One winter morning I walked into the kitchen and spotted an opened package on the table. Opening it I saw another box. One of those old massive PC game boxes that you could judge the amount of content the game had by how heavy the box was, and this one was fucking heavy. Across the top of the box I read the words "World of Warcraft."
I couldn't contain my excitement. I had learned to type by punching in Warcraft cheats. Staring at the back of the box I was mesmerized. Flying on gryphons, fighting mookins, exploring snowy landscapes; dear lord sign me up. The only catch was that my grandparents were staying over for a week, so I couldn't play it because it would suck away all the time I was supposed to spending with my grandparents. On top of that my father said to me, "There's no way that you are going to play that before I am."
I read the manual and stared at the pictures for days, grating my teeth waiting for my grandparents to leave. Eventually my time came and I was quivering with excitement. I'll never forget that feeling staring at the log-in screen for the first time. The portal beckoning me to have the best gaming experience that I will ever have; I put in my info and smack the enter key. I took me at least an hour to decide what I wanted to make. My first choice was a gnome, which I quickly learned to hate and deleted him before even clicking the play button. My second, and most played character, would be a dwarven hunter...named Snowy.
I read the manual and stared at the pictures for days, grating my teeth waiting for my grandparents to leave. Eventually my time came and I was quivering with excitement. I'll never forget that feeling staring at the log-in screen for the first time. The portal beckoning me to have the best gaming experience that I will ever have; I put in my info and smack the enter key. I took me at least an hour to decide what I wanted to make. My first choice was a gnome, which I quickly learned to hate and deleted him before even clicking the play button. My second, and most played character, would be a dwarven hunter...named Snowy.
The cold ambiance that Dun Morogh graced me with is what struck me the most. The crisp wind sounds, the perfect sound of crunching snow underneath my boots, the subtle music playing in the back foreboding the harsh environment that I would be exploring. I was hooked from the start.
I carry so many memories from World of Warcraft, more so than any other game I've played. The first time climbing up the massive hill to Iron Forge and being greeted by the massive gates, only to be impressed by the city within more. Grouping up for my first instance and the feeling of community I got conversing with people whilst exploring awe inspiring environments like The Deadmines. Running through Ashenvale with friends trying to find the queue for Warsong Gulch when it first launched. World PvP at Southshore. Running to SM. Doing MC, ZG, and later BT and Sunwell. I played this game for years and loved every second of it.
I stopped playing it a little bit after Cataclysm came out and I don't really know why. Maybe it wasn't the same game that I had played before, maybe I just grew out of it, or maybe it was because all my friends had stopped playing. Even though I haven't played it in years, I can't help but think about it from time to time. I think about all the fun I had and I sometimes even renew my subscription trying to get that same feel of discovery and fun, but it just isn't there any more.
So I've shopped around trying to find something that will capture that feeling again, or at least hold my attention for longer than an hour, but I just can't find it. I used to love the MMO genre, Everquest being my first, and being in loads of others before WoW, I loved the feeling of being able to explore massive worlds and play with interesting mechanics. The fault with WoW being so popular is that ever other MMO that has been released since has tried to capitalize off it's success by becoming a carbon copy.
I've played Warhammer, Rift, Lotro, Guild Wars, The Old Republic, and a few others, but none of them had any merit to them. The quests were boring, the ambiances don't bring you into the world, the environments are flat, and none of them strive to feel different from MMOs of the past. Most of them had loads of hype, claiming to be WoW killers, and turned out to be flops which go free-to-play after a month. Now I don't want to get invested into MMOs because they offer nothing different from each other and I don't want to spend the money and time it takes to start up, especially if the game dies before I can even get to the end game.
I wish that they still had the mentality of huge worlds with massive amounts of things to do. I mean if you look at Star Wars Galaxies, even if the game wasn't too great, it still had way more innovation than any MMO since. You could make an entire town, hire mayors and make your own laws...all in game...not instanced. How crazy is that? Now all we have is "phasing" to make us feel as if we have an impact on the world.
I stopped playing it a little bit after Cataclysm came out and I don't really know why. Maybe it wasn't the same game that I had played before, maybe I just grew out of it, or maybe it was because all my friends had stopped playing. Even though I haven't played it in years, I can't help but think about it from time to time. I think about all the fun I had and I sometimes even renew my subscription trying to get that same feel of discovery and fun, but it just isn't there any more.
So I've shopped around trying to find something that will capture that feeling again, or at least hold my attention for longer than an hour, but I just can't find it. I used to love the MMO genre, Everquest being my first, and being in loads of others before WoW, I loved the feeling of being able to explore massive worlds and play with interesting mechanics. The fault with WoW being so popular is that ever other MMO that has been released since has tried to capitalize off it's success by becoming a carbon copy.
I've played Warhammer, Rift, Lotro, Guild Wars, The Old Republic, and a few others, but none of them had any merit to them. The quests were boring, the ambiances don't bring you into the world, the environments are flat, and none of them strive to feel different from MMOs of the past. Most of them had loads of hype, claiming to be WoW killers, and turned out to be flops which go free-to-play after a month. Now I don't want to get invested into MMOs because they offer nothing different from each other and I don't want to spend the money and time it takes to start up, especially if the game dies before I can even get to the end game.
I wish that they still had the mentality of huge worlds with massive amounts of things to do. I mean if you look at Star Wars Galaxies, even if the game wasn't too great, it still had way more innovation than any MMO since. You could make an entire town, hire mayors and make your own laws...all in game...not instanced. How crazy is that? Now all we have is "phasing" to make us feel as if we have an impact on the world.
With Wildstar and the new Everquest in the works I hope that the MMO genre will return to it's roots of being engrossing with massive worlds driven by players and environmental exploration, not the classic theme park MMO that has been pumped out for the past 10 years.