2/21/17, an hour and a half at home on my desktop. The gods that determine if my computer software works or not struck and struck hard over the weekend, making it impossible for me to play WoW for a whole week which shouldn’t be a huge deal, but I have been craving it pretty constantly since last session. So now that my computer is up and running again, I hopped straight onto WoW, and dove into the slew of quests that I had to catch up on. Today I climbed to level eight (from five), and I had to do a ridiculous amount of running around (which doesn’t give experience points, so it is basically wasted time in WoW). Finally I was able to make it to the Undercity though, which was awesome, because it allowed me to choose several professions in order to benefit and augment my warlock’s needs. I spent a good amount of time working on leveling the tailoring and first aid profession, since I knew that those would come in handy in the later game for money making, being able to pump out lots of product and then using the auctions to sell it at slightly higher rate (but not as much as everyone else). I was able to have more discussions with players during this session, mostly about dumb things, but I did get offered a spot in a guild while exploring the Undercity. It was a level thirty undead warrior who was trying to found her (I assume her. That was the gender of the character) own guild and needed a few more people to sign on. I let her know that my account wouldn’t be used for much longer, but thanked her anyway. It made me wonder if my old guild that I helped found with my old account was still running. If so, there was a lot of loot and gold just sitting in a bank, waiting to be accessed. In respect to class discussion, I have been thinking about how I have been playing WoW and it is interesting because I have been mostly and Achiever (with a little bit of socializer), but I have been dying to get into some Killer aspects of the game. However it is really difficult to do so without being much higher level. It seems that the game may be designed to push the Killers away and keep them from getting to a high level. I remember the game community used to be much more toxic and full of these “Killer” personalities. If Blizzard took this on as a project, it seems to have worked at least in part. I haven’t run into any Killers during my play time. Hopefully in my next session I will be able to reach level ten and choose my specialty for my warlock.

2/15/17 hour long session at home desktop. The grind became real in this session. Not much of actual substance happened, other than collecting pelts, bones and other random items for every NPC and their mother. I did get to level five today though (from two), which isn’t that much of an improvement, but I’m getting enough abilities to begin seeing distinctions between the mage and warlock. The ability to summon meat shields that throw fire to protect me is really handy, especially with how easy it is for my weakling of a warlock to take damage. I also noticed while playing that the dynamics of how common each class is had changed from seven years ago. It used to be that warlocks were one of the most uncommon classes, along with shaman and priest, and yet now the warlock is easily the second most common class that I have run across, aside from hunter. Also the general social-ness of the community seems to have become much more reclusive than it used to be. It feels like I am playing a single player game at times, even in hub areas, which seems to defeat the purpose of the game in my eyes. Part of the fun is being able to hook up with other players to take care of quests together or cause chaos together, and yet no one seems willing to ask or even spend time playing with me. The game is still enjoyable, it is just an entirely different animal from what I quit playing. I also wonder if maybe the social aspect will pick up at higher levels (due to harder quests, dungeoning, and PvP). I may have to hook up with some classmates through the discussion to play together (if anyone else created an undead character anyway). Either way, it seems to me that I just have to keep grinding until I can at least get to the Undercity (the hub city for the undead), which will open up possibilities like the auction house, and several professions for my character. The one experience this session worth mentioning was during a quest where I had to gather several wolf pelts as proof that I had reduced the population of these diseased wolves or something like that. While I was fighting a level 4 wolf, a level 107 death knight, mounted on this huge spectral horse and decked out in massive armor showed up next to me. I wasn’t sure what to do so i just kept killing wolves, while this death knight that was over 100 times my level watched, and after he watched me kill a second wolf, he makes his character clap in celebration, and then run off. Whether he was mocking me, or genuinely happy that I was playing the game, I will never know, but I chuckled for a good ten minutes over that. It seems that the WoW community hasn’t lost all of its old charm that I remember.

