Background: A longtime raiding WoW player over four years whom no longer plays.
I will cover everything from social players to raiding to actual gampelay.
Warcraft-A Magical World
It is very difficult to begin a review of World of Warcraft. From the emotions in social interactions to it's unique look even to it's gameplay, these all invoke many different feelings in me that are all contained in this "game". Though, I believe WoW has become and evolved into more than just a game which I now refer to more as a culture.
It contains an enormous world and thousands of quests for a player to lose themselves in. You may argue many modern RPG's contain this sense of being completely absorbed by a different world and say WoW is nothing new. Even from a critical standpoint, WoW is somewhat lacking in it's gameplay mechanics and graphics engine. But what WoW lacks in these complexities it makes up for with rather intuitive and an easy entry level control scheme for non-gamers. Blizzard have succeeded in converting casual solitaire office workers into gamers, opening a whole new market for the PC gaming. This is only a small part of the magic that makes WoW what it is today. The real magic in the game is the culture.
This is a typical introduction for a WoW player into the World from a first person perspective:
"I have made many characters in WoW from Taurens to dwarves but I can still vividly remember beginning my very first character. I remember looking at the tiny amount of space allocated on the world map in my starting area. This starting area seemed huge and magical from ground level, instantly suspending my disbelief. I completed the first few quests and already a level up, followed by a big flash on screen and a "Congratulations!" from the game. Other people in the area saw me flash and "grats"'ed me for my accomplishment. I already felt a sense of achievement increasing my characters attritubutes, pulling me deeper into the world, slaying even more beasts for my next level up. The unique look and artistic style drew me in immediately, saving poisoned night elves and helping the local people dwelling in a mystical tree. I learned how to cook and skin beasts to sell their hides. Townspeople gave me new boots with more armour as rewards for doing their bidding. I teamed up with other night elves to slay a high level monster in a cave, it killed us a few times before we finally assigned healing duties and killed it. We were all delighted with our tactics and results, ending up completing even more quests together, chatting and eventually becoming 'friends' by adding each other-an encouraged and simple process.
We entered the main city, overwhelmed and excited by how many people were also playing. I found a leatherworker who taught me how to craft all this skinned leather allowing to make my own armour, while my 'friends' learned how to make potions and enchant items with magic. I made some armour to sell on the auction house and explored the city talking to all the people I could to get quests. Someone had to leave our party saying it was late; I looked at my watch. I'd been playing for 5 hours straight, from then on WoW taking a large part of my life for years to come."
This gameplay was revolutionary for me. Ive got to be honest, I've lost hours upon hours saving Hyrule from evil playing Zelda or even just popping head shots in CS. But WoW offered something more, an alternate world where you could be whoever you wanted to be and was more than just playing the game. Some would argue with me on this point, that there was Everquest and Runescape. But in my eyes, neither had the "magic" that WoW has created. WoW's success was a combination of ingenius design in atmosphere from questing to artistic style to player interaction combined with a bit of luck that only Blizzard could get.
Levelling PVE gameplay and PVP
When compared to the complexities and strategies of another fabulous Blizzard title, 'Starcraft', WoW severely lacks depth in individual gameplay. The three main archetypes of MMORPG's are covered in healer, tank and DPS(damage). These are more deeply explored through 8 different classes each with 3 different talent trees. Many Classes can be different archetypes depending on which talent tree they spec into. Each class also has different mechanics to use actions, from spells to special attacks. While this seems to make the gameplay more complex than it really is, when you're playing with the one character for hours, you get to know them and their abilities inside out. You start off with only a few various abilities gaining more with levels, slowly introducing you to more while becoming more powerful. Each class often ends up having many unique abilities distinguishing them from others, though they are very easily manageable and simple to assign to keys and use. While killing an npc foe, you can often hit as few as 2-3 buttons and easily kill those at the same level as you. This single player combat clearly isn't the drawcard that pulls people in, or is it?
