WoW Blog

02/16/2017, 09:00-10:00pm

Building a Character and completing my first ever Quests!

Okay, so I can finally start to use my desktop computer knowing that the $1400 rig will get some new action! I built a Hackintosh and am yet to use any programs that would put my graphics card to the test, so I’m excited to see how it’ll run! Unfortunately, because my computer is a Hackintosh, there are still some issues that I am yet to work out, one of them being choppy audio. (Need to patch the correct kexts in the correct location… proving a challenge.) So, I’ve been playing World of Warcraft without much sound, but everything else is working great!

After spending a good amount of time building a character, which was a female dwarf with the name of ShortFiona (based off of Shrek) I started playing. Somehow, I was able to complete a quest, which in the 20+ years I’ve been alive, don’t ever recall accomplishing.

Something I found difficult was figuring out how exactly to go about performing certain actions.  I kind of got the hang of how to move, which was a little difficult seeing as I use a magic trackpad instead of a mouse. Mostly I use the keyboard. But I couldn’t figure out how to, for example, save a prisoner. I got how to shoot things with my magic, but still a lot to learn.

Throughout my WoW gaming experience, part of me feels as if I will be thinking about  my final project a lot, which has to do with emergent narrative. One thing I can tell right off the bat is that, compared to any games we’ve played thus far, the narrative of WoW is VERY world/environmental based. That is to say, that much of what happens within the space is what creates the story of ShortFiona and any other characters I create in the future…

One thing I noticed after our class discussion about representation, is that WoW has, at least to some extent, a decent amount of often times, underrepresented groups to chose from as characters. During class, you suggested that we try to play as an gender different than our own, so I went and did that. And now we shall see what happens!
02/18/2017, 08:00-09:30pm

Making Friends With Technician Braggle

Within half an hour I started to understand the idea of completing a quest. Each one is like a mini-narrative, with a puzzle to be solved. I completed three or four of them before I died. After the first 2, I realized that I needed to turn the quests in after completion, to the person who I originally received the quest from. For the third one, I needed to turn in my completed quest into Technician Braggle, who was a very friendly guy! I had to do this each time, and each quest could be different, with a different avatar to turn in the quest to.

Maybe if I had read some sort of manual before playing I would have figured that out sooner. That being said, this action of turning in a quest would have been much for strung out and complicated if I were playing Zork. And the fact that I can work on multiple quests at once is something I think is really interesting.

The two core dynamics that I currently see most in play (as talked about by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber) are collecting and destruction. Collection of objects and destruction of the bad dudes and oversized aunts. Maybe a little bit of Survival when my avatar has to interact with other bad guys.

I’m starting to get a hold of the map means and how to use it. Something that has helped for some reason is that my sound on my Hackintosh is currently (somewhat) functional, which has helped me engage with my avatars environment.

Picking and choosing to complete quests so far have been the only (seemingly) meaningful decisions I’ve seem to have made. I guess at this point I don’t know a whole lot about which decisions really mean or have an important factor on the long-term outcome of the game, but I’m still figuring out over the next week or so! Currently feeling as if each game we’ve played in the class has gotten more and more enjoyable, which is great!

02/19/2017, 09:00-09:30pm

Finishin’ the job

Okay, I really like how this emergent narrative is playing out. Multiple quests that I don’t have to complete in a particular order, but that all need to be done before I gain another important object to add to my bag or whatever. I believe Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber said that these objects were referred to as bits.

At the end of my last gaming session, I had a few quests queued up to work on for today. I left myself dead, needing to go back to reincarnate myself, and complete the two part quest of killing the Boss Bruggor and detonating the  trogg tunnel. Throughout the game, I kept building up my narrative, by the help of cutscenes, dialogue and descriptive text.

One thing I really like about WoW is the all around interaction I have with the environment and the quests at hand. The game state and the game view are far better than any of the other games we’ve played, and I’m starting to look forward to playing. (Note, I’d never thought I’d say anything along the lines of that, so this is a pretty big breakthrough as far as I’m concerned.)

During this time I also I also googled a few questions… which again seeing as I don’t know much about games, made my experience more fun. One thing I do see is just how much a community is built around WoW. Just a few small google searches warrants thousands of forums, videos etc… dedicated to this single game! I just briefly glanced around the WoW main web forum, and really enjoyed seeing how mostly friendly and helpful players seemed to be.

In the end, I was finally I was able to kill the big crazy monster and blow up the cave that kept giving me trouble on one of my quests. Was rather excited and decided to call it a wrap following my mini victory dance.

02/22/2017, 11:00-12:00am

Grinding and Thinking

I know what this term means now. I’ve done it in sports, but never in games. Just small tasks, over and over again, just to achieve the overall end goal. I kind of just did mindless tasks, nothing too noteworthy.

I find myself now working on 3 or 4 quests at a time. I wouldn’t say that each one is building off of the other,  or that I need to do them in order. A lot of quests seem to be very much collection based. As in, as long as you can find something and add it to your collection, you’re good to go. That being said, often it will take a bit of looking around before I really understood what to do and how to do it.

Like I said, nothing too exciting, but did get to pondering over our conversations we’ve been having in class throughout the week.

I’ve started thinking more about what we talked about on Monday, the idea of different types of players: Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds and Spades. After some thought, I decided that I can’t really pick one particular player type, but I know I can eliminate the idea that I’m a killer. I do enjoy exploring though, so maybe spades. But that being said, if I had the opportunity to socialize with others, I totally would. I think that’s really smart of game designers to create spaces where these different types of players can thrive, and even interact.

After our talk today about gender construction (from the reading Judith Butler) I only wish game designers would be more inclusive to other potential players, who may not identify as a straight white male. While my knowledge about the videogame industry is little to none, I do know that other industries (film for example) are mostly run by men, and that the representations of gender, race and age in video games as talked about by Dmitri Williams, is skewed to fit white men. Still can’t wrap my head around why this is the case, when I truly feel like designers have nothing to lose and everything to gain when expanding their potential audience range.

The Final Quests

02/26/2017, 01:00-3:00pm

These last couple hours were a little bit more of a task than previous ones. I’ve gotten better at realizing what it is that I need to do, but it got to the point where I feel like I spend more time grinding and dying over and over than really working towards an overarching end goal.

That being said, I’ve sent some time exploring and searching around different parts of the game environment, which has been interesting. Though, from what I’ve gathered, I need to complete more quests in order to unlock more space. I see how people would love to play with others, a MPD seems like an awesome place to socialize, explore and have a good time.

I thought I’d be thinking about my project more, the idea of emergent narrative and why its addicting, but really I’ve just been kinda playing. I haven’t personally seeing many examples of gender discrimination, as talked about by Butler. Mostly that’s because I’m not interacting with others and have little idea as to what to do and how to do it.

One thing that was different with this game than the other ones in my section, is that I didn’t depend on the use of googling things as much. I think this is because there was just so much information about the game, that to write about such small tasks and specific quests would just be too much, not just to write about but to search through even if was detailed.

Before I was done, I made myself another character, one that was a human white male, just to see if I’d have any different feel about the game and the way I interacted with it.  Really, there was nothing all too different. Again, I feel like any gender related issues I would have faced or witnessed would really only surface over time, or if I had any inclination on how to collaborate with others.

I kind of wished I had gotten to see and experience the different player balances but overall, this gaming experience was much better than any of the other games that the class has played thus far. The game space is hands down the most engaging and interacting. I got into the game, I enjoyed bragging about it to my friends, and hey, I even got to use my new computer!