Posts filed under 'World of Warcraft'
Editor’s Note: I would love to say that this was delayed by my crippling addiction to the game. It wasn’t– actually I haven’t even logged in in the two weeks since I wrote this due to the permanent job hunt and some contract work I’m doing. I had intended to have a very scathing rebuttal to my final opinion, penned by none other than an employee of Blizzard itself. However, it was not to be. Something about him screaming “NO! NO! DON’T MAKE ME, THEY’LL LASH ME REPEATEDLY!” kinda soured me on the concept; though I did offer the Taskmasters of Blizzard five bucks to lash him anyway. The bleeding’s nearly stopped, he tells me. Anyway, I do apologize for this being as late as it is, and I also apologize for the lack of updates. The total non-surprise GTA project will start on the 25th. There may even be another project going on, too. We just don’t know what The Mysterious Future holds. So, without further adieu, the end of the World. Of Warcraft. Thingy. Yeah, that sounded cooler when I said it out loud.
I started this project in the hopes that even if all I got out of the whole thirty days in Azeroth experiment was my mock-on going, then that was all right. However, here after just over thirty days, I’ve found that quite frankly, I’ve grown accustomed to my race. I don’t readily play the game as often as I feel I should, but the time I’ve spent was actually… enjoyable. To a certain extent.
Let’s talk about the second Interrogation, before we get into any conclusions. I got in as Ceilai a few minutes early, and decided that the best way to go about giving the PvP a fair shot would be to try it again. This time, with a weaker character who, it should be noted, I hadn’t actually played in weeks. I gave myself every deliberate disadvantage, and even with that… I still did far better than I had as the Tauren Shaman. I actually killed other players. I had killing blows registered, and more than just two or three. I think on that first run I had eight or nine, and the second one I had five or six. A lot of it, of course, was due to my team– they were in fact the way we won the first match– but I was playing my support role the best way I knew how, and actually felt like I was contributing to the team. In some small way, I liked that. Granted, the fact that Warsong Gulch resets completely negated the feeling of having accomplished something good within the overall framewerk of the game, but meh. I’ll take my ego-boosts where I can get them. Aside from that, and a couple more quests/grind sessions, nothing terribly interesting to report. Still nothing in the way of communication.
Let’s go back to the beginning, then, and take a look at what I had to say about the game. My biggest problems with the game were the oversaturation of players (most of whom were jerks), the requirement of PvP play, and the fact that the game was totally inaccessible to casual players. One point at a time, then:
A large enough player base actually reduces the immersion an MMO player has in the world, as through login queues, zone oversaturation, and GM non-responsiveness, he or she is made to feel increasingly insignificant. To some extent, I didn’t have this exact problem during my playthrough. I ran into the login queue problem exactly twice throughout my entire run, and the zones never felt like they were far too crowded (though they certainly had their spots where a lot of people were gathered). As I never needed to call a GM, there wasn’t that problem either. However, the player base is too large. It takes away from the immersion when you’re handing over the one-of-its-kind vial of moonwell water to the druid, only to have to wait in line for the other nine people to do the same. Ditto for named-monster kills (Lady Sathrah, to be specific– I killed her, and then not an hour later she was still there). It’s also worth noting that the player base was completely hostile to new players. I had the exact same experience when I started up Ultima Online (didn’t even last a week there); nobody was willing to answer a question, or even tell me where to go to get the right information. I understand the argument of “you have a manual” but not everyone actually reads the manual. I read what I needed to know about combat, about the topics I’d heard about, and then I went in. The online help is pathetic at best and impossible to recall if you need it.
Forcing players into a PvP combat situation is akin to forcing players to be griefed; conversely, restricting players from PvP forces them into mindless grinding without any purpose. World of Warcraft does not provide enough PvE variety or non-combat PvP competition. Boy, was I wrong about this. There is literally a metric assload of stuff to do in the game. Granted, a lot of it revolves around going out and killing things, but it is possible to derive satisfaction out of the game in a non-combat situation. While some players go out and hunt things, others buy and sell services as enchanters and crafters. A good deal of money can be made just through harvesting items like herbs or minerals. While I can’t say anything for roleplaying– as I didn’t actually join an RP server– I’m sure a lot of that happens and it can’t be all bad. I was dead wrong about a lack of PvE variety. However, PvP is always combat. And, fortunately, completely optional. So, I likely won’t ever set foot in any PvP setting ever again. EVAR.
