OK, I couldn’t take it. I figured I’ll at least purchase World of Warcraft (WoW) and only play the 30 day free trial. I finally found what I was looking for and had missed. Everything I ever wanted from an online game was in World of Warcraft. I found it hard to believe that whenever your character would die, all you had to do is “the walk of shame” (obviously not the same walk of shame your probably thinking of). This and a little money to repair your armor for each time you die 10% of it’s durability goes down. I asked over and over was that it? While most online games penalized you for dieing by taking gained experience points or slowing it down, WoW simply made you pay to repair your armor.

I asked other players what level would it be that I absolutely had to party with others and couldn’t solo. I got the most shocking answer, never. What they meant was never if you didn’t want to, that would never stop you from reaching level 60 or 70. This idea of soloing from 1-70 was so alien to me I couldn’t believe it. While all other games tried to force you to depend on other people, WoW allowed you to still play and have fun alone. However, I later found out that if you wish to take on the more challenging dungeons you must party. To my relief, these dungeons and raids are optional. These instances are generally the only time you need to conform to the traditional Tank/Healer/Nuker mold that is so lovingly embraced by MMO developers.

I of course was concerned from player killing (PK). Well, unless you choose to play on a server that was specifically made for player killing, any player vs player activity was left up to the player. In other words, if you want to PK you can declare yourself to take part in it, but you can only attack others that have done so as well. I was thrilled with this idea. Not that I wanted to PK but I was happy to know that I didn’t have to. What if another player lured a monster to me allowing it to attack me? Well in WoW if you attempt to do this, the monster will only attack the person it was chasing. After they die, or leave, the monster will run back to it’s original position ignoring all players in it’s way. Yet another problem solved.

Ok, but what about experience and levels? Me and my friends suffered from having to remain the same level in order to progress at all. If you are a higher level in WoW you can still party with your low level friends. Being high level you wont get anything, but your friend still will. However, it is an understatement to say the best way to get experience is to complete quests and not to grind experience by killing monsters. Quest experience is not hindered in any way by any party members regardless of level. So you can have a lvl 70 friend assist you on quests and still get all the experience you need to grow.

To make this long story shorter, WoW solved all my frustrations I’ve had with all online games. I cant’ imagine playing any other online RPG game. I have tried, and they all feel a few steps backwards from WoW. So where do you go from here?

To Be Continued…(sorry I promise it’s the last chapter this time)

Tags: WoW

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 1:10 pm and is filed under PC Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.