun). The game is the ultimate RPG and I see it as a natural progression from games that actually have an ending upwards. One thing I will say is that if Oblivion had been online then this would be similar (think less petty theft and more cartoony) but much, much bigger.

Well, that's about all the ranting I am prepared to do...It's nearly Warcrack time and I must leave the decision in your hands. Remember - if you start playing it do not curse my name and be prepared to give up a fair whack of your social life.

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