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August 17, 2005
Lost the Spark
Well, today after only three months, I canceled my World of Warcraft account. I’m not going moan about it, but I am going to go into the basic reasons why. There are only two, really.
1. It's a Time-Sink : This is pretty much the core of it. It's not like the puzzles and quests come to you. This is in part some of the draw of the game -- you have to dodge and weave through throngs of violent creatures and enemies. Will you survive? Only skill, cunning, and the powers you bought on gaining that level will tell! But when you take a half hour trying to get to the place you were yesterday, that's a half hour you're not getting back. A half-hour is nothing compare to some of the four- to six-hour dungeons WoW wants to put you through.
2. I Suffered Brain Wan: It's not cerebrally challenging and it often breaks my "why not?" curiosity. Sure, the most challenging puzzle in the game Knights of the Old Republic was Tower of Hanoi, but my brain apparently considered that to be enough of a break from "go there, kill that, rescue this, fetch the other, survive". Also, why doesn't a crocodile rush the feathery morsel that keeps on flying overhead? There's pretty much only one thing on the diets of beasts: You. The place did not seem to be alive, which would, for me, have helped overcome the dearth of puzzles. This ongoing sameness (among others) taxed my ability to be interested.
Things I Liked about WoW: It's pretty and very stylish, it renders quick, there are a lot of good-natured and enjoyable people there, and it's fun at first. Really fun. But like a theme park, there are only so many times you can ride a coaster, so many shows you can see before you have to go home for another year.
Posted by jenkins at August 17, 2005 11:38 AM
Comments
Timesink: yeah, once you get past level 20, any given session becomes more of a time committment. Heck, you can easily burn an hour just doing “housekeeping”: selling stuff to vendors, visiting the Auction House, crafting items, sending mail, visiting trainers. Until a few bad apples invoked an outright ban on games at any time here in the office, I used to spend my lunch hour doing that WoW “housekeeping”.
There are some small touches that make the world seem more alive to me. I’ve watched wolves and panthers stray from their stalking paths to kill a deer or rabbit that ventured too close, and seen a patrolling guard leave the path to kill a wolf or buzzard that wandered too close. You can see that Stormwind is the city they spent the most time on, with all the wandering NPCS and their scripted events.
There’s an obvious conflict in the current development process. The “promise” of WoW was a game that was supposed to be more alive, and more of something that a casual gamer could hop in on for an hour. But their hand was forced on the release date - much earlier than Blizzard had hoped. And ever since, they’ve had to focus on bugfixes, ramping up their infrastructure for a succcess even a Blizzard game couldn’t have hoped for, and making content to keep the hardcore players happy (more long-time-committment content).
Not to mentioned adding in the promised features such as the Honor System and Battlegrounds.
Filling in the obvious holes in the richness of the world, and the “casual gamer” content hasn’t managed to crawl up the priority list.
Do me a favor, and cross-post this to your LJ, would you? I know some people who would be interested in commenting on it.
Posted by: Jim Gaynor ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.zalen.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 17, 2005 12:11 PM
Doh - I see you did post there. :P That’s what I get for checking the blogs before LJ.
Posted by: Jim Gaynor at August 17, 2005 12:17 PM
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