The World of Warcraft. A world split into two continents and as many warring factions, that for many is the pinnacle of massively multiplayer gaming and the greatest MMORPG of the decade — maybe even of all time. It draws you in with its tremendous lore and background then hooks you with its vast array of characters, races and classes which you can tweak to your heart’s delight. Continents hold many regions with each holding many cities and expansive areas to explore packed with goodies and secrets, not to mention hordes of enemies to boot. My friend from Primary school introduced me to World of Warcraft and was immediately captured by the whole fantasy aspect that really appealed to my young imagination and it has stuck for years. See, it’s at this point I’m hoping I’ve convinced you that I love World of Warcraft and am as rampantly enthusiastic about it as though I were just shown a pair of breasts every time I load the game.
And it’s at this point that any diehard World of Warcraft fans may want to keep reading. I really hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it (I seriously doubt you will and that makes me even happier).
Ironically, people abbreviate the title of this game to the first letter of each of the three words that comprise the title: “WoW”. I wasted an entire month and not once did such a word or anything similar even cross my mind. That is, of course, not including the times I had actually stopped playing and had realised how bright it was on the other side of my curtains. You’re probably wondering why I played for so long if I found it so boring; I had friends who played it savagely at the time I picked it up and so I was quite determined to give it a good going over, which never really transpired in the end. I was waiting for it to get interesting and it never really did.
I can’t actually comprehend how Blizzard have managed to sucker in 12 million people to play it, let alone pay for it on a consistent basis. I mean let’s face the facts here: all 12 million of them are wrong. Millions have been wrong before – the Nazis are probably the best example of this.
The game is filled with loads of content for sure, but the main problem is that it’s loads of content that is either A) rubbish or B) inaccessible. The game is set across two continents and a few otherworldly counterparts so there’s plenty to do and explore, I’ll admit. I bought all that content. I (rather stupidly, in hindsight) bought all that content but still Blizzard held it all back. I can’t go over to those hills, no. Those are level 22 hills! As a level 20, anything between here and there is guaranteed to rip you enough new holes that your next dump will look like spaghetti.
Come on, Blizzard! I bloody well forked out the cold hard cash for your content, at least have the decency to give me access to it! I never expected to be able to explore every corner of the globe from the off – but I’m barely even able to explore maybe 10% of the game world from the start. As you progress further and further from your start location the enemies get tougher and tougher, making general exploration a repetitive chore.
My next gripe? The so-called “quests”. It wasn’t difficult to get bored of the uninteresting characters asking uninteresting errands of you — the majority of which contribute nothing to the overall story arc. On the subject of a story arc, I’m not even sure if there is one. No form of struggle or future event that may have been the subject of a major quest was obvious at any point. Maybe it would have been obvious had I actually had the patience to sit and read the words and other boring stuff that seemed to be conjured up every time you clicked anyone remotely interesting (or not interesting, as was more often the case).
Anyway, back to the chores. Sorry, quests. To think that nearly 90% of these quests are the same structure is partly understandable; the baffling part is when you consider that this 90% is just boring as fuck. What’s that, Mrs. Average? You want me to deliver your dirty socks to Captain McGeneral on the other side of the planet? Why certainly! I’ll see to it immediately after I’ve crushed my own head out of boredom. I must congratulate Blizzard on their excellent performance in this area though — their copy and paste department certainly outdid themselves. Plenty of role-playing games have fetch quests by the dozen, but the World of Warcraft fetch quest count must easily number in the hundreds, if not thousands. I don’t know about you, but I never accepted mediocrity as fun the first time so I sure as hell won’t change my mind for the thousandth.
Don’t get me wrong, Blizzard have made some good games. Starcraft 2 was fantastic even if the mutliplayer never really catered for people who hadn’t played the original to death and Diablo 2 is regarded as one of the greatest role-playing games of all time. Diablo 2 was mildly repetitive truth be told, but it was fast-paced and fluid which makes it much better than World of Warcraft in my book. World of Warcraft, however, is easily the most overrated game that company has made, if not the most overrated game full stop.
And it is complete, and utter, shit.
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