2/14/17, hour long session at home. This assignment to play World of Warcraft is one that I am approaching hesitantly. I played it for a six month period in high school, and it devoured my life, such that I have no memories of that time other than playing this game. I want to reactivate my old account for this project and continue with my level sixty-something human paladin. I don’t think that would be a good idea, however, so I made a dummy gmail account and made a free trial version. During this session I didn’t make much progress, other than struggling over what class and race to play. Some significant changes had been made since i last played (7 years ago), such as the depth of the character customization. It used to be that everyone looked more or less the same with different hair and races, but now its possible to get the details down to the type of mouth modified. I decided to worry about that last, and after some struggle and lots of reading up on classes (its been long enough that i have forgotten a lot of my old knowledge), I decided to create an Undead male warlock. In my old profile I had an undead mage, and I thought it would be interesting to see how the Undead’s standing in the World had changed after the 3-4 expansions that have been released since I stopped playing. I also wanted to experience a new type of class, more specifically, a spell caster that relies on the summoning of minions and powerful demons to soak up damage and protect me, as opposed to just laying waste with a barrage of spells. I also settled on an undead with it’s jaw missing, letting the tongue hang out, because I like the idea of a “main character” who cannot speak properly. It seems appropriate for an MMO, where there are thousands of “main characters” and the narrative plot really doesn’t matter. I am most interested to make it to the levels that let me join the dungeon raiding system. If “grinding” through levels is the work of an MMO, the dungeon raiding is the recreation. Upon my entry into the World I completed a couple of simple quests before the game saddled me with an annoying NPC that followed me around speaking in text boxes. I had never encountered this before while playing, so i thought it was some other player being overly friendly. So (me thinking this was a real person) I decided to spite him, and not give him help with his quests, so I logged out, waited for ten minutes then logged back in. I was shocked to find the NPC still standing there and following me. It was only after ignoring the character and turning in the quest that it ran off and I realized that I had been an idiot, playing chicken with an NPC. Having discovered this, my shame in myself couldn’t let me keep playing for the day. Just that little taste of the old MMO grind has made me start thinking about playing more though. This assignment might be the rekindling of an old obsession.

2/10/17, one hour session at home. The first thing that I did during this session was try to go through the labyrinth, but no matter what direction i typed, I got told that it was a maze of twisty passages. I struggled with this, typing different combinations of directions for a while. My stubborn nature didn’t gain me anything though. So the game clearly doesn’t want me going that way. I returned to wandering and found a space that I had forgotten about: The dome room. I had forgotten that I’d tied a rope to the railing for later, when I’d been wandering last session. So I descended the rope and found myself in a room with an ivory torch. Like a good little treasure hunter I claimed the torch as my own, and descended into a decrepit temple. Here I spent some time examining the inscriptions and features but didn’t find anything of worth other than a brass bell. I followed the staircase further down, but this is where things became confusing to me. This stairway led me to what was described as an Egyptian crypt that had a coffin holding Ramses II. I thought that this game was set in a not real fantasy world, but this room leads me to believe that this exists in a strange alternate reality of the real world, or perhaps is some sort of alternate dimension (like the land of Oz in wizard of Oz). Either way, this room has severely destroyed any sort of immersion in this game that I had. This game is really interesting and fun to play, but it trips itself up at every turn by undercutting its own intentions. Perhaps some of these issues are products of the time and technology available, but I see no excuse for using a real world past pharaoh in a fantasy world other than just laziness on the part of the writers. After this last session for class, I don’t know if I will return to this game. To me, it just seems determined to push its players away.

2/7/17 at home, 1 hour session. I am beginning to wonder if I am cut out for this game at all. After my encounter with the thief I have spent the majority of my time wandering through the passages randomly, looking for treasure to loot. I forgot to keep up my map and got hopelessly lost for a while, but somehow found my way out of the cave and to the front of the house again. I went west of the troll room, but finding a labyrinth I decided to leave that as a last resort. I wanted to make sure to explore absolutely everything before getting lost in there. This plan didn’t seem to be working for me though. After this hour of fruitless wandering, I decided to get off and enter the labyrinth next time. This session has again brought forth the thought that this game just doesn’t have enough cues and markers to drive a character in the direction that they should go to push the narrative forward. I spent at least fifteen minutes puzzling over the Gate to Hades, before deciding that I must need something that I’d find later for it. Zork just doesn’t seem all that user friendly when it comes to narrative direction. As a dungeon simulator, it is great fun, and I will keep playing gleefully, but I am pretty convinced that this game shouldn’t be played with the expectation of a satisfying narrative. Also I wonder if this game has any end to it. I know that as far as story goes, I’m hardly into it at all, but it seems to me that this type of game wouldn’t have an “ending” in conventional terms. The manual implied that my only goal in the game is to find treasure. A worthy goal, but certainly not all that interesting as far as stories go. Hopefully more happens next time.

