As it turns out, most of the players in my gaming group have tried World of Warcraft MMORPG including myself. Anyhow, after playing for a while I became intereseted in the backstory and history of the various characters and areas in the game. I went and read the history section on blizzards site as well as some other fan sites and was surprised and the depth of background the game had. This lead to the proposal among our group that a warcraft RPG campaign would be a cool idea.
I ended up with a copy of the World of Warcraft RPG book and have been reading through it. It's got some definate good points. There's some background info that you don't get anywhere else plus new spells, feats and classes related to the game. On the downside however, some of the classes felt as though they were more or less directly ported from 3.5. Though all in all, I'd say it's a worth picking up for anyone intereseted in the game.
Anyhow, to make a long story short, I'm currenty trying to remake a few of the classes using the abilities found in the warcraft games. This is an attempt to maintain the flavor presented in the warcraft setting. If anyone is interesed, I'd be happy to post what I have been able to do so far. I'd also be happy to hear comment from other folks on the boards!
There are a a few novels written also; as well as all the stand alone computer games for warcraft 1,2,3 and I think 4; been a while so am a bit fuzzy on the details; each of these has the continuing story; the mmorph takes place after the last of the stand alone games. The game has a lot of confused perspectives; there are other threads on this somewhere about who is the bad guys; who are the good guys; who is deluded and the war; what war; the orc leader tells you we are not to war and dont start one; they human leader says they are at war and go kill horde; heh the undead want to kill everything, everyone is afraid of the ancient enemy returning; there are lots and lots of splinter groups; yep; sounds like a good rpg setting to me :) I would rather do it with the D&D rules or a few others and not the warcraft one; dont care for their game system. Their game mechanics for the online game are not great and it has a whole host of problems generated from the continual bellyaching on the warcraft boards about this that and the other. I would like to play in a game just to see how it flows and such; well, to have fun which is the whole point. heh guess i am luke warm about it.
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On the downside however, some of the classes felt as though they were more or less directly ported from 3.5...
Well, being a game written on the OGL, one would expect the core classes to be fairly similar. They did make some very significant changes to some of the core classes though. For example, they added several new abilities for rogues including things like 'Sneak' and 'Finishing Strike.' Paladins now have different auras to choose from and can switch between them to suit the encounter best. Mages are now broken into three distinctly different main casting classes (Mage, Necromancer, and Warlock) and the same has been done to the 'Healer' class (Priest, Shaman, and Druid).
I also like a few of the changes that they made to the skill system. For example, Hide and Move Silently are both lumped into the 'Stealth' skill. They also added racial class levels for most of the races that are available and gave various races certain skills that are always considered in-class for them. Personally, I think its a great system altogether but, compared to normal D&D 3.5 standards, it comes off a little overpowered. I mean, rogues can get Improved Evasion at level 6 if they choose to, the Forsaken are an undead template with +2 Strength and have no level adjustment, and plenty more badness. As a self-contained system, however, I think it does a great job portraying the setting. Just don't try to do any Azeroth/Faerun crossovers and you should be fine. ;)