Azeroth Owns My Soul
I haven’t been posting much lately, because I have been enjoying World of Warcraft, the new massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) from Blizzard. Well, okay, perhaps “enjoying” is a bit of an understatement — “addicted” might be a better word, given that it is consuming all of my spare time (which normally would be taken up with some combination of gaming, TV, and recreational programming).
The crucial difference between World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs — and, probably, a primary reason it has been successful to the point of overpopulation — is that its design does not punish the casual player. (”Casual”, in MMORPG terms, means something like “plays only two hours a day, every day”.) Fast advancement, digestible chunks of content, and relatively less emphasis on group play make it possible to accomplish something in World of Warcraft even if you only have an hour or two to play. It is, in short, a game rather than a job, and a very enjoyable and addictive game at that.
In fairness, I must also mention the primary complaint about World of Warcraft: that it is unfinished, and has no endgame once you have advanced to the level cap. This is absolutely true — it seems to have been released early, so that there is a lot of content yet to be added. And once you have leveled a character all the way up, there isn’t much left to do with it. If you’re the type of player who will grind around the clock on one character, you’re going to run out of game pretty quick, at least until more content is added. But for the rest of us, there is still plenty to enjoy until then.
I will probably have more to say about World of Warcraft and its design in future posts, but for now consider this a mini-review: while it is far from perfect and is by no means complete or bug-free, it’s incredibly fun and I am looking forward to how it improves in the future.
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