After a while the quests I was being given started to push me to adventure farther from home to new areas of the map, soon I had discovered other small towns and villages all with their own quests to play through and the creatures I was being asked to fight were becoming tougher and more interesting. As more of Teldrassil opened up before me I became more and more impressed with the work done by Blizzard's designers. The land felt huge and more importantly alive in a way that a lot of single player games never manage to come close to, at times I'd just stop and stare out over the forest enjoying the view. While the graphics engine WoW runs on isn't exactly pushing the polygon capabilities of more modern graphics cards to the max its lack of detail is hidden somewhat by the beautifully stylised cartoon-esque art design. The interface too has been honed to perfection, little touches like an auto run button that when turned on means you only have to control the direction of your character making the sometimes long journeys from location to location much easier and allowing you to organise your character's supplies and abilities at the same time as you travel.

Finally, just when I was beginning to wonder if I'd missed the point somewhat, I was given a quest that recommended I form a group with other players in order to complete it. Although essentially a standard find and kill quest the difference with this one was that the monster in question was considered a little too strong for my still fairly puny night elf to kill all on his lonesome. I found the monsters lair easily enough and almost as soon as I arrived on the scene I received an invitation to join a group with three other players. I agreed and we stood around waiting for our leader to tell us when to attack. At this point I realised with a slight sense of disappointment just how such quests are possible in a world. Once the monster in question has been killed by a band of hardy adventurers he doesn't remain dead as you would expect in a single player game, instead he re-spawns a few minutes later giving the next group a chance to kill it. A 'trick' that is obviously needed to keep the quest working for all players but the effect of which is ruined when multiple groups want to do the same thing at the same time leading to a queue of groups waiting for their turn who see the monster die and re-spawn a number of times before they get their go making the whole noble quest to fell the evil beast idea feel a little more like waiting for your turn on a whack-a-rat fairground stall. Also not helping matters, the player to player interaction that I expected being part of such a group to involve was sadly lacking too. Once I'd accepted the invite into the group our leader simply told us to 'wait here' and then 'kill it' when our turn came. After the beast lay dead at our feet and we'd looted its body one by one my three accomplices left the group without another word and ran off to continue their own adventures. Hardly the pinnacle of immersive multiplayer role playing I'd been expecting but it was, to be fair, an early quest and perhaps the people I'd grouped up with were feeling just as unsure as I had been about the whole thing.

While the massive scale of the adventuring within WoW is one of its big selling points one unavoidable downside to such things is the amount of time you'll spend simply travelling from A to B. Although most quests seem to be grouped together in pockets there is still a decent amount of simply walking from objective to objective, which can get tiresome after a while even if such treks offer up the chance to kill a few more nasties along the way to help boost your XP. Later on in the game there are promises of animal mounts and transport between cities which will make getting around the wider world more manageable but won't cut out the smaller scale journeys... so be prepared.

Soon enough my travels took me to the main city in Teldrassil called Darnassus. I've no idea how it compares in size to other cities throughout the game but suffice to say walking into it for the first time and seeing the sheer size of it was very impressive and lead to a good few minutes of simply wandering around looking at things, generally playing the part of the wide eyed slack jawed tourist to a tee. During my exploring I came across a quest that offered to take me to an entirely new part of the WoW universe all I had to do was hunt down a hippogryph trainer and he would let me ride one of his charges across the sea to Darkshore. The trainer was easy to find and as my hippogryph took off and Darnassus slipped from view there was a real feeling of seeing once more the massive size of the world I was travelling through as the coastline of a large continent loomed into view ahead and my hippogryph headed for a small town on the shore.

I fulfilled the quest that had brought me to Darkshore and rather than return to Darnassus straight away I set out to explore the area a little more. It wasn't long before a whole variety of new quests began to present themselves and soon I set Isorn off into the unknown with plenty to do. The only problem was that where as back on Teldrassil I had been stronger than most of the creatures I'd been fighting, here on Darkshore I was finding it hard to stay alive long enough to get anywhere near where I was trying to get to, much less long enough to complete any of the quests and soon I grew tired of the repeated deaths being inflicted on me and headed, tail between my legs, back to the relative safety of Teldrassil with the intention of continuing the XP grind until I was strong enough to come back and survive.

