worked on each one, and they may have. At the same time, the transitions are never jarring. As you fly from, say, Ironforge to the Wetlands, you'll descend down a snowy mountain, gradually
making your way down to the green and brown marshes full of crocolisks (six-legged crocodiles), gnolls, and many other beasties. You can still definitely sense when you're moving into a new area, so they must have done a lot of work on getting this balance just right. I also had the mouse pointer lock up a few times, about ten seconds into the session, and it's reportedly related to how the game deals with nVidia's mouse acceleration on 6800 cards. You can use software mode, but it's a little sluggish. I found that if I just spun the pointer around until I felt I was clear, I didn't have any issues. The 9800 Pro on my work rig did not have this issue. Last but not least is the full-screen bloom effect. While it gives the game a warm glow, it also makes textures blurry, removes antialiasing, and makes the names above people's heads difficult to read from a distance. I found that *not* using bloom made things sharper and more vivid. If you like it, then more power to you, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. Sound is also a large part of the WoW experience, and they've done an excellent job with the score--the music just doesn't get old. It's apparently just subliminal enough to withstand hundreds of hours of play. Each zone
has its own distinct theme, whether it's the sad strings in Westfall, the tribal sounds of Stonetalon, or the slow dreaminess of Ashenvale. You can also disable music and play your own stuff in the background, as WoW cooperates very well with the ALT+TAB and CTRL+ESC command. Running in the background, WoW usually takes up 70-90MB of RAM, so you can quickly pop onto the
WOW Gold was released in 2000 and is part of the WOW Hits series.