The End of the World… of Warcraft
12.05.06 - 11:10am
After avoiding the game since the original beta testing which I participated in, I am back and I am ready to cause some complete destruction. Within most video games I can be compared to Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds. I will literally take a game, spend a few hours playing it, master the gameplay, destroy the competition, and then move on. During the beta testing for WoW I did precisely this and within a week I had become bored with the game as it offered the same continuous mind-dulling experience grind that I had hoped to escape from playing the dreaded Everquest. Now that the World of Warcraft has had some time to mature and grow I have decided to make a brief return to the fictitious world of orcs and humans and see if I still have the touch.
In my last encounter with WoW I was using my subpar A64 system coupled with a weak x700 video card, this time around I have the Lean Machine to power my way through the game and when coupled with my brand new Samsung 225BW screen I must say it is a considerable improvement. I never was a huge fan of the graphics chosen within WoW as I personally prefer more realistic graphics rather than fairy tale graphics but I can only play the games, not design them. Asides from the graphics my initial impression is that of every other second generation MMORPG, polished and simple, almost too simple. I sort of miss the days of Everquest when you spent hours grinding away at giants just for that one precious level to only get ambushed by some half-crazed goblins a few minutes later. Perhaps as I progress through the game with my roommate, Paul Stamatiou, as my partner in crime I will encounter some more difficult moments of game play.
A Week Later
I had initially planned on stretching this post into a two post affair but I have held off and here I am a week later. I have logged a total of 9 hours with my character and I feel that I have a pretty good feel of the game for the first 30 hours of gameplay or so. I tend to power through these sort of games at unnaturally quick speeds and with 9 hours into the game I’ve already hit level 15 as an Undead Priest. Now it has been an interesting 9 hours and I will admit I haven’t even scratched the surface of this game but from what I have gleaned by playing it thus-far, there isn’t much to keep me coming back for more.
For starters I love to build stuff. I build stuff all the time in real life and I must be able to do the same thing within a MMORPG to feel fully satisfied. In Everquest 2 I had an enormous crafting system at my disposal and I spent countless hours building rare and unique items that had actual value. In Everquest 2 there is a general learning curve and it will take some time to master the system. With WoW, I was severely frustrated with the crafting system as I felt like I was running all over the place for a few raw materials to get started and then I would end up fighting it out with other players to get the select few nodes that were scattered through the world. Just from that short encounter with crafting it looks like it’ll be a much less interesting affair in WoW. There is nothing more frustrating than having to verbally argue with a 12 year old kid that the rules are finders keepers and not show-up-second-and-take-everything.
Crafting is good and all but that isn’t the primary reason why I play a game, I play a game so that I can temporarily forget that I am a college student in a tiny apartment sharing a bathroom with two other individuals. Within WoW I find it very easy to go out by myself and spend 30 minutes to an hour hacking and slashing at all sorts of mythical creatures but after that hour point the truth begins to settle in, I am just grinding out experience. The quest system is so easy a monkey could complete them and I really like that the quest givers have noticeable images above their heads indicating quests but at the end of the day it is just another grind. It just lacks a certain excitement, it is like biting into a steak that wasn’t marinated.
Graphically and physically the game is about average, it looks better than a good majority of games but it really just looks like a large game of Warcraft 3. Some people may enjoy the cartoonish graphics but I prefer as much realism as possible so that I feel immersed in the game and the graphics throw me off. Even with the settings cranked up to the maximum and at a 1680×1050 resolution I still feel like I am watching something on Cartoon Network. I prefer to see shimmering water, realistic ground textures, trees with more than a few limbs and character models that don’t look like my little brother made them in art class.
All in all the game is great for what it does, it brings MMORPGs to the masses and it has managed to keep them hanging on. I think for those of us that are a bit more demanding of our games will look elsewhere as WoW doesn’t excel in any one area but does a good job at being average in all manners of the game. With a current max level of 60 and judging from my current rate of progression and my past experience with such games it seems like an adept player could rush to 60 in about 90 hours which isn’t too bad all things considered. I’ve been told that I should really play it all the way to 60 and the post-60 gameplay really makes the game shine but I’d rather move on to some of the upcoming titles such as Conan and Vanguard. Good job Blizzard, now release Starcraft 2 so I don’t think you are a total failure of a company.
Pictures to come as WoW servers are down for maintenance..again.
WarCraft is the best game ever! 2007 is the year of mobile gaming. Can’t wait until I can play Warcraft in the supply room on my 15 minute break. Make it happen!