2/6/17, Hour long session at home. This play session I was able to find the gross knife, so when I descended into the cellar, I felt more prepared. However, it turned out that I didn’t need it against the troll, because when I attacked it with the sword, instead of losing the sword, I struck it down with no problems. Confident, I decided to explore the east passage first. This may have been a mistake because the are never seemed to end. My map quickly became cluttered and I found a route out from underground as well as a locked gate into Hades itself. None of this led me anywhere though, and despite searching through each room, nothing seemed to help push the story forward. Then right before I had thought I was going to head back to the troll room and through the hole leading west, I encountered the thief in the round room. I was fairly certain that this wouldn’t go well, so I figured I would just go all in and try to kill him. I tried to hit him with the sword, but he knocked it out of my hand (The troll did that too! I need a better grip on that thing). In a panic and desperation, I decided to throw the glass of water at him. My hope was that it would blind him for a second so I could escape down a passage. This didn’t go the way I expected, and it also exposed a hilarious flaw in Zork’s programming. So when i told Zork to throw the glass of water at the Thief, Zork interpreted this as only throw the water. So I threw just the water at the Thief, and kept the glass. But apparently if you throw ANYTHING at the thief, he will catch it, keep it and then leave you alone. So basically I launched water at him, and he caught water midair, pocketed it and thanked me before leaving me in peace. I decided to end my session there, as I couldn’t take the game seriously anymore. This showed me something about this kind of game. When designing games like Zork, the designers can only account for so many circumstances, so sometimes it is possible to use mechanics within Zork in unconventional ways. This isn’t bad, per-say, but certainly can ruin the immersion which the world is trying so hard to establish. When I return, I cant decide if I want to see more of these hilarious bugs, or if I would rather have everything run smoothly.

My updated map. It is getting hard to fit it on my white board.

2/5/17, Hour long session at home. I did end up looking for a walk through. I found that I have to lift the rug in the house to find a trap door. I don’t think that this information is easy to find at all. The only clue is that the rug is heavy and that tells me that i shouldn’t lift it because it is TOO heavy. Anyway I descended into the abyss and found myself in a cellar with paths extending north and south. I began drawing a map at this point because I need some sort of reference to not get lost. From the cellar I had the option of going north or south, so I started with south, and after a couple of rooms found an art gallery which I proceeded to loot of a masterpiece. Feeling rather good about myself, I proceeded into the north room, where the door closed behind me and I was confronted with an angry troll, swinging a bloody ax. My first thought was to swing my sword at him, but this proved futile, as the troll knocked my sword out of my hands and hit my arm with his ax. Panicking I checked my inventory, not knowing that this would cost me a whole turn, which the troll used to swing at me, narrowly missing. My inventory didn’t have much: a sack with some garlic and a lunch, a cup with some water, a lantern, a golden egg, and that painting. So with this in mind I thought, maybe in this world Trolls hate garlic. Being defenseless, I had very few other options. I threw the garlic at the Troll, which resulted in it catching the garlic, and being a Troll of evolved tastes, ate the garlic, and then killed me. Having lost all of my progress, I decided that I would just restart the game at my next session. The combat mechanics seem to work, but I have no idea what I could have done differently. Maybe it is just the generator didn’t roll in my favor this time. Either way, I will be trying to take out the troll again, I’m sure.

The beginnings of my map.