The “rest” system does nothing to contribute to casual players and in fact serves as an artificial hindrance to the “hardcore” crowd, who will overcome this through tedious grinding. This is dead-on, but for a different reason. I played very infrequently. I imagine that if I played more often, I’d have noticed a difference. However, as it stands, I didn’t see anything that made the rest system any different than normal play. Because I was always in rested mode. After the initial period, I let my characters sit for days on end and accumulated so much rest that I never saw the end of the rest bar on Sunday evening. And this was after gaining a full two levels. TWO LEVELS and I still had enough rest to take me into a third. The rest system is completely ineffectual. It’s nice if you have a lot of alternate characters and rotate between them– and the randomness of the servers being up or available pretty much necessitates that– but ultimately it confers no end-user difference.
As for observations that I picked up along the way. I’d like to address this to all but maybe three people in the Anvilmar “community”: YOU ALL SUCK. The multiplayer experience I had on the server– a “normal” server– did absolutely nothing to convince me that the game was worth paying $15 a month for, let alone playing at all. Being hostile to new players, challenging them to duels they can’t hope to win (and calling them chicken when they decline, in broadcast, and saying you’ll make a GM call if they continue to decline), and not even correcting them when they ask stupid questions will not endear me to you folks. So to all of you who were hoping I’d have something good to say about you players, I don’t. My initial assumption that you are all diseased asshats still stands with only a handful of exceptions.
All that said, I’m still going to play.
That’s right, I have decided to stay on in Azeroth. This trip wasn’t just an experiment, it was a learning experience. I figured out what to do and what not to do. And armed with this knowledge, I’m going to go back and try again. The reason behind it is very simple: because sometimes it takes a little work before you get to a great amount of fun.
When I first started City of Heroes, it was at the urging of my good friend (and fellow Unbeliever) PsychoPez. I played for two months before I let the subscription lapse; mostly because I didn’t play it terribly often, but primarily because I just wasn’t having much fun. I had picked two really bad archetypes for beginners to play, Blaster and Controller; Blasters had no defense back then and Controllers had no offense– plus, there was debt below Level 10 as well, so both got into a permadebt situation PDQ. It would be over a year before I reinstalled and started up again during a period of unemployment, because it was cheaper than buying a new game at that point; also, Mike had mentioned that some of the recent changes had made the game much more forgiving. He helped me out with a new character, and I slowly made connections within the game and within the community. It was tough at first, and occasionally I had periods where I said, “Forget this, I’m not progressing”. But the best solution actually was to play a different character. To take on the same content, from a while back, from a different angle. And occasionally with help that I didn’t have before.
WoW is, I think, the same way. I have made a lot of mistakes, and I’ve not exactly made things easier on myself through some of my choices. However, when I’m actually playing the game– even just grinding– it’s fun. Is it fun for everyone who plays it? Of course not. I know of at least one person who will call me retarded for continuing to play. Making connections will help out the experience immensely, I think. And I already have a standing invitation to a guild composed of the former members of the DDR Erie crew. I think I’ll just go right ahead and make up that character tonight, in fact. A Night Elf Hunter, of course.
The Good: The game itself is fun, for folks with a certain predisposition to the genre (I’m not an “MMO Hater” as some folks may have described me– which actually means I have to go and find someone who truly is one and give them this Auto Assault trial disk I’ve been hanging on to since May). The world is very well developed, and the story is interesting (where it’s not ripped straight from Tolkien/Warhammer). Technically speaking, it’s damn pretty and damn economical on the resources.
The Bad: The playerbase on the normal servers are all asses. Online help is just plain useless. The user interface, by default, has a LOT of flaws. The minimap is also useless and a lack of navigational aids really makes moving between areas you know too difficult– Blizzard could learn a LOT from Guild Wars. Bits of the story have been lifted from other sources, but if you’re not a fanboy you likely won’t care (and despite Pez’s attempts, I still know very little about the Warhammer universe, so what’s been lifted here doesn’t affect me).
Final Opinion: Slightly good. But ever-so-slightly. If you’ve never been fond of the MMO model then World of Warcraft won’t win you over– it may even drive you away completely. But if you’re willing to do a little bit of work for a potential lot of reward– all of it virtual, except for the social interaction– it could be a great game. Assuming, of course, you know people who already play. Let’s call this one “cautious optimism.”
September 15th, 2006
An Interrogation is a live event designed to help the members of the community that The Unbelievers mock defend their game. Within the game, the Unbeliever working on the game will (hopefully) be joined by folks like you who’ll help him or her learn the ins and outs of the game, and respond (in a civil manner) to the criticisms raised during the course of the game.
