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I loved World of Warcraft when I first got it. Played night after night, poured over online resources for strategies and guides, became very active in my guild, 'thrilled' my wife with stories of Warsong Gulch matches until she begged me, for the sake of our marriage, to shut my damn mouth about Warcraft. Then one night I realised I spent three hours a night for four straight nights harvesting herbs to sell in the Auction House and nothing else. It suddenly felt to me like I was working on my game time and that doesn't happen. So I quit.
This christmas, at the strong urging of my son and coinciding with our first new computer in four years, I reactivated the account and decided to give it another shot. From this point forward, updated weekly for the next four weeks are my fevered impressions of the experience. I hope it sheds some light as to why you should, or should not, be playing World of Warcraft in 2010.
Journal 1 - Dusting of the Rogue
With images of the South Park WoW episode ringing through my mind I logged in for the first time in over a year and was pleased to find my characters all right where I left them, pretty much intact. Unfortunately my guild, which had over 100 members at one time, had not carried on without me and I was all alone to find my way through insurmountable odds with my Night Elf Rogue.
When I first started playing WoW I really felt it was the perfect game, fun, accessible, friendly, every time I played it I felt like I'd achieved something and best of all, no actual end in site as far as gameplay went. Especially after playing games on Xbox Live where the vast majority of people seem to want to chew you out, the WoW community seemed reversed, the majority of people where helpful and generous to noobs with a small percentage of douche bags who were easily avoided. Playing a good solid five hours today reminded me of that feeling, that WoW was some kind of pinnacle of gaming.
Not just because I was returning to the game after such an extended period that it felt fresh, but because so much of the adjustments have made the game that much more accessible to casual players. Leveling at the earlier stages has now been made a lot easier and big milestones in your WoW gaming life, like getting your first mount (that's an animal you ride on by the way, not losing your virginity, although there's definitely some parallels in the experience) happen a lot sooner and more cheaply. If I was a more cynical person I'd suggest Blizzard did this to get people to the point where they needed/wanted the expansion content sooner, but it's just as likely to give later milestones like getting your flying mount a better perspective.
Just playing the game seems to have gotten tons easier as well. The locations of quest goals are now handily marked on your map at all times to cut back on the time it takes mopping up quest lists and to cut back on thousands of questions in game as to where to go to kill X number of Y. Joining a party to take part in an instance dungeon is now a ton easier as well. Instead of hanging around outside Instance's waiting for a group who was short a guy to come along (and hoping they weren't from the other faction and stop to kill you on the way past) or standing in Stormwind yelling "LFG Scarlet Monastery" over and over you just click on a button and you can queue up for any and all of the dungeons that fall in your level range. I managed to tackle an Instance dungeon four times with a full party of guys today which in my previous experience was unheard of, it was just too time consuming and annoying before to organise a group. Now the system does all the work, it's like internet dating only nobody lies about their equipment.
 Achievements have also been added to the game, almost identical to the Xbox ones and PS3 Trophies, they're markers of certain goals in the game that are, beyond bragging rights, completely devoid of any value. Although there's a good chance you could get some cool freebie at some stage for completing them. I all ready had a cool christmas freebie in my mailbox when I logged in, a pet penguin called Mr. Chilly who bounces along after me. Although being a Rogue and turning invisible to sneak up on people is kind of ruined by having a penguin follow you every where as I discovered during an embarrassingly failed attempt to ambush a Warlock.
The most exciting thing about jumping back in was the nerfing of some of the games goals meant I met the requirements for a new armoured sabre tooth tiger to get around on. I have to say that if you were thinking of getting back into WoW or trying it out for the first time then now is the time. The game is more geared towards lower level play than it has ever been before and far more enjoyable. So far I haven't experienced any of the painful grind that drove me away from the game the first time.... so far.
I'm not sure if Mr. Chilly's adorable chirping and my new battlecat are enough to keep me going though. Could the game devolve again into an endless grindfest? At this stage I'm really not sure, it honestly doesn't feel like Warcraft is built that way anymore. We'll see where my heart is in a month.
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Comments
It's a bit disheartening when you hear how many people circumvent the system by buying gold from gold farmers. To me it sucks the fun right out of it.