Digitally Disillusioned

I’ve been gaming as long as some of our younger readers have been alive, but the one genre I’ve avoided like the plague is that of the MMO. Having placed a high value on both my free time as well as my money, I’ve consistently dismissed the MMO as being a flight of fancy for the unemployed or for social misfits. I’m ashamed to admit that just as the outside world tends to look down on gamers, I myself looked down on MMO players. Regardless of whatever semi-logical justifications I’d rationalized to avoid trying them out, I had become a snob.

Knowing my distaste for the genre, a close friend of mine would constantly taunt me insinuating that we should both take the plunge into World of Warcraft, he being quite taken in by the concept and the execution. This started on a long car trip to Penny Arcade Expo 2005 and had continued unabated since, renewed by his recent upgrade from a Athlon 2000 XP to a 24″ iMac. Since it had been over a year since we began that injoke I dismissed his new found vigour as a passing phase.

Last Sunday my doorbell rang at noon. While perhaps a civilized hour for most people, noon on a Sunday in my house is spent in bed recovering from whatever indulgence had overtaken us the night before. Once the fog cleared enough for me to find a shirt I stumbled to the door to find my friend at the end of my driveway, a bundle of games under his arm. Relieved to find that I was actually home he walked with a veritable spring in his step to greet me not with words, but with a box emblazoned with the World of Warcraft logo.

I groaned.

It seems those clever lads at Blizzard are packaging free 10 day trial accounts in with World of Warcraft. He’d taken the plunge, now wouldn’t I like to join him no strings attached to see what I think of it?

I asked my wife later what she thought of the whole affair, she being up to date on our running joke. “Do you think he hates me?”, I asked only half in jest. “No,” she replied without a hint of humour “I think he hates me.”

So for the last 20 minutes I’ve been running the installer (Disc 3 of 5) and it crossed my mind that I was on the cusp of something. Jaded, cynical, and about to take the plunge into the MMO phenomenon that has dominated the industry for the past 2 years. Not only haven’t I played it, I don’t know a damn thing about it. I figure there has to be some other brave or stupid souls out there who have yet to answer the seductive siren call of the MMO but are like me tempted to do so.

This one is for you.

I don’t know how long this can last, but I’m inviting you to come along and experience it with me. My name is Edward Pollard, I am a World of Warcraft virgin, and this is my story.

The Install

Comprised of 5 CDs, World of Warcraft is not a quick install. While the DVDR drive in my 20″ Intel iMac isn’t known for speedy throughput, 30 minutes into the install and I’m still staring at the installer, about halfway through disc 4. I’ve been warned that patching is going to take a while after this is done, so it is a due criticism that from box opening to play time World of Warcraft is more than a little long. Sure, the sleeves for the discs are nice and pretty, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m even going to get to play tonight. I am still very cynical of the whole idea, and since I only have 10 days of free play I want to maximize my impact. Having (I guesstemate) the first hour swallowed by install and patch is a bit of an impediment.

But I’ve got all the time in the world to consider the installer, a simple piece of work decorated with graphics of daunting, villainous statues guarding what I perceive is the gate to my social and financial downfall. I briefly think pleasant things of my workplace for having the wherewithal to block software such as this from functioning, as I’m sure that would be a short lived and catastrophic downward spiral. “Just on my lunch break,” it would start, and soon deliverables and milestones would be long forgotten as I and my trusty Gnomish avatar named Sven Bjornik skip down a lonely path in some intimidating but not outright ghastly Azerothian forest.I should mention now that I have an addictive personality. I tend to cling to things I like as if I could somehow intellectually mate with them and have little genius offspring of memes and ideological understanding. This may explain why I have a Mac, but that’s not the issue at hand. While I technically have dabbled in one MMO before - Clan Lord, an incredibly marginal MMO, back in 1999, on dial-up no less - I’m a bit worried as to what kind of impact this sort of game could have on me. I like the idea of open ended play in a diverse and dynamic world. I like playing with and competing with others. And I like collecting cool looking magical doohickies that have some artificially derived scarcity. Especially if they make my character look bad-ass and cool.

And at 42 minutes my install is done, replete with daunting music to wake me back up. Now to create an account.

Account Creation

Creating a new account opens up your web browser to the World of Warcraft website. Click into the Create Account section and one enters a special plane of hell where the damned are taunted with eternal scrolling. This, friends, is the World of Warcraft EULA. Pages and pages of text whipped past my face as I searched for the elusive I Agree button. Only once I got to the bottom did I think to use the End button on the keyboard, but at least this way I can say I did scroll past the text I was agreeing too, even if I didn’t read a word of it.

