IT-Review

Wired: A Kinder, Gentler Type of War

Whether you join the mostly good Alliance or the predominantly evil Horde, the area you start in is essentially a playground for neophyte adventurers, only instead of a bin of multicolored balls you have a field packed with wolves, zombies or other ostensibly dangerous creatures strolling around waiting to be whacked.

Perks and powers abound. Your character is pleasant to look at and fun to play from the beginning, and just gets more so. Warlocks, for instance, start out with a bouncy little demon to boss around, and eventually earn the ultimate in fan-service, their own private succubus. Hunters can track enemies nearly right out of the gate and can start recruiting beasts as permanent allies within a few hours of play, and so forth for each class.

Dying in World of Warcraft is about as noninvasive as it can be, short of having a dialog box that says "Do you want to die?" with "yes" and "no" buttons. After you get beat down, your spirit rises in a graveyard somewhere fairly nearby. You have the option of either running to your corpse and reviving it there with no ill effect -- your spirit is even given a speed boost for that purpose -- or being revived by an angel for the price of a bit of repairable damage to all your equipment and a short period of reduced fighting ability.