First off, I’m not trying to self promote, hence I won’t be posting any links or anything, but rather I’m asking for help from the community as I genuinely have writer’s block when it comes to writing a review for a game as large as this one.
How do you even begin? What do I talk about? Keep in mind this isn’t a BfA review. This is a World of Warcraft review. We’re talking the entire span of the game here.
I’m hoping that the community can help share some thoughts about the game in general, first impressions, and what they both love and hate about the game. Again, we aren’t talking about BfA, but rather the game as a whole.
I really appreciate the help, and I’m hoping this will help bring some ideas to life for the review.
WoW is a big game with a lot of history and a lot to do in it for a wide variety of ‘effort’ ranges… Some context is going to be necessary in terms of who the audience actually is, and what restrictions/goals are in place for the review.
IE the difference between a gaming news site article which needs to be generally blunt and to the point, a brand new writer looking to get started, a school assignment where the audience may not be gamers at all, etc.
To be entirely honest, you might need to narrow your scope. Maybe talk about a specific feature (like raiding, or dungeons, or pvp), since you seem to not want to talk about a specific expansion. I don’t think its possible to cover 15 years of a game the size of WoW in a single review.
So, I’ve been writing game reviews for years now, though I’ve never tackled an MMO before. I’ve written reviews for games like the Halo franchise, Doom 2016, Rocket League, etc. Most of those games, as you put it, are straight and to the point. They either have campaigns associated with them, or they have certain goals that the player needs to focus on in particular.
WoW is in an entirely different league here, which is why I’m splitting the review up into two parts. The first will be a very general layout of the game itself, and the second part will focus on the pros and cons of Pathfinder.
Ahhhh ok. So maybe the first part should have a focus on how players experience the world via exploration first. The questing system as a way of physically going to a place in the world, and then hearing story bits from an NPC. That focus on exploration then turned into a reward system under pathfinder, rather than being a fundamental part of the original gameplay.
Yes! Thank you! I figured I would focus Part 1 on leveling and questing since that seems to be the general focus of a new player. I’ll briefly touch on raiding and dungeons as something the player can focus on once he or she reaches level cap, but I want to mainly focus on the journey to getting there first
I want to talk about the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, Outland, Northrend, Pandaria, Draenor, the Broken Isles, and Kul Tiras/Zandalar.
I figured I could focus the second part on Pathfinder since that seems to be when the game started to shift in a very different direction for players.
I think I see the conundrum. That will get pretty dry without a heavy narrative focus. And the charm of WoW is something that really must be experienced.
For me, leveling is all about growth. Becoming stronger in terms of character progression and me as a player getting better at the game. It offsets my frustrations at the real world for being stupid and holding people back for pointless reasons. I discovered WoW in 2005 shortly after I escaped from a cult. (Long story.) Anyway, WoW helped me anchor myself during a rather turbulent time. It gave me something to be proud of, to look forward to, and a way to define myself.
The things that I don’t like about the game are basically the same as the things I don’t like about real life. Over time, the game has shifted from feeling like “anyone can work hard and achieve the goals they set for themselves” to “I can’t get there from here because I need gear and experience to be able to obtain gear and experience.” The teamwork, cooperation, and general sense of community is lacking compared to what it used to be, imo.
I don’t blame pathfinder for it, though. I think there is a deeper design issue at fault. WoW started as an MMORPG. They slowly removed the RPG elements, and now they are slowly removing the MMO elements. WoW is becoming a genre-less thing that lacks identity. The same thing that it helped me find in 2005, it now lacks. I suppose it’s ironic, but it makes me sad.
That got rather more pessimistic than I intended lol.
Not at all! This is exactly the type of material I’m looking for. I really do appreciate you sharing your experience of the game, though I’m sorry it came from a more negative real life experience.
As another poster said, that is kind of a lot to put in a review.
The review would end up muddled, not really giving the reader a sense of whether or not they would like the game.
If It was me, I’d focus on something like BFA since it has more choices. I’d compare a character like mine, who never groups/does dungeons or raids(unless maybe for a specific content unlock, on the lowest difficulty possible), with someone who does raids and/or mythic content. Then i’d compare how satisfied they are with their gear, since at this point I’m very satisfied with what I can get as a “murder hobo.”
For example, some people could raid and do well in Vanilla Wow. So they think of Vanilla Wow fondly, giving it a good review. They would also like to play Classic, which is as close to Vanilla Wow as possible. They may be let down, when their experience this time is not the same (because they probably won’t have the same “global village” of people they were with then, or the ability to raid on the same schedule as back then.)
I played Vanilla Wow but could not raid. I saw how little the game offered outside of that, really growing to hate it. Near the end, I was never going to return to Wow again; Then I got an invite to the Burning Crusade beta, which I stayed in nearly up until it released. I think I used the week, or two, just to chill and only return to “Vanilla” once more to wrap up some loose ends.
The review is actually up now, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post a link here, so I won’t. Still, I want to thank everyone for their input! It helped a lot
Why are you writing a review if you have no idea what you are doing? Beyond that I’m wondering why anyone would want to review WoW… especially merely in general. I could almost understand an in depth review of the current expansion compared to previous expansions, but a general review of WoW as a game? There are like 5,000 reviews out there already… by people who don’t have to ask someone else how to write a review.
![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")