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Addictively frustrating
World of Warcraft, the latest massively multiplayer online RPG (MMORPG)
and one dealing with the milieu of Blizzard's best-selling
Warcraft series, is one of those games where you have this mixed
bag of everything good and outright horrible. This would have
been a great game had it not been for the frustration factor –
one that is very common in MMORPGs, unfortunately.
So what's good about it? Much, actually. If there is one thing
to give the acronym “WoW”, it's the graphics. This is the game
you want to play with, say, a brand-new Pentium 4 3.0E GHz with
NVIDIA GEForce 4 setup. In my opinion, World of Warcraft has the
best graphics of any game except for a couple of the later Final
Fantasy games – and even in those, your ability to explore and
interact is rather limited. Though the graphics of the people
could be done a little better, many of the aesthetics, including
diversity of raiment and practical armor, are fine as they are.
The music is halfway decent - my favorites are the moody New Age
in Night Elf countries and the folk-like tune in the human inn.
But the sound is a bit lacking, with too few voices (i.e. there
is only one voice set for each race and gender – what's up with
that?)
Those videos of World of Warcraft gameplay on Blizzard's website
do not do justice compared to actually playing the game – a fun
quasi-action/strategy style similar to Secret of Mana melded
with the real-time strategies of Warcraft or Starcraft. It is
addictive to level up, try to be stronger than the next for
bragging rights. Thanks to abilities like talents, leveling a
character is choosier than you think, making even playing the
same class twice much more exhilarating.
Not surprisingly, the graphics and gameplay accentuates your
interaction of the world, from the Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor.
It ends up fun – if not also addictive! – just to explore, to
see the lands from the subterranean kingdom of Ironforge to
Teldrassil's lush and exotic forests and natural cities (most
notably Darnassus). The populaces of the various regions are
also interesting: the spiritual Tauren, the archeological
dwarves, the Beavis and Butt-Head-sounding goblins, the ethereal
and matriarchal (sort of) Night Elves, the uniqueness of playing
the Undead. And that's just to name a few. About the only
complaint I have here is that the latter two races feel like
shoo-ins for some weird reason, possibly because of their
(scant) NPCs and quests, they just do not have the feel of the
other six races.
Blizzard is smart enough to implement many fail-safes into the
game to ensure enjoyment for many months to come. One
implementation is “soulbound” items – that is, items or
equipment that can never leave your character unless you sell to
a vendor or “destroy” (drop forever) the item. This reduces the
glut of items on the market and increases demand. Minimum level
requirements for certain items also decrease the number of
degenerate characters and keeps it fun for everyone.
Player vs. player (PvP) is a lot of fun, if not just plain
addictive, especially when you set up an army (a.k.a. a “raid”)
to attack an opposing town. Unfortunately, it takes a long time
before you can participate effectively, as those guards – as
well as some player opponents – are of very high level. The
upcoming battlefields, where you do PvP in a mass scale, show
much potential. If there is a weakness, it is the inevitability
of uneven teams. On most servers, the Alliance outnumbers the
Horde. Possibly because the two most popular races in MMORPGs in
general – humans and elves – are on the same side. Having
belief-based instead of a race-based ideology would have been
better – but this was because latter was directly drawn from the
other Warcraft games (humans vs. orcs).
Unfortunately, for the game's many positives, there are many
negatives as well.
First and BY FAR the worst, death and resurrection in World of
Warcraft quickly turns into such a pointless chore. If you die,
your spirit begins in a graveyard darn far away from your corpse
– and you have to trudge ALL THE FRIGGIN' WAY to your corpse to
revive. Usually taking 5-10 minutes depending on how far you
are. When you do reach and revive, your health and mana are low,
your equipment suffers, you have to re-cast your enhancements,
and you are still not out of the fire! Meaning you could die
AGAIN (especially if you are in the middle of fighting a horde
of monsters) and have to perform this crap once more. Maybe
twice, maybe even more. It's enough to make you bust your mouse
in frustration. It's enough to make even the most even-tempered
curse a sailor's streak. “Recovering your corpse” is probably
the second most annoying element in the history of video gaming,
behind only the “ironman RPGing” in the 80s where total death
would mean deletion of your character or party. And there are
the “no-fault” deaths when you lose your Internet connection and
the monsters you fight just suddenly wail on you.
