Saturday, November 22, 2008

Only a Matter of Time


For some time now, my brothers have been my pathway to true geekiness. For example:
  • It was my desire to understand their ways that introduced me to Magic: The Gathering, with long-lasting results.
  • Pete gave me his copy of Record of Lodoss War, which was a first for me in many respects -- first time owning a full TV series, first anime in my collection and the first with subtitles.
  • It was at Morgan's apartment that I played my first round of 8-man Halo, prompting me to buy the Xbox and leading to a few of the geekiest things I've ever done, including holding a video game tourney as fund-raiser, manning Halo at a bachelor party, and participating in a game-inspired improv show.
It should come as no surprise, then, that when I learned that Pete is currently playing World of Warcraft, I decided to try out the demo. We're not really letter-writers, but we are certainly gamers -- perhaps this will give us a chance to hang out, right?

Well, let me tell you this. PA has it right once again. From what I can tell so far, the game is mainly a steady stream of tasks involving killing X number of Y monsters. Snooze.

Now, I assume that once the tedium of grinding is done and you actually team up with people, some coolness can occur. Except that people are a pain in the ass. So, we'll see.

2 comments:

Beers said...

The WoW grind never really goes away. Grouping with folks to complete instances is fun though and was the most enjoyable part of the game for me.

Greg said...

The game you are playing is not the game that came out 4 years ago. Back then, it was about exploring a huge world and interacting with tons of players along the way for a shared experience.

Since so many have already seen that content in early game, the "grinding" is now all that's left. Blizzard made the early level progression much faster to get folks to the end game quicker. So now the first thing you see is a series of ghost towns instead of a bunch of new players trying things out, having helpful conversations and playing around.