World of Warcraft Should I Play Again
World of Warcraft–or WoW, as the kids* call it–is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game set in a fantasy world. There are dragons and demons, elves and dwarves, druids and mages. It's been around since 2004 and shows no sign of stopping, with a brand-new expansion called Shadowlands set to drop later this year.
WoW isn't the first MMORPG, but it's consistently been the most dominant. Other games come and go, but Warcraft remains. I played it pretty seriously for a few years before quitting in 2011. Since then, I've tried other MMOs like Elder Scrolls Online.
So how does WoW compare to more recent releases? And does it hold the same addictive charm as it did 10 years ago?
*Note: I'm pretty sure that no one under the age of 30 plays World of Warcraft anymore.
My Journey with WoW
The year was 2008, a simpler time when the economy had tanked but Donald Trump's presidency was still just a joke on The Simpsons. I'd started playing World of Warcraft on a whim.
The game was already a few expansions in at that point; I arrived on the virtual scene just in time for Wrath of the Lich King and stayed through the beginning of Mists of Pandaria.
The years that I played World of Warcraft are something of a blur now. Despite the fact that I was working full-time and living in a swanky-for-the-South downtown apartment, I spent most of my free time playing the game.
I'd get in a few dailies before work, then log in when I got home for a raid or just to hang out with my guildmates on voice chat while I ran around Azeroth.
Looking back on that time, I feel a bit like Roy Batty at the end of Bladerunner. I remember doing the Hagen dance solo in Naxxramas while my guildies cheered me on. Flying over Elwynn Forest on a magic carpet while idiots challenged each other to duels below. Exploring Dalaran for the first time, or summoning the sea monster Tethyr for the fifteenth time because I loved the questline so much. Good times.
Eventually, I realized that my fun hobby had become an unpaid job. I tried to quit multiple times, but it didn't stick until personal drama destroyed my guild.
Without the group of friends I'd made online–some of whom were my closest relationships at the time–it just wasn't fun anymore. I quit for good in 2011… at least until now.
The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same
My old WoW account is long gone, so I was starting from scratch. No legacy gear, no mounts. Just a Night Elf named Moonshy with a dream. I was immediately struck by how little the character creation screen had changed. Compared to Elder Scrolls Online, where you can fine-tune the size of your posterior and choose from a hundred different hairstyles, WoW is sadly limited.
The pre-expansion patch that drops next week aims to fix that, or at least offer a work-around. Apparently, there will be more options in the barbershop to change your appearance for in-game gold, including swapping your gender. Neat.
The starting zone for Night Elves also remains unchanged. However, the new player tutorial was less than helpful, and I eventually turned it off. The interface looked like I remembered, as did the graphics.
This is where WoW really suffers in comparison to newer MMOs. In ESO, the world is breathtakingly rendered in cinematic detail. In WoW, it's the same old block shapes wrapped in crummy-looking textures. I know that they've upgraded the graphics since I played, and I'm sure that the newer zones look better than Teldrassil.
Still, it was disappointing to see how bad and dated the game looked. It was a lot like returning to your old high school for a reunion, actually. Everything looked smaller and shabbier, and the stuff you used to think was really cool now just seemed a bit sad. Gameplay is a little clunky and repetitive, with fetch quests and text that I frankly did not read.
The other thing that hasn't changed is the baked-in racism and sexism. WoW's Goblin race suffers from the same issue as JK Rowling's hook-nosed bankers. The whole continent of Pandaria is a colonial fantasy of China. And let's not even get started on the Trolls. It's worth noting that a lot of these issues pop up across multiple fantasy games. Wizards of the Coast, the parent company of Dungeons and Dragons, recently announced changes to certain racial traits that were outdated at best and bigoted at worst.
Frustrating Limitations
Aside from the character creation interface and the lackluster starting zones, I'd forgotten about how limited professions are. You can only have two crafting professions! I saw a flower, and I wanted to pick it. I couldn't without finding a trainer and committing to herbalism as my career path. Showing me something and then telling me I can't have it? That's frustrating, and not in a fun, motivating way.
In Elder Scrolls you can do all the professions, obviating the need to have a bunch of alts that level additional skills. Heck in Stardew Valley you can level up all your skills through practice and upgrading tools. Admittedly, I didn't make it to level 20 in my quick jaunt through Azeroth–my editor-in-chief gently suggested that spending my entire workweek playing a video game for research wasn't the best use of my time. At 20, you can start leveling archaeology, which is a fun little mini-game profession that I remembered really enjoying from the Cataclysm era.
Luckily for new players, Blizzard developed a brand-new starting zone called Exile's Reach. It sounds similar to the story-focused experience of leveling a Pandaran:
An expedition has gone missing, and you have been called to be a part of a new crew of novice adventurers charged with discovering what's become of them. As with many such journeys, you'll find yourself as part of a crew aboard a ship bound to their last known location. When things take a turn for the worse, you'll make landfall on the island of Exile's Reach.
They are also implementing the first-ever level "squish," bringing the cap down from 120 to 60. The developers say this'll make a "streamlined faster level experience" and "lower the amount of time it takes to reach max level." To an extent, WoW doesn't really get exciting until you reach the endgame content, so it makes sense to get there faster.
Will I Keep Playing?
At this point, you might be thinking that I hate World of Warcraft. Even though I enjoyed Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and even Guild Wars 2 more in terms of storytelling and graphics… WoW is still fun.
The game is engineered to be fun… and to keep you playing for as long possible. It's basically a Skinner box–a system that rewards you randomly when you take certain actions. It's a little more sophisticated than a pigeon hitting a lever with its beak, but the principle remains the same.
I got a piece of malachite from one of the first nightsabers I killed and it was thrilling! The randomness of drops means that you play more than if you were guaranteed certain items every single time. WoW knows that and has absolutely min-maxed the effort/reward dynamic to ensure that you keep playing.
With Shadowlands just on the horizon, I might just keep playing a bit longer. New expansions are always a good time to jump back in the game since everything is new. Plus it features Sylvanas Windrunner, and she's one of the best characters from the game's rich lore. Check out the cinematic trailer below, and be honest: You kind of want to play now, too.
Source: https://poptonic.com/play/video-games/coming-back-to-wow/
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