The Thrill of the Spectacle

There's something exhilarating about being in a group that's the center of attention, even in a virtual world. I think this is what leads people to grief, or to produce high-visibility artworks. Our run on Wednesday was an example of this group spectacle mentality. Although we weren't doing something particularly interesting or groundbreaking (running to a city, taking a boat to another city, etc.) we were doing it in an unconventional way and in a large, coordinated effort. This breaks the context in which players normally see these things.

Yes, large groups are common--in raids and battlegrounds. 

Yes, running across zones is common--but not in a huge group. 

Yes, taking a boat from city to city is common--but not cross-faction on an alliance boat.

All this comes together to create a memorable social experience. It's part "look, we're breaking the normal play routine!", part "wow, all these people coordinating together is really cool!", and part "this is just something you don't see everyday!" It's just like a flash mob in real life. It's a happening.

Of course, this leads to griefing as players feel threatened by the break in normal routine (or they want to steal the thunder from us, more likely). In this case, the appeal of griefing lies not in the vein of the collective spectacle (breaking norms, collaborating, etc.) but in garnering the attention of the griefed through blocking progress through the game.

But we don't all have huge 15-person groups that meet every week to play with.

Creeper

Yep, I'm a creeper.

Ennui

I think I'm entering the ennui phase of the game. I'll admit that the novelty factor of the game kept me interested, but as of now, I'm exploring the same locations as I've been in for a while (or, I'm starting to notice that many of the locations are one-trick-ponies and at a certain level they all look similar). I'm doing the same types of quests. The PH4T L00T isn't really keeping me interested--not that it was a source of questing for me anyway; I was always a quester of opportunity--and I'm just at the point where I'm grinding for the XP.

I refer to my earlier post about requiring an insider to level efficiently. Stumbling through this game (even though I know the mechanics) just because I don't know exactly which instances drop the good loot or the efficiency of a certain long questline is not any way to play WoW. It's frustrating, boring, and alienating.

I reiterate: I'm kind of bored. I'll get to 40 and work on my skinning skill, as that lets me visit areas I haven't seen in a while (starting areas, or areas heavily populated with skinnable mobs).

I think I realized just now that the only reason I'm getting anywhere in this game is because I constantly ask my friends for advice on where to go next (putting aside the leveling help Gen gives me).

No new player could possibly play this game in any efficient way without an insider. Is there any way to get around the steep learning curve of a large, complex system? I'm still in the dark as to what areas are good for leveling, and I'm level 30.

/hug

Well, I had fun, at least.

Cross-faction leveling isn't so much a matter of actually leveling as it is of circumventing the system. It's not that it was especially hard to do once we found each other and got to the site where we were going, it was the setup.

To start, I'm a horde tank and she's an alliance druid. I was around 3 to 4 levels above her, so I wasn't looking for XP here. So I fly on over to Ashenvale where she's leveling and try to meet up, only to run headlong into problems.

First, we can't track each other on the map or group up to find each other. Second, WoW doesn't come with map co-ordinates installed by default, requiring that Rachelle install an add-on to figure out where she was. Third, if we ever broke line of sight, there was a chance we'd lose each other. Fourth, I couldn't keep an eye on Rachelle's health easily to see if she was in trouble. Fifth, THEY ALL HAD RED NAMES! It's not my fault if I accidentally attacked her boyfriend (who was in game on Alliance, helping her) and killed him. Well, maybe it is.

Those were pretty much the roadblocks to this endeavor. I think we got one quest done in 2 hours, which--considering the actual physical location and the spread between quest areas--should have taken no more than 30 minutes. Efficient, it is not.

Aside from all the frustrations, it was pretty cool. I just had to make sure what I was attacking. Mikey joined us on Horde, and Rachelle's boyfriend was there, which made for a 2-horde, 2-alliance group. Only one other player came by, and he left the alliance characters alone. I was just like:

"It's cool, they're with us."

And Mikey was like:

"They're cool, they're our friends"

And the guy was like:

"kk"

and rode off.

Moral of the story? Cool in concept, but certainly not an efficient way to level.

Off to the Disc

For my fieldwork, I chose the text-based MUD (Multi-User Dungeon/Dimension) based on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel series, aptly named the Discworld MUD (http://discworld.atuin.net). I had some experience with this MUD in high school, where I played for a year or two, and tried out several different character classes. This allowed me to dive back into the game without too much difficulty, circumventing the newbie area. Part of the reason I picked this is because it had been established long before WoW ever existed (even before EverQuest). This means that the mechanics are based on other MUDs, which, in turn, are based on single-player text adventures. So, while it shares some of the features and mechanics of all MMOs—including WoW—it has fewer similarities than it has differences.

The primary difference stems from the presentation. WoW depicts a world similar to our own, i.e. 3-dimensional, human-scaled, with the ability to navigate around like we do in real life. In contrast, MUDs are all presented via text description, and broken up into discrete areas, called ‘rooms’ (regardless of their actual type), between which the player moves. The entire GUI in WoW is replicated in text, including character statistics, skills, appearance, and inventory. In essence, the player is reading an interactive story. The only way to interact with this ‘story’ is through a command-line parser (again, similar to single-player text adventures) at the bottom of the screen. An interesting note about MUDs is that they’re client-independent. While WoW requires the Blizzard client to play, MUDs can be played over a simple telnet client. However, the appearance of paragraphs upon paragraphs of text every time you move into a new room is daunting, forcing you to get some sort of MUD-specific client to color code the information so you can focus on the important things.

I found it relatively easy to get back into the MUD mode, and quickly remembered most of the parser commands that I had learned back in high school. It might not be so easy for most, though—these commands are more like simplistic computer code than English. Something as easy as giving a voucher for a talking-stick got me stuck toward the beginning of the game: I tried “give voucher to shopkeeper” and “ask shopkeeper about voucher”, to no avail. I read the voucher more closely and discovered I had to use the “exchange” command. So, much of the frustration in the game comes from not being able to see the whole picture and having the agency to accomplish something simply because of the limitation of the parser.

Mechanics are a small part of the game experience with respect to WoW, but it’s worth pointing out that the gameplay works very differently in terms of leveling. Yes, there are different guilds that the player can join, effectively making them a different class, but there are also location-based skills (as in, an assassin trained in a certain city might learn different skills than an assassin trained in a different city). This really added to the immersion and gave more weight to my choice of character.

Finally, the social community was very different from WoW. Because of the talking-stick, everyone in the game (around 100 simultaneously on average) can chat together, in guild chat, or in chat based on location. Discworld’s equivalent to WoW’s local chat only extends to the room, so having the talking-stick helped me feel less isolated. At thousands of rooms in the world, on average you won’t find anyone around. However, over the talking-stick, I found the community to be tight-knit, if a little smaller than when I played in high school.

I noticed several changes and refinements since I had played in high school. Parser expansions, reworking of zones, and gameplay changes all probably stemmed from the explosion of graphical MMOs in the mid-‘00s and reflect the changing expectations of players. Still, it was fundamentally the same experience as I remembered, and it was great to re-learn something not heavily based on WoW.