World of Warcraft: the Board Game?
Posted by Rob Herman at April 23rd, 2006
I like World of Warcraft. It’s brilliantly executed and exquisitely balanced.
I like board games.
But this seems like a real long shot to me: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/17223Â
With a game time of 3 hours, I’m pretty sure I’d rather run Baron Strat twice or play Catan three times, thank you very much.
(Illness is sapping my energy for a full-length article.)
What’s truly staggering is the photo of the “exploded view”, of the board layed out with all the pieces. It takes up a full dining room table, and the little player boards are still stacked. I think the only way to play this 6 players or more is to push your dining room and kitchen tables together, and maybe with an ironing board on the side. Finding a surface is 178 minutes of play time, the other 2 minutes is realizing that you’d rather be playing something else.
Beware the false prophet that is Blizzard, all ye board game faithful.
Choice quote from a boardgamegeek review:
“This game stinks … In fact I can summarise here by saying that absolutely everything about this game is stunningly beautiful… other than the actual experience of playing it.”
I can’t blame Blizzard for anything more grevious than selling out their name. I think Fantasy Flight Games is actually to blame, and they appear to have a long and glorious history of dubious licenses:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/
I own the game and have played it about a dozen times. It is a solid Talisman-esque game where players advance and fight a “boss” at the end.
The length of game depends on the type of boss and the experience of the players. Sure, and experienced group of players can play the game in 3 hours if they are fighting the Dragon.
Realistically the game is a 4 to 5 hour affair depending on player experience. Ironically, this is a game where a 2 player game might take longer than a four -player game (which is what the game is designed for as a minimum).
My ownly complaint was that the sculpts were too large. As for dubious licenses…Lord of the Rings and War of the Ring are great games.
But, to rephrase what I said above, if you like quick playing “Eurostyle” games WoW isn’t for you. If you want to play an RPG campaign in a day, then it is.
I’ve never played Talisman, but I’ve played HeroQuest. Have you played that game to be able to describe how it compares?