Jun 9, 2007

MMO Gnome. Act Three. The World of Warcraft.

After inexplicably spending some time with the completely uneventful and not particularly massive ChainSAWn MMORPG -the only game ever having you explore a completely blank 100x100 grid- I went on and created a brand new e-mail account. What for? Well, it's a long silly story, but all you really need to know is I finally managed to enter the pop world of World of Warcraft and join a couple of million people in slaughtering its well-designed fauna. For 14 whole free trial days, mind you, during which (at least the 4-5 of them I actually played the thing) I absolutely failed to grab any screens whatsoever. So, here's all the WoW related eye-candy I'll be posting for this 3rd MMOG act:

Not bad, is it? Better look for more at the official site. Better yet, try the 14 day demo, as I did, but do expect downloading massive amounts of data and then some more. And then come another hundred Mbytes of patches, a simple registration bit, a pretty basic character creation process and you'll be ready to see what this WoW thing is all about, which frankly isn't that much.

To be fair, though, I must admit the game's not so much at fault, despite featuring little more than glorified fetch and killing quests. It really started off with the wrong foot, by having my online persona, Gnomie Freeware himself, a roguish gnome and a lover of butterflies, kill dozens upon dozens of harmless hogs, dogs and other monsters of the kind, during the exact same period I was reading William Cronon's account on the slaughtering of millions of buffaloes in the wider Chicago area during the 19th century, which had put me in an admittedly rare ecologically sensitive phase. Killing harmless beasts wasn't -at the time- exactly what I had in mind.

Thankfully, things picked up as quests shifted from killing fluffy things to killing orcs, ice monsters and an assortment of other typical RPG baddies, that apparently don't have mothers. The interface, the comic book quality of the graphics and a shockingly fine community of players started making WoW a fun experience, let alone an addictive one. For a couple of days all I kept thinking of was progressing my character and exploring the major cities, even though they offered a pretty low -unacceptable even- level of interactivity. Heck, I actually went as far as socializing a bit, joining raid parties and even sharing a joke or too.

Finally, after reaching level 13, starting a couple of non-gnome characters out of sheer curiosity and taking a short WoW break, I just got bored. Yes, despite being part of the phenomenon that gave birth to the particularly NSFW (especially for priests, rabbis, ayatollahs, but not for the more humane shamans) and seemingly defunct Whores of Warcraft. Just didn't feel I cared enough for Azeroth, which -better face it- is as derivative a fantasy setting as they get, to spend more of my time on it. Apparently, clicking on stuff and waiting for them to die isn't my thing... Decided I'd better wait for Warcraft 4 and started fantasizing about the glories of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. More on the later, next time.

Related @ Gnome's Lair: MMO Gnome. Act Two., Urban Legend review, Ron Gilbert in the Penny Arcade, freeware CRPGs

17 comments:

  1. wow thats an incredible likeness... miss the hat though.... I guess you'd have to be born in Azeroth to care for it... though you do look like you acclimatised quickly

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  2. If only our hometown weren't overrun by evil gnomes and shit... Still, I wouldn't say dwarved do look like us...

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  3. That's cool that you don't like World of Warcraft, dude. Have you tried Urban Dead? I read a story about it in the Escapist, and now I'm pretty into it.

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  4. Oh, yeah, I've already spend quite a few hours on it and blogged it over @ Siliconera. Was going under the Sapisiaris nick...

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  5. Never bother to try WoW but seeing what you have experienced, guess I won't be trying it either. Sounds exactly like playing Diablo 2 online in Azeroth.

    But the world of Azeroth seems pretty nice (at least in the concept artwork) though :)

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  6. I played the game since launch for almost 2 years... ugh.

    But I just sold my account for $450. At the height of my wow days Offered almost $1400 for him. The funny part is that I didn't sell him. Thats how obsessed I was with the game.

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  7. Well, oh Munkey, Azeroth does indeed look great -especially in concept art form- but it definitely isn't the most original of places, really. And Diablo 2 is still more fun to play, at least for antisocial bastards like myself...

    damn it Joe, that 's a lot of money mate... a bloody lot... 1400$?!?! Wow is all I can think of. Well, WoW too...

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  8. For some reason that character looks like someone I've seen before... hmm... I believe it was on a blogging site actually... a very good one too... i've entered many periods during this comment...

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  9. You can find my WoW characters over in the bargin bin for a whopping $1.99 each.
    I will warn you that they pretty much suck tho...

    I would never have the time for a game of this magnitude. I'm glad your here to test them out.
    Sounds like it would get boring pretty quick for me too!

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  10. Gnome, do you use a Mac...?

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  11. Pretty sure it would my friend. It's just addictive in the most mindless of ways. And I do believe than even paying 1$ for a character is quite outrageous....

    As for the Mac, unfortunately no. I did love a friend's iMac (the one on the hemisphere) though and was obsessing over the Mac Classic as a child... A Mac Mini would be nice for a second PC though...

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  12. Well I'm glad you dipped into it and not me! If an old RPG Gnome like yourself got bored there, a zombie blasting impatient behemoth, like myself, (with the attention span of a gnat) would probably have regretted evan a demo forray into the game. Excellent! You've killed off any curiosity I had for WOW, completely painlessly!

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  13. Always glad to be of service oh noble Father, but I'm afraid it won't be so easy when we get to the Lord of the Rings Online bit...

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  14. Hey Gnome,

    Are you going to continue your forays into free-MM-Online gaming? If so perhaps you'd like the styles of Dofus. It's like, turn based strategy, but it's a MMORPG. Anyway I really liked it. You can play for free within a limited area (all the low level zones). I think it won an award at the Independent Games Festival a few years back.

    Wakfu, a new game by the same people is in an open beta too, though I haven't tried it.

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  15. Why, of course I'll keep trying out them freeware MMOs... It's just that Lotro seems more than interesting for now, and I really had to try WoW... Anyway, Dofus got bookmarked! I'm such a sad turn-based addict, I am...

    Thanks for the tip (and for reading) e. Cheers!

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  16. Yarr, finally a kindred spirit! Have to agree with your entire review... played it for a bit after launch, but only because my friends did, and was bored out of my mind the entire time - well, after they screwed up Open World PvP anyway...

    Anyhow - on LotRO... let's just say I wouldn't rate it any higher than WoW (well maybe.. but only because it's community isn't retarded). I had been beta testing it since September and it starts off nicely, but that's it really. Once you hit level 20+ it's no different from WoW: boredom, boredom, and oh... more boredom! It doesn't even have friggin' PvP! (no, monster play doesn't count).

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  17. Hmm, haven't gotten bored yet, but I do spent ages gawking at the amazing scenery.. And there's a festival, complete with dancing and other silly stuff coming up too. Oh, yes, and I think I might be a total Tolien whore....

    As for PvP, got a point. Monster play is fine, but actually finding freeps is nigh on impossible. Till now, that is.

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