The World of Warcraft

Originally I was going to post something different but felt that this subject would be more interesting I think.

The inspiration for this comes mainly from seeing a review of the new expansion for WoW and hearing about my friends who still play it back on New Years Eve.

Currently, I do not play World of Warcraft but I used to as many of my friends know.  I'm going to describe my experiences playing it and my overall opinion of the game itself.  Not meant as a review but more as an impression of it.

I never planned to play it.  I thought it would be boring and I wouldn't enjoy it.  I had never played an MMO and my friends were all at the level cap (with several different characters in some cases) so I didn't think I'd have fun.

Lucky for me the Mac can run it and my Mac mini actually managed to run the game at a good pace with fairly good graphical output.  Learning all the controls at first was tricky but I eventually grew into it.

Starting the game was simple enough though to this day I have no idea what the overall story of the game is.  I began as a female human Mage.  I wanted something simple to deal with.  I had health and mana and would learn offensive spells and other cool things.  Worked for me!

The combat engine was something silly, but that's just an MMO thing I think.  Yahtzee described it best as you walk up to a monster and kick him in the shins, then he kicks yours back, and you repeat this until one of you dies, usually the one with the smallest pair of boots.

That's how the combat seemed to go for me mostly.  At least during the earliest levels it does.

Leveling at the start of the game isn't too hard and exploring the vast world is very fun.  Even when I had no goal in mind just knowing that I had the option to just walk wherever I could (until killed by a deadly monster) was very cool.  That sort of open world appealed to me.

Once I could enter instances it didn't get very different.  I mainly ran through with all my high level friends as they got me good gear for my character.  I didn't feel I was earning any of that.  I remember going through one with equal level players and I got this cool black robe from the boss, but I barely contributed during the battle so I didn't feel like I earned that.

On the other hand I think it sucks to run through an instance and lose a roll for something good.  You could wind up empty handed which I didn't really care for. 

Once I got higher level and figured out how to spend my talent points and fight my way around places the game did get a little more enjoyable.  I was mostly by myself and playing instances with random players which didn't help me much.

I did like teaming up on mobs of monsters with each player having a role in combat.  I'd usually turn one monster into a sheep and keep him that way until the rest were subdued and then we'd all go nuts.  That was fun to work in that manner.  I just wish I knew these people or played on a regular basis.

That was my underlying problem with the game, I rarely played with my friends.  I can't remember why that was either.  Maybe they wanted me to level up to 70 (the cap at the time) by myself and then be able to join them on the fun parts of the game.

I never got beyond level 64.  I just couldn't play by myself and didn't really know people to help me with things.  The matchmaking didn't help me either.  There were just several quests that I simply couldn't find people to help with and I wasn't about to grind my way up the last six levels.  Plus I spent 8 hours in one instance (Blackrock Mountains? something like that) and I did nothing.  All that time and I didn't do a single quest.  I didn't like that.

I just felt I was missing out on the really fun parts of the game.  Maybe if I stuck it out to level 70 I might have been able to play some fun instances with friends but that didn't work out for me.

I really didn't care much about my role in the game.  I'd make portals for free in the towns.  I had enough gold for most things and didn't even really find myself needing to buy things so I didn't care about getting paid for making portals.  I did take money when offered sometimes, but I'd just make a portal for the hell of it sometimes.

I am a little sad I never got to experience the really large scale raids and such with large groups working together to take down the most dangerous monsters and bosses.  I watched my friend MJ do some of those and they looked confusing as all hell with the amount of stuff going on at once, but the fact that this group of players were all working together and knew what they needed to focus on was really interesting to watch.  I just couldn't process everything that was happening to understand it myself.

Would I go back and play?

Well...not sure I'd want to invest that much time and money.  I surely could if I wanted to, but would I really want to start over again from scratch?  I have a feeling I'd run into the same problems.  I'd be low low level and all my friends would have their Level 85 characters running about while I struggle to play catch up.

I guess the answer is no then.  I can't expect them to babysit me while I try to catch up to them and it would take me far too long to reach that level.  It took me several months to reach Level 64.

While I think WoW is a fun game I just think the amount of time needed to reach the "fun" part of the game takes too long, at least for me.  So I guess if you can glean anything from my ramblings here is that I don't think WoW is the game for me.  I do love the scope and interactivity of it, but the overall grind is just something I can't fully enjoy I think.

As for addiction to it...I wouldn't blame the game for that.  You could easily find someone addicted to Halo or Call of Duty.  I mean, WoW does offer a lot more to get addicted to but I think it boils down to the person having pre-existing addictive tendencies in their behavior.  That's just the Psychologist in me talking I guess.