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The World of Warcraft Disappointment
Having recently given in to the persuasive power of my brother's 10001 Reasons To Buy Warcraft Battlechest, I landed my hands on the World of Warcraft trial included in the package. What began as a pleasant surprise ended up in disappointment however.
The problems began almost immediately. Half an hour into installation, there was a fatal error. Restarting the process and subsequently completing the installation required almost 2 hours on my 3.2 GHz, 1 gig RAM machine. Registering the trial account required my credit card number, which I am always loathe to give out online, in case I forget it's an opt-out service. Blizzard claims that trial account holders will not be charged under any circumstances, so why the need for credit card account numbers?
Updating the game was another huge obstacle. Unlike Guild Wars, where the updating process is blazingly quick even when you update from the very beginning, the World of Warcraft update file measured over 200 mb. Even worse, the default mechanism of receiving update files is via a proprietary P2P connection, which recognized but did not trigger the rule-learning system of my firewall. As a defense against the slow download speed, and also partly due to my reluctance to search for manual firewall settings for a temporary game, I had to totally shut my firewall down. You'd think such a drastic action would satisfy the update downloader. Instead, it continued to protest against a now non-existent firewall while it laboured sluggishly, all the while claiming innocently that the download will complete in 2 hours. Blizzard says that the traditional way of downloading updates (via http) exists. Nonetheless, they have it well-hidden enough such that a first-time gamer like me had a tough time finding it. Total time taken to download the update? 5 whopping hours.
Aggravating installation and update issues aside, the gameplay of World of Warcraft did little to dazzle me. From what I've seen, combat at the lower levels is mostly comprised of repetitive button mashing. Little strategy is involved: one simply avoids creeps which are higher levels than yourself and press a series of keys to deliver your moves. The initial questing is also typical of many MMORPGs: kill some creatures, find someone, deliver a package etc. The gameworld is not instanced, meaning you share it with all other players. Since players of a similar race start off in one region, you'll be seeing plenty of clones of yourself at the beginning. In fact, you can almost count on having identical skill sets and appearance with players who've selected the same race and class as you, up until the mid levels at least. In my few hours of play, World of Warcraft did little to differentiate itself in terms of gameplay from the legions of MMORPGs out there today. Things might get better later in the game, but it could be a case of too little too late.
Where World of Warcraft performed exceedingly well however, is the game environment. My Night Elf started off in a lush forest populated by the obligatory wandering creeps and soon journeyed to a dark and dank cave. The level of detail is breathtaking most of the times. The gameworld is huge and a trip from one to another is often a beautiful journey. You'll see upclose the architectural design of Warcraft III as well as many familiar buildings like moon wells, which should be a real treat for fans of the game.
Ultimately, this less than sterling experience has dispelled any notions I had of getting the game and shelling out the high subscription month after month. While production values are noticeably excellent, the gameplay simply doesn't compel this gamer enough.
Filed under: Gaming
The problems began almost immediately. Half an hour into installation, there was a fatal error. Restarting the process and subsequently completing the installation required almost 2 hours on my 3.2 GHz, 1 gig RAM machine. Registering the trial account required my credit card number, which I am always loathe to give out online, in case I forget it's an opt-out service. Blizzard claims that trial account holders will not be charged under any circumstances, so why the need for credit card account numbers?
Updating the game was another huge obstacle. Unlike Guild Wars, where the updating process is blazingly quick even when you update from the very beginning, the World of Warcraft update file measured over 200 mb. Even worse, the default mechanism of receiving update files is via a proprietary P2P connection, which recognized but did not trigger the rule-learning system of my firewall. As a defense against the slow download speed, and also partly due to my reluctance to search for manual firewall settings for a temporary game, I had to totally shut my firewall down. You'd think such a drastic action would satisfy the update downloader. Instead, it continued to protest against a now non-existent firewall while it laboured sluggishly, all the while claiming innocently that the download will complete in 2 hours. Blizzard says that the traditional way of downloading updates (via http) exists. Nonetheless, they have it well-hidden enough such that a first-time gamer like me had a tough time finding it. Total time taken to download the update? 5 whopping hours.
Aggravating installation and update issues aside, the gameplay of World of Warcraft did little to dazzle me. From what I've seen, combat at the lower levels is mostly comprised of repetitive button mashing. Little strategy is involved: one simply avoids creeps which are higher levels than yourself and press a series of keys to deliver your moves. The initial questing is also typical of many MMORPGs: kill some creatures, find someone, deliver a package etc. The gameworld is not instanced, meaning you share it with all other players. Since players of a similar race start off in one region, you'll be seeing plenty of clones of yourself at the beginning. In fact, you can almost count on having identical skill sets and appearance with players who've selected the same race and class as you, up until the mid levels at least. In my few hours of play, World of Warcraft did little to differentiate itself in terms of gameplay from the legions of MMORPGs out there today. Things might get better later in the game, but it could be a case of too little too late.
Where World of Warcraft performed exceedingly well however, is the game environment. My Night Elf started off in a lush forest populated by the obligatory wandering creeps and soon journeyed to a dark and dank cave. The level of detail is breathtaking most of the times. The gameworld is huge and a trip from one to another is often a beautiful journey. You'll see upclose the architectural design of Warcraft III as well as many familiar buildings like moon wells, which should be a real treat for fans of the game.
Ultimately, this less than sterling experience has dispelled any notions I had of getting the game and shelling out the high subscription month after month. While production values are noticeably excellent, the gameplay simply doesn't compel this gamer enough.
Filed under: Gaming
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