Syl wrote a great post on the effect WoW has had on their gaming experience, which included a call for others to blog on this topic. Typically I was travelling with work so had zero free time to write until now, so I may be somewhat belated in responding but the topic interests me. Here’s my list of the ways in which WoW has influenced my gaming experience.
1) Sub game
My early years of MMO gaming were in WoW exclusively, I played for about 2 years with no desire to even look at other MMOs. Blizzard managed to overcome my aversion to monthly subs, something that SWG and Mankind failed to do. I believed at least for the first three years that WoW represented good value for money entertainment wise.
2) Replay value through alts
I’m not the sort of person to rewatch films or TV regularly. Before WoW I’d never really replayed games at all. Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age, KOTOR – it didn’t matter how good the story was I wasn’t interested in replaying the same story even with a different class or different choices to make. WoW however seemed to be such a big world that playing alts was a way to explore all that content on-level. There were multiple leveling paths at least until level 60 for both factions, this was something pretty new to me.
3) Crafting
I got pretty hooked on crafting in WoW, despite the simplicity of the mechanics. The first big hook for me were the overlaps between professions, e.g. leatherworkers needing buckles that a blacksmith made. This further enhanced my desire to create alts to fill in these material gaps (which I’ve also done in LoTRO to an even greater extent). The crafting professions were pretty interesting, with rare recipes some of which you found inside dungeons (the blacksmithing and engineering recipes in BRD come to mind) further cementing the crafts to the world itself. Before WoW I’d never really bothered with crafting , but the persistent world, the auction house economy and the chance to trade across alts or with the characters of friends really added a huge amount of play-value to crafting that no single player game could match.
4) Class quests
Original WoW had some wonderful class customisation features, sadly now mostly removed. The class quests were pretty awesome as they grounded the classes in the world, unlocked spells or abilities and in some cases gave some pretty nice equipment as rewards. The high level class quests (such as the level 50 Sunken Temple ones) were no simple undertaking either. By the time I had a warlock or paladin high enough Blizzard had already drastically simplified the ‘mount quests’ for those classes which I regret as I would have loved to have seen them in their original form. As a side note priests also had ‘racial spells’; for example only dwarven priests had remove fear. This also was a great flavour addition to the class which was removed as the homogenisation process kicked in.
World of Warcraft was something very special when I started playing it, as I’ve noted before though Blizzard’s path of development sadly veered widely away from the original design of the game, and away from the very reasons that made me play the game so avidly.
GamingSF 