Month: February 2017

I spent my last hour with World of Warcraft trying to see as much as I could. I returned to Stormwind, delved a bit deeper into Westfall, and tried to just experience as much of the world as possible (without dying).

I even went to Dun Morogh (without any quest compelling me to) just to see what it was like in that area; it didn’t disappoint!

If there’s one thing I can appreciate about World of Warcraft, it’s the sheer variety in the aesthetics of the gameworld. The color palette is extensive, there are a variety of enemies (even I can see that in my limited gameplay), and the world still feels alive even when I’m not around other players.

I do still take issue with the narrative limitations, though. I can see now that the game compels players to complete quests and earn experience so they can safely enter new areas. The further I delved into Westfall, the higher the enemy levels were – this effectively forced me to turn around so I wouldn’t die. Strangely, this wasn’t true of Dun Morogh – I was perfectly safe there and the enemies were all lower leveled. This mechanic forces players to interact with the (very loose) narrative to gain significant amounts of experience, unless they just want to battle random enemies all day for experience.

Still, these interactions with the narrative through quests aren’t all that compelling. I’m a narratively driven player and even I found myself skimming over the backstory given in the quest dialogue. The more I played, the less significant these NPC interactions were as I realized that they all wanted essentially the same things: kill something, meet/talk to someone, bring them something, or some combination of the three.

The world may be pretty, the lore rich, and the enemies diverse but World of Warcraft is too repetitive to hold my attention for long. Narrative driven, single player games are often critiqued for repetitive gameplay – why don’t MMORPGs receive the same level of criticism? I feel like there must be some sort of bridge, some way to make these sorts of games both interesting narratively and also open enough for players to mold their own experience.

All in all, I don’t think I will be returning to World of Warcraft on my own. Perhaps it’s the lack of narrative structure, or perhaps it’s my disinterest in interacting with other players is what keeps me from enjoying the game. Either way, World of Warcraft was too monotonous an experience for me to enjoy, although it was interesting to play a game with so much hype and see for myself what the experience is like.

(Game session was 1 hour, played at home on my laptop)

In this play through, I tried to complete two quests together; exploring a mine and finding out what happened to some murdered/missing soldiers in Stormwind. I successfully managed the mine (all that I really needed to do was walk a few steps in), but the village I was supposed to explore to find the soldiers was overrun with frog creatures that I couldn’t manage to fight all at once.

 (I hate these things)

Seriously, though – what is up with not being able to cast spells while I’m moving? How am I supposed to fight multiple enemies at once if I can’t simultaneously get out of their range and hit them with spells? This game mechanic really bothers me.

I’ll be honest here: I’m really not compelled to continue playing W.O.W. at this point. The deeper I delve into the game, the more lackluster everything seems. I find this disappointing because I know there is so much of the gameworld I haven’t experienced, but the issue is I’m not compelled to experience it; the game isn’t drawing me in as it does other players. I find it more interesting than Zork by a long shot, but not as compelling as narrative-driven games like Tomb Raider or even Pokemon.

This is apparently the gameworld in its entirety thus far; I have seen very little of it (only one major city, some mines, a heck of a lot of forest, and the Westfall border area). I feel like I’m missing something, some key element that makes others find this game so enthralling. Either way, my experience of this game has been more akin to work than play – I find myself “playing” the game because I have to, not for the enjoyment of it.

Callois defines play as both “an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often money” as well as “a free and voluntary activity, a source of joy and amusement” in his essay The Definition of Play and The Classification of Games (Callois 83). I find the former applies to my World of Warcraft experience much more than the latter – although I don’t feel like time spent in amusement is necessarily wasted. It’s difficult to envision the mentality of players who feel differently, who think that the game is purely fun and not a waste of time slogging through repetitive activities. Still, I can see why others might enjoy this game. From what I can tell so far, it just isn’t for me.

(Game session was 1 hour, completed on my laptop at home)

I spent this hour trying to figure out who killed two people in a horse drawn cart on the edge of the border of Westfall, with the “help” (if you could call it that) of some nearby homeless people. This quest – among others – made me consider the game-world of W.O.W. more closely .

