Idealized landscapes and communities, Part II
As I'm walking through Westfall under a full moon, I enter Sentinel Hill, eager to redeem a quest that I've completed. By the gryphon aviary, several other characters have gathered, picturesque in their weaponry and armor. As a member of the Alliance, I'm surrounded by dwarves, gnomes, and night elves, each of whom is just different enough from the human norm: night elves with their glowing eyes and long pointed ears, gnomes looking like small, perfect, deadly children, and dwarves with their enormous noses and forearms. The moon bathes us all in its glow, and the light cloud cover and lack of snow or heavy clothing reminds me that this landscape is perfect, even down to the monsters and bad guys (easily identified by the red tags on their names that appear when I drag my cursor over them) waiting beyond the next hill.
As I climb the next ridge, I see a camp of gnolls. They wear armor and carry heavy weaponry: swords, bows, and long knives. Some are obviously spell-casters, identified by their wands or maces and the ritualistic totems on their shoulders. Each will defend the cyber-territory around their camp.
I notice another character, a human mage, looking at the same scene. Before I can even consider how to make contact with him, a window appears above my cyber-head, asking me if I want to join a group. In the chat window, I notice that he has asked me if I want to "group them," with each of us pooling our talents in order to meet the requirements of our quest, eight gnoll paws. I agree, having learned from my previous experience that this is a fast and efficient way to fulfill a quest.
We proceed to kill off a number of the gnolls, with each of us getting a paw from the resulting corpse. We get killed a couple of times each, mainly by pressing the gnolls' camp too closely and thus provoking an attack from multiple gnolls. But the overall effect is fun, and addictive: I play for another three hours based on the adrenaline I feel.
The horror and the beauty
The WOW landscape evokes these sorts of reactions, both in myself and in others who play. When I asked one of my fellow guild members about his lack of sleep, for instance, he responded by saying that there's no need for sleep when he could be playing WOW, and that response is typical. Part of its immersive power comes from this beauty, the fun of playing, the challenges inherent in the game, and so on, and it's an immersion that provokes passion among its players.
However, the immersion also comes from a careful merging of Blizzard games. In some environments - corporate, academic - this would be called 'training' or 'education,' and when I'm feeling cynical I'd agree. one that I call training. WOW is obviously based on the three-sequence Warcraft game that millions have played, including on-line, but it also incorporates many of the elements found in Diablos I & II. Both of these games have large on-line communities - I'd be interested to know how much these communities have changed since the implementation of WOW in late November - and thus they've enabled Blizzard to develop several aspects of its new game: in addition to terminology, characters, classes, ways of equipping characters, and the concept of levelling up (stolen from D & D), players are also familiar with the Blizzard method of connecting to various servers, the format of that connection, the game forums that Blizzard and several other companies use to accept feedback from their players, and the extent to which Blizzard employees will respond to customer feedback. I'll need to work this list into one that separates broad concepts from components of those pieces, but there are so many out there that the training aspect just begs to be explored.
This redudancy serves many purposes. My guess is that chief among these is training, because training is both a huge expense for companies (game manuals, user feedback forums, and on-line game managers are just pieces), and they also serve to keep customers coming back, forking over 15 bucks a month for the privilege of playing the game.
I've never played Everquest.
As I climb the next ridge, I see a camp of gnolls. They wear armor and carry heavy weaponry: swords, bows, and long knives. Some are obviously spell-casters, identified by their wands or maces and the ritualistic totems on their shoulders. Each will defend the cyber-territory around their camp.
I notice another character, a human mage, looking at the same scene. Before I can even consider how to make contact with him, a window appears above my cyber-head, asking me if I want to join a group. In the chat window, I notice that he has asked me if I want to "group them," with each of us pooling our talents in order to meet the requirements of our quest, eight gnoll paws. I agree, having learned from my previous experience that this is a fast and efficient way to fulfill a quest.
We proceed to kill off a number of the gnolls, with each of us getting a paw from the resulting corpse. We get killed a couple of times each, mainly by pressing the gnolls' camp too closely and thus provoking an attack from multiple gnolls. But the overall effect is fun, and addictive: I play for another three hours based on the adrenaline I feel.
The horror and the beauty
The WOW landscape evokes these sorts of reactions, both in myself and in others who play. When I asked one of my fellow guild members about his lack of sleep, for instance, he responded by saying that there's no need for sleep when he could be playing WOW, and that response is typical. Part of its immersive power comes from this beauty, the fun of playing, the challenges inherent in the game, and so on, and it's an immersion that provokes passion among its players.
However, the immersion also comes from a careful merging of Blizzard games. In some environments - corporate, academic - this would be called 'training' or 'education,' and when I'm feeling cynical I'd agree. one that I call training. WOW is obviously based on the three-sequence Warcraft game that millions have played, including on-line, but it also incorporates many of the elements found in Diablos I & II. Both of these games have large on-line communities - I'd be interested to know how much these communities have changed since the implementation of WOW in late November - and thus they've enabled Blizzard to develop several aspects of its new game: in addition to terminology, characters, classes, ways of equipping characters, and the concept of levelling up (stolen from D & D), players are also familiar with the Blizzard method of connecting to various servers, the format of that connection, the game forums that Blizzard and several other companies use to accept feedback from their players, and the extent to which Blizzard employees will respond to customer feedback. I'll need to work this list into one that separates broad concepts from components of those pieces, but there are so many out there that the training aspect just begs to be explored.
This redudancy serves many purposes. My guess is that chief among these is training, because training is both a huge expense for companies (game manuals, user feedback forums, and on-line game managers are just pieces), and they also serve to keep customers coming back, forking over 15 bucks a month for the privilege of playing the game.
I've never played Everquest.
posted by ron at 8:43 AM
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