I'm a couple days in now, and I gotta say, it just isn't for me any longer.
Not much has changed in the game, really. You have a killing machine (your character) that you kill things with, which in turn makes you kill more effectively. Throw in a chat box and various other time sinks and you're set. Sure, it is much more complicated than that, but at the core of every massively multiplayer online game, that's what it is. World of Warcraft does it the best right now. And it's not enough.
For me at least. In what I consider the best year of gaming ever, WoW just doesn't have enough to keep up. The graphics are outdated--but that was never the strong suit of a Blizzard game. It's the gameplay that is lacking.
My experience was like this thus far:
I had to download the entire client for both World of Warcraft and its expansion Burning Crusade because I left my original copy of WoW at my parents' place in southern california (boy do I wish it was on Steam). Over 5GB of downloads, it took me about 2 days to get everything patched up and ready to go.
As soon as I signed on with my level 60 druid, I was confused. Quite a daunting world to leave for 2 years and jump back into. Of course, after finding some friends online, I was able to get oriented. I was immediately ordered to jump on a bird to go to the new lands. This is where my first real complaint arises. Flying on the bird and seeing the scenery was fun for about the first two times it happened. After that though, it becomes just another time sink. Am I really paying 15 dollars a month to sit on my ass while watching my virtual self sit on my ass? Apparently, I, along with millions of others, are. During the time is where I commented to my friend, "Man, these graphics are really outdated." I mean, it was already outdated when it was released, but now it is just ugly. In what amounted to maybe about 5 torturous minutes later, I arrived in some barren town with some epic problem with some ugly textures. Time to fight.
Grabbed a couple quests. Here is what they were: Kill 20 Orc dudes. Grab 8 wood, grab 8 metal. Sound familiar?
Anyway, after fumbling around and getting killed by some Horde I realize I need to use my talent points. Apparently the skills trees have been revamped and I have all my points to allocate. Here is my second beef with this. It looks like you have many choices, but soon you realize that there are only a few viable choices when it comes to picking your skills. Otherwise, you are called a newb and not invited to groups any more.
The combat, which gives you many spell variations, just becomes the same after a while. And I still don't know why enemies need to be aggroed. THEY CAN SEE THAT YOU AND A GANG OF YOUR HAMMER-WEILDING FRIENDS ARE ABOUT TO HIT THEM. Where is the AI? My friend, maybe 10 feet away just turned into a sheep, yet only his group of friends within 3 feet do something about it. Why does nobody care about this? I believe in suspension of disbelief as much as the next guy. But c'mon? Why are MMORPGs exempt from making believable AI? I guess because they are exempt from being fun.
The best part for me, and probably for many others, is just chatting it up with your buddies online. The camraderie is great and the taunting is fun, but I'd rather do that without all the borecraft.
Either way, I'll see what the rest of the 10-days has to offer. Admittedly, I played 1 hour longer than I should have last night, it sort of does that to you. Looking at my account, it's been over 2 years since I lasted roamed the vast land of Azeroth; 10 days from now I'll likely be gone forever.
Unfortunately, a "scroll of resurrection" just isn't a strong enough spell to fix this World of Borecraft.
No comments:
Post a Comment