World of Warcraft Battlechest
Friday, April 24th, 2009
Enter the World’s #1 Online Game with the complete collection of World of Warcraft. This epic value contains the original Game of the Year and its blockbuster first expansion set, The Burning Crusade. Also included are Battle Chest Guides from BradyGames, detailing the tips, tricks, and strategies that will aid your quest to Level 70.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Awesome
Awesome game, have had this for a while…the one I bought here was a gift, and the person plays it, so I guess they like it.
5 Stars Addictive but won’t ruin your life
I’ve always loved massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), but swore off them after a horrible addiction to the first Everquest (EQ). After trying the 10-day free trial, I realized that WoW is no where near as bad as EQ was. The realms are massive, but allow you to travel from one point to another view zepplins, ships, and creatures (provided that you find the flight master in each location).
The rested exprience is what really makes this game amazing for people who don’t have time to play it like the kids who do all the time, or for people (like myself) who enjoy playing, but refuse to dedicate 7 hours a week night to WoW. Essentially, when you log off, you begin to rack up rested experience time. When you log back on, your XP bar will show up blue, and any creature you kill, you get double the experience. This will last until the allotted rested XP time has expired (no real way of telling when that will happen).
Another good note is that when you die, you don’t lose XP and you don’t have a time limit to retrieve your corpse before it decomposes and you lose everyhing on it (like EQ did).
Levelling up much easier with this as well, as there are plenty of quests which give you a lot of XP compared to killing a creature.
This Battlechest is great for someone who enjoyed the 10-day trial, but is still confused about parts of the game. I haven’t dug through the two books very much, but when I have, they’ve really come in handy.
If your significant other has a problem with you playing this “too much,” introduce him/her to SecondLife, which will keep them occupied. Just make sure you have 2 computers; my wife and I keep fighting over who’s turn it is to use the PC. Good thing I’m building a new rig as we speak, specifically for the purpose of resolving the WoW vs. 2ndLife conflict.
1 Star Wish I could finish downloading everything so I could play
This may be a wonderful game. Or it may not be. Sometime next week I may find out. There were problems loading the game from the discs; that took two days to resolve, what with the limited hours the Blizzard tech support desk is available. And now that it’s loaded, it is on its second day of downloading required patches. I have a DSL connection, but due to a number of factors the tech support desk couldn’t help me with (or maybe was giving me the runaround on) it is downloading at dial up speeds. When you have several Gb to download - and the accumulated patches really are that big - this is going to take a while.
As for the package as a whole, the two “bonus” guides are miniature versions of the originals, which means the many graphics and especially the tables and maps are of very inferior quality to the original. I had to resort to a magnifying glass to read some of the text.
Since this is an online, pay-to-play game, the registration process required an upfront credit card, PayPal, or game card account. I inquired about this, since the box implies you get 30 days free with the purchase of the game (which, by the way, is slipping away while my computer downloads all the patches) and I received a disingenuously worded reply about avoiding interruption of game play time when the trial period runs out. You pay at the beginning of each subscription period and all the options except the game card renew automatically unless you cancel. Thus Blizzard gets their money even if you don’t want to keep playing, unless you manage to make that unseen deadline to cancel the subscription.
Finally, I must say, that as I have periodically monitored the status of the “realms” (areas where your character is assigned to play)over the last few days, it appears that they are out of service a lot - at least once every three or four days. Sometimes they are out for hours. I rather doubt Blizzard gives you credit for those times, either.
So, think hard about whether you want to spend money on this. The Amazon price is not discounted, so you may be able to find it cheaper at a local retailer. The books included aren’t much of a bargain, given their poor quality, and you can find all the information in them on online forums, so you may get a much better deal buying the basic program and the upgrade separately. Finally, if you do buy it, realize you won’t be able to play it right away. Between installation issues and the required patch download times, it will be days or longer before you can play, and you’ll need to leave your computer tied up downloading the patch files during most of that time.
On the whole: not recommended
5 Stars Game’s great but don’t waste your money on faster shipping
I love the game, there are so many options and quests for this game I imagine I’ll be playing it for years. Don’t waste your money on 3-5 day shipping though because that really only means that they will process your order in 5 days, stick with the free shipping and you won’t be disappointed. The item shipped from Dallas and took almost 2 weeks, so really if it takes 2 weeks to ship it less than 5 hours away imagine how long it will take you to get it.
4 Stars Fun and addicting
I started playing a couple weeks ago on a couple 10-day free trial accounts. Nevermind the details of why two accounts, suffice it to say, I was “recruited” into the game and find it very enjoyable. It is visually stunning.
I agree with the critical review, with the caveat is that if you change the game world, you could break it for other players, so it is best to not change it.
After installing, I still had a couple hours of patching and updating, which was fine as it coincided with their Tuesday realm server maintenance which lasts 8 hours from 3AM - 11AM PST.
I haven’t looked at the books as I simply dove right in on my trial account. The in game help and tutor system was very beneficial. However, you can make bad or good choices in character development and I’ve had a few false starts.
There is the tactical side to it that will require some learning as it’s not entirely intuitive, but there are great resources on the net (WoWWiki and Blizzard’s own WoW guide on their site: [...].
The ingame infrastructure and communication system (auctions, mail transportation, etc) is something to want a guide for and the WoW guide does cover a lot of the key aspects of the game.
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