Minecraft vs. World of Warcraft

A leading buy-to-play sandbox MMO versus the best pay-to-play MMORPG.

The Match-Up

The first match of the second round pits two 1000 pound gorillas against each other! Both have lead their respective genres for years and continue to this very day. The only difference is when each first started. WoW started with a few MMORPGs that were already well established like EverQuest, but the MMORPG genre had not taken off yet. WoW quickly took over and the raised the entire genre as a whole. Minecraft essentially brought the sandbox genre from almost nothing to a leading genre that is likely in more demand these days than MMORPGs. Besides the pay-to-play aspect, that is where Minecraft really shines over World of Warcraft and why the score is rather one-sided despite the epic feel of the match-up.

Tale of the Tape

Minecraft

Buy to play sandbox MMO.
Clear leader of its genre ever since launch.
Highly anticipated when launched.
Offers a single player and multiplayer mode.
Can craft exclusively or craft with monsters etc being able to attack you.
One of the best games ever for creating since it is a giant sandbox.
Was sold to Microsoft and continues to expand its franchise.

Versus

World of Warcraft

Leading fantasy MMORPG.
One of the very few remaining pay-to-play games.
Has had several successful expansions.
Not as popular as it once was.
Continues to evolve with each expansion instead of just staying the same.

Select Comments For Minecraft

Rating: 9
Author: Aaddron
Comment: Minecraft is an odd game, it basically breaks every single industry “key to success” and still succeeds. Photo realistic graphics? Nope, this game could be passed off as a Ps1 game. Deep and engaging storyline? haha no… actually the game doesn’t have one. Epic combat system? Nope, swing sword hit target… that’s about it. Ok so how about a detailed environment and setting? Wellll… not really, lets just say it has it’s moments. One epic NPC that guides you with witty lines and is always trying to kill you? … … nope, in fact NPC’s weren’t added until late in development and at this point still do nothing. Sooo I give up, what makes this game so great? Exactly!

Minecraft is a game that if brought to a publisher probably would of been rejected. Thankfully it wasn’t, Minecraft is developed by Mojang which started as one man band. Notch is his internets name and he defied all odds, produced a winner and now has his own game development studio. It’s really a great story but we are here for the game so lets just leave it at. Notch made a game, it’s sold through the roof and now he has more money than he knows what to do with… all without the help of the tradition “publisher”.

So back to the original question, what makes Minecraft so great? There are millions of answers but since this is my review I’m gonna go with its openness. When I say open, I really mean open, sure it has the “see it, walk to it” aspect of all the top sandbox games but that;s where it ends, no only can you walk to anything you see, you can blow it up too. Sick of that mountain… well just take it out… ever want to dig a super big hole but can’t because of zoning laws… no problem! Dig to your hearts content, no annoying city workers here… although you should still watch out for the locals… except them little green fellas. Friendly little buggers, might even help you dig if you let them close enough to you. *trollface* O and the best part? Sick of your world… simply start a new one, everything is randomly generated so no two worlds are the same.

To know what Minecraft is all about, you simply need to read the title of the game. Minecraft is a game of mining and crafting. Your sole purpose is to survive, gather ores and build. You see you start the game with nothing… not even a hint as to what you should do. Then night falls and it quickly becomes apparently something isn’t right, monsters start spawning and 9 out of 10 times you’ll find yourself dead before dawn. So you died… you respawn, nothings changed, still no objectives, still no instructions but this time you know nightfall equals bad news. With a little help from the internets what was once confusion is now a race against time to find or build a shelter. You survive your first night, congrats!

Minecraft is a game of blocks, everything is a block and every block can be broken and placed. You use these block to build and craft, you use wood from a tree to make planks, you use the planks to make sticks… you use 2 sticks and 3 planks in the shape of a pickaxe to make a wood pickaxe. Minecraft is a game of upgrades. Your fist can’t break everyblock and is really slow… so you’ll want to upgrade to wood tools which are faster but that have limited durability so then you want to use the wood tools to get materials to upgrade to stone ones, these are slightly faster and last longer… then stone to iron etc.

Crafting a major part of the game not only for making and upgrading tools but also to get access to tons and tons of items that can only be crafted. Items like chests, pressure plates, trip wires, furnaces, minecarts, rails etc. Minecraft doesn’t hand anything to you… if you want to build it you have to make it first. This kinda sucks as elaborate contraptions take forever to build as you need to get all the materials by hand, it can be extremely time consuming but at the same time it’s extremely rewarding when your done. For those that might not have the time they’ve added a creative mode where you can get any block in the game in infinite amounts and break everything in one hit without tools. It’s a great place to experiment.

Multiplayer in Minecraft is unique. Usually a good Multiplayer takes away from the a good Singleplayer and vice versa but in Minecraft that isn’t true. Minecraft’s multiplayer is Minecraft’s singleplayer with multiple people. If you don’t like Multiplayer or can’t get anyone to play with you that’s absolutely fine, your not missing anything minus player generated stuff. However if you choose to play Multiplayer your experience can change dramatically. Instead of adventuring on your own you can adventure with many other players. Instead of one little house, players get together and build full cities. Communities have formed and full RPG style severs with real players as NPC style characters have spawned… some truly awe inspiring stuff has come out of the multiplayer side of Minecraft.