When: Sunday, September 3rd, at 4PM Eastern Daylight Time (1PM server time) for two hours
Where: World of Warcraft, Anvilmar server, Darnassus
Who: Night Elf Hunter Ceilai
Why: If I’m a n00b, why don’t you folks show me how the game PvP is supposed to be played?
I’ve decided to give the so-called WoW community on Anvilmar one more chance to redeem itself. I know there are people playing the game, and I know there are people on the damn server. So I’m scheduling this out a little ways to make sure that the folks who think they can sway me from my current disgust know about this. This is your last chance to defend the game in the eyes of The Unbelievers, so make it a good one.
Again, the ground rules laid out from last time still stand. Moreover, I’m Level 10 at the time I write this and I intend to hit at least 11 or 12 in the time between now and then. Probably won’t be playing much tomorrow due to life concerns, but hey, we have a full three-day weekend ahead of us. And three-day weekends were made for catassing.
Bring it on, punks. We’re doing Warsong Gulch up Unbeliever style.
August 31st, 2006
Session Time: Ninety minutes split between early afternoon and late evening. No level progress on either character, but…
Tonight I decided it would be a good time for me to go ahead and do some things I’d been told were the best ways to experience World of Warcraft. The first thing I did was log back into my Night Elf hunter– remember her?– and go about getting a pet. Well, the wonderful thing about that was that I picked an owl as my first pet. Ordinarily not a bad choice– I mean, come on, if it’s good enough for Harry Potter it’s just fine for an anorexic blue-skinned idol that I know at least one person has masturbated to (and no, it’s not me– why that guy thought I would be impressed that he mentioned that is quite beyond me, although at least someone was talking to me). The one thing that in my careful calculations I failed to realize was that the owl must be fed properly if it is to remain on good terms with me (read: won’t go all Hitchcock on my skinny blue ass). Yes, I did know that pets needed to be fed, per se; I did not realize that they were in fact picky eaters. I went through my entire stock of beef jerky in about the first thirty seconds after realizing that the owl was “rebellious” and “unhappy”. This made the owl “happy”, as evinced by the indecipherable little square smiley face under its icon. This also made me “poor”, as evidenced by the fact that after getting beat down by several monsters in a row, the beast was now “unhappy” and refused to eat the perfectly good mushrooms I still had left. I made a mad dash back to Darnassus and started looking for a vendor.
That’s when I discovered that, apparently, Night Elves are vegans. There wasn’t a fleck of meat to be found in the whole damn city. So now I’m not just playing a blue-skinned fap target with an eating disorder. I’m playing a blue-hued fap target with a half-assed eating disorder, who doesn’t eat meat but throws up what she does eat about twenty minutes later. The Barrens isn’t a wasteland, it’s where the collective gastric juices of all the chunks blown by the population of Darnassus runs off to. No wonder the Horde’s pissed to share the continent with them.
Did somebody say Horde? Why yes, I believe I did. After I spent my entire savings (about five silver) trying to bid on anything that remotely resembled meat, I realized that the longer I stayed logged in, the more my pet’s pleasantness would deteriorate. So I jumped over to my Tauren and decided I ought to try this PvP thing I’ve heard so much about. I signed up for a match at Warsong Gulch and was presented with… another queue message.
WoW: Waiting on Whatnow?
All unreasonable bitching aside, it was a less than a minute wait before I was prompted to teleport to the Gulch. Fair enough, I thought, and I jumped in. Immediately the Hordeside “leader”, a Tauren whose name I shall not utter here, began bitching everyone out for being too low level. He was the only one bitching that I heard, actually– the first leader made some stupid remark and left immediately. Now, I’ll say this– yes, I knew I was probably not going to be of a whole hell of a lot of use during the match. However, I was of some worth– healed a couple people when they needed it, and dealt significant damage to the Alliance thugs who eventually did make off with our flag. Warsong Gulch is set up as a Capture the Flag match; it plays pretty similarly to any FPS CTF game except you’re using the WoW combat engine instead of your run of the mill BFG9000. To be honest, I half wanted to whip out the Big Freakin’ Gun and start team-killing. The whining did not stop. At all. “Come back when you’re level 16 please.” “Thanks for the loss, noobs.” “Any other Level 11s want to leave?”
One lone voice of reason did say, “Shut up. They have as much right to be here as you do.” I would have said “thanks”, but a) I didn’t want to expose myself to further ridicule, and b) I was too busy playing the god damned match.
