Great playability and an enormous amount of game content. While many quests are still “kill 20 of these and bring me 10 livers”, there are a lot of quests worthwhile, fun to do, with well thought rewards. The humor and some references to classic movies and sci-fi titles make it even more enjoyable. One of the best MMORPGs, if not the best.

Graphics: 86

Almost nothing changed in the game graphic engine, but somehow the textures, new models, animations and architecture of places evolved much. The player gets the feeling of vast varied areas from the first moment he steps into the Dark Portal. I've noticed a minor bug with the user interface, whenever you get disconnected you loose sometimes some icons (they are black or transparent) - but doing “/console reloadui” fixes it.

Multiplayer: 92

Enjoyable experience while soloing, or grouping with other players. By lowering the raids cap to 25 man or below in the new instances, and by design, individuals are more meaningful in raids, and players feel more important - and they are.

Sound: 94

I just love the music scores, absolutely superb. Sounds are good as Blizzard always thought us. More speech has been added to NPCs which gives dungeon battles a more dynamic aspect. It supports DirectSound and hardware acceleration, but that's about it.

Hardware: 82

It doesn't require a powerful system, and it will run acceptable even on a GeForce 5200. The main problem is that you need at least 1 GB of RAM in order to experience it smoothly. Also, a lot of disconnects and server restarts at the beginning, and it will still happen from time to time - you are in the middle of a dungeon and you get disconnected, and you have to start all over. That's not too pleasant, you have to have a lot of patience.

Recommended Addons

I am not gonna leave you yet - I know I know you must be so bored; soon. I am gonna direct you to a few addons that I use and found to be very handy:

• Natur EnemyCastBar - although you may say WoW has one now by default, this is so much more, and I really encourage you to try it

• SCT - Scrolling Combat Text - the one and only: yes Blizzard added something like this too, but again, try this!

• CT Mod - one of the oldest in the business, I personally use Raid Assist and Mail and Map mod only at the moment, but they have a lot of cool features that might interest you

• Atlas - a mod containing all instance maps and bosses.

• Atlas LootEnhanced - an addon for Atlas that shows you the exact boss and mob drops throughout instances

• EquipCompare - I find it vital: when you select an item, it compares it to your equipped item so you can choose if you need it or not

• Perl Unit Frames - even if it will take you a bit of time to configure them, I prefer these instead of the classic game interface. Try it out! (I use Perl Classic)

• MobHealth - I use MobHealth alone, but this is the link to MobInfo that contains it. MobHealth displays the exact number of hit points that a monster or player has (and mana/energy/rage as well).

• ItemRack - a must for me: allows you to crate and change item sets fast, helping you to be prepared for any situation. It supports triggered events, so you can equip your +riding skill gear for example when you mount, and switch back to your normal gear when you dismount. Automatically.

• Mobile Frames - This allows me to move every window from my UI on the screen.

• TheoryCraft 2 - All kinds of statistics related to your character.

• WoW Econ - Last but not least, I find this a very useful addon, updated every day. It contains an items database, with prices from the Auction House for most if not every item, dissenchanting predictions, and much much more.

I am sure I can find many more, but I will stop here, and let you discover the rest. Here are some links to sites containing addons so you can search there if you are interested in something particular:

http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/files/addons/

http://ui.worldofwar.net/

http://www.wowinterface.com/

Happy gaming!