It would be unfair to discuss only single target npc killing for questing. When playing on a Player versus Plater(PVP) server, once you leave your starting area you are subject to the terms of full scale war against the opposing faction. Though If playing on a Player versus environment(PVE) server you can stay safe. Open world PVP often doesn't give you any reward apart from the simple satisfaction of killing other players, which for people playing on these servers is often satisfaction enough! PVP combat often calls on a player to maximise the use of all possible abilities to balance survival against attacking the other playing. This open world PVP definitely adds a constant sense of danger to the game which some players thrive off and relish. Being nittpicky, this can sometimes lead to unsavoury situations of being killed over and over by a player much higher level than you. Though this PVP can often create spontaneous large scale battles for hours between factions at random locations(see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1mVAPU44_A for some pre-expansion world PVP many reminisce about now).
Wow is a constantly evolving game though and world pvp feels stale with some classes being overpowered in a contant state of fluidity trying to maintain class balance to allow even grounded fights. Though with Content updates, Blizzard has been reasonable to the PVPers among us introducing an Honour system for killing other players to reap rewards like armour. Blizzard also introduced specific battlegrounds, where players can specifically go to, fighting for bases and Capture the flag scenarios for bonus honour. Battlegrounds have changed dramatically to positive and negative community responses over time. Currently the PVP community is still relatively strong and has recently increased with the recent introduction of dual specs-allowing players to both be PVE and PVP specced.
PVP also offers the Arena system allowing players to compete in 2V2, 3v3 and 5v5 teams. These often offer fierce competition and require good co-ordination of team members often using ventrilo or teamspeak to do battle. This system is very competetive and also provides players with the best PVP gear in the game. From a technical standpoint I have to say the Arena system fails. It has showed in massive decline in players currently due to the difficulty of keeping classes balanced-the top teams all containing the same classes. Blizzard's current mantra of bring the player not the class has decreased the uniqueness each class brings to a raid in PVE though in PVP it does not apply with a select few classes being overpowered. From a critical perspective this unfair from the outset situation makes for a dull system.
Gameplay:End Game Raiding and Culture Of Raiding
I often find it hard to explain to non gaming friends who make fun of my WoW habits why I still play after Ive reached the highest level. Many believe reaching the current maximum level being 80, to just be the beginning of the game, which for a lot of players it is. The 'tangible' in-game rewards of raiding is Epic loot. End-game bosses drop the best weapons and armour in the game. End game raiding offers something that is experienced on a smaller scale during your levelling up. It is essentially assembling a large amount of people(upto 40) to conquer more difficult bosses. These bosses require a knowledge of what they in fact do to kill them. Some may spawn lots of additional monsters that need to be killed or fire coming up from the ground which everyone needs to dodge. Due to this difficulty of unpredictable actions by the boss before the encounter, this often results in a lot of raids where everyone will be killed. These circumstances pull people together and co-operate to work for the same goal. After dying over and over again with everyone getting tired and frustrated over three hours, perfecting the strategy every attempt, when the boss is finally killed a sense of genuine accomplishment is felt. Strong camaraderie is formed and people form guilds, making weekly times to go raiding.
Raiding culture from top level guilds often requires many hours commitment of every player to turn up. This can be 3-4 nights a week each for 3 hours or more. This obviously requires players to balance their real life commitments with their WoW commitments, which can be difficult for many people-often failing or foregoing their real life ones. Being a self-confessed addict at one point while playing WoW, I can definitely empathise. Sometimes it is all too easy to not go out and stay in playing WoW. The imagination can often get the better of you and escaping in top the fantastical WoW can be a great way to forget about real life troubles. Just like any other Social group, there is often guild drama ranging from stealing loot to abuse. As an officer of a guild, it can be difficult keeping everyone in line and getting along. But pushing through hard times as a raiding guild and bringing everyone together to slay that final boss for the first time can be truly satisfying.