Was I too low level? Probably. Warsong Gulch is set up for levels 10-19. I didn’t have my second totem yet (still don’t, actually– going out to the Barrens is my next stop tomorrow), and I was still a little shaky with keybinds and battling on the run. Did I have a right to at least give it a try? Blizzard thought so.
In real life you’re not always given the chance to pick and choose who you work with. This is a lesson I know all too well. There are three things you can do in the event that you don’t like the people you’re near. One, you can always leave. Two, you can bitch and complain and make everyone’s experience as miserable as possible. Or three– and this, ladies and gentlemen, is usually the Right Answer– you can shut up, deal with the problem at hand, and try to politely correct the faults of the people you’re near. Granted, right now I’m choosing Option Two: bitch and complain. But that’s because I was using Option Three throughout the entire game. I was dealing with the problem at hand– there were Alliance in r base, they were killing r mans. (Nevermind that by “dealing with the problem” I was in fact “slowing them down only ever so slightly”. A small contribution is still a contribution.)
While playing, actually, I figured out what I’ve been doing wrong with WoW. I’ve been looking at WoW as a multiplayer game. It’s clearly not intended to be that way– if it was, people would, you know, cooperate. Nope, World of Warcraft is, quite simply, not meant to be a multiplayer experience unless you’re with a bunch of people you know not to have their heads so far up their asses they look like an Escher painting when they open their mouths. I happen to know a good deal of people without that particular strain of craniorectal inversion. Unfortunately, none of them play WoW. Coincidence? You be the judge.
The Good: I’m actually happy with the game now that I’ve had my big paradigm shift. It’s an excellent, immersive single-player RPG. I don’t know why it needs that silly online requirement.
The Bad: What has consistently been hailed as the be-all, end-all reason to play World of Warcraft, the PvP combat, sucks. It’s ridiculously unbalanced and totally hostile to anyone who deigns go in with just an inkling of curiosity. The players who are “hardcore” PvPers don’t exactly help this much.
Opinion Change: Hard to say, really. I’m definitely sure I don’t like the idea of continuing to pay for a single-player game. However, it is a good single-player game. The multiplayer component is terrible, though. Since that’s all that anyone ever talks about, though, I’m going to have to say opinion down greatly.
August 30th, 2006
Session Time: Two hours split between Sunday morning and Sunday evening. One and a half if you don’t count… well, you’ll see. Advanced a good ways into Level 11.
Let me preface this whole thing by saying, first and foremost, that I am not blind to the deficiencies produced by my playthrough. I will be the first to admit that by only relying on what is presented to me in-game and in the manual, I am missing out on quite a bit of information. So I’ve taken the advice of a few of the people posting here and made a couple changes to what I try. The results have improved my opinion of the game enough to warrant their mention.
First, the idea of selling items in the Auction House over a longer period of time certainly was a good one. The Notched Shortsword of Strength I’d found in a random chest in some godforsaken hole (ahem, beautifully-rendered godforsaken hole) sold for almost double what it would have through an NPC. Also, asking the guards for information actually works. Had someone been kind enough to point that out in-game instead of ignoring me, maybe I wouldn’t have been as lost and pissed off. Finally, I’m getting the impression that being a Shaman isn’t specifically a caster-type role; I found a Dreamwatcher Staff which deals a lot more damage than the mace I’d been using. Of course, finding new armor is getting to be a chore.
Now, then, let’s talk about the 800-lb. ogre in the room. The server queue. Last night, for the first time since starting the trial, I was subjected to the dreaded “Anvilmar is Full” message. Let me reiterate. Anvilmar, a server touted as “new” when I first started in late July, is now a “full” server. Granted, I have not been playing on weekend evenings specifically so I can avoid getting this, but last night I just had to get on. I’d gotten to that point of the weekend where you’re saying, “Goddammit, Monday, just get here already!” So I logged in, saying, “I have to check my auction anyway and get my stuff back”. And found myself at position 130 in line to get in.
Now, yes, 130 is not that bad. It wound up only being a five-minute wait. But, for those five minutes, it was eternity. Can you imagine if someone truly addicted wound up delayed by this screen? I don’t know about you, but even in my quasi-apathy I was pissed. Imagine someone who actually likes the game having to wait. Or, worse, someone who got randomly disconnected in the middle of a party situation or guild event. Getting stuck in line while your allies are getting slaughtered in turn is not going to endear you. You may lose DKP, whatever those are, and that’s Serious Business.
