Personal enquiries 2

Economy:

Wow is unique in the way it offers you the opportunity to become an entrepreneur. It does so with it’s in depth economy, consisting completely of players buying and selling materials and armour. You can choose 2 professions in Wow, from a vast list of them to suit your play style.

The level of realism is really incredible, as the prices of items for sale depend completely on what people choose to sell them for. This means that real business tactics come into play with undercutting competitors for your goods, to whole sale traders who choosing to buy and sell only when prices fluctuate. The rarity of goods also affects their price, as the more people there are trying to sell one particular thing, the lower the price will drop.

(The auction house layout in WoW.)

 The professions available cover all of the cliché RPG professions such as Blacksmithing and Alchemy, but include very niche ones too, such as inscriptions and gem crafting, each profession providing the apprentices of it the abilities to craft useful items to sell and trade with others.

The level of detail in the economy of WoW creates an entire game of its own where you can try to make a fortune and destroy your competitors, completely separate to the RPG elements of the game.

Aesthetics:

The Aesthetics of WoW have been debated for a long time, as the low poly characters and blurry textures have remained the same for 12 years, with very few updates. I agree that the character models look quite shoddy, compared to those of Guild Wars or SWTOR, but I also think that the hand drawn quality of the textures adds a unique style to the visuals, not only in the characters, but the environments.

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(dat character design.)

Above is one of the newer character models for one of the Orc leaders. The shapes and colours of the texture are very stylized to fit in with the exaggerated feel that WoW’s models and textures boast. 

You get a sense of the weight and strength of the character and the model really captures the character’s traits. They are instantly recognisable as silhouettes. Compare the above model to those found in Guild Wars 2.

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It is obvious that Arenanet wanted a realistic look to their characters, and the good thing about that approach is that your audience might be able to relate to their characters more. But I think realism can look quite dull if not done well.

Despite the high quality looking models, they don’t seem very iconic, and in my opinion fail to show any fun or interesting traits or personalities through their shapes and proportions. These character models really bore me and I think they lack character, which is the one thing they are MEANT to show.