Talking to a spirit healer? Yeah, that sure is a fast way to
make you a pauper. Resurrection sickness is bad enough. The loss
of money in repairs is tantamount to Schadenfreude. One of my
characters took several hours just to get back on track because
I revived via spirit healer too many times and ran out of money
to repair – and found it hard to get more with such broken-down
equipment. I am just glad this is not the beta!
At best, it is better than what the Everquest junkies face,
especially with the utter torture they have to go through when
they die – you lose levels. At least you never lose experience,
much less levels, in World of Warcraft. (Am I glad I did NOT
play Everquest.) Thankfully, dying in PvP does not have an
equipment penalty unless you talk to a spirit healer.
My solution? Eliminate the repair penalty from dying. To have a
disincentive to die (of course), a “penalty box” where you can
do nothing for several minutes would work best. At the least, I
can get up and take a breather. It's a shame MMORPGs aren't like
classic RPGs where you can reload and run through a difficult
spot tabula rasa.
Second, some quests can also end up frustrating. Too many times
have I searched forever to find a certain location or NPC. Other
times, you have to kill a certain “boss”, only to find that the
“boss” had recently been defeated, and you have to wait at the
boss's lair just to get your chance. The worst, in my opinion,
is the quest where you have to find an item (or an amount of
items) dropped by a specific set of creatures. Sometimes, the
first monster you kill drops that quest item; other times, you
might have to kill dozens upon dozens of monsters to get said
item. Furthermore, the quest system feels like you are required
to play with a whole bunch of friends, online or real-life. With
a limit of 20 quests in your log, it usually ends up filled with
a bunch of “elite” quests that all but require a group to
complete. Yeah, you could “abandon” them and retake them in the
future, but that often screws up various chains of quests (and
don't even get me started on the bugs within them).
Third, the “underworld” is not as detailed as the “overworld”.
Too many dungeons seem generic (places like Gnomeregan and
Maraudon are exceptions) and just plain feel boring compared to
exploring the world above ground. Heck, some dungeons are
identical to each other save the monsters, making some gamers
think, “Haven't I been here before?” Ditto certain cities. I was
thoroughly unimpressed with Stormwind, for example; it felt too
generic when you look at other kingdoms in the world.
Fourth, the servers are rather unreliable. Too many times have
gamers been kicked out of the server and find themselves dead
when they log back in (see the part on dying), and it is worse
when servers are “rolled back”, that is, the gamer loses
progress, usually since his last login. Almost as bad is the lag
in big cities and in auction houses (especially in Ironforge).
The staff seems to take their sweet time to fix the problems in
the game. It took how long to fix to the boat problem? (And even
that is only a temporary fix).
Finally, some aesthetics of graphics and sound are poorly
implemented. You have only one set of sounds per race and
gender, as is body type - i.e. all human men have the same
height, weight, and gait. The “emotes”, where you can make
characters perform actions (bow, dance, roar, etc.) seem rather
limited when you see in the chat box what the gamers do when
they role-play. More emotes please!
Overall, this is the mixed bag of mixed bags – it seems that
what is really good is immediately ruined by something that is
really bad (the utter annoyance of dying, mainly). Or maybe it's
just me; this is my first MMORPG, and I get that strange feeling
that it will be my last, based on what I may face in other
MMORPGs. Those that love MMORPGs (despite the aches of playing
some of them) will find this a dream. Those that don't, well…
try it and you might like it, but I don't blame you if you just
stand up and quit. Of course, when you think about it, based on
what Blizzard had done, and what they could have done, it could
have been a whole lot worse.
The Good:
Great graphics and gameplay, especially exploration
Player vs. player implementation (including the upcoming
“battlefields”)
Less grind compared to other MMORPGs
The all-female Night Elf Sentinel armies (someone had to put it
in! :D)
The Bad:
Too much “grind” (i.e. the chore to resurrect your corpse) –
admittedly, better than other MMORPGs
Annoying quests and poorly implemented quest system
Some locations seem generic
Extreme server unreliability
Lack of graphic and sound diversity compared to most games
The Most Ridiculous:
Can someone tell me why female Night Elves dance like Britney
Spears while male Night Elves dance like Michael Jackson? I
thought they were too long-lived to deal with the many
shortcomings of pop culture.… .
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