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?

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?

I'm sorry, you seem to have chosen an Alliance race.
 
You'll have to go back and try again.

If your into the story you should have chosen an undead on any horde character for that matter.

Good read by the way.

@Tylea002 said:

• 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.

Really? I kind of disagree. I mean, yeah WOW is repetitive, but there's more to actually do in the world. So by gameplay do you mean just the basic mechanics of the game, or what? Also, this might just be because you're new, but WOW has been adding in functionality for user addons for years. The problem is that it's entirely up to user preference, so if you want all your bags to be in one giant bag that's up to you, but some people don't. Yeah, it might be nice that they add it in, but one could argue that if the addon already exists and is popular, then why bother adding it in?

Otherwise, glad to see you branch outside your gaming comfort zone. Hope your future endeavors are more pleasant!

WOW is like every other MMO ever made, addictive but when it comes down to it, lifeless.

@satansmagichat: I mean purely in the combat, I probably should have been more specific. The combat in City of Heroes is the best MMO combat I have seen. Alas, the endgame's terrible, the lack of future customisation poor, every quest is the same, the AI is abysmal, and it's nowhere near as well designed as WoW. But that one thing, that mere 'pressing buttons to shoot spells' is far superior in that game. I would have loved it if CoH had the Blizzard Budget, and subscribers, and that level of polish. But alas, that one thing that was good was not enough to generate enough money to get it's problems solved.

@Mikemcn said:

WOW is like every other MMO ever made, addictive but when it comes down to it, lifeless.

Yeah kinda. It was great to begin with but when you're leveling this late in the game a lot of the world feels kinda empty. Server dependant of course but it's much nicer to level when passing people by frequently and seeing other people doing shit in the world.

Really excited to play Guild Wars 2 around launch time. These games feel the most like an MMO in their infancy.

If they make a new World of Warcraft, I'd probably start playing it.

I tried it once. Got bored.

Then I tried it with a friend, was fun. But not that fun.

I've happily never paid for it.

A wizard is never late.

Yeah if you want story, try rolling an Undead. They've probably had the best intro storyline since Cata came out. I don't know how much of it will resonate if you don't know anything about the Warcraft universe, but it probably has the strongest story component. Worgen have great starting quests and zones as well. Moment to moment, WoW doesn't have an amazing story, but there are some really good quest lines in it and the overarching fiction and background is pretty compelling imo, spoken as a huge nerd who reads all the WoW books.

All MMO's are repetitive really.
 
WoW's a great game, looks amazing, feels fun, has that vibe.
Enjoy it, just do what ya want, its one of the few games that really give you freedom to just mess around.

@TaliciaDragonsong: I think you're confusing it with EVE Online on that last part.

@TaliciaDragonsong: I think you're confusing it with EVE Online on that last part.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

@Titus said:

@TaliciaDragonsong: I think you're confusing it with EVE Online on that last part.

No, I'm not.

Oh, well, you're just wrong then.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

@Titus said:

@TaliciaDragonsong: I think you're confusing it with EVE Online on that last part.

No, I'm not.

Oh, well, you're just wrong then.

@TaliciaDragonsong: TotalBusciut put it down to words very well: World of Warcraft is a theme park more than a sandbox, there's only so many times you can ride the same roller coaster. They've improved them, changed the color palette but they're essentially the same.

I played World of Warcraft from 2004 to 2010 and it was fun, well parts of it anyway, but you realize that you're not playing because it's fun, you're playing because if you quit, then your character that you've built for years, just goes to waste.

I actually found the changes that they made in Cataclysm really brought forth some sort of care for story, namely the in game cutscenes. I still think the level 80-85 areas have some of the best storylines in the game.

But, I can also understand that it does not apply to anyone, so I can't really say why you would want to play WoW if you don't really enjoy the gameplay, or have any people to play with (and yeah, addons can be a bitch too.) If you like loot driven games, there are a lot of them out there after all!

@Tylea002: You're a low level, of course theres only 2 buttons for you to press! Fire gets incredibly fun once you get dragons breath and living bomb. Most specs start feeling different around 50-60ish cause thats when you have most of your tools needed for pvp/pve

@TaliciaDragonsong: TotalBusciut put it down to words very well: World of Warcraft is a theme park more than a sandbox, there's only so many times you can ride the same roller coaster. They've improved them, changed the color palette but they're essentially the same.