Once a guild has mastered and looted bosses week after week, the content can quickly become stale and repetetive. I believe Blizzard has strongly appeased the raiders of WoW by often releasing big content patches of complete new dungeons throughout all stages of WoW's life so far. This has often allowed fresh bosses and dungeons to progress through. Though Blizzard has been criticised by the hardcore raiding community since the latest expansion for content being too easy, allowing casual players to easily progress also. Blizzard's response to this has been to allow casual players to see more content as they make up the majority of players in reality. Which is probably the smartest move from a business perspective for Blizzard.
Play Nice Children
From the horrors of Pickup groups(PuG's) to the ingame marriages, Warcraft can offer some of the most stale and immature social interactions to the most passionate of peoples commitment. There is no doubt Warcraft is a social experience that can't be fully appreciated or enjoyed unless you immerse yourself into the game. You can take a pot luck chance of grouping up with random players or level up with your friends. What made me really fall for this game was playing with a real life friend for hours on end levelling up with each other, each character complementing the other to battle enemies. Though, many players will team up with random people often spending more time with guildies online than real life friends. This is an increasingly prevalent situation in our ever advancing technological lifestyle.
Detachment from actually seeing a person and picking up on voice tone, facial expressions and pheromones does create an unrealistic situation. This can be a positive, allowing people to immerse themselves into the world more and take on the role of their character on Roleplaying servers. This stagnant form of instant communication definitely isn't good for a society as a whole, and can be destructive to WoW also. You are only responsible for your in-game actions and these don't carry over to the real world. This is good in the sense that people can escape the game though this detachment has led to a decline in a lot of people's normal behaviour to in-game being assholes as they don't have to be responsible. This can often create a hostile environment. These people are increasingly chastised from the community though, but their are always the stories of people clearing out guild banks and leaving the guild for their own personal gain.
Though, the culture of WoW can greatly vary depending on what people you run into in-game. Many people are often willing to help out low level characters and will help others with advice. I have created many what I would call real friendships with people over WoW even though having never met them.
World of Grindcraft
The repetetive gameplay and mystical world just can't draw some people in. I do have many personal criticisms of the gameplay itself. The gameplay can often become tedious and boring with questing often involving kill 20 of X, or collect 20 of Y or go to Z. This is repeated over and over again. Wow isn't for many people, and if not drawn in by the artificial in game rewards of bettering your character and gear, the game can become very dislikeable within minutes of playing. Though my hypothesis is many people play games to escape and often zone out, making WoW a perfect tonic to the disease of boring office jobs.
The profession system is also pretty basic, there are essentially gathering professions and crafting professions, particular ones complementing each other. Each character is allowed to take up two primary professions, these will provide direct benefits to the players gear depending on the profession. They are also often used as a means to make money to sell gathered materials or crafted armours etc on the Auction House. The in game economy I have always found very solid, with gold always playing an important part in the game. I have enjoyed many times, simply buying low and selling high in the Auction house, sometimes monopolising specific products, making good returns on them.
While with recent expansions making quests more interesting and rewarding, Grinding is always a part of WoW. To gear up for raiding you have to grind reputations with certain factions, doing the same quests day after day who will eventually reward you with high level gear. You have to kill the same bosses until your item drops which is completely down to blind luck. Each boss has a loot table with different items having a drop %rate. This can sometimes become incredibly frustrating doing the same boss every day for one drop. For gold you have to fly the same routes to gather materials, or kill the same monsters, or do the same quests. Daily quests for reputation are necessary for the best in game enchantments, over and over again. My point is WoW is about grinding and at times can get very repetetive, tedious and frustrating. But it always keeps people coming back
.
Wrap Up
WoW has provided me days of gameplay that I'd be embarrassed to say, and I can pretty confidently say it's the biggest timesink out of any game I've ever played. In saying that though, I no longer play it as the game has become stale and repetetive, boring me. I can definitely see what it offers people in the whole package, but Blizzard just keeps formula of always releasing better gear/content. In saying that I can definitely see me coming back sometime in the future(next expansion) and getting sucked into the lore and story of the World of Warcraft.
On that note,If you've never played WoW, do yourself a favour. "Go out and buy a copy of World of Warcraft Right now and join the online sensation before we all Murder you", as Cartman of South Park so fondly puts it! Hope you enjoyed my review.
