Trials of a World of Warcraft Player: Entry One

“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”

0 thoughts on “Trials of a World of Warcraft Player: Entry One”

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Diablo 3, Finite Health and Loving ItDiablo 3, Finite Health and Loving It

Diablo 3 Lead Designer Jay Wilson sat down with Multiplayer Blog to explain how the health system works in Diablo 3 and how it differs from Diablo 2. In short, you can’t add a new feature without removing an old one, in this case we’re talking about health potions.

The goal is to broaden the Diablo audience to more than just the hardcore fans. Lets be honest with ourselves, the health potion system was way too far out of control (broken?) By mid-game or earlier, half the character inventory was full of potions and you might have just purchased shares in the potion selling company with all the spending you’ve done there. The health potion system created the infinitely powerful character, in essence, by making them immortal.

Activision Blizzard has learned a bit about their success with broad audiences in games like World of Warcraft, which has surpassed game sales over Diablo 2, their most successful game title. What they’ve decided to do in this release of Diablo is to limit the characters ability to heal and make them “mortal” again, requiring the player to use strategy, tactics and skills to defeat enemies. Rather than charging forward pressing “1” then “2” then “3” and the other hot keys for potions, you’ll be forced to back away during strong stomp attacks, mind your enemies special attacks and defend yourself.

“One of the things that happened in ‘Diablo II’,” Wilson continued, “was the player was faster than most of the monsters and had pretty much infinite health because they would just pop as many potions as they wanted. So when you have a player who has more mobility, more health and endless power, essentially the only thing you can really do to challenge [the players] is to kill them… by just spiking the difficulty.” (multiplayer blog)

Gating the users ability to heal is a classic RPG/Adventure game mechanism for changing the playing field in terms of difficulty. You can make a game with weaker enemies in abundance and still cause you harm, take a look back at Gauntlet in the arcade for an example of this method. You can build challenging enemy styles and dungeon traps to cause the player to mind their step, look at the classic Zelda series and some of their crazy enemies. A great example is the Darknuts from The Legend of Zelda, it was a small knight that could only be attacked from behind but had a sharp little dagger if you bumped them from the front. You had to use tactics to wipe out a full room of Darknuts.

Activision Blizzard will now have the option to create some fancy enemies with challenging special abilities that do not involve insta-kill upon contact battle tactics. You control a super hero character, not an immortal; there should be some challenge besides hacking and slashing through mobs of enemies. Wilson went on to say, “We can make a monster that affects your mobility, we can make a monster that has different kinds of attacks that are dangerous to you and that you actually have to avoid. And so it makes the combat a lot more interesting.”

One of the criticisms to the Diablo franchise has always been the “click fest” of battle. You sit still and click on enemies until everyone is dead. Perhaps, without having infinite potions you’ll be challenged to use your brain on occasion, like a real RPG and have more creative use of your money rather than investing a half-billion into the potion vendors.

Where does that lead the hardcore Diablo fans? Activision Blizzard hopes they’ll see a title with a lot more depth, a new style of challenge and a long term appeal.

Why Doesn’t iTunes Have Game Trials?Why Doesn’t iTunes Have Game Trials?

Nothing is more annoying than going into iTunes to see what video games are available for the iPod Touch and iPhone to find it cluttered with hundreds of duplicate games. Developers seem to find it most useful to release two games instead of one single game: a full version and a “lite” version.

itunesDevelopers know gamers want to try before they buy, so many will create a game they’re hoping to sell, then a limited “lite” version with partial levels or stripped of features. They’re obviously trying to work around the fact that Apple released a half-assed game shopping experience. These pro and lite versions assist in cluttering the shopping space.

iTunes App Store should allow users to trial a game by allowing them to download a neutered version of the game title or using a time-trial like many other downloadable game services. Electronic game downloads are usually non-refundable because you can never give back a product which you can make infinite copies. The solution to getting users to buy into your product is to allow them to try before they buy.

Apple’s obviously enjoying the immense game sales from the application store but they may be able to increase their sales by allowing gamers to see what they’re buying before they walk away empty handed. This would also limit the total products found in the App Store because developers won’t have to post to revisions to their game title to allow gamers to try before they buy them.

There are some obvious downsides, Apple wouldn’t be able to boast the thousands of products in their store because many would be substituted for a real game download system. Okay, that’s really the only download I can think of… any others?

Developers may opt out of a trial system, forcing gamers to buy it before they try it based on the text and screenshots or utilize a time trial or limited featured version.

Thoughts?

Evolution of RPG’s – Gamers Don’t Want an End?Evolution of RPG’s – Gamers Don’t Want an End?

I remember a day when old RPG games had either a level cap or a definite ending. From Pool of Radiance to Secrets of the Silver Blades to Final Fantasy the game had a final boss or stage and often had some type of level cap. Today, gamers don’t want it to end, they’d rather have the option to wonder around aimlessly or completing minor quests in order to soak up every ounce of money they spent on the title.

linkNow even Bethesda is saying “we’ve learned our lesson” from the whiplash of ending their game title and capping levels. Gamers want to go back and re-try content they missed, they want to run side quests and talk to everyone in the world they want to grind themselves to über powerful levels and become a god in their fantasy world. Can you blame them?

You can’t really blame them for wanting to maximize the content, although it’s slightly more evolved than RPG’s of old. Perhaps it was World of Warcraft and other MMORPG’s that brought us to the stage in life where we all want to squeeze every last RPG dime out of the title. As a kid I wondered the world of Hyrule and covered every tile of graphical color, burned every bush, bombed every stone looking for all the content. However, even Zelda had an end with scrolling credits – you didn’t just land on a platform with your master sword and a dream.

Other titles have used level caps to limit you and draw you into the next release of the game. This was popular in the D&D world because the game is designed to target specific levels of difficulty. They may only allow you to gain level 10 because the enemies are no tougher than level 13, allowing the challenge to be good but not overwhelming. If they allow you to get to level 50 they’d have to design the game so all the enemies grow powerful along with you — that’s not always a desired result.

Final Fantasy is a popular franchise that typically allows you to grow infinitely powerful depending on how much time you want to spend repeat killing the same enemies. Gamers aren’t always into the grind, they just want to grind “enough” to make the challenges a little more do-able.

Today, however, with larger storage capacity, larger development teams and the desire to build more value into your gameplay experience titles have dozens of side quests and sub-plots that are totally optional. The result of so many sub-quests results in a player who is much more powerful at the end of those quests compared to a player who sticks to the narrow path of the main plot. So, games much grow dynamically challenging to keep the fun per dollar high.

Do you like your RPG’s to have a definite end and a high but capped level?