Assignment 4 (World of Warcraft)
I remember almost two years ago when I first started reading about World of Warcraft. Of course I applied for the Closed Beta, did the Stress Test and eventually playerd the Open Beta as well. Due to previous experience playing Everquest, I had an idea of how MMOs worked. Applying this experience to World of Warcraft, it was easy to see what Blizzard achieved where Sony had come short. And what it comes down to is the world setting and how it relates to player type on a server.
So it was no surprise to me when World of Warcraft passed the 1 million subscriber mark. Then 2 million. Now 4 million. There is a reason for this.
When I sold my account, I’d been playing WoW for well over 5 months. The reason I stopped was because I started to lose interest in the world. Other players were abundant, but there weren’t enough options to keep me interested in the gameplay. I would consider myself a cross between Achiever and Explorer. I do enjoy dueling with other players and groups, so I could also be considered a Killer I suppose, but that was not the main draw that kept me in the game. I also will never just sit in the game and chat with people for no real reason, even though I will be in communication with many people for the duration of my play.
WoW itself integrates the four key factors described in Lazzaro’s “Why We Play Games…” On top of that, in the content base of the gameplay WoW takes a step that most MMOs haven’t done: It creates meaning within the quest base for specific quests that reach through many player levels (this combines “Hard Fun” AND the “People Factor”). These chain quests are not simply “Retrieve the heads of 14 grizzlies,” but instead have an object, story and goal. This allows for more seamless integration of the world for both Achievers and Explorers, giving each a reason to experience the quest base. As a self declared Halfling, this feature of the game appealed to me specifically.
It was these quest bases that kept me immersed in the game for as long as I was. The constant desire to see new areas (this was also a result of the considerable graphics advantage that WoW had over previous games like Everquest and the amount of consideration that went into the world) combined with the ability to unlock many different storylines and level more quickly at the same time helped the game retain its freshness.
World of Warcraft was a very balanced game for each of the different character types. The large cities that made up the social base for the game were good places for socialisers. Questing and the instance-based storylines presented by the game were fantastic places for the Explorers (for explorers the gigantic world itself was a treat) and Achievers. The PvP areas (and certain servers that were “PvP” servers on which players were allowed to slay other players without any inhibition) were a perfect place for Killers. The game’s inherent social dynamic dealing with the Horde and Alliance is also a good situation for Killers (and explorers – nothing like exploring the enemy’s areas).
I find my player type an interesting comparison when I consider a game like World of Warcraft with a text-based MUD. For my MUD I played what is apparently considered the most interesting and exciting MUD available right now: Achaea: Dreams of Divine Lands. I joined it and immediately started exploring. It was as if instead of even considering playing the game I just wanted to find out what was so amazing about the game, and so I walked around for a considerable amount of time just exploring. Then I realized the true beauty of World of Warcraft: I did the same thing there as well, but the existing subtext of Questing allowed me to do it and be an achiever at the same time. When I stopped playing Achaea in order to write this paper, I still wanted to know more about it. There were certain parts of the splash page that comes up when you go to the site that I really wanted learn about (things like the Underworld and Parthren Gare). The world itself is also dynamic, so the creators of the MUD are constantly altering and improving it for the players. This keeps the world fresh for Achievers and Explorers.
I think that all of the MMOs that are currently online could learn a thing or two from the more popular MUDs: The key isn’t creating gigantic worlds and hundreds of things to do, it’s creating seamless integration of the social context with a dynamic world and the players. As far as I can tell, MMOs have yet to take that to the same level as many MUDs have. I don’t think it will be long before we see a new killer app that integrates all of these things.