someone mentioned it's been a while since i last posted here. ah, well. best try to redress that, i suppose.

one of the reasons i've not posted much is that well, i still pretty much play world of warcraft for a living, even one year after it's been first released. i always figured that unless one actually played the game there wouldn't be much interest talking about what i'm doing or what's going on in WoW, but some people have told me that yes, they would actually care to hear some thoughts on the matter.

heh. foolish mortals. :)

depending on what sort of questions and feedback i get, i might occasionally write about some aspects of the game (and the people who play it, natch), but for now, let me try my hand at a (somewhat) short overview.

The Game and it's World.

WoW is a mmorpg set in the fictional world of azeroth, which is your typical fantasy world, complete with gnomes, dwarves, elves, orcs and ogres (as well as cow and cat people for good measure.) it would take the better part of an hour to just gloss over the general backstory of just how azeroth got to the point it is at the moment, but through the glory of the internet, i can save myself a lot of typing and just point people to this URL for a lot of the WoW backstory.

Lore and Storylines

one of the nice things about WoW is that all that backstory isn't just for show and tell -- it's actually fairly central to the journey you as a player undertake and an awful lot of game lore is scattered all throughout the game, just waiting to be discovered. a good example of this is the story arc that involves the dark iron dwarves. you encounter these pesky adversaries fairly early on (some are present in Dun Morogh, the dwarven starting area) and as you progress through different zones, you will repeatedly cross their paths. just what's up with them, you might ask? well, eventually you find out just what's up with them, but that answer is in itself the start of a whole new adventure, on an even bigger scale. what starts as an encounter with a few pesky dwarves up to no good eventually paths into an epic struggle involving gods and monsters. and oh yeah, you and your friends are caught in the crossfire. good luck!

there are several of these types of epic storylines woven all across the gameworld and to me, it's one of the most interesting aspects of the game -- to find out what happens next.

Factions, Races, Classes

there are two factions in the game -- horde and alliance. both factions have four races that a player can choose from and each race in turn can choose from a multitude of classes. if one has played EverQuest, or really any other mmorpg, most all of this should be fairly familiar. each race has some special abilities that all members get (explained at character creation) and each class has their own distinct abilities, as well as pros and cons.

i think a breakdown of the classes might be a good point to pick up with, the next time people cajole a post out of me (hopefully very soon...:)