I will cover everything from social players to raiding to actual gampelay.
Warcraft-A Magical World
It is very difficult to begin a review of World of Warcraft. From the emotions in social interactions to it's unique look even to it's gameplay, these all invoke many different feelings in me that are all contained in this "game". Though, I believe WoW has become and evolved into more than just a game which I now refer to more as a culture.
It contains an enormous world and thousands of quests for a player to lose themselves in. You may argue many modern RPG's contain this sense of being completely absorbed by a different world and say WoW is nothing new. Even from a critical standpoint, WoW is somewhat lacking in it's gameplay mechanics and graphics engine. But what WoW lacks in these complexities it makes up for with rather intuitive and an easy entry level control scheme for non-gamers. Blizzard have succeeded in converting casual solitaire office workers into gamers, opening a whole new market for the PC gaming. This is only a small part of the magic that makes WoW what it is today. The real magic in the game is the culture.
This is a typical introduction for a WoW player into the World from a first person perspective:
"I have made many characters in WoW from Taurens to dwarves but I can still vividly remember beginning my very first character. I remember looking at the tiny amount of space allocated on the world map in my starting area. This starting area seemed huge and magical from ground level, instantly suspending my disbelief. I completed the first few quests and already a level up, followed by a big flash on screen and a "Congratulations!" from the game. Other people in the area saw me flash and "grats"'ed me for my accomplishment. I already felt a sense of achievement increasing my characters attritubutes, pulling me deeper into the world, slaying even more beasts for my next level up. The unique look and artistic style drew me in immediately, saving poisoned night elves and helping the local people dwelling in a mystical tree. I learned how to cook and skin beasts to sell their hides. Townspeople gave me new boots with more armour as rewards for doing their bidding. I teamed up with other night elves to slay a high level monster in a cave, it killed us a few times before we finally assigned healing duties and killed it. We were all delighted with our tactics and results, ending up completing even more quests together, chatting and eventually becoming 'friends' by adding each other-an encouraged and simple process.
We entered the main city, overwhelmed and excited by how many people were also playing. I found a leatherworker who taught me how to craft all this skinned leather allowing to make my own armour, while my 'friends' learned how to make potions and enchant items with magic. I made some armour to sell on the auction house and explored the city talking to all the people I could to get quests. Someone had to leave our party saying it was late; I looked at my watch. I'd been playing for 5 hours straight, from then on WoW taking a large part of my life for years to come."
This gameplay was revolutionary for me. Ive got to be honest, I've lost hours upon hours saving Hyrule from evil playing Zelda or even just popping head shots in CS. But WoW offered something more, an alternate world where you could be whoever you wanted to be and was more than just playing the game. Some would argue with me on this point, that there was Everquest and Runescape. But in my eyes, neither had the "magic" that WoW has created. WoW's success was a combination of ingenius design in atmosphere from questing to artistic style to player interaction combined with a bit of luck that only Blizzard could get.
Levelling PVE gameplay and PVP
When compared to the complexities and strategies of another fabulous Blizzard title, 'Starcraft', WoW severely lacks depth in individual gameplay. The three main archetypes of MMORPG's are covered in healer, tank and DPS(damage). These are more deeply explored through 8 different classes each with 3 different talent trees. Many Classes can be different archetypes depending on which talent tree they spec into. Each class also has different mechanics to use actions, from spells to special attacks. While this seems to make the gameplay more complex than it really is, when you're playing with the one character for hours, you get to know them and their abilities inside out. You start off with only a few various abilities gaining more with levels, slowly introducing you to more while becoming more powerful. Each class often ends up having many unique abilities distinguishing them from others, though they are very easily manageable and simple to assign to keys and use. While killing an npc foe, you can often hit as few as 2-3 buttons and easily kill those at the same level as you. This single player combat clearly isn't the drawcard that pulls people in, or is it?
