MMOs are a strange beast. They are designed to make you play as much as possible, yet addictiveness does not always equal fun. In the field of pyschology, there are several kinds of rewards systems, and the one that seems to be the most successful is the random reward introduced at a random time. Sometimes you click the button, and nothing happens. Sometimes you click and get the food pellet. It's this mechanism that fuels the slots in Vegas, and when you walk away empty, as is statistically inevitable over a long enough stretch of time, you tell yourself that the overall value was the experience itself, since you come away with nothing tangible. MMOs take away your time and they never deliver a discreet conclusion.
I played a ton of Dark Age of Camelot shortly after it launched, and I find myself reminded of it negatively every day that I play World of Warcraft. To discuss the differences in favor of WoW would be an article in itself, but I'll try to keep to the main points.
First, let's talk about The Grind. In a traditional persistent online RPG, you advance your character by killing an endless string of monsters, and by doing "FedEx" quests where you get some money and/or experience points by delivering an arbitrary item from Point A to Point B. As your character advances, his or her progress begins to slow. It takes longer and longer to get to the next level, because you need more and more experience points each time, yet the experience returned from monsters and deliveries does not scale accordingly. Yet you feel compelled to continue because at Level X you get a really cool spell or other ability that's supposed to make the game more "fun."
The second part of the grind is "downtime," the amount of time it takes to recover from each monster (or "mob") encounter. When I played DAOC, it typically took every ounce of my resources to defeat an enemy that would give me respectable experience. Then I would sit down and wait while my energy bars slowly refilled. Then you'd have to wait awhile for the next batch of monsters to spawn again, and you'd typically be competing against other players and "camping" this same spot all day long.
2. Starting
Now, imagine an MMO where your experience is a string of quests where you're rewarded with a cool item, recipe, or a decent amount of pocket money. A game where the grind is virtually eliminated--a game where downtime is relatively nonexistent, where enemies respawn rapidly and dynamically according to how many players are in the local area; where you can use a healing spell, or bandage yourself, or eat some food, or all three, before diving right back in again. Your character's death doesn't result in the loss of many hours of experience points, or one of your items, or any money (although there is item decay, so whatever you have equipped currently takes a 10% durability hit). When you die, you resurrect as a ghost who moves quickly, runs on water, and cannot be harmed on its way back to its body. You can also have a player resurrect you in a matter of moments, even after you have entered ghost form. This is a game that understands Fun.
3. Features
We currently have 90 levels, I will count here the expansions with everything they include:
-Classic WoW: Level 60; 10 races.
-WoW : The Burning Crusade: Level 70; 2 new races
-WoW : Wrath of The Lich King: Level 80; 1 new class
-WoW : Cataclysm: Level 85; 2 new races
-WoW : Mists of Pandaria: Level 90; 1 new class.
I excluded the new armors, zones, quests etc.
Each race begins in a starter zone, with some quests, and each player needs to choose between some proffesions like: Mining, Enchanting, Tailoring, Archaeology etc. Its pretty funny because, you have the chance to kill players with same Professions trying to gather the same materials like you.
And for PvP, there are 2 factions.
-Horde
-Alliance
Yes, you may be wondering, is Player Vs. Player active in WoW (PVP) ? Well, Yes, only if you want, you can choose between 3 paths.
-PvE (Player is taking the way of killing bosses)
-PvP (Player is taking the way of killing enemy players)
-Role-Playing (Player will just rest and have fun with his friends, role-playing)
PvP could also use some more fun factor, to be honest. Currently, you don't get any experience, or additional abilities, or money, or items from fighting the other faction or dueling other players, so it ends up feeling tacked on. They have plans, which include PvP arenas, but it's pretty undercooked for now. There's also no free-for-all PvP, which is good or bad, depending on your tastes--just an FYI. Personally, I prefer not getting ganked by my fellow players, which happens a lot when a group from the enemy faction comes rolling into town, looking for trouble and averaging ten levels above the players questing in that area.
4. Entertainment
There are also Ground-Mounts, Flying-Mounts and Water-Mounts.
You need level 20 to get the first class of ground-mounts, 40 for the swift-class which is more faster, 60 for the fastest ground-mount and the first class of flying mounts and 70 for the fastest flying mounts on WoW. There are also some exceptions for some mounts, requiring more level to get them.
5. Conclusion
World of Warcraft, like any MMO, is a tough game to score. Your play experience will have no concrete resolution, and content and character class balancing will make for a slightly different experience from one month to the next. And WoW III had some debilitating issues at launch trying to handle the record-breaking number of people filing in for subscriptions. After having written about the extremely long queues, they have dwindled to almost nothing, even at peak playing times, and the game has become much more stable. I still get the occasional crash, but WoW still has a polish that puts most other MMO launches to shame. Almost a victim of its own popularity, World of Warcraft quickly found its feet, serving up no fewer than eighty-eight servers across the country, with more likely on the way.
6. Ratings
10(Presentation)
A very friendly and inviting design, and the official web site has a truckload of nicely presented tests.
9.3(Graphics)
The test direction is phenomenal, but low poly count will hurt longevity in a constantly advancing industry.
9(Sound)
Gorgeously arranged music doesn't get old, ambient sound is rich, and the sound effects are plentiful and sharply done; dialogue is tested.
9(Gameplay)
A refined and fun-oriented design rewards the test player, but there's still some character class and trade skill balancing to be done.
9.5(Lasting Appeal)
I've been playing since Spring, and I'm still playing--and testing it.
Thank you for reading my impressions, see ya !
-Best Regards, Razvan !
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