If there’s one thing the creators of W.O.W. did well, it was create a vibrant world. I saw this in my transition from Stormwind to Westfall; the color palette and look of the land completely differed in the two places.

 Goldshire

 Westfall Border

World of Warcraft is a game “controlled by the player as they explore the game space and unlock its secrets”; quests are everywhere in the world, but the player isn’t compelled to complete them all and can cherry-pick their preferences (Jenkins 182). While the quests themselves are a bit lackluster, the narrative space in which they exist is staggering in scope.

For me, the interest in the game came out of the lore provided in the text explaining the quests. Through the characters that already exist in the game world (the AI I suppose? Or the NPCs) as well as the structure of the world itself the creators of W.O.W. have successfully put together “narratively compelling spaces – even if the gameplay is lackluster in my opinion (Jenkins 176).

The interesting world yet lackluster gameplay leads to the issue that I’m finding more and more as I play: balance. The creators of W.O.W. do a great job of “environmental storytelling” through the gameworld and the NPCs – but is enough to compel the player to want to continue playing (Jenkins 177). I know W.O.W. has a complex and rich lore, and that as I play I can continue to uncover it; unfortunately, the lack of balance between gameplay and narrative. Here is where I feel W.O.W. struggles, the designers have an issue with “trying to determine how much plot will create a compelling framework and how much freedom players can enjoy at a local level without…derailing the larger narrative” (Jenkins 181). In a MMORPG such as World of Warcraft, this balance is different because you have many players in the same world, at the same time, with many different interests and reasons for playing. This creates a narrative vacuum for game designers, in my opinion. They have to try to create a game that appeals to all four types of players categorized by Bartle, a feat I’m not sure is entirely possible.

Yes, I think the lore surrounding W.O.W. is interesting, but the first few hours of gameplay haven’t captured my interest enough to compel to continue to discover and understand the gameworld. I can’t explore to my heart’s content without being killed by higher-level enemies; I can complete quests and achieve in-game experience, but the repetitive-ness and monotony in doing so make it feel more like a chore than fun.

(Gameplay session was 1 hour, completed at home on my laptop)

I’ve spent a lot of time pondering over character customization in World of Warcraft, but now I’ll get into my actual experience playing the game. In my first play-through, I stayed in the Goldshire area and completed many of the small initial quests that I’m sure all new players go through. Even when given the opportunity to leave on the gryphon, I stayed to complete the oddly comical quests associated with the families on the nearby farms.

At first, I found the world interesting. It was bright, full of color, and I felt at liberty to go pretty much anywhere. Here is where the explorer/spade side of me and the achiever/diamond side came into conflict. I wanted to explore the map and see how much variety there was to the world, but I also had a drive to complete any quest assigned to me. That’s why I spent so much time in the area around Goldshire, trying to complete all the tasks in that area before moving on to the next one (an impossible goal, I later found out).

This led to a whole lot of grinding; I haven’t made it very far into the game, but from what I can see most of the early quests are kill this many things, fetch this many objects, deliver this thing to this person, and repeat. To be frank, I found it all rather tedious and boring. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t care to be social with other players, but I completed these quests, got my rewards, obtained a new repetitive goal, and consistently wondered why exactly I was doing all of this. What’s the point? Where is my larger objective?

To be fair, the quest descriptions are interesting. They give you the why, how, where, etc. of your quest, and plenty of excess information concerning the world should the player choose to look. So far, reading these snippets of information has been the driving force in completing each successive quest, especially those that are sequential and relate to one another. But will it be enough to keep me interested?

I feel like I’m a picky player sometimes, but perhaps that’s normal. I know I tend to need either a compelling narrative to drive my gameplay, or interesting puzzles that capture my attention to keep me invested in a game. Perhaps the style of W.O.W. just won’t appeal to me, or (hopefully) it will get better as I play.

