Thursday, August 6, 2015

My Thoughts on World of Warcraft

It was around this time of the year back in 2004 that I first experienced World of Warcraft.  My fiance had been invited to what I assume was the open beta and was eager to share the game with me. I immediately found the game to be beautiful and a wonderful change from all of the 'real-life brown and grey' games that had been coming out at that time.

Up till that point my only experience with MMOs had been playing Everquest (although due to the death penalty, never getting past level 20) and a brief stint into player hosted server Ultima Online. My main character in Everquest had been an Iskar Shaman, and I loved the idea of playing a non-human look-a-like and being able to run around buffing people.

I had never played any of the Warcraft RTS games, but I knew of  Blizzard from playing Diablo II and Starcraft.  I immediately fell in love with the Horde.  I could be an full blooded orc that wasn't evil!  There were bull people, shamanism, raptors running around, and epic tribal music.  It was great!

Playing the open beta allowed my fiance and I to become hooked.  We bought the game the night it released and made characters together.  My first character and one that has become almost part of me was Garuk, an orc beastmaster hunter.  Back then you didn't start off with a pet but my first pet was FlappyFoot, a derpy looking red raptor found in Durotan.  He was so named due to the odd 'flapping' animation of his feet when running.


Fast forward and WoW had become a very important part of my life.  It was a game my fiance and I could play together, and it allowed me to feel better about myself.  Here was something I was good at--not just playing the game but also earning money through the Auction House.  It's weird to look back on now, but I was so proud that I could buy my fiance whatever he wanted in WoW.  I couldn't work back then (although neither one of us knew why I kept losing jobs), so I couldn't bring in real money.  But by the gods, I was some sort of trading wizard in that virtual world.

Travelling into Outlands was a blast.  I loved Nagrand with its wide open plains and over arching elemental theme.  Sadly as the Burning Crusade expansion's life span was coming to a close, so was my fiance's interest in WoW.  At that point I was leveling his character for him, so we could occasionally play together.  Eventually, he stopped.

I rushed into Wrath of Lich King at midnight and was running around Sholazar Basin trying to be the first person to reach max level mining by dawn, even though I was almost six levels too low for the zone.  While I didn't reach max level that night, I did fall in love with that zone and the little Gorlocs that lived there.

I was not so excited for Mists of Pandaria.  By this time I was getting sick of WoW's crafting system.  It was the same thing every expansion just with new icons and names.  At this point in my life I had been exposed to countless (seriously) MMOs and their various crafting systems.  The only real fun part for me in MoP was the farm you got in Valley of Four Winds (and the Harvest Moon-style relationships you could foster with the other NPCs there), that Sandstone Drake mount you could turn into, and Timeless Isle with all of its treasure chests, rare NPC spawns, and fun things to do.

I gave WoW one last chance with Warlords of Draenor.  Certainly it was going to be fun all over again because this time you got a Garrison and minions!  With having so many max level alts, I had to do the Garrison quests too many times and logging into each character just became a chore.  The Garrison felt more like a mobile game with its energy, timers, and restricted game play than something actually fun.  Garuk got to level 100 but only because I felt he deserved it.

I have zero hopes for the expansion announced today: Legion.  I don't care about demon hunters, I don't care about elf lore, I don't care about customizable artifact weapons.  There are only two things that might interest me:

1) If the new follower system is interactive like they say, where they come with you on missions.  It'd be kinda cool to be able to do dungeons or whatever with a party of hand picked NPCs instead of random people.  Even if you couldn't do normal dungeons, being able to DnD party it would be interesting.

2) BM Hunters get customizable pets like how feral/guardian druids are getting customizable forms for their artifact weapons.  I don't want a stupid colorful bow.  Let me give Flappy Foot some sweet armor or flaming claws!

I'd say I would be interested in a new crafting system but that has 0% chance of ever happening.

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