World of Warcraft

For those of you that are familiar with behaviorism, this game is one big operant conditioning experiment on YOU.

It is a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. You don't know how many responses (ie - attacks on an enemy, or whatever) it will take to get the payoff (experience, treasure, or just the buzz from watching a creature die). A VR schedule produces the highest rate of responding, in chimpanzee, pigeons... or YOU. That is why it is the most common schedule of reinforcement in the game.

The game also uses fixed interval schedules, when certain tasks can only be completed at certain times of the day or month.

One of the keys in a reinforcement schedule is to not have the payoff require too many responses, otherwise there is ratio strain (too much effort for too little reward).

The game gets around this by creating a strong reinforcement history, having a small Variable Ratio schedule maybe VR4 (an average of 4 attacks will kill a creature at level 1 or 2). Once you have been conditioned, the reinforcement schedule is "thinned" (it takes 10, then 20, then 40, then 200, then 1,000 attacks to get the reward).

"Thinning" is done slowly - they are training you to do more and more for less and less - one step at a time.

Behaviorists have trained monkeys to press a lever 10,000 times for a single banana in this manner. They will press the lever until they tear muscles, break their own bones, bleed themselves, for hours.

Are you feeling smart now? For more information, look up behaviorism, or reinforcement theory, on the net.

When you are done reading, delete your character, cancel your account, and chop the game disks into small pieces with a sharp pair of scissors.

Blizzard has always delivered a quality, well-thought-out product. World of Warcraft is certainly no exception. When this game was announced, it already had many fans (prospective players): those who played the original Warcraft games (of which there were three).

This game now has 50.6% of the entire MMORPG market (according to http://www.mmogchart.com/) at the time of this writing. Blizzard is doing something that most other MMO creators have yet to do consistently: stay on top of the problems. Yes, it has some things that need to be fixed, but far less that any other MMO I've played.

The world in which this game is set is absolutely stunning and brilliant in complexity as well as it's immersive nature. Players choose sites between either the Horde or Alliance, then select a race followed by a class (i.e.: a warrior, a mage, etc). The Warcraft series has already developed a full, rich lore on which the World of Warcraft can draw it's own story line.

I know that Wikipedia isn't always overly accurate, but I must say, if you're curious about this game, I'd say read the Wikipedia article.

Only Two words sum up World Of Warcraft, Sheer Brilliance. This is unlike any game you will ever play. You will be hooked as soon as you start to play as this game is SO darn addictive !! World of Warcraft is a massively multi-player online game that enables thousands of players to come together online and battle against the world and each other. Players from across the globe can leave the real world behind and undertake grand quests and heroic exploits in a land of fantastic adventure. At long last, the world of Azeroth, first glimpsed in Warcraft 1 and further enhanced in subsequent strategy games, is realised in glorious detail and ready for the arrival of millions of prospective players. World of warcraft is 20 times better than all current MMORPG's, simply because it is 20 times more FUN.There are a few reasons why WOW is ten times MORE FUN than other MMORPG's. Attack cities and kill its leader with 39 other people. Lots of PvP, Lots of fun. Warsong gulch is like capture the flag in Quake except its an RPG game instead of a First Person Shooter. Endless hours of fun there. The Battlegound Alterac valley. 40 vs 40 PvP-zone that is huge and even has PvP-quests in it. Hours of FUN. A huge pvp arena where fighting is too the death. A chest is dropped in an arena every 3 hours and opening it is interesting as pvp is free for all in there and everyone wants to open it and will do everything they can to stop you. MORE FUN. Instance Dungeons for level 60's like Stratholme, Scholomance, Black rock depths, Lower blackrock spire, upper blackrock spire. Dire maul north, dire maul west, dire maul east, Molten Core, Blackwing lair and so on and so on. Plus all the high level elite bosses roaming around the world that takes 30-40 people some effort to take down. More instances and brand new content added EVERY month in new patches (this is the reason why we pay our monthly fee, and we are well rewarded). A talent system that enables you to define you character from everyone else and also an Ability to redo your talents whenever you want which lets me do what I want when I want and the way I like it. OK this game does have it's downside's. Don't all games? The main problem with this game is the company that created it. Servers go offline with no warning, some servers can have bad lag at peak times, and most of the servers are full with queue times when you first log in. The customer service from Blizzard Entertainment is Auful, but it is getting better as time goes on. Also, a lot of younger players play this game and some more mature people will find this difficult, as playing with 12 year old children that spam the chat channels is not their idea of an Online game. If this does not appeal to you, play Everquest 2 instead. As a final word, World of Warcraft is the best Computer game available for the PC to date, and seeing its huge amount off success across the world, will be for a long time.

Simply put: One of THE BEST video games ever made.

Edit: Revamps and additions ruined the game, had to walk away.

Excitement, adventure, and amazement unfolded when the game first came out, like opening the gates of a wonderland. Focused on polished game play and community, World of Warcraft learned much from its declining predecessors and impressively has this original version in tact. Role play servers were for role-players and was a norm both in random interaction as well as guilds.

Customer service is a definite highlight, changes are positive as they are in response to player's interests/requests. Finding quests can be a bit of a challenge at times and in the series, this version is the most difficult to survive questing especially solo.

Although Classic is still around today, the wave of nostalgia players have come and gone (now that Burning Crusade Classic is the rage). This means there's not really much of a community anymore as well as little to buy/sell at the auction house. Few role players can be found on the role play server. On the upside, there's no competition for questing, nuisance chat or spam, so the world feels big again. Difficulty is up, finding groups, earning gold, and a good-fit guild is down.