(Game session was 1 hour, completed at home on my laptop)

In his essay Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs Richard Bartle discusses the four types of players in Multi-user dungeons such as World of Warcraft. He creates four categories: Achievers (diamonds), Explorers (spades), Socializers (hearts), and Killers (clubs) (Bartle 3-6). A lot of his research pertains to race/class choices in W.O.W. – players make different choices about what kind of character they want to play as based on their play-style and what they hope to get out of the game.

I chose to be a human mage for my primary character, and also created a human huntress just to see what the gameplay associated with that class was like.

I took the time and thought to make both characters look kind of like me, but I didn’t think much about why I made the choices I did regarding the race and class of my avatar(s).

Why did I decide to be a human – both times? Well, my limited knowledge of W.O.W. has led me to believe that the Alliance represents the “good guys” and the Horde are the “bad guys”. I don’t actually know if this is true or not, but the connotations of the names of the categories alone carries that weight. Out of all the potential Alliance races I could have chosen, the humans were the most appealing in appearance to me, so that’s why I chose them.

As for class, I always find myself leaning towards “magical” characters in these sorts of games, so my choice to be a mage as my primary character wasn’t difficult. For my secondary character, I chose huntress because I liked the idea of having an animal companion (clearly I thought long and hard about this). I never considered what I wanted to get out of the game when initially making these choices, or what they said about me as a player.

Referring back to Bartle’s player types, an analysis of my choices and my own gameplay leads me to believe I’m more of an explorer/achiever. I’m not interested in close combat – with other players or the enemies in the game – nor do I like being forced to fight when I’m trying to explore. I suppose we’ll see if this continues to be an issue as I explore the game further – perhaps the quests become more compelling the longer you play?

(Game session was 1 hour long, played at home on my laptop)

My only memories associated with World of Warcraft center around watching my step-brother play 10+ years ago, but otherwise I have very little experience with the game. I started as everyone else does, trying to decide what “race” I wanted to be (troll, human, elf, orc, etc.) and then what “class” (mage, hunter, etc.).

I played around with different “races” and “classes” to figure out what level of customization was allowed for each kind of character, and to see what they all looked like in their various forms and occupations. What I found was a bit surprising, to me anyway.

First, I noticed the disparities between males and females of each race. The female character models were all slimmer, with much more substantial curves than the male character models. As far as skin, facial features, hair, etc. all of the character models (male and female) had similar levels of customization. My issue wasn’t so much with these cosmetic feature as with the bodies of the characters themselves.

While this image isn’t the best quality, it does show the disparity between male and female character models among a variety of “races” in the game. The aforementioned curves are evident across all races – even the Pandaren (Panda bear like creatures) have noticeably feminine body shapes. This wouldn’t be a problem if players were allowed to customize body shape (or even clothing) in the same way as they do facial features or hair color, but this isn’t an option.

Now, I’m not a game designer and I don’t necessarily understand the logistics of character models. But I have seen plenty of games (The Sims, for example) that have allowed body customization for years. What if I don’t want my character to have extremely large breasts; what if I want her body shape to be more realistic? Every female character model is inherently sexualized; with no way to change what their bodies look like, female players lack control over the perception of their characters.

World of Warcraft presents the female body through only one lens, even across races when comparing the female character models to the male character models of the same race. As discussed by Williams et al. in The Virtual Census: representations of gender, race and age in video games “imagery that is viewed or played repeatedly is more accessible when a person is attempting to recall information about that class of social objects (Williams et al. 191).  If male players of W.O.W. or any other game only see female character models with large breasts and slim hips, there will be a perception that this is what a woman is supposed to look like. They not only associate that specific body type with women, but also as a basis for sexual harassment of female players.

While our avatars in-game do not necessarily reflect what we look like in real life, they are representations of the player within the game and do carry weight with other players in how they treat us. Allowing women and men alike to customize the bodies of their avatars in W.O.W. (to a reasonable extent) could help to transform how female players are viewed and treated in-game.

(Game sessions was 1 hour long, completed at home on my laptop)