One week of World of Warcraft

I've owned World of Warcraft for several years now, despite which I've never played it. I've always secretly suspected that World of Warcraft was the same bullshit I'm used to putting up with from MMORPG's due to the fact that almost every other MMORPG is a repainted rip off of World of Warcraft. This sat well with me for quite some time, however I eventually got to the point where I was not content with disliking it without ever having played it anymore. This week I decided I would play for exactly 7 days and formulate my opinions based on what I experience instead of on what I hear.


A face for radio...
Well prepared for the most arduous week of my life, I set out to learn about this 'new' game. I read through the class descriptions, explanations of the talent tree and then looked some at the models generated by the different classes you select. The first thing I have to say about this game is that the stock models without gear on them are ugly as hell. I completely skipped over Dwarf because I didn't want to be a 3 foot tall burn victim. I almost wanted to be a Tauren however I had decided to go with the Alliance, as I have a real life friend who plays on that faction also. In the end, I picked human. Not because humans are good looking, but because they look the least awful. I'm a sucker for a good beard, however the character generator provided the most lackluster selection of facial hair I've ever seen in my life. I went with a standard beard also, as clean-shaven showed far too much of my ugly ass-face for my liking. My class was priest and I had decided to talent into shadow priest because it sounds like the name of a religious position I would hold in my real life...

The worst spies in history
After the obligatory flying camera with narration intro (a staple in games since like 1998)  I found myself in a forest abbey with a small scale battle taking place 10 meters away. The questgiver priest was impressively nonchalant about orcs slaying his friends within viewing distance, so I assumed he was a badass and not to be trifled with. He told me to heal some of his downed comrades and slay some orc spies. The downed comrades were thankful for my healing but the orc spies were much more odd. They were standing next to trees with looking glasses, often looking directly at walls or hillsides. Maybe it's a spy thing, I wouldn't understand. After mutilating an arbitrary 8 of them, I returned to receive my level up and even some money for my dirty deeds. What a stand up guy. With a click of my heels, I ventured forth to fuck-knows-where (but an arrow told me to go there, so it's cool.)

Like a DeLorean except better
The first major thing I'd like to say is that the World of Warcraft UI is good. Looking at screenshots and other people play doesn't do it justice, but playing with it is very intuitive and smooth. It is highly customisable, letting you modify it with both first-party additions and also third-party add-ins. I was told a threat managing utility and an inventory modifying utility would be of great service to me. A recommendation is using the Curse client to manage your add-ins. It's more useful than a condom in a dive bar.

Holy shit, I actually lost weight
A big concern of mine was that playing World of Warcraft would cause me to spend too much time playing, and not enough time doing those other things that totally exist in my life. To my complete surprise, I actually didn't have to trade a portion of my soul to keep up in World of Warcraft. Probably due to the new fad of game developers making their games more culturally/socially acceptable (read: paying tribute to the almighty dollar) World of Warcraft has managed to mitigate the grind factor by including incentives to log out. Logging out in a tavern accrues a certain amount of experience that will be received in double. This actually came as a great help to me, meaning when I logged out, logging in a day or two later granted me much faster leveling for a limited time. This in turn allowed me to do important things like sleep and shower. Fucking awesome.

Sure, I'll kill 8 worgen pirates!
In a lot of my experience, quests have either been completely unnoticeable or pointless. Thinking my past experience would actually be worse in World of Warcraft was actually my largest mistake. I'll say it outright: World of Warcraft has some of the interesting and funny quests I've ever seen. I'm not saying you don't get loads of "slay x y and return to me" quests, however this is often broken up with questlines with actual story, odd missions and hilarious and/or fun objectives. In my brief time in World of Warcraft I was found doing the following: Mowing down orcs in a tank with John-fucking-Rambo on the turret, helping a Horatio Caine lookalike solve crimes with puns, taking an enormous troll-like friend to pull a huge stone off a villager, firing a cannon at gnomes on oil rigs, bombing pirate ships bearing werewolf armies from the air and accidentally resurrecting an ancient, evil troll who proceeded to kidnap my pet raptor and take control of a fortress.
Call them gimmicks if you like, I had genuine fun with these missions. There was a point in one mission where I was tasked with putting a drop of liquid in a cult's cauldron to destroy it. When I got there, I was given these options:
- Put in a drop
- Throw a whole flask in
- Throw in all 12 flasks.
Like a badass, I immediately chose to throw in 12 flasks and consequently blew myself (and nearby enemies) over a nearby mountain. Worth it.
The top contender for my favourite questline would have to be the Booty Bay quests. They're rife with hilarious and fun pirate-related content.
Another selling point of the quests is that they actually give amazing XP, equipment and money rewards. They're easily the best way of levelling up I've yet to find and it's refreshing to feel an incentive to do quests other than out of obligation.


Oh shit, they noticed me, run-
A big part of World of Warcraft is group dungeons. While a majority of my play was done solo, I also used the in game dungeon group-finder (which, by the way, is a fucking awesome tool) to do a few 5 man dungeons. Early dungeons are relatively new player-friendly, with a majority of them being a standard tank'n'spank approach. There is a certain thrill to teaming up with other players to defeat a common enemy that I enjoy, and the loot from dungeons is awesome. The dungeons also satisfy the part in me that like a 50 foot tall fire-breathing harbinger-of-death boss.
Occasionally I would find the dungeon quests hard to turn in, as the NPC you need to turn them in to is located at the entrance to the dungeon and you are currently located atop the corpse of a freshly slain two-headed demon dog. I'd like to see Blizzard make these quests turn themselves in regardless of location like a lot of other quests to avoid this hassle.
I've yet to do any dungeons larger than 5-person, so I'll write an update on them when I eventually get to that stage.

Is that a severed dragon's head hanging from the front gate? Cool.
There's a lot to be said for the world of... World of Warcraft. It has a very epic feel to it and it is also ridiculously large. I'm talking my-ego-sized large. The main city of my faction, Stormwind, is fucking enormous and packed with people both human and NPC. A friend of mine took me on a flight over the continent, revealing to me how mind-bogglingly big this game is. A few particularly good places to check out if you're interested are:
- The Altar of Storms
- Ironforge
- Booty Bay
I've yet to have a good look at two other continents in my world and also an entirely separate world called Outland which reminds me of Mortal Kombat but I'd make the assumption, despite my suspicious nature, that these also are as epic to look at as the Eastern Kingdoms.

I would follow you through the gates of Avalon...
There's not much I can say about the guild system in World of Warcraft, but a shock is that i like it. Guilds are a huge part of World of Warcraft, providing community, friends, access to raiding groups and also amazing guild-buffs like extra XP, extra reputation and cooldown reduction on your hearthstone. That's only a handful of the numerous benefits too, if you play and aren't currently in a guild, use the in-game guild browser to find one that suits you and join up! The interface is simple, providing only what is needed, no more or less.


All in all...
To be honest, my World of Warcraft experience has shocked me to the core. I went in expecting to be bored and feel like I had a second job, however that's not the experience I had at all. I had genuine fun playing, and intend to keep playing. Shame on me for my unfounded previous opinions.
Don't get me wrong, World of Warcraft is far from perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect game, however the goods in World of Warcraft far outweigh its shortcomings (not to mention that Blizzard is always improving and adding content.) To give a quantifiable score, I'd give it roughly...
8 out of 10 potential fucks given.

I will certainly write a second article at some point in the future covering things I've yet to experience like PvP, large raids, etc.

Until next time.