Investigative Gaming

Issue 2: World of Warcraft, Part 2

Picking up where issue one left off, we continue our look in to why World of Warcraft continues to be so darn popular. I've since put in a couple more hours with Lug, my Tauren hunter, as well as almost 20 with Gavelier, my human paladin. Gav is now level 15 and is working his way through Westfall. I've discovered, through experience, that hunters are not for me. I like to be able to stand toe-to-toe if necessary, and I like to be able to heal myself, so as of right now, the paladin is my ideal class.  I've also come across a few more points of contention for and against WoW's popularity.

Point 1 in favor of WoW is that the world and it's inhabitants are inviting. You can really get to know who and what you're dealing with, and other players are, on average, competent. I've lost track of how many times I've healed another player and gotten buffs in return. Grouping is easy, but it's also easy to group with the wrong people, folks you would want nothing to do with in real life. Point 2 in favor of the game is that you can really get involved in the quests you're given, and they can eat up your time in a hurry. However, this leads to my first point against WoW.

The first hit on WoW is mainly the grind. You have to kill, on average, twice as many baddies as you should have to in item-gathering quests due to the fact that less the 50% of a specific baddie carry the items you'ren looking for. It's no wonder people play for so damn long -  it takes forever to accomplish anything! Another problem stems from that, and it involves the grouping and pulling of baddies. Personally, as a hunter, it was easier to pull a single baddie away from a herd, but as a paladin, with no ranged attack whatsoever, it's a pain in the butt. I can't draw just one baddie from a group, oh no, I always attract the whole damn pack. Another point against the game is the death bit. I hate dying and having to hike back to my corpse. You can regen on the spot, but that leaves you with damaged equipment and stats.  I don't have a recommendation, other then maybe to make ghosts run faster, so you can get your corpse faster.

More points for the game include the tons of loot to accumulate. I've just started finding uncommon items, but when I tried to send a shotgun I found as Gavelier to Lug, I was told that I can't send items to 'unfriendly' characters. Can't I just improv some backstory where they became buds? Isn't that what roleplaying is about? I also like that the game is constantly updating. As an old interview with a Blizzard employee in one of the magazines in my collection read, Blizzard sees WoW as an amusement park: Keep the lines short and keep changing the rides. For example, it was just my good luck that I started as a human when I did, while the Darkmoon Faire was in Elwynn Forest, the human lowbie zone. It changes by the month and won't be back here until June. One month earlier or later and I may have never even seen it.

So far, we see that the game is time consuming in nature, in that it requires you to invest the time to complete missions, but it rewards you with an enchanting environment and sweet items. In future Investigative Gaming articles, I'll be reporting on magic users, as well as the different professions. Look forward to it. Alphasim out.

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