Students Blog

The Basics: WoW is an RPG which in which you first must select a side; Alliance or Horde, then you select your race; Human, Night Elf, dwarf, gnome, orc, troll, tauren, and finally you choose your class; warrior, mage, priest, rouge, druid, etc. Deciding which side/race/class that you want to be has a big effect on what your game experience is going to be like, mostly in choosing Alliance or Horde. Alliance players seem to be more in the game for experience, while Horde players enjoying killing Alliance and raiding towns. Once you’ve set up your character you start in a section designated by your race, then you begin getting quests and traveling around the cities/continents to accomplish your quest, and receive new quests in the process. There are many other aspects to the game like joining guilds and playing side games like Capture the flag, but I haven’t experienced everything yet.
My character is a Night Elf Druid, which I had no idea what it was when I selected it; it basically just sounded cool. Luckily I had a friend who played to help me learn the ropes, however, without him I think I still would have picked up the game pretty quickly. The game does a great job in slowly immersing you into it, and rather then a “tutorial”, you learn how to do things by actually playing the game. Of all the MMORPG’s that I’ve played, this one was by far the easiest to learn initially.
In reference to Bartle’s types of players, WoW definitely suits every type of player, hence it’s massive success. The three types of players that the game appeals to most are killers, achievers, and explorers. The leveling up, completing quests, and attaining new abilities all appeal to an Achiever. I found this to be something that excited me while I played, as I was constantly glancing down at the “experience” bar to see how much longer until I achieved a new level. For the Explorers there is a massively large world to explore with many secrets, all of which is visually stimulating. This was another reason why I enjoyed playing the game; every new area you enter is completely different and you never know what your going to see next. To satisfy the Killers there is an abundance of computer npc’s to kill, but if that isn’t enough you can go to “neutral” towns were you will undoubtedly come across the opposite team and you can go to battle with them. This doesn’t appeal to me as much, but the large number of Horde players that roam the world looking for Alliance to gang up on tells me that there are quite a few players who belong to the “Killer” group of players. Lastly, there is the Socialisers aspect of the game. As far as mmorpg’s go, this game is pretty good in this aspect. You can chat with friends only, party only, only those around you, or yell to everyone in the area. This lets you customize who you want to communicate to, so that you don’t have to hear the conversations of others. There are also numerous “emotes” which let your player make gestures or sounds. This is something that I’ve never seen before in an RPG, and you can have a lot of fun with it. I believe this is the smallest aspect of the game, but I do enjoy talking with friends and messing around with the emotes.

As far as Diablo II goes, there are generally two types of players that apply. Achievers and killers both apply to this for the same reasons as WoW, however the killing aspect is directed much more towards computer players, rather then real people. The exploring aspect is there somewhat but the graphics aren’t as appealing and a lot of the terrain is very similar. There is also very little ability to chat other then a scrolling chat bar, and only a handful of voice emotes. The achiever aspect of the game can make it highly addicting, which my senior year grades will attest to…