“The One Ring”
It’s been a year since my last addiction. I jumped into World of Warcraft a year after heavily playing Guild Wars (roughly 2005), I left WoW a year later due to boredom with leveling and grinding. There were so many other games I could get into that didn’t involve the time investment into this MMORPG.
Then, in 2007 I returned on the eve of Burning Crusade. Blizzard had me… they put out an expansion and drew me back in even though I never had a character (“toon”) that could leverage the powers of the new content. I had two characters at level forty four but most of my friends left for other adventures once I quit the game. I started over yet again, only now on a PvP server instead of the “too easy” PvE server everyone abandoned. This time I made it to level eighteen with one character and level twenty with another but I left not long after because of time issues and managing my life around other games (and my kids).
Here I stand now, a third attempt at World of Warcraft with little to no expectations but a small goal: be ready for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion due out later this year. If I can reach those goals I’ll have also conquered the Burning Crusade content I’ve never achieved. Not even three hours into gaming I’ve re-rolled another character which my distract from my goal.
Why Roll A New Character? I ask myself this question often and the only good answer is denial: life as a low character is easy and I gather neat new skills faster so I feel more progress is being made, although the inverse is true. I’ve had these same issues with classic paper-dice RPG’s, I love inventing new characters and new roles, the end game content isn’t always my first choice.
I’m back to my PvE way of life, on yet another realm and have paid my USD $50.00 to transfer my oldest two characters to the server, back to my life as a Horde. I’ve abandoned those friends that once abandoned me when they moved to PvP and, now, met up with some other friends who play more casually. I’m not a PvP kinda guy, I just want to occasionally game without the pressure to meet up for weekly raids and practice our “tactics.” I just wanna kill stuff.
World of Warcraft is an addiction, a way of life, it is something that you’ve got to take seriously because you’re paying monthly for the privilege to lose precious hours of your real life to a virtual world. You have to respect it, always keeping it at arms length to avoid being crushed by its outer worldly desires. If you let it consume you, you’ll be a changed person with very few options to get out. World of Warcraft is the “One Ring” and must be taken seriously to avoid danger… you’re always running.
How long will I hold out before I release the game once more? I’m not certain, hopefully until at least February of 2009 so I can fully appreciate the extra content I’ve continued to purchase. But, I’ll get out before I find myself in a dark cave eating fishes while invisioning Azeroth and whispering, “my preciousssss”
The game industry, like other entertainment avenues, is a risky business in which publishers have to pick titles they “predict” will do well in the market while passing on other “risky” propositions. While a the good ol’ shooter title will break sales records, the market cannot rely on one genre to carry the business especially considering many of these titles are forgotten within two months from launch. Publishers are going to be forced in expanding their reach to “family games” in order to finance new blockbuster titles.
The idea of designing a “family” game isn’t new to our industry, as a matter of fact, it’s one of the oldest cornerstones of video game entertainment. Pong, Centipede, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and many other classic titles were no doubt playable by the entire family, but things have changed. We’ve evolved from hit titles like Donkey Kong to hit titles like Halo. We migrated from 2D gaming to full 3D adventures and pixel graphics to pixel shaders, but where do we go next?
As a fairly new player to WOW (three months), I’ve learned one important thing. The game is what I want it to be.
I don’t understand those in a hurry to level up. I don’t want to race from quest to quest like my cloak is on fire. If I decide to spend the day fishing, I don’t consider it a waste.
The goal for me is to have fun. I already have a job. And in that context, WOW has more to offer than people give it credit for.
In some ways you’re right, in others you’re still new to it 🙂 Once you’ve created a new character a few times you may encounter a situation where you end up doing the same quests again, like deja vu.
For instance, creating an orc and then a troll will lead you down different paths from level 1 to roughly 7 but then once you hit higher levels you’ll start crossing paths to where, no matter what race you have, you’ll always be doing the same Crossroads quests and such.
What I’ve tried to do is stick with races that are more separate by space, Tauren vs. Troll vs. Undead vs. Blood Elf, so that you get a slight variation to the quest. Then, you want something completely new you try some Alliance races/classes.
Everyone ends up on the same quest track by level 25 so once you’ve created five horde characters you realize that you’re doing the same thing five times in a row, that gets tedious and, with that, you tend to use more addons like QuestHelper to give you a bit more clue on what direction to go “just to get this one done with.”
I just like experimenting with new classes and exploring the possibilities, but the quest situation… in the end, I’ll be doing the same thing I did with my Troll and Tauren.
Just wait til you’re hacking away at 200 Murlocs trying to get a single drop of a quest item.