The remainder of the registration process is fairly obvious and unsurprising, with one exception. I was prompted with a captcha to prove I was a sentient human. I was a bit perplexed by this, as I wondered what use it would be to programatically register World of Warcraft accounts. I bet it has something to do with gold farming. I wonder how long it is until I’m buying gold from North Koreans who exploit children by forcing them to harvest MMO loot? And if Kim Jong Il created a character, what would it be? Apparently I’m still sleepy from the Neverending Install, but like Bastian in the attic, I continue.The Patching

Once in the actual application, one must agree to what I presume is the same EULA again. Again, I didn’t read it. Who does? But this was followed by another lengthy bit of text this time dubbed Terms of Service. Not being entirely sure what the difference was, I again scrolled to the bottom and accepted it. Having no inclinations towards antisocial behaviour I’m sure I’ll stay on the right side of it.

What followed next was the inevitable patching process. Weighing in at almost half a gigabyte, I’ve got another hour long wait on my hands. Time to do some chores and play with the dogs.

The More Patching

An hour later, and a login to World of Warcraft is greeting with yet another EULA and yet another Terms of Service.

And another patch. Sure, this time its only 5 megabytes, but this is getting annoying.

The Genesis of Sven Bjornik

Finally, game time. After I agree to the EULA (again) and the Terms of Service (yet again). First I had to pick a realm, prearranged in the real world with my friend so we could play together. Following that, character creation within World of Warcraft is painfully simple, astonishingly so, actually. However the character creation screen is somewhat devoid of any details as to what is what so research on the World of Warcraft website is definitely recommended. Don’t worry, you’ll have ample time in the two hours it takes you to get the game up and running.

I’d set my sights on a gnomish warrior, but the numbers online revealed that compared to the other races gnomes seemed to make for pretty lousy warriors. Where they seemed to excel was at being warlocks, so while I was nervous about not taking a high-hitpoint high-defense character as my first attempt a warlock I became. I was almost put off by the incredibly nasty in-game text to describe warlocks, but my gnome looked so dapper in his little red robe I couldn’t resist.However, I had some problems bringing Sven Bjornik into fruition as spaces are forbidden in character names. Apparently Azeroth isn’t a nation fond of surnames despite the examples of Anduin Lothar and Jaina Proudmoore. Well, whatever, I’m flexible, but if the inclusion of a god damned space was going to increase the realism of my MMO I know I’d include a god damned space as a valid option. Since the extremely plain Sven was already taken, SvenBjornik it is. Except the game removes intercaps. So make that Svenbjornik. See example on spaces above for how I feel about including capital letters. You’d think this was rocket science.

Once in the world I promptly set about ignoring everyone and focusing on orienting myself. The in game help was absolutely helpful in this regard, and I soon was chatting it up with an in game NPC that gave me my first mission to collect wolf meat. While not exactly teaming with real life, there were one or two other level 1 characters lining up for the same quest. This is when I noticed that in the World of Warcraft you can walk through other players. I noted this as an odd incongruity, but my computer science background saw it as a very acceptable compromise to overcome a substantial challenge in regards to network latency.

I decided to kill the first thing I could, which was a rabbit hopping about happily behind the starting camp. As rabbits are wont to do it offered littler resistance to shuffling off its mortal coil, and I was overcome with a bit of remorse as it seemed a pretty pointlessly violent thing to do. But apparently warlocks are supposed to be nasty as hell so I chalked it up to in character behaviour.

Moving on to the conveniently located field over populated with absolutely docile wild wolves, I found the key to completing my basic fetch quest. Indeed, the assorted nasty denizens of this introductory area were catatonic to my presence, and would only respond when poked with a sharp object, much as you’d expect an almost dead dog to do. My dagger was a little on the pathetic side, but my elementary warlock abilities packed quite a punch. I’m not exactly sure why my mana and health seemed to pop back to 100% between battles - I presume this is a natural regenerative effect - but it made the slaying of the eight wolves a simple affair and I was soon level 2 and had collected my rewards - some flamboyant rabbit skin gloves.At this point, a full three hours since I started, I decided to call it a night. The plan was to meet up with my friend tomorrow, and some very cantankerous Schnauzers were waiting for me to go throw a ball up and down the hall. Despite the ample opportunity for sarcastic comment, and the fact that I’d only played for maybe 15 minutes, I’ll confess to actually having fun.