Forgive me for being clueless, but I have to ask...

What is World of Warcraft? I mean, I know it's a game, I'm not that dumb, but what's the premise, how does one get involved, etc.? I have a fifteen year old nephew with a birthday coming up, and I don't think he plays it yet, so I'm wondering if it would make a good present.

I'm not familiar with the game, or any game for that matter, but for what I understand, this one is a game that is played on the intern et with multible players. But I guess if you google it, you'll find everything you want to know about it.

It wouldn't make a good present because not only is there an upfront cost, there is also a monthly fee. It is an online massive multiplayer game.

I have never played this game. But if you spend any amount of time on any gaming forum you will see alot about this game and what it is all about. I seem to see something everytime I turn around. It is not a dumb question because I was curious as well. I didn't realize that there was a monthly fee to play. I knew about the up front fee to start but that was it. Is it exspensive to pay for monthly? Just curious.

You don't have to pay monthly, I believe you can also pay annually (although it costs more, I believe it's less than if you payed monthly for the entire year). It's fun and very addictive, but it wouldn't make a good gift unless: You know the kid likes MMORPGs, he has a DSL or Cable connection, his parents are willing to pay that monthly or annual fee.

Personally, I love the game and wish I could play it more, but it is expensive. Also, keep in mind, that there's a lot of adults on it so it's not entirely kid-friendly.

I am still curious as to what this game is about. It seems like it is a lot of fun with all of the players, etc.. but what is it?

The overall goal of the game varies from player to player - some play it for the social interaction, for the huge Raid groups and group quests while others play it to gain levels and still others play for the Player-vs-Player fighting. Personally, I play it to gain levels/explore the world because I prefer doing things on my own <!--s51-->:3<!--/s51-->

As for the plot, well, most MMO games don't have a formal plot. Basically it's about the world Azeroth which consists of two large continents with various biomes on them. There are two factions, the Alliance and the Horde (neither are good nor evil), and 8 or 10 races (depending on if you get the expansion). On the Alliance side you have Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Night Elves, and with the expansion the Draenei. On the Horde side you have the Orcs, Trolls, Tauren, Undead, and with the expansion the Blood Elves. When you make a character, you pick which race (and thus faction) you belong to and you cannot communicate with people of the opposite faction. You also choose a class for your character (Druid, Thief, Warrior, etc...). Basically the goal of your character is to become powerful and help their race and faction from being taken over by whatever threat.

It's really complicated to explain XD I hope that helped. If you have any specific questions, though, I could probably answer them for you.

There are some plots though, if you do the quests you'll find out all kinds of interesting stuff about the world and the characters that inhabit it. This is my favorite game right now because it's easy to play and easy to play as a couple or a family. Everything Artemis said was correct.

Thanks, everyone, for all the info. I can see why the monthly fee makes it a poor birthday gift idea, but it still sounds like lots of fun to play. Who knows, when my life settles down (probably about the time I start collecting social security) I may have to give it a try myself.

Seems interesting yet complicated to me. And now, I really know I would never get into it. I think one can buy video games, or rent them, or even belong to a club that exchanges the games within members, but pay to play a monthly fee? What if the company goes belly-up? Would I get the money back? I'm too skeptical.

Blizzard go belly up? XD I don't see that happening anytime soon. World of Warcraft is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, MMORPG to date and it has tons and tons of users who pay a monthly, biannual, or annual fee which keeps their servers running and you playing. Blizzard is quite a healthy company at the moment, I don't think it's in danger of crashing anytime soon. Chances are people will stop playing World of Warcraft far before the company couldn't pay for it anymore.

The only "danger" of such a game is in your interest level, so it's good to use a trial before you play, so you know whether or not you like it enough to pay periodically. I don't know if we still have our account(s), but my family always payed annually because you only need the money once and they don't bother you again for a whole year. The benefit of month-to-month, though, is that you don't have to pay for the next month if you know you're not going to be on at all (of course, you can't play if you suddenly have some extra time but still). The thing I also like is that you can pretty much have as many characters as you want on a single account and not pay extra for them (Final Fantasy XI, another MMORPG, charges an extra fee a month for extra characters).

I guess it wouldn't really be something you would give as a gift to someone, unless you gifted it for a certain time-frame only.