Well, it’s finally happened. Blizzard released World of Warcraft on November 23rd, and with it went the rest of my free time. The quality of this game is rivaled only by its addictiveness (for me anyway). Ever since the days back in high school when I would play text-based MUDs I knew that it was just a matter of time until an online RPG came out that would be completely irresistible. This would seem to be it. None of the other multiplayer RPGs I’ve played before (Asheron’s Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, and City of Heroes) ever managed to hold my interest for long. All of those games seemed to assume that you wouldn’t mind playing the game more than a full time job if you ever wanted to make any progress in them. Long repetitive hours of play would leave you only marginally better off than when you had started, and that’s assuming you could find a decent group of people to play with. World of Warcraft takes a more humane approach and assumes that you’ve got other things you’d like to do with your time when you’re not logged in. I can log in for just an hour or two in the evenings, meet up with friends or go solo and still feel like I’ve actually made progress (to the extent that you can actually accomplish anything in a completely made up world that is) Amazingly, it actually manages to keep a fairly coherent storyline as you progress (something almost completely lacking in other games) which helps to smooth out some of the inherent repetition of the genre. Ironically, it’s that “hey, you don’t need to play me every waking moment” attitude that makes the game so hard to put down. I suppose it’s a good thing this game didn’t come out while I was in college or, well, I’d probably still be in college.

Comments

Comment by Nathan Hessler on 2005-01-10 14:45:57 +0000

I understand you completely. I bought the game after the quarter ended and in 3 weeks put in 7 full days of gaming. I am going through major withdrawal now that school has started, but the made up world just doesn’t have any good paying jobs. 😀