My World of Warcraft trial ends tomorrow, and I can’t really say that I’m sad to see this day come. I’m just over level 19, bringing me one level shy of the trial’s level cap. I am, if anything, confused as to how I let myself play as far as I did, because it was around level 7 that I became noticeably upset with complete and utter lack of variety in gameplay objectives. I’ve read around and seen that the game is supposed to get a lot better towards the end-game, so I guess if one really had the time and money than the game would most certainly be worth the investments after several dozens of hours.
My gripes with these MMO’s are, admittedly, very biased. I have grown up on games that make story or gameplay the central feature. If the game doesn’t have an interesting story (and by story I mean everything between characters, setting and plot) like Half Life 2, then it better have engrossing gameplay like Ninja Gaiden. The problem with an MMO is that there can’t really be a “story” in the traditional sense of the idea because the world has to involve everybody, and if key events were unique to one player than that would leave millions of other players having felt cheated out of a good time. Sure, there might be backstory behind the races or alliances of an MMO, but I sincerely doubt that most people play the game aware of such a history, let alone appreciate it. The fun of an MMO comes from getting together with “friends” and performing impossible feats of fantasy.
Let me get a little specific with my narrative problem. I have been doing a great deal of quests wherein I am to kill leaders of a warrior centaur tribe called the “Kolkar.” On the final quest the orc or troll or whatever it was that gave me the quest said that this mission would essentially destroy their tribe and force them off of these lands. Well, I go out and I kill the final leader, feeling that I just might be making a difference in this world; that because of me the native inhabitants of The Barrens would be able to live without fear of their invaders. But much to my expected dismay, once I finish the quest and get my XP and loot, nothing has changed; though let’s face it, in a game like this nothing feasibly could have changed, and herein lies my problem with a game like this: nothing I do makes a bit of difference. I want to feel like I matter, which is something I don’t really get much of IRL. This is why I play videogames, to become somebody else, someone that does make a difference in their world. In the two games that I have played (EVE and WoW) I feel like I’m just trading the monotony of my normal life, which sucks, for virtual monotony, except it’s one that I have to pay for monthly.
As for gameplay, I have no substantial gripes. Compared to EVE it was much more involving because I had more to do in a fight other than press the F1 key. In hindsight it felt like a simplified version of Oblivion to me. I’ve heard that end-game PvP fights are intense and that raids make the game play completely differently, but after just 10 days of drudgery with this game I cannot see myself even lasting to high enough of a level to where the game starts getting good. In the absence of plot I was relying on gameplay to get me through the game, and what was there just wasn’t cutting it for me. Remember how I mentioned Ninja Gaiden earlier? Well that’s actually what I’ve moved on to from WoW, a game where the story couldn’t matter less but the gameplay is fast, visceral, intense and satisfying.
I will say that the community in WoW, at least from a tyro’s perspective, is infinitely more pleasurable than the one in EVE. In WoW I was invited to several groups where me and 2 or so other low-levels would grind with each other. The one dungeon that I made it to during the trial was beyond me, but a nice level 22 player (who was teaching her 7 year old son how to play, how awesome is that?!) invited me to her group and helped me survive and complete a mutual quest. People that you would run across in the world would buff me just for the sake of it, an act that I impulsively began performing myself. The server that I was on had a very friendly environment and I only had one run in with a dick. He was some level “??” alliance deathknight and he wouldn’t stop asking me for a duel. At first I said, “sorry im not really up for it.” But that wasn’t good enough, so then he starts chat-spamming, “yoyoyoyoyo” and then when I kept saying that I would rather not he would run ahead of me and kill everything, ensuring that I got 0 experience until I dueled him; which I eventually did and I most certainly did lose, with just one hit from him taking about 400% of my health. Other than that, though, everybody was friendly and considerate.
Of the games I’ve tried since starting this class which includes EVE, Second Life (I know, not really a “game”), and Our World, WoW has been my favorite, offering an experience most akin to what I expect out of a game. I can still say that I would feel very uncomfortable having to pay $15/month to play the game, on top of buying the game and both the expansions. My reasoning being that I don’t really feel like I’m actually “playing” all that much whenever I log on; my view mainly being that I just walk from place to place and right click enemies once, healing when the chance comes up or running away when a second enemy starts fighting. It was fun enough though, and madly addicting, but that may just be the Fantasy RPG in general.
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