Significantly Cheaper than Cocaine

I picked up World of Warcraft a few months ago now, and I'm still having a moderately excellent time with it. It's the first MMO I've played, and despite the ongoing fees (US$42 every three months) I'm still having a ball. It really isn't that surprising giving the critical acclaim the game has gathered, the awards it has won, and its popularity with the rest of the unwashed nerd hordes, but it's nice not to flame out as I did with my other hobbies of Cow-Tipping, Dwarf-Tossing and Stalking The Hot Blonde Girl From The New Battlestar Galactica Series.

Basically the game is typical swords and sorcery fun, set in Azeroth, the world made famous by the Warcraft strategy games. You create your character and wade in, completing quests, killing beasts, saving princesses, killing princesses, picking herbs, dancing, climbing mountains and much more. Indeed, the sheer number of things to do is what makes the game shine. There's always one more quest, a better item, an improved enhantment, higher skills, or another new zone to explore. It's all so smoothly constructed, so each steps leads to the next one with a couple more options floating in the background, for when you feel like doing something a little different.

The game being an MMO also means that thousands of other players are in there with you, which adds a whole extra level of complexity to the endeavour. Humans are, after all, far more devious, creative, vicious, insulting, generous and amusing than any faux-AI construct controlled by pseudo-random numbers and a few limp heuristics. Adventuring with a good group is stupidly, ridiculously entertaining. Warriors wade into melee, mages blast away with magic, shamans place totems, priests heal, druids shapechange and rogues strike from the shadows. Each class is designed to have distinct strengths and weaknesses, which means that while two warriors together can be formidable, a warrior and a priest together can lay down smack of epic proportions. A group with a warrior, rogue, priest and mage are practically the A-Team.

I've only created one character so far - Varshak the Orcish Hunter. Hunters are a good solo class to play, specializing in ranged damage and tamed beasts as pets. My pet runs in and goes rar a lot in melee while I shoot the bad guys from a nice safe distance. Obviously I have problems when my pet gets clobbered and enemies get close enough to hack at my jugular, but them's the breaks when you play a hunter. My current pet, a bear named Humphrey, is fairly mean and tough so that doesn't happen that often. He also eats just about anything, even cheese.

Varshak has just passed level 40, which is a significant landmark in the game. Level 60 is the ultimate limit (for now) and those guys scare small children with their very footsteps, but 40 is not bad at all. They have a few powerful skills, some decent items and their outfits are starting to look quite groovy. The other big reason they get respect is that at level 40, they can buy a riding mount. This allows them to travel at a drastically increased pace, which is useful for covering long distances, escaping from danger and running down to the shop to get chocolate milk, but it's also a mark of status and freedom, like a teenager's first wheels. Oh we're hunting yetis in the Alterac mountains? No problem, I'll just summon my mount and zoom, I'll be there in a jiff. My boots won't even get dusty.

As well as slaying computer-generated foes, WoW has shedloads of Player vs Player (PvP) action too, which is arguably the best part of the entire game. I say this because just about all my favourite moments have come from victory in combat over the filthy Alliance. I play on a PvP server, which means that players from opposing factions (Horde and Alliance) can attack each other at any time. On non-PvP servers, players can only engage enemies with an appropriate form signed in triplicate by both parties and a Dutch Elvis impersonator who knows kung fu. Needless to say I prefer the former, even though it sometimes leaves me open to being pummelled by enemies of much higher levels and sadistic persuasions. Escaping from their clutches and popping them the finger from a nearby Horde fortress is pretty entertaining, anyway.

To draw PvP action away from the dirty back alleys of Chateau de Gankville, Blizzard recently added Battlegrounds, zones where teams of players face off and beat all holy hell out of each other. All right, there are actual strategic points and mini-quests to be done, but they're of secondary importance when there's filthy Alliance scum to be torn asunder. I've only played the smaller scale instance, Warsong Gulch, but what I've experienced so far has filled me with overwhelming joy. Warsong is capture the flag in an MMO setting, and it works frighteningly well. The wait times for Battlegrounds are brutal though, which sucks. There only seem to be two concurrent instances of each zone running at once, which seems about as effective as a brothel with only two bedrooms, but I expect they'll add more soon.

The game does have a few weaknesses, but not many, and most are lost in the quality and polish of the experience. Perhaps once or twice per session, I get "ghosted" and can't interact with anyone or anything for about five minutes until the server realizes something has gone a little strange, and boots me out. Everything is fine when I reconnect, but it happens far too often. Grouping with idiots also happens far too often, but I'm learning to stick with proven companions and cut and run at the first whiff of petulance, greed, or abject stupidity (unless there's a really cool item up for grabs). Another criticism is that the game grinds to a halt at level 60, when the travelator of fun and self-improvement ends. This might well be true, but I've still got quite a ways to go before I bump up against that limit. Until then, I'm pretty sure I'll continue having a storming time.