It would be unfair to discuss only single target npc killing for questing. When playing on a Player versus Plater(PVP) server, once you leave your starting area you are subject to the terms of full scale war against the opposing faction. Though If playing on a Player versus environment(PVE) server you can stay safe. Open world PVP often doesn't give you any reward apart from the simple satisfaction of killing other players, which for people playing on these servers is often satisfaction enough! PVP combat often calls on a player to maximise the use of all possible abilities to balance survival against attacking the other playing. This open world PVP definitely adds a constant sense of danger to the game which some players thrive off and relish. Being nittpicky, this can sometimes lead to unsavoury situations of being killed over and over by a player much higher level than you. Though this PVP can often create spontaneous large scale battles for hours between factions at random locations(see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1mVAPU44_A for some pre-expansion world PVP many reminisce about now).
Wow is a constantly evolving game though and world pvp feels stale with some classes being overpowered in a contant state of fluidity trying to maintain class balance to allow even grounded fights. Though with Content updates, Blizzard has been reasonable to the PVPers among us introducing an Honour system for killing other players to reap rewards like armour. Blizzard also introduced specific battlegrounds, where players can specifically go to, fighting for bases and Capture the flag scenarios for bonus honour. Battlegrounds have changed dramatically to positive and negative community responses over time. Currently the PVP community is still relatively strong and has recently increased with the recent introduction of dual specs-allowing players to both be PVE and PVP specced.
PVP also offers the Arena system allowing players to compete in 2V2, 3v3 and 5v5 teams. These often offer fierce competition and require good co-ordination of team members often using ventrilo or teamspeak to do battle. This system is very competetive and also provides players with the best PVP gear in the game. From a technical standpoint I have to say the Arena system fails. It has showed in massive decline in players currently due to the difficulty of keeping classes balanced-the top teams all containing the same classes. Blizzard's current mantra of bring the player not the class has decreased the uniqueness each class brings to a raid in PVE though in PVP it does not apply with a select few classes being overpowered. From a critical perspective this unfair from the outset situation makes for a dull system.
Gameplay:End Game Raiding and Culture Of Raiding
I often find it hard to explain to non gaming friends who make fun of my WoW habits why I still play after Ive reached the highest level. Many believe reaching the current maximum level being 80, to just be the beginning of the game, which for a lot of players it is. The 'tangible' in-game rewards of raiding is Epic loot. End-game bosses drop the best weapons and armour in the game. End game raiding offers something that is experienced on a smaller scale during your levelling up. It is essentially assembling a large amount of people(upto 40) to conquer more difficult bosses. These bosses require a knowledge of what they in fact do to kill them. Some may spawn lots of additional monsters that need to be killed or fire coming up from the ground which everyone needs to dodge. Due to this difficulty of unpredictable actions by the boss before the encounter, this often results in a lot of raids where everyone will be killed. These circumstances pull people together and co-operate to work for the same goal. After dying over and over again with everyone getting tired and frustrated over three hours, perfecting the strategy every attempt, when the boss is finally killed a sense of genuine accomplishment is felt. Strong camaraderie is formed and people form guilds, making weekly times to go raiding.
Raiding culture from top level guilds often requires many hours commitment of every player to turn up. This can be 3-4 nights a week each for 3 hours or more. This obviously requires players to balance their real life commitments with their WoW commitments, which can be difficult for many people-often failing or foregoing their real life ones. Being a self-confessed addict at one point while playing WoW, I can definitely empathise. Sometimes it is all too easy to not go out and stay in playing WoW. The imagination can often get the better of you and escaping in top the fantastical WoW can be a great way to forget about real life troubles. Just like any other Social group, there is often guild drama ranging from stealing loot to abuse. As an officer of a guild, it can be difficult keeping everyone in line and getting along. But pushing through hard times as a raiding guild and bringing everyone together to slay that final boss for the first time can be truly satisfying.
Once a guild has mastered and looted bosses week after week, the content can quickly become stale and repetetive. I believe Blizzard has strongly appeased the raiders of WoW by often releasing big content patches of complete new dungeons throughout all stages of WoW's life so far. This has often allowed fresh bosses and dungeons to progress through. Though Blizzard has been criticised by the hardcore raiding community since the latest expansion for content being too easy, allowing casual players to easily progress also. Blizzard's response to this has been to allow casual players to see more content as they make up the majority of players in reality. Which is probably the smartest move from a business perspective for Blizzard.
