Anyone who has maintained even remote ties to the online gaming world in the last three years has heard of the phenomenon that is World of Warcraft. This game is one of the best-selling games of all-time and currently has a community in excess of 9 million people. That's the entire population of a major city (we're talking on the order of Los Angeles here...) just think if EVERYONE in L.A. played WoW...you've got a really big game.
WoW and I have something of a love-hate relationship. I played the game nearly non-stop for a year and a half, to the exclusion of quite a bit else in my life (though thankfully I didn't lose any friends or a job because of it.) I'm off it now, but as I look at the other games in my library, they all seem to pale in comparison. No other game in my life (and my gaming life extends quite a ways. 21 years if memory serves me correctly) has kept me so enthralled so completely for so long. While I may have really enjoyed them and played them a lot, Quest for Glory IV, Starcraft and Final Fantasy IV didn't keep me playing them every day for a year and a half.
As you can see, I love WoW. I love the world, I love the lore, I love the gameplay (for the most part.) I love creating a unique character, going anywhere, doing anything...I love surprising hapless Hordies in the battlegrounds who think I'm a ret paladin when I'm really a prot paladin in disguise. Oh, did that string of Reckoning crits hurt? Here, have another. Nah, keep hitting me, my shield likes you. That sting a little Rogue? Keep it up, it'll all be over soon.
Classic.
But I also hate WoW. I hate it because it offers gratification too easily. As the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King draws ever closer, it is becoming easier and easier to get at the high-level content in the game. Why? Because Blizz wants you to experience as much high-level content as you can before it all becomes obsolete. And it will, practically overnight. Just watch.
When Burning Crusade, the first expansion was released, many people found their gear being replaced within 2 levels of hitting Outland. I know I did. Many people grumbled at the ease with which their hard-earned gear was turned into crap by the first green drop in Outland. Those same people are going to grumble again when their Tier 4 is instantly rendered obsolete an hour after they hit Northrend. But I digress.
WoW offers such an easy method of gratification. Instancing, completing quests, arena fighting and battlegrounding are all designed to provide rewards that ultimately can be exchanged for even greater ones. You need but spend a few hours in a battleground or an instance and you can walk away with several new pieces of armor or a new set of weapons. World of Warcraft is great at holding the proverbial 'carrot' in front of you, then continually moving it away. And you want it. DAMN how you want it.
I have realized recently that I hate WoW for an entirely different (and seemingly paradoxical) reason: it's good. Again, I realize that's strange. A game is good, so you hate it. Here's why. It demands to be played. Once you've tasted WoW and found it to your liking, the taste of any other game is bittersweet. Other games I enjoyed playing (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic mostly) jumped in to fill the gap when I stopped playing WoW, but were quickly beaten and forgotten.
I even tried other MMOs. Dungeons and Dragons online is horrendously bad on healers and is practically impossible to play solo (I spent a whole gorram week solo-grinding one effing instance to get to level 2...WoW has you at level six inside of half an hour.) Age of Conan has potential, but is largely PvP focused. I'm not a huge fan of PvP, despite my prediliction for doing it (hey, it's quicker to pvp for gear when you're not in a raiding guild...) That, and Age of Conan has some serious graphical and gameplay issues to sort out before it gets really good. And finally, my computer is, shall we say...'dated.' I lack the funds/motivation to buy another computer, particularly a gaming computer, so Age of Conan is pretty much out. WoW, on the other hand, was designed to work for older machines. I have to sacrifice some graphical features (guessing where your Consecration is is fun, but you get used to it...) but it works well enough.
Bottom line: no other RPG out there is as good as WoW. None of them have the staying power (constant content updates, gameplay updates, tweeks, etc.), the depth or the entertainment value that WoW has. I love it, and I hate it. I love it because it is quite possibly the best game I have ever played. I hate it because it burns up so much of my time.
Anyone who has ever gone to a raid in WoW has gone to both good ones and bad ones. I was never part of a raiding guild and never wanted to be. Not my cup of tea. I do however, like some light raiding. I know how to main and off-tank every fight in Karazhan. I've finished the whole thing in two hours. I've also spent seven or eight hours just trying to get to and kill Maiden (and ultimately went home with her still standing.) It is so ridiculously easy to blow your entire day doing nothing but WoW. And that worries me. I don't want to look back on my twenties and see nothing but WoW memories.
Another thing that bothers me is how much I want to return to it. I left it for a variety of reasons. I had reached the point where I was basically killing time before the next expansion. I didn't raid or do any heavy pvp; I had my Nether Drake, I could make a thousand gold in a couple days or less, I have my Shattered Sun title...not much else to do but raid and I wasn't in for that (beyond Karazhan.) I figured I should find something else to do with my time besides get killed in the arena and pissing & moaning about the Alliance getting crushed in the battlegrounds. So I left. But now, about four months later, I find myself thinking that I'd really like to go back. There are things I miss. I miss the friends I met through WoW. I miss the community, I miss stepping out of myself for a while (I found WoW lets me do this better than pretty much anything else.) It's left a void in my life, and in me. And I fear the only thing that can fill it now is more WoW.
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