World of Warcraft



World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) set in the Warcraft universe. It is developed by Blizzard Entertainment and contains 3 expansion packs:  World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade,  World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King,  World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and  World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. The initial release is now sometimes know as "vanilla WoW" or "classic WoW".

As of 2010, World of Warcraft has more than 12 million monthly subscribers, and currently holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest and most popular MMORPG. It also continues its further story development throughout its franchising, other than online media, such as Warcraft novels, comics, manga, RPG books, TCG, and board games.

Features
Note the following are the pre-expansion details:
 * Uses and expands the storyline from the Warcraft series of games.
 * Customizable characters:
 * 2 factions: Horde and Alliance.
 * 8 initial races: Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Night Elf, Orc, Troll, Undead, Tauren; added Blood Elf / Draenei and  Goblin / Worgen.
 * 9 initial classes: Mage, Warlock, Priest, Rogue, Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Warrior, Paladin; added Death Knight (Hero Class).
 * 9 initial professions, enabling resource gathering and item crafting; added Jewelcrafting and  Inscription.
 * 4 initial secondary professions: Cooking, Fishing, First Aid, Riding; added Archaeology.
 * 2 initial class-based professions (Rogue): Lockpicking, Poisons (removed with patch 3.0.2); added Runeforging.
 * The Talents and Glyphs system allows further customization of the character's skills and stats.

Gameplay System

 * General System
 * A casual-friendly character progression system up to a point.
 * Quests occur frequently, and being offline (resting) increases your experience points gain.
 * In-game trading, mail service and auction system.
 * Four server types: Normal (PvE), RP, PvP, and RPPvP.


 * Quest and Honor Systems
 * A PvP Honor system, 3 initial Battlegrounds; added 1, 2 and  2
 * Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch; added Eye of the Storm,  Strand of the Ancients / Isle of Conquest, and  Battle for Gilneas / Twin Peaks.


 * Events
 * A variety of World Events including:
 * Darkmoon Faire, Children's Week, Scourge Invasion, Midsummer Fire Festival, Hallow's End, and Feast of Winter Veil.
 * Dozens of Instanced Dungeons, ranging from Blackfathom Deeps to Zul'Farrak with dozens more added in content patches and expansions.


 * User Interface and Customer Support
 * Customize AddOn and Interface with some game commands support.
 * Client seamlessly supports both Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Linux users can play via Wine (MS Windows emulation), however this is not supported and can be buggy at times.

Availability

 * Oceania (English - Australia, Hawaii, New Zealand)
 * North America (English - US & Canada)
 * Europe (English-UK, French, German, Spanish, Russian)
 * South Korea
 * China (Simplified and Traditional Chinese; including Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau)
 * Latin America (Spanish, English?)

Trivia
The original WoW is sometimes referred to as "vanilla World of Warcraft," "pre Burning Crusade (Pre BC)," or "classic World of Warcraft".