Play Nice Children
From the horrors of Pickup groups(PuG's) to the ingame marriages, Warcraft can offer some of the most stale and immature social interactions to the most passionate of peoples commitment. There is no doubt Warcraft is a social experience that can't be fully appreciated or enjoyed unless you immerse yourself into the game. You can take a pot luck chance of grouping up with random players or level up with your friends. What made me really fall for this game was playing with a real life friend for hours on end levelling up with each other, each character complementing the other to battle enemies. Though, many players will team up with random people often spending more time with guildies online than real life friends. This is an increasingly prevalent situation in our ever advancing technological lifestyle.
Detachment from actually seeing a person and picking up on voice tone, facial expressions and pheromones does create an unrealistic situation. This can be a positive, allowing people to immerse themselves into the world more and take on the role of their character on Roleplaying servers. This stagnant form of instant communication definitely isn't good for a society as a whole, and can be destructive to WoW also. You are only responsible for your in-game actions and these don't carry over to the real world. This is good in the sense that people can escape the game though this detachment has led to a decline in a lot of people's normal behaviour to in-game being assholes as they don't have to be responsible. This can often create a hostile environment. These people are increasingly chastised from the community though, but their are always the stories of people clearing out guild banks and leaving the guild for their own personal gain.
Though, the culture of WoW can greatly vary depending on what people you run into in-game. Many people are often willing to help out low level characters and will help others with advice. I have created many what I would call real friendships with people over WoW even though having never met them.
World of Grindcraft
The repetetive gameplay and mystical world just can't draw some people in. I do have many personal criticisms of the gameplay itself. The gameplay can often become tedious and boring with questing often involving kill 20 of X, or collect 20 of Y or go to Z. This is repeated over and over again. Wow isn't for many people, and if not drawn in by the artificial in game rewards of bettering your character and gear, the game can become very dislikeable within minutes of playing. Though my hypothesis is many people play games to escape and often zone out, making WoW a perfect tonic to the disease of boring office jobs.
The profession system is also pretty basic, there are essentially gathering professions and crafting professions, particular ones complementing each other. Each character is allowed to take up two primary professions, these will provide direct benefits to the players gear depending on the profession. They are also often used as a means to make money to sell gathered materials or crafted armours etc on the Auction House. The in game economy I have always found very solid, with gold always playing an important part in the game. I have enjoyed many times, simply buying low and selling high in the Auction house, sometimes monopolising specific products, making good returns on them.
While with recent expansions making quests more interesting and rewarding, Grinding is always a part of WoW. To gear up for raiding you have to grind reputations with certain factions, doing the same quests day after day who will eventually reward you with high level gear. You have to kill the same bosses until your item drops which is completely down to blind luck. Each boss has a loot table with different items having a drop %rate. This can sometimes become incredibly frustrating doing the same boss every day for one drop. For gold you have to fly the same routes to gather materials, or kill the same monsters, or do the same quests. Daily quests for reputation are necessary for the best in game enchantments, over and over again. My point is WoW is about grinding and at times can get very repetetive, tedious and frustrating. But it always keeps people coming back
.Wrap Up
WoW has provided me days of gameplay that I'd be embarrassed to say, and I can pretty confidently say it's the biggest timesink out of any game I've ever played. In saying that though, I no longer play it as the game has become stale and repetetive, boring me. I can definitely see what it offers people in the whole package, but Blizzard just keeps formula of always releasing better gear/content. In saying that I can definitely see me coming back sometime in the future(next expansion) and getting sucked into the lore and story of the World of Warcraft.
On that note,If you've never played WoW, do yourself a favour. "Go out and buy a copy of World of Warcraft Right now and join the online sensation before we all Murder you", as Cartman of South Park so fondly puts it! Hope you enjoyed my review.
