The Stack

I think the most striking thing about World of Warcraft in its early stages is how ordinary it seems. This is a very conventional CRPG. You get quests, you kill monsters, you collect loot to sell or craft. I deliberately chose the most unconventional race — undead — but even that’s more conventional than it sounds, with only minor gameplay differences from any other race. (Apparently undead player characters, as opposed to undead monsters, aren’t even considered to be undead for the purposes of magical effects.) One thing about the quests that surprised me was they’re not always delivered in the conventional way, by NPC conversation: I’ve received one quest opportunity by reading a letter that I found on a slain enemy, and another simply by being present to witness a scripted event encountered while executing a different quest. But under the paint, the quests only come in a few well-worn shapes. I may go into more detail in future posts.

There may be something of the “Shakespeare is so full of clichés” effect here, accusing something of unoriginality because it’s been so widely imitated. But then, WoW isn’t that old. Most of the RPGs I play even today predate it. No, more likely this is a case of the developers focusing on craft rather than originality. There experience is in fact pretty smooth, especially for a new player with a low-level character. The in-game tutorial is a thing of beauty: it refrains from popping up too often, and when it tells me something I’ve already figured out, I usually feel like I’ve been cleverer than expected, not like it’s wasting my time by overexplaining. And there’s amazingly little downtime. After most combats, I pop back up to full health and mana instantly, and when I die, I have the option of resurrecting immediately at the nearest graveyard.

[UPDATE: This paragraph contains misinformation. See the comments.]That last point is something of a freebie for low-level characters, though. Above level 10, you have to either run to your corpse in ghost-form (which is particularly strange if you’re already undead), or wait six minutes to resurrect. Are there other ways in which the game makes things more convenient for newbies? I suppose the passivity of the early monsters counts: in the starting areas, nothing attacks you unless you attack it first. Beyond that, we’ll see. Certainly newbies are the ones to cater to, to draw them in and get them hooked. Once they’re hooked, they’ll put up with more. Ah, but why put in the six-minute wait at all? I don’t know. Maybe to make it more difficult to leap back into those small-village-sized boss fights I’ve heard about. Maybe just to provide a disincentive for dying that doesn’t involve permanent harm. Maybe I’ll figure it out once I’ve experienced it.

Another thing I have yet to experience is any real multiplayer play. Presumably I’ll make an effort to join into groups at some point, because that’s clearly the point of the game, and the main thing separating this from the single-player CRPGs it keeps reminding me of. But I’m kind of surprised how well it’s accommodated solo play so far, especially since I’m playing a primary spellcaster. Yes, warlocks need meat-shields to keep them alive, but they get one built-in. At level 1, you get an imp companion, which attacks stuff for you; at higher levels, you can learn to summon other, bigger sorts of demon. In some ways, this demon seems better than a party: you can re-summon it whenever it dies (provided you survive whatever killed it), and you don’t have to split loot with it.

One thing that seemed strange to me in the early quests: one of the authority-figures in the initial undead village goes out of his way to tell you that you’re free to do as you please and even hints at insurrection against Lady Sylvanas, Queen of the Forsaken. There followed a quest to join in a battle against rebel undead, which seemed like an ideal moment to switch sides, but if it’s possible there, it’s difficult — you pretty much have your hands full being attacked, so figuring out whether you can manipulate the faction system at the same time seems onerous. I don’t even know if it’s possible to gain the favor of enemy factions — I know I managed to do such things in Everquest, but the division between Alliance and Horde seems too fundamental to the game design for that. But for the moment, at least, I’m just accepting every quest I’m offered, heedless of consequence, on the basis that I’m not yet too committed to this character to start over. Soon after the above, I was offered quests to murder some human farmers just in case they decided to join with the enemies of the undead, and to spread plague. I only briefly considered this as a test of loyalty vs morality before agreeing to the deeds.