I played World of Warcraft from 2004 to 2010 and it was fun, well parts of it anyway, but you realize that you're not playing because it's fun, you're playing because if you quit, then your character that you've built for years, just goes to waste.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

@Titus said:

@TaliciaDragonsong: TotalBusciut put it down to words very well: World of Warcraft is a theme park more than a sandbox, there's only so many times you can ride the same roller coaster. They've improved them, changed the color palette but they're essentially the same.

I played World of Warcraft from 2004 to 2010 and it was fun, well parts of it anyway, but you realize that you're not playing because it's fun, you're playing because if you quit, then your character that you've built for years, just goes to waste.

Sadly, that has little to do with my point. WoW offers freedom to do whatever the fuck you want. Collect mini pets, mounts, raid, level, quest, reputations, pvp, alts, heroic modes, fishing, collecting clothing sets, raiding/dungeoning old stuff, daily quests, play the auction house, archeology, explore the sights...etc. My point was there is a lot of freedom to do whatever you want, probably one of the biggest mmo's there is. Just because people put focus on endgame raiding and reputation grinds doesn't mean that's all the game is and that its limited to it. I mean, if someone willingly does nothing but sit in SW/Org and raid few days a week, then yes, WoW is a very limited game. But in no way is the freedom limited, there's still much to do, see and discover.

No need to curse, the gods are watching, and to some extent I agree with you. There is a lot to do in Azeroth, for sure, although if mini pets and fishing are worth €12 I don't know. What I tried to convey was that if it's freedom you want (not considering the steep learning curve) then EVE Online is your choice. Freedom can, on the other hand, be very boring. There are no quests in EVE, except very basic ones in the beginning, and those quests won't get you far. You make your own quests, and although that idea is very interesting, it can fall a bit short if your imagination is less than stellar. Or if you don't know how to execute those ideas.

World of Warcraft is the game I've probably had the most fun in, but it's glory days are over for me. I just don't find it fun like I did in vanilla and TBC.

Dude! I just started playing World of Warcraft about 3 days ago and so far I'm having serious issues with the quest design. It's just fetch quests over and over again. Maybe it would be fun with more people but every time I stop I have a hard time getting myself to boot it up again.

@TaliciaDragonsong: I agree with you for the most part, but the problem is that at this point the wonderful sense of discovery has passed. I played WoW from beta right up to 4.2 (firelands raid patch) and while I used to get lost for hours in the world, the cata changes killed alot of the old content that I would revisit. The game is just too long in the tooth at this point. Each expansion brings us all back for a little while but a shorter time each expac. As someone who loved the first five years (oh crap it has been that long) I think its time to let WoW die and move on to bigger and better.

A few points here I would like to comment on.

Addons, you dont need em. They have had 7 years to add functionality and they did. People that are running 40mb worth of addons or more are relying on a crutch. A few addons are great to have but none are mandatory, even for high end raiding. Turn that shit off.

I think the idea of things being repetitive in WoW is mostly a fault of the player. There is an enormous amount of things to do within WoW, if you find your self grinding or being bored then you are kind of ruining it for yourself. Grinding in regards to leveling has been self imposed in WoW since the beginning. You never had to grind in WoW, people just chose too and then bitched about it. Grinding for rep or doing dailys on the other hand is mostly optional. In the cases were the rewards are too great for it to be something you can just chose not to do, I think Blizzard makes it worth wile in the long run.

Lastly if your baby mage is boring because you are spamming the same spell that would be because you have dozens more levels to go to learn more abilitys. If you got everything at the start you would be even more bored by the end.

TotalBusciut is an example of someone that pretty much ruined the experience for himself. I have nothing against the guy but for gods sake, its a video game.

Welcome to WoW. I've been playing for years now, off and on. The problem is that I get to max level, get bored with the loot grind and quit. Only to come back with a new expansion and do it all over again.

But I agree with you the dungeons are some of the most fun to be had in this game. If you have a chance, try your hand with some battlegrounds if you like PvP. It's a good distraction sometimes.

Came in thinking I was gonna get pumped to hear why I should get into WoW but no....not at all.......the goods sound as bad as the bads. Especially when you have to ask yourself

Why am I still playing WoW? Why do I want to keep playing it?

Count me out

@LordXavierBritish said:

I'm sorry, you seem to have chosen an Alliance race. You'll have to go back and try again.

@TaliciaDragonsong: Oh yeah, no doubt about it. I've had some relapses in the past year that have all started out well. Until they end with me realizing that I'll never catch up to the people I knew and played with when I did so regularly. But if you begin today you're going to have endless amounts of fun for a long time, for sure. Especially if you start with a buddy or two.