World of Warcraft was the second MMORPG I decided to try, being a fan of the Warcraft games. I used to play Warcraft III online a lot so I thought it would have been great if I could actually walk around in the expansive world. Here you'll find how I enjoyed the game in comparison to FFXI.

WoW was fun to play and I preferred the much more varied environments, enemies and quests when compared to FFXI but, it didn't leave me with the same memorable experience. For my first character, I chose to be a elven druid because the elves was my favourite race during the WC3 games. It only took me less than 2 weeks or so to level him to level 60 in WoW because there was none of the hard level restriction quests to do, no financial problems to fund your gear, no XP loss when you died and no need to wait for parties to level. You just soloed your way through like a breeze. FFXI took me over 4 months to level to 75.

Doing one of the harder quests with a party.

To be fair however, it was good to be away from the frustrations of FFXI, seeing good items drop more often and having no need to compete against rival "gilsellers" (or "gold sellers" in this case). Also, while you still of kill mobs non-stop to level, WoW had quests with little storylines to drive you along. And when you did actually party, some people actually take into consideration there's something known as dinner time and are willing to wait instead of kicking you out of the hard to gather party.

Waiting for the train.

It was also enjoyable gathering together with the high level guild members to take on dungeons like the Molten Core, Blackrock or Zul'Gurub. I didn't play through all of them however due to some extemely terrible lag with my ISP, Tiscali... For some reason, I had no lag in receiving data but was lagging in sending commands. Well, Tiscali has an extremely bad reputation for their service anyway (yes, now I know) so, the problem must be them. Stay away from this ISP.

Fighting the big puppy in Blackrock, one of the places high levels raid for gear.

Hello, General. Give me my chest piece, please.

Even so, I didn't find the high level dungeon raids as entertaining as the "Die-nyamis" fights in FFXI. While in WoW, we would carefully pull one mob after the other as we made our way to the boss, in "Die-nyamis", waves of mobs came at a time and with a time limit on the area, it was much more exhilarating.

The guild gathering for Zul'Gurub.
Time to kill that glowing witch for the goods.

On the other hand, the Battlegrounds were fun despite Alliance getting beaten around 9 out of 10 times by the Horde. Most of the time everyone ended up arguing with each other and sometimes making separating themselves into their own little group back on the Bronzebeard server. But when you do win one of those great games where both sides are really fighting hard, it's brilliant fun. I played Battlegrounds for a while and got up to Commander rank, giving me a full set of PvP Druid gear and a sleek looking Black War Tiger too. I made it into the top 5 in the PvP charts but, don't know where I've decayed to now since leaving. Having mounts in the game was much better than having to run back to town and then paying a small fortune to rent a Chocobo in FFXI.

Battlegrounds, Capture the Flag. Just need to get our own flag back from the Horde now.

Time to assault the Horde base for the next flag!

Once you have enough Honor Points and gain the rank of Knight, you can enter this area to buy some PvP gear. Mounts are available for higher ranks.

What I really hated was, there were beggars everywhere in Ironforge! You'll always find someone coming up to you to ask for some money, something that I don't see in FFXI. I really don't see why there are beggars in WoW when you can gain a considerable amount of money by selling all the junk you get from killing mobs during quests to NPCs and, not to mention there are quest rewards. In FFXI, there are none of these things to help you earn money. You'll find yourself having to take up a craft to get a good income. While in WoW, you can't fail in any of the crafts you choose and materials are generally easy to obtain, you could find yourself losing a large fortune failing in FFXI or purchasing materials to level to the next craft rank.

Ironforge, the main Alliance city where everyone gathers for the Auction House. Always fun when the countdown starts before maintenance.

In the end, I think WoW is a good MMORPG for the casual online gamer and I would have stayed longer to experience more of the high level dungeons if it wasn't for the send lag I was experiencing.

Flying off to another adventure.

Related Links: World of Warcraft (EU)