World of Warcraft: The Magazine has finally shipped and we here at Ten Ton Hammer now have a copy in our possession. We’ve looked through every page, read every article, and have examined it from cover to cover and are here with an exciting look at this new collectable item. Is it worth $40 a year? Let’s find out.

My first impression when looking at the magazine was oh, my, gosh. The magazine is indeed a coffee table “magazine”. A coffee table book is a book designed to be a decoration on top of a coffee table and to be easily picked up and read by bored guests or used to begin conversations. This is sometimes applied to quarterly magazines, except they often have glossy soft covers and arrive less frequently than other magazines. This is indeed the case with the WoW Magazine. The cover is shiny and the art is exceptionally detailed.

Of course, I am not one to judge a book by its cover. Being somewhat of a “WoW Professional” as I like to jokingly call myself, I began reading. I read a lot of magazines like Business Week, PC Gamer, etc, so reading magazines comes naturally to me. The first thing I’d like to talk about is the art.

You can view a preview of the magazine by visiting the main site and clicking on the sneak peak.

The articles are all accompanied by wonderful art, some commissioned by Blizzard, some of it higher quality prints that we’ve already seen. The art itself is what I liked most about the book. That, my friends, is foreshadowing, but hold on we’ll get to it. If the book was on the table and someone picked it up to skim through it they would be easily impressed with what they found.

The articles themselves are a different story. Reading through the book I wasn’t that impressed with the content. It wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t exactly stand out. It covered Trial of the Crusader and gave a lot of tips from some of the top guilds out there like Ensidia which was really interesting to read. The only problem is that patch 3.3 is out and people are getting enough gear to faceroll through ToC to the point they don’t need strategy. A lot of the content was kind of dated and available freely online.

The articles about DPS were disappointing because some of the mechanics have already changed. I keep telling people that WoW is a constantly evolving game but no one listens. As another example the talk about Rogue poisons didn’t matter because those mechanics changed in 3.3! I’ll stop myself here, because I don’t want to seem like it’s all bad. We do offer a lot of guides ourselves if you'd like some awesome up to date WoW info.

This is a collectable for fans. It’s not a player’s guide to Pokémon; it’s a magazine for fans of WoW. If you’re a fan of WoW then a lot of the articles will appeal to you. For instance, there is an interview with Breanni from WarCraftPets.com which I found very interesting. The comments from Ensidia I found to be, while outdated, an interesting insight into a guild that often achieves world firsts. The interviews with Blizzard employees were awesome and truly stuff that appealed to a know it all like me.  There was also a really good article about the original WoW beta.

So the content is good, but dated which is to come with something that has to be printed out quarterly. I wouldn’t buy a subscription to the magazine just for the content though. I’d buy it to have something nerdy out on my coffee table or on my desk. I’d buy it for the collectable value or the same reason you’d pick up a collector’s edition of WoW or buy any of the figurines.

This is for fans and collectors and if you’re one then you won’t be wasting your money. The book is really high quality and even a non-WoW player would be entertained with the compelling articles and stunning art. I’m really happy with my copy and I don’t feel like it’s a waste at all. Then again, I’m pretty devoted to this game, so my opinion is from that perspective.

If you don’t want something neat to show to your friends or leave on a table or if you’re just not a collector then you won’t miss a lot. Some of the articles are really good reads, but you may feel like it’s a bit too pricy just to read a few articles. If you’re a collector though, don’t hesitate, order a copy today. You can visit the official WoW Magazine website to order a year subscription for $39.95 (in the US, additional fees and prices for different countries).  If you order now you can get the first issue as a bonus, or something like that. For the official details see the official site.