96 hours will take you to about level 43, which is really before the best content shows up. You are welcome to dislike the game, the initial phases of the game, the looks, and the quest system as you have experienced it… However, your complete lack of knowledge marks this as a poor piece of journalism. googling “leveling to 60 in WoW”, WoW level grinding, and the like yield playtimes that average around 12 days (that’s in game, or 288 hours)for hardcore players, and 15-25 days for non-hardcore players. There are many people (myself included) who will tell you that the majority of the game seems to start at level 60.
Like I said, you can hate the game, but this is poor journalism. If you’re trying to make it a more personal perspective, write in a more personal context. If you’re trying to be objective, get some facts. If you’re trying to simply blog (scribble derivative drivel and hope someone stumbles across it), ask yourself why you’re blogging in the first place. Not trying to be too harsh because of a video game, but this is just…baseless and uninformed.
I’ve got to agree with the last commenter. At level 15, I don’t really see how you could know much about the game, particularly the crafting bit. At level 15, the crafting stuff you can make uses the materials that are present in newbie areas, i.e. if you’re doing blacksmithing or alchemy, you need the raw materials from Goldshire and Westfall. I know from a *lot* of WoW experience that the materials you need when you start crafting are extremely abundant in the newbie areas, for exactly that reason: lots of newbies getting started on crafting. Sure, occasionally you’ll run up to a copper mine and someone else will steal it, but it isn’t exactly like there’s 50 people sitting on a mine.
Out of curiosity, to what level did you play to in the beta? It’s implied in your first paragraph that you played about a week. While, like the commenter above said, it’s okay for you to dislike the game, I think you’re being a bit sweeping in your judgments when you don’t seem to have played much at all.
Just my (friendly) .02.
I’ve played Dark Age of Camelot for some years now and seen how people went off to play WoW on release, but some have returned. For me, the graphics are way to happy - whereas Dark Age of Camelot has some real medieval feel to it.
Cheers,
k.
You dont even metion the player vs player aspect of the game…
This reads like a PR article for EQ2 or Vanguard….
Terrible review.
I understand how you feel about WoW but the game really sucks in the beginning. I have played through to 64 on two different characters and the game blew until about level 45. After then grinding even became fun. Some people have different tastes in games as games evolve and better ones show up the next day. I continue to stick with WoW because of it’s amazingly stable interface and system. It provides a new experience each day because I don’t go all out, instead I explore a bit and grind and keep going at it.
Starcraft 2 will be good but even if it isn’t released, Blizzard aka Vivendi Universal is still quite successful. They have the world where they want them and no one wants to give it up. If they shut down all of their servers for good right this instant, the world I am sure would go into disarray. About 80% of the people in the world have heard or seen the Warcraft Series and it would have a dramatic effect on the masses.
Sorry to bust in and throw firecrackers at your party,
_-Andraxion-_
hey i was wondering if you could tell me something about wow,if u can please email me at devinbhkboy@aol.com,ty
Sadly SC2 probably won’t be released but there is a group of individuals porting the SC gameplay over to the WC3 3D engine so we might have a hybrid very soon. I’ve seen some of the images and it looks great, hopefully it’ll happen and Blizzard won’t complain about it.
Kaiden feel free to ask whatever you’d like out in the open, I don’t delete comments as you can see above I managed to anger a few devout WoWers and haven’t removed them.
I don’t really think that this was meant as a review guys. It was just the impressions of one blogger. I really don’t think that it’s right to call it “bad journalism” or just a “PR article” because he didn’t spend ninety six hours to get to the good parts of the game. I mean, he already spent fifty dollars or so for the game - why should he have to spend ninety six hours to get to the fun?
For the record, I still play WoW on and off. I enjoy the grinding and such for about a month before I get bored and cancel my account again. I really do wish that Blizzard had invested more in making the lower levels interesting for those of us who don’t feel like investing ninety six hours, when we could just go to another game and have sustainable fun right off the bat.
Oops, I just read Chris’s post. As soon as that porting group starts to have tangible goods, Blizzard will shoot them with a blast of hot lawyerie goodness melting them to a molten core. Don’t even expect that group to finish without the project being murdered by Blizzard’s goons.
I doubt Blizzard will do anything. They have enough trouble shutting down private servers.
I have a 70 druid and 61 Hunter. The games lacks any sort of content or realism. The only reason people play is because it appeals to the general public. The community is well established and the game gets around by publicity and word of mouth. EQ2 is where it’s at if you have a decent computer
It took you nine hours to get to 15? And you call that insanely fast? my first toon was 15 in 5 hours playtime. Hehe. O.o
More than half of the game is End Game Content(after lvl cap stuf).. you made it to level 15. And the thing is that there are so many aspects to this game.. that you really can’t look at the mediocre graphix and judge the game by it. If you really didn’t like the game, just move on and don’t post annoying stuff like this.