World of Warcraft at 60, part 1

I've been playing World of Warcraft since February, and there's no reason I shouldn't have mentioned this on the blog before now, except that at some time in the past few months I had the foolish idea that before I comment on it in public I ought at least to get a character to the maximum level the game allows, to avoid charges of unfairness. Over the last couple of weeks my efforts to reach this goal became more determined, and after devoting most of the weekend past to the game, yesterday I finally reached level 60. And there was much rejoicing.

WoW players will realise it but others may not: this is not a boast, since it is not an achievement that marks any significant level of dedication or skill. Reaching the maximum level in WoW is much easier than in any other MMO I've played. In WoW, level 60 characters are everywhere. In fact about 43% of the active population of non-newbie characters on my server are level 60. (Remember this statistic, because it makes sense of much of Blizzard's behaviour in supporting this game as selectively as they do.) Reaching level 60 requires a couple of hundred hours of play and lots of patience, but in contrast to the post-60 game, no luck, and no real ability.

The character I played was a Hunter, a gun-wielding, trap-setting ranged combat class with a vicious boar for a sidekick, although I put a few other characters through the first few levels as well, to try to get a feel for them. I found that the Hunter was a good fit for my play style, as it was an easy class to play solo, and starting a game at level 1 when all your friends are level 60 and there's no provision for enjoyable group play with characters of very different levels (unlike in City of Heroes -- a glaring omission from WoW), playing solo was pretty much unavoidable.

As with most MMORPGs, what passes for gameplay is somewhat rudimentary and repetitive, although there is a greater emphasis on tactics than in some, which is welcome. The levelling process is driven by quests, which are never in short supply, and which usually fall into either 'kill' or 'courier' categories. Some are a little tedious, but for the most part, they do keep things interesting, and keep you continually working toward goals more immediate than 'reach the next level'.

Although the graphics are not the most advanced, they are passable, but the underlying art direction is actually very good. It's not a game that's going to win awards for its originality (as noted by many, there are many elements in the Warcraft universe that are carbon copies of Warhammer), but the environments, the creatures, and the sound and music are all well designed. (I even put some of the music tracks on my iPod.) I think all presentational aspects of the game can be described as 'derivative, but well done'. Unfortunately the game has a tendency of not taking itself seriously and has plenty of incongruous 'humour', which may be pitched at the 14-year-olds who seem to make up most of the player base but which I just found alienating. This reinforces the superficial attitude that Blizzard seems to have to the setting of its game: it's fantasy-lite, a (literally) cartoonish facade, populated by automata. It's not a setting I felt any impulse at all to immerse myself in, in sharp contrast to, say, any RPG from Bethesda or Bioware, or any other MMO I've tried.

In general, the game is consistent, though the occasional design decision beggars belief. Transportation was my nemesis in WoW. There is point-to-point teleportation, but it can not be done more than once in an hour, and you have to set the destination in advance by actually going there. Most transportation over large distances uses the flight routes, where your character will hop on the back of an eagle or something, and be flown across the world to your destination. The first time, this is very pretty and cool, but these sequences are noninteractive, long, and unskippable. Add to this the fact that travel between points on different continents can require catching an eagle to a port city, running to the dock, waiting several minutes for a boat to show up, waiting to sail, disembarking on the other continent, running to the flight point and then flying again to your destination, and you realise to what degree travel in WoW is an exercise in pointless tedium. From source to destination, travel times of 15 minutes are not uncommon. 15 minutes doing nothing. Repeat night after night. Sometimes it seems as if Blizzard's mission is to minimise the amount of actual gaming you can do in any given session.

But having said all this, I have to admit in fairness that I had a lot of fun in World of Warcraft, at least to a point. I'll talk about that point, and what I plan to do next, in part 2 of this post.