Let it be known, that as a human being - in the real world, I am not a man of facts and figures. My talents lie in the creative side, in that what cannot be expressed through order. Yet, there is order to it. There are rules. I do not merely create. I craft.

And Today, I have been crafting: War.

Welcome To Azeroth

That stupid introduction was merely to set up one thing: This blog is about World of Warcraft, motherfuckers. I thought now was as good a time as any to get into it - y'know, cause 7ish years into an MMO is a brilliant time to begin playing it. I've got a Dranei, she will fucking kill you with fire.

And it's a perspective that's rarely seen - that of someone new to World of Warcraft, so I thought it might be interesting to just bring a bullet point list to the table, for a short blog of what's right and wrong with a 7 year old game, that 11 million + people are still paying for.

Good

• It looks pretty as hell. I can't get it to run ultra. I've turned a lot of the settings down to keep the framerate high - it's a surprisingly demanding game for how old it is, and whilst I'm running on Lion, on a mini (so I have a fairly shit sucky gaming experience) - it gets a good balance between looks and performance. And most of it is just the damned art style. It's great.
• Dungeons. I've only run a couple of them at this low level - and only run deadlines once, and the latter was particularly fun. I hear it had been completely overhauled for Cataclysm, and it showed. It was mostly voiced, had 3D frames in quest windows, good quests, and it was enjoyable. The rest, not so much. So I'm hoping there's more like this.
• Loot. God damn I love loot. There's nothing I like more than loot. World of Warcraft is loot incarnate. More loot is always needed. The loot never ends.
• Questing, and XP. It's great at just - conning you into feeling good. Shiny! Big Numbers! Feel positive!
• My Guild. I'm on a new server - so I was invited in like, 5 minutes of creating a character, but it's been awesome to type '/g' and ask any newbie question, and find an answer. I didn't feel like the community wasn't accepting.

Bad

• Gameplay. I've only played 2 MMOs in my time - this, and City of Heroes, and the gameplay in City of Heroes his far superior, by a bajillionty miles. I'm just casting repetitive spells.
• The Addons. I'm running like 40MB worth of Addons, to improve the functionally of the UI. I also come from the world of console gaming, where there are no mods. Blizzard have had 7 years. This game should have all of this UI functionally that it needs in the base UI.
• I don't know why I'm still playing. There's no compelling story, there's no end, there's no people I know in real life. Everything persistent about it exists merely inside it, and whilst I'm playing it, there's nothing that's more fun then any of the console games I need to finish - or perhaps losing over and over in Starcraft. These don't cost £8 per month.

So I'll end this short little thing with a question. Why am I still playing WoW? Why do I want to keep playing it?

Outro, Bitches.

So yeah, this is more to kickstart a discussion than anything - I'm aware that similar discussions have happened in perpetuity since the inception of MMOs, but how many of you are still playing? Are any of you new? How does the genre continue?

Here's what I'll say before I go: 99% of these people on this server don't play other games. They play Wow. It isn't a game, this is some second life shit. That's not what I'm looking for, really. I'd love a game that I can consistently play with my friends, as a multiplayer game. However the only one that appeals to my group of friends is that Call of Duty. I'd prefer Starcraft, or Burnout Paradise - but what can you do?