2/2/17,  short session of an hour, at home again. Reading the manual was really interesting. It was like reading a history textbook, but instead of real history, the history of a fantasy world that is whimsical and funny. It seems to detail a long lost empire (which explains the lack of any intelligent life during my last play through). It also mentioned that the majority of the lost empire is located underground, which is some information that could have helped me greatly last time. Also the manual told me that I am a treasure hunter so apparently the golden egg was my first find. Therefore, armed with this knowledge, I loaded in a new game and quickly found the egg then started searching for anything that would lead me underground, and again couldn’t find anything. I am growing fairly infuriated with this game. I hate to say it but i may have to look up a guide or walk through to get me to the next step. I wandered for the entirety of this hour and nothing seems to help me. All I am proving is how terrible of a treasure hunter I would be. This leads me again to the point that Jenkins made. If a game is spatially driven (narrative-wise) it MUST have cues and clues redundantly placed throughout the space, because one cannot assume that a player will see every or even ANY piece of information. As it is, I have no way forward other than cheating and looking up a walk through. I find this extremely frustrating as an avid gamer. My pride stings. But at least if I can get my first step into the adventure, then I should be able to handle the rest. The manual mentioned dungeons and through my gaming experience, I am well versed in the art of dungeoning.

1/31/17, session of two hours at my home desktop. Despite common sense and advice to the contrary, I decided to try playing some Zork without reading the manual. When the black screen first loads up and provides me with the initial description of the white house, I was struck by how familiar this mode of visualizing space was to me. I spent most of my childhood imagining spaces without visual cues (through books or playing with friends), so being told exactly what I am experiencing felt like an old boot that i hadn’t put on in a long time. Comfortable but nostalgic. But despite feeling comfortable, and the controls being pretty intuitive, I found that discovering what I was supposed to do pretty difficult to discover. After investigating the whole house, and finding nothing, I wandered outside until I discovered every area I could venture to, but no plot driving moments or monsters to slay. If a game is a “space driven narrative” as Jenkins suggests, then the space of this game doesn’t seem very well put together to me. Beautiful and well written yes, but where I am supposed to go is beyond me. In a well designed game this should be clear. In my whole session I only discovered a grate (which wont open) and a golden egg in a tree (which is cool and all, but it seems meaningless without context). So unfortunately with two hours of gaming and next to zero plot progress to report, my response can only go so deep. I did discover an interesting loop hole in the controls though. After wandering for an hour and a half, I got frustrated with the game and decided to see if I could break it (like game testers do). So I decided to see if there was a way to kill my character or use an item in a way that the game cant stop, but doesn’t expect. If i succeeded, I would gain some insight into what the game allows and maybe give me a hint as to where to go. I was disappointed. I tried to use a rope, but the game said suicide wasn’t the answer, which I took as a challenge. It only took a couple tries to discover that hitting myself with the sword was allowed, and resulted in my death, and absolutely zero gain, material or otherwise. My next session may have to begin with reading the manual. 

1/28. This session was 3 hours long. I sat down at my computer and decided that I wasn’t going to get up until I had defeated everyone, or my empire self destructed. My experience with this game has been that my plans will always get derailed, but for whatever reason, be it divine or mundane, my plan worked. I took Paris without much trouble, which revealed a new game play dynamic, where if a civilization loses its capital, then a civil war begins and the nation that lost its capital splits into two different nations. The French, having lost Paris gave birth to the Aztec, who captured over half of the French cities left. This divided the power that was left there, so it was relatively easy to capture the remaining cities. It was a bit of a struggle to take the Zulu down but the invasion went the same way that the French did, with the exception that i left the capital for last so that I wouldn’t have to deal with a war on two fronts. Having finished a game through domination, I feel that this game has a really steep learning curve, but once one gets a hang on how to properly conduct an invasion, then the game is almost too easy. I’m also left with questions of how one would go about winning through other means than simply destroying everyone else. Each attempt I made to use more peaceful methods were met with such stiff resistance of game play dynamics that my only option for win was to crush everyone else. Granted, once I started the crushing, I began having much more fun than struggling against starvation and poverty, but it seems that the game is set up to make the other options much more difficult. I’m still trying to climb that learning curve. For what it is worth, I will likely be keeping this link and trying to play this game again. Rome won this time, but I would like to be able to see what it is like to win the game through each of the other methods.

The captured French Capital. They now submit to the might of the Roman Empire.