Personal Enquiry: Rough

MMO’s were a big part of my life when I was younger. I think they are a truly unique genre of games, and offer things that no other title can, Particularly World of Warcraft.

What really interests me about these games is their level of interactivity. They are notorious for having overwhelming amounts of content, with quests, warring factions, exploration, economy, pvp and a lot more. I found that the game I have had the most fun on and spent the longest playing was World of Warcraft, simply due to this incredible amount of stuff to do.

Humour is important to me when I play video games. I find titles such as Call of Duty and Battlefield take themselves too seriously, with their super muscly 1 dimensional characters, it just feels as though the only response it tries to evoke is ‘WOAH, THAT WAS COOL!’

Pretty visuals, violence and explosions.

But nothing else. :(

(There is something to be said for fps games, as they offer great coop experiences and are accessible to pretty much anyone, but, more often than not, they feel stale and repetitive.)

 These games often feature an ‘on the rails’ style of gameplay, where you are told to do something, you do it and scripted events make it look pretty. This is where MMO’s really raised the bar for me, and opened my eyes to what a video game can achieve.

From the moment you start playing WoW, you are able to control your playing experience, from the way you present yourself to others, your class and what role you enjoy playing, to what stats you want to focus on. Customization like this is an essential part of any role playing game, to ensure that the player bonds with their avatar, and establishes a relationship with their in game surroundings.

(WoW’s character creation menu.)

From having the choice to build your character from the ground up, and play who you want to play, I found that I was more engaged by the story of the quests and enjoyed the fact that my decisions affected my experience. This was unlike any other game outside the RPG genre, as everything you do has a purpose, a reward and something to do afterwards. This formula is very clever, and works very well at making you keep playing.

Some people argue that because there is always something to do, and it doesn’t really have an end, that it is a futile effort playing it, and that Blizzard just want to hook you into playing forever.  While I am sure Blizzard are happy with the amount of revenue they receive from WoW’s subscription fees,  the amount of fun to be had on these games is really huge, and yes, you never finish playing, but that is kind of what makes it so great, because you can always come back to it and do something new with others, and continue your own adventure.