Once I was in, there were no obvious signs that the server was straining. There was no lag, no overpopulation, nothing that would say, “We need to limit the number of people here”. Maybe the server wasn’t straining. That’s a possibility; maybe “full” really means “If we add any more people, there may be 1/128th of a second of lag and heaven forbid that there be lag in my Horde”. It would be nice to know what Blizzard considers “full”. It would also be nice to have something to do during the wait time other than stare at the queue countdown. I mean, sure, you can curse at it, but that gets old after a while and your throat gets dry really fast.
I’ve found that I’m eligible for the Warsong Gulch PvP Battleground, so I’ll be heading into that later this week. Y’know, assuming I can get in.
The Good: Even in a situation where the game’s in a “critical” state, it’s responsive (which makes the spike of lag I had on the first night very very odd). The game remains quasi-fun if you have the time and mood to get into it.
The Bad: I promised that there would be whining when I had to wait, and here it is. Waiting sucks. It’s not clear if I could have tried a character on a different server and still kept my place in line. There should be something more engaging during the queue screen.
Opinion Change: Slightly less. I’m gradually moving away from outright hatred of the game and more into neutral tolerance, but unless something wows me here in the next week or so, there’s no chance I’ll be continuing.
August 28th, 2006
Session Time: 90 minutes. Two days ago. Job hunting sucks. ahem Progressed Shalalah to level 10, cleared out a couple of quests, and managed to still have rest left over.
As stated, job hunting sucks. That’s been the key thing preventing me from playing; after eight hours searching Monster and HotJobs fending off people who think I’m perfect for this wonderful over-the-road trucking position in East Buttcramp, Wyoming, or (my personal favorite) the guy trying to get me into a check-fraud plot, saying, “C’mon, they can’t all be scams!”, I’ve very little desire to sit in front of a computer and grinding away at something even more demeaning and less rewarding. Still, in between doing loads of laundry Wednesday morning, I did manage to get an hour and a half of play in.
I will admit to one important thing, though: the game is growing on me. I’m finding it a lot easier to slip into the world as soon as I log in. Probably the most telling fact is that, after grinding out 20 kills for a quest, I actually smiled. Yes, I enjoyed it. I had fun, dammit, and that scares me.
There was a sense of satisfaction about surviving a battle with two or three wolves by the most narrow of margins. It’s a sort of a cheap thrill as I’d accidentally gimped myself (I left my Earth Totem in the bank before realizing that I need it to cast Earth Totem spells– who’da thunkit?). Still. There’s nothing that was done that couldn’t have been done in any other RPG– hell, you don’t even need an MMO to do seat-of-the-pants escapes (just play the original Final Fantasy). So what exactly is it?
I mentioned this a little while ago, but the Taurens are the ’spiritual’ members of the Horde. A Tauren takes harmony with nature seriously; the land is something to be respected, not exploited. The world is made of what is material and what is immaterial, and harmony between the two sides of the world is of the greatest importance. We have been charged by the spirits who watch over us to safeguard the land for our children and our children’s children. It’s not just our sacred duty, it’s the meaning of our existence. The Tauren is the steward of Azeroth.
And I got all of this knowledge just from playing through the quests and accomplishing the tasks. Not even paying too much attention to the in-game text. Just the general feel of the quests. That’s saying something.
It’s often been asked, “Why play through an MMO at all? It’s just grinding.” And yeah, for the most part, an MMO is based solely around killing things and optionally selling their loot. But what keeps a player interested is the story, the content, the trappings surrounding the grind. Can you get a good story from other places? Of course; they have these things called ‘books’, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. Can you get the story of Azeroth from a book? Wait, bad example…
I’ve always held that the greatest role-playing game in the world will be the one where the players’ actions directly dictate the way the overall story plays out. No individual quests that everyone gets, no mindless grinding. Everyone has a task, and every task serves a purpose to advance a story. When the players accomplish a task or fail to do so, the development team puts out content for their next move. I want to see a ginormous, developer-DMed game of Dungeons and Dragons where nobody feels insignificant for even a single second.
Of course, that means PvP combat. Which is what I’m planning on doing very soon now…
The Good: The story is starting to pick up. I’m getting ready to leave Mulgore and head out into the Barrens for the first time. Cross-server PvP sounds interesting.
The Bad: It’s not entirely clear what was changed in the latest patch that directly affects me, but apparently it was important. I still feel extremely lonely.
Opinion Change: Improved, but this may just be a case of “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. I suppose the game could work well as a casual pursuit, but for my part I intend to go hardcore this weekend. Namely because no placement agencies work on Saturday.
August 25th, 2006
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