WoW Addiction Gone?
Recently, I’ve found myself deciding it just isn’t worth it to try to get a group together, or schedule some play time, or log on at just the right time to jump into whatever activity I want/need to do to progress. It’s not that WoW isn’t still great– it is– but single player RPGs (Final Fantasy 3 and 12, currently) are offering me my fix without all the overhead.
I’m probably just one of the many WoW players that retires his or her character not long after running out of good solo content. Ironically, I actually prefer to play grouped. Grouping in WoW is no problem if you log on at a regular time, or simply play all the time. If you’re like me, fitting gaming into the opportunities that arise, WoW is much more hostile to pick up grouping than something like City of Heroes.
I want to make it clear that I’m not saying WoW is in any sort of big trouble: heck, I’m not even canceling my account. Millions of players will continue to play for the social fix that a single player game can’t give. I’ll probably be back in next month. What I’m saying is that if Blizzard is starting work on a Starcraft MMO, it’ll probably be out at just the right time to pick up a lot of ex-WoW addicts.
(Note: I just read today’s Penny Arcade news post, and Tycho’s saying pretty much the same thing. I’m not as convinced as he is that the May 19 announcement is World of Starcraft– I think they need to be further along before they announce that. I think it’s either Diablo 3, since it’s been so long in development, or Starcraft 2, the perfect game to release two years before World of Starcraft.)
May 8th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
“It’s not that WoW isn’t still great– it is– but single player RPGs (Final Fantasy 3 and 12, currently) are offering me my fix without all the overhead.”
You mention single-player RPGs offering you your fix, but you don’t list any. What RPGs are you playing?
May 8th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
* joke flies over Matt’s head *
FFIII is pretty standard fare right now. FFXII seems a lot better, but it has longer load times. They’re both super linear (surprise), but there’s a ton of freedom in their combat systems.
May 8th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
My zinger stands!
Going back to City of Heroes after playing STALKER… CoH and WoW feel so clinical in comparison.
On STALKER: Talking to Drew Skillman about the game, I realized something: Once a game has convinced you it’s not a game, it can get away with anything it wants. Bugs and poor design decisions all become part of the world, because the authorial layer is removed.
The hard part as a developer, obviously, is convincing the player that they’re not playing a game. I’m not sure it’s something that can be crafted or otherwise done deliberately… but saying that discredits developers who *are* able to successfully pull it off.
Hm…
May 8th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Oh, sorry to derail your thread.
I actually am playing an RPG right now: Pokemon Pearl. It’s pretty much… Pokemon. Nothing more, nothing less.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:31 am
“CoH and WoW feel so clinical in comparison.”
Wow, that’s a pretty good word for it: they have a very finely engineered combat mechanic, and perhaps their delivery machine is a bit too precisely tuned.
Fine, you’ve talked me into it: I just picked up STALKER at 32.50 shipped. The comment on bugs worries me a little, because Vampire: the Masquerade was an extremely promising game that eventually crumbled beneath their weight. There are some things you just can’t overcome. Hopefully I’ll see what you’re saying about it not feeling like a game. I don’t know if I’ve played an FPS like that in quite some time, and it seems like the easiest way to do it is to scare the crap out of someone: System Shock 2 and Alone in the Dark being big examples of games that made me forget they were games.
Also: FFIII isn’t an RPG, but Pokemon is!?
May 13th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
“Also: FFIII isn’t an RPG, but Pokemon is!?”
I’ve been counterzinged! I have no response other than to throw my countless Pokeballs at your bunny-girl and hope the numbers work out in my favor.
STALKER springboard continued: I think it’s about evoking emotion. It just so happens that fear is one of the emotions that interactive media are more easily able to produce in their audience.
How about care? I think that’s much tougher. I’m having trouble thinking of a game that made me care about a character other than myself/the protagonist. KOTOR came close when I was at the moment of no return and had to choose evil by betraying (half of) my “friends”. And maybe that’s part of the core of it — it was interactive. It meant something because I was making a *choice* that affected characters I’d grown fond of. Or is that care masquerading as… GUILT? If so, that’s still just as noteworthy an emotion to evoke.
May 14th, 2007 at 1:53 am
KOTOR’s also one of my favorite examples. I particularly love the recovered evil Jedi– she’s like an alcoholic that you can keep on or kick off the wagon. It’s all this added responsibility.
Your character is “you”, and you know if you’re just gaming the system to get your evil powers or whatever, but the impact on others has more of an impact, at least for me. I think that really is the future (at least near future) of emotion in games: characters and interactivity. There’s so much attention to story, but it’s a red herring.
May 14th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
late jump onto the thread, but KOTOR by far invoked the highest level of emotion for me. Almost completely when going dark side too - I didn’t get much if any goody-goody feelings from playing light side, but oh man… I won’t hit the spoiler points, but there were some dark side moments that made me feel very, very guilty - enough that I’d have to stop for few days, and I couldn’t bear to talk to one of the characters any more.
So, this is a semi-random point brought up by KOTOR - I wish I didn’t have to play all the way through again, but I don’t have a good answer on how to fix that. I mean, it wouldn’t really be the same to play the game all the way through light side, and then go back to a save at a critical point and go dark dark side from there on - there are a lot of opportunities early on to go all out one way or the other, with some entertaining conversations/cut scenes that turn out differently. So how do you increase the replay value enough to make it worth it to explore both paths?
-geoff
May 15th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
“So how do you increase the replay value enough to make it worth it to explore both paths?”
Shorter game; take the time spent on length and put it into width and depth. (That’s easier said than done, obviously, in a commercial medium.)
May 16th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Good to hear I’m not a solo KOTOR crackpot.
I’ve been hearing rumors about Deus Ex 3 (well, I suppose there have been rumors about Deus Ex 3 since Deus Ex 2). Deus Ex may be a high water mark for replay value in a modern, high production value game. Well, Diablo 2 is probably higher for many people, and MMOs are in a totally different world, but Deus Ex really allowed a ton of different play styles– and it wasn’t just in giving you different ways to deliver damage to a monster.
In other news: discussion breaks double digit posts? Milestone!