I have this problem with videogames and my ability to be a cynical reductionist about them. For instance, I can break down a FPS and say “it's just a game where a combination of your reflexes and available toolset (in other words, weapons and items) allow you to overcome enemies and obstacles while moving through a linear path toward a set ending.” I can break down a RPG and say “it's just a game where you work toward making your numbers bigger than the enemy's numbers, through use of an available toolset (equipment, spells, items, abilities, leveling up, etc.). Even if you aren't moving along a linear path toward a set ending, there are only so many available endings possible.” This, of course, ignores the promise of X-hundred endings for Fallout 3, where X represents however many numbers they've promised in this month's interview or press release.
This cynical, reductionist eye, when turned upon World of Warcraft, gets a bit fuzzy. My impression in the beginning was that it was a mix of Diablo 2's “lootin' and levelin'” addiction cycle set upon a persistent, multiplayer landscape. But it's a bit more complicated than that. Literally, more complicated: World of Warcraft adds more layers of complexity on top of that formula. You aren't just picking a class, you're picking a race, too. You aren't going through a set of quests toward chapter endings and a final boss or bosses; rather, you're free to go anywhere at any time and do what you want. You also have more things to do than just “lootin' and levelin'”: you can do professions to make money, mess with other players even if you aren't on a PvP server, do dungeons and raids, try your hand at Arena or Battleground PvP, and quest to raise reputation with 'factions' so you can access their specific vendor items and equipment.
So, I found myself heavily addicted to the game for five months straight. I got a character to the current level cap of 70. I played a bunch of alts. I tried almost everything the game had to offer. And then...I quit.
The “why” of my quitting has a short and a long answer. The short answer is that it ceased to run on my laptop. I began to get an error saying that my display driver had stopped working. I ran through all the possible causes and solutions—overheated GPU?? outdated driver?? non-compatible, new driver?? game installation somehow corrupted??—before I finally gave up. I was talking to friends online at the time and I jokingly said to one that I was such a loser that I didn't quit WoW, WoW had quit me. But the truth is that I had given up on the game by then. And therein begins the long answer.
When I was a kid, I used to dream up the ultimate videogame. It would be like another world you went into, one that was always new and changing, so that it had no end. I loved videogames, but I was always a bit let down when they ended. Wouldn't it be awesome if Mario 3, Shining Force II, or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis never ended?? Moreover, wouldn't it be awesome if these games were another world I could live in for hours at a time, instead of just a passive form of entertainment?? Obviously this sort of “living cyberworld that isn't a game, per se” thing is touched upon in much cyberpunk literature, not to mention The Matrix and non-RPG MMOs like Second Life. But I think World of Warcