World of Warcraft is arguably one of the most successful video games of all time. As someone who has never played a massively multiplayer online game, I have wanted to know for quite awhile what makes these games, especially World of Warcraft, so appealing to the masses. Is it the lore of the Warcraft Universe, the variety of the game play, deep character customization, or even some content that I don’t even know about?

When Blizzard announced earlier this year the “refer a friend” program, I found my opportunity to enter the Universe. My roommate, as a day 1 subscriber, was willing to re-roll and level up with the triple exp, and the ability to get the promised exclusive mount. With my minimum experience and knowledge of WoW, I created an Undead Warlock and started questing in the opening area.

Now if you haven’t ever played World of Warcraft then the questing structure starts by talking to a person with an exclamation point, then killing a certain number of enemies/ collecting a certain number of items/ escorting someone from point a-b/ Delivering goods etc, and then going back to them to collect your reward. It is a tried and true structure, but after around 10 hours, the game play become ultra repetitive; but being an avid JRPG player and having kept an Animal Crossing Village in tip top shape for over 6 months I am not new to the school of repetitive game design. However unlike JRPGs, beside the opening cinemas and certain instanced events, any semblance of a story is so veiled behind repetitive fetch quests that I found I lost the motivation to read the quest descriptions after only a few hours playing.

For as good as the actual combat/spell casting feels, I have a notion that World of Warcraft could be a much better game if it didn’t follow the genre conventions so closely. A MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is by design made to simply use up your time, keep you playing and paying the monthly subscription fee. As such, some of the things that the game has you do to gain experience is about as exciting as learning about dangling participles.

The deep character customization allows for you to pick one of three talent trees to level up skills, as well as two professions, allowing an almost meta game in powering up spells, and abilities as well as finding other outlets to make money. But as always it is made to make you keep playing, as with my first profession, mining. After learning the skill I went out questing only to find upon stumbling on a vein of copper ore, that I had not purchased a mining axe, and thus had to walk all the way back to a town to buy one. Your abilities provided by your profession are also leveled up, meaning that in order to mine certain other veins of a higher value mineral is not allowed without the proper experience.

After playing for a considerable amount of time (Now at lvl 30) I can see why so many people can play only one game for an entire year without making any other video game purchases. It is an experience so deep that even after quite awhile playing, I was still finding new aspects to the game. Really my gripes with the game are much more aimed at the genre as a whole. The questing structure and genuine time suck makes it feel like the game is punishing me to get me to keep playing it. I would liken it to having a really high maintenance girlfriend; it devours your time and money, and because the time you spend with them is so constant, the times of shear enjoyment become few and far between

-Eric Wall

Tags: Game Design, grind, MMORPG, PC, time sink, World of Warcraft, WoW

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