Friday, November 14, 2008

The Rise & Fall of the Lich King

I have been a long time fan of the Warcraft universe. When I finally caved in to the pay-to-play world of MMOs there was little doubt what game I would be playing. I fell in love with the game from day one. The world was immense, in my eyes. I remember my first time logging in to the game clear as day. I spawned an Orc. He was awesome. I killed boars. They were awesome. The landscape, the other players, the tasks assigned to me – all of it amazing. My buddy Ben and I climbed a mountain, jumped into the ocean on the other side and got eaten by alligators. We had no clue what was going on, but we laughed our collective ass off.

Throughout my time in WoW there were images like this. My first visits to Orgrimmar, the Crossroads, Thunder Bluff, Booty Bay, Stratholme, Black Rock Mountain, Ragnaros, Nefarian. These are all very vivid and very positive memories for me.

Then… Outland.

After a couple years of amazing game play in one of the greatest worlds ever created we couldn’t wait for the expansion. Burning Crusade offered so much more opportunity for us as a Guild. A new world awaited us with new bosses, quests, gear, and thousands of hours of dorky goodness to consume our free time. That’s not quite how it worked out, however.

The beauty of the original World of Warcraft was this continuity to how the world worked. Each quest line was designed to help you experience the environment. A led to B led to C, D, E, and F – many of these with new paths of their own. Every zone was interesting and served as a backdrop for the gradual growth of your character. It was a masterpiece. By comparison Outland was a muddled mess.

Maybe Outland suffered from expectations, or development timelines, or the leveling-as-a-science approach many players had adopted by the time of its release. There is probably no way to tell where this failure occurred, but the expansion was clearly not born of the same blood of the original game. Quests were contrived and zones were crowded. Everything was laid out in a way that leveling felt mechanical rather than organic.

It was synthetic.

I guess that’s what I should expect from a computer generated world, but I have seen immersive environments, both before and after WoW, and Outland totally missed the mark. It should have been bigger. It shouldn’t have ridden such a sharp tangent so far from the original lore. It should not have disrespected the history that we went to great lengths to experience to its fullest.

So this week the “Wrath of the Lich King” expansion came out. On the walk between my car and my office this morning I found myself considering the ramifications of reopening my account. The notion didn’t last very long, but I felt an affirmation that my time in the original game could not have been wasted if – even after the pains of the Burning Crusade – the allure of Azeroth was so strong.

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