It’s not all roses though, for every way Minecraft’s multiplayer is great, it also has an equal amount of issues. Minecraft multiplayer is like the wild west, not many rules and people don’t always follow them. Griefing (players raiding your server and destroying everything) is a common occurrence, same with hackers, spammers and pretty much any other annoying thing you can think of. Mojang has taken some steps to help but it’s been mostly up to the Mod community to devise methods of warding off these troublemakers, they’ve been successful in some respects but it’s a never ending war. The only way to prevent this is making your own server and only allowing friends on it… still make sure to take protective measures though as even then you’re not safe if you leave the door open.

Minecraft is in many ways a throwback to the old days of gaming, featuring little to no hand holding, like losing all inventory items on death (5 minutes to get back to them) and no mini map or objectives to guide you. You don’t have a whole lot of health and even on easy monsters due quite a lot of damage. It’s a throwback but a whole new world at the same time. The sheer aspect of being able to do anything… and I mean anything is simply unmatched… fancy a game of minesweeper? Yup you can do that. Wanna make your own Adventure Game… go for it, thousands of people already have and surprisingly a lot of them are really good. Mods? Yup have them too.

Minecraft is the game that “shouldn’t” work with today’s gamers but it does, o it does. Well it’s about that time, I’ll leave you with the sole rule of Minecraft, always dig straight down*.

Rating: 8
Author: quinn
Comment: Minecraft is quite a fun timekiller. The classic version, especially, really floats my boat. Although it went downhill after Survival was released, I can always count on the original if I ever need a good pick-me-up. It’s also great to put on the computer when my little cousins come over, they love it too!

Select Comments for World of Warcraft

Rating: 10
Author: axwellshm
Comment: So this time I will review the game I played since Warcraft III. Blizzard entertainment that created this game really know how to schedule whole lore through the all expansion.

Starting of with Warcraft III, which is the only reason why WoW as we know him today exists. It was only the mask for the Wrath of the Lich King in expansion. Whole campaign has everything based on Lich King’s lore and every character that helped (tried to stop him) are there , in Wrath of the Lich King.

Vanilla – Nothing else but introduction to the game, characters, classes, Alliance & Horde. Was really good start, but it was also really buggy since they went from “MOBA” game to MMORPG.

Burning Crusade – Lore was great designed as well as the whole Outland that was represented in whole expansion. Illidan was managed to get to the top of the Outland , and he was once a great Night Elf. Also attack on ancient tree (which is only known on trailer) but in game as battle for mount hyjal is also one thing that lead Demons to defeat. But they were always arrogant and till this day, they are battling to pass in the blasted lands through dark portal.

Cataclysm – I think this was a whole turnover in a gameplay. PvP wasn’t really interesting since everyone wanted to try to kill Deathwing which is a great raid (great designed) and there I think you could visit Deepholm for the first time.

Mists of Pandaria – New continent, new character. Panda’s kinda brought harmony in the game. They are very good designed, and they are represent in game as a calm and really good people, but the Sha invaded them because of Garrosh.

Draenor – Nothing else but really getting known to the all Horde bosses that fought against Dranei’s before drinking the blood of mannoroth.

So characters are: Taurens, Orc, Undeads, Trolls, Goblins, Humans, Dwarfs, Night Elfs, Worgens, Gnomes, Draenei and for the end Pandarens.

Classes : Hunter, Warrior, Priest, Mage, Warlock, Shaman, Death Knight , Paladin, Monk.

I really like the game cause it’s open world after all. You can explore everything , have some mounts, pets. It’s great! Dungeons and Raids are well scripted, but some of them need improvements for sure. For example Gnomeregan. I hate that dungeon you just jump kill trash and thats it. But in overall they are good.

There are PvP – which stands for Player vs Player & PvE – which stands for player vs envoirement. Currently im PVE based because PvP is kinda unbalanced, but i hope they will fix it.

I’m also trying to keep members of Game Ogre posted with latest news about world of warcraft, since I am moderator, and I wouldn’t be if i don’t like this game, right?! 🙂

I just love this game, and you should too. It’s maybe about the tastes that you don’t like it. But if you starting watching some trailers, or watching some lore about the game, and once you start it, you won’t regret. I promise! So my rate is 10/10 for the best MMORPG game i have played in past few years.

Rating: 8
Author: Thedarkboy
Comment: WoW is a very entertaining that can keep you up all night. It’s a shame that it’s P2P but it’s probably worth it. Personally, I don’t like the graphics very much. Well I guess it’s okay but don’t really like games with ”cartoon” graphics. Otherwise in total, it’s a great game. There’s many classes and races which gives you many options on how you wanna play the game. It got really many players although it would probably have more if it was free. But still a great game.

The Showdown

Cheaper to Play = Minecraft

Better Multiplayer = World of Warcraft

More Popular = Minecraft

Better User Created Content = Minecraft

Better for Livestreams/Videos = Minecraft

Minecraft received a total score of 4
World of Warcraft received a total score of 1

The Result

Minecraft Wins!