Blizzard has a long record of producing groundbreaking games. With StarCraft and their popular WarCraft franchise, they have become masters in the realm. They reinvented the action/RPG with Diablo I and II. Now they tackle the oversaturated MMORPG genre with World of WarCraft.

A game based off the world of WarCraft (unintentional pun), it has succeeded beyond all wildest hopes and, quite frankly, only God itself could hope to craft a greater MMORPG.

The game has two opposing sides, the Alliance and the Horde. The Alliance claims humans, dwarves, night elves, and gnomes as its races and the paladin as its unique class, while the Horde claims orcs, tauren, trolls, and undead as their races and the shaman as their unique class. Zones are divided into three categories: Alliance, Horde, and contested. Everyone is fair game. Combat can be as low key as a one-on-one rumble in a contested zone to 40-on-40 raids that can turn a continent into a bloodbath.

The graphics are beautiful and offer a wide scope of environments – from a winter wonderland to the rolling grassy hills to the marshlands to the mountains. Traversing the majestic terrain is, of course, no easy task, and a variety of ways besides your own two feet exist to carry you across the land. Each side has flight masters, which are discovered over time (the Alliance use griffins, while the Horde favor wyverns).

WoW is such a success that Blizzard is having immense trouble keeping all the servers in order. Lag and server crash are rampant. However, the game is still young, and this certainly wouldn't be the first time (not by a freaking long shot) that a game needed heavy patch work. This glitch is not enough to deter anyone from playing, however. It's just that damn good.

In closing, WoW is a terrific, if young, game. It is by far the best MMORPG ever made and will be wildly difficult to top. I would both highly recommend and advise against purchasing this game: Do not purchase this game if you have any more than one major commitment in your life, and even then, think twice. It's far too good a game to just play casually.