Upon landing back in Darnassus I realised almost by chance that there was a whole side of the game I'd missed till now, the chance to learn a trade! Only being able to learn two at any one time the choice of trade seemed an important part of defining what sort of a character Isorn would evolve into, something organic and natural seemed to fit my elvish sensibilities and so I decided to embark on a career as a leatherworker. It made sense to be able to gather my own raw materials too so I also learnt the art of skinning animals as my second trade skill. I spent the next few hours happily wandering the forest killing anything I could skin then making the basic leather goods (once I'd finally found the strangely well hidden crafting screen) I'd been taught how to make which I then sold in the city for a tidy profit. There is a huge amount of scope for making money this way in the economics of WoW and with in-game banks, auction houses and traders I can understand how some people may get so tied up in making money that they almost stop focusing on the questing side of the game altogether. However, I lack the patience for such a lifestyle and having seen the new world across the sea I was soon once again chomping at the bit to gain the experience needed to survive there. My time spent wandering across Teldrassil on the search for things to skin had revealed a few more quests that I'd missed first time through and with a bit of work I was soon a few notches higher up the XP tree at level twelve. My last quest had seen me start down a path that would eventually lead to me developing the intriguing ability to turn myself into a bear and as the next step in that needed me to make the journey back to Darkshore now seemed a good time to try my luck at the quests over there again.

Knowing that I'd now be strong enough to survive in Darkshore and having exhausted all the quests in Teldrassil, this time when I boarded the hippogryph and made the trip I felt very much like I was leaving the relatively safe beginners area behind me and moving into the big wide world. Isorn and I had come of age and while there was much still to learn and experience we were no longer beginners and as such our journey no longer needs chronicling leaving me to draw my story to a close with some kind of conclusion about my experiences.

On a purely technical level WoW is a stunning achievement with a world so naturally designed and grand in scale that players really do feel like they are making their way in a living breathing world. Such immersion makes it very easy to see how it can become such an addictive hobby. However in some way it can also feel less like a game and more like a responsibility, by making a regular monetary commitment to the game you feel compelled to play it to obtain some kind of value for your money, much like the person who only drags themselves to the gym because they know they've already paid for it. Such a feeling is bound to increase once you get higher up the level structure and join raiding parties and guilds, even if actually playing as part of such teams would be fun it would still start to become a responsibility with scheduled in game meetings and regular commitment needed. While the typical gaming rewards of bigger weapons, more spells, increased power and more impressive things to fight all play their part I couldn't help at times feeling that unlike in a typical single player RPG, where these things were the reward for the effort put in by the player, in games like WoW these were used far more as a constantly improving carrot on a stick to make the player feel justified in paying their subscription fee month after month. The flip side of that fairly cynical coin is of course that at less per month than the price of a single budget game WoW still works out considerably cheaper for gamers who play regularly than if they were going out and buying a couple of new releases a month and spending their time on those. No doubt the social aspect of games like WoW cannot be undervalued either and that adventuring with friends does add a lot to the experience even to the degree where WoW players I've talked to login just to hang out and chat with their friends with no intention of actually playing the game in the traditional sense.

There is no doubt that I've enjoyed my time playing WoW and I know I'll continue to play it in the future. I've yet to experience a lot of what it offers and while I have neither the time or the inclination to get too involved in the guilds and raiding parties that go some way to keeping the game exciting once the quests start to dry up at the higher levels, the rest of the game is so huge that even when you feel you may have run into a wall with one character you can always create another of a different race and experience the world all over again from a different point of view. How long I will be happy to pay for the privilege may be a different thing, I suspect, much like my old gym membership, there will come a point where I can no longer provide the commitment that the subscription demands to make it worth its while but until then I'll continue to enjoy it, now if only could make WoW reduce my waistline like the gym used to then I'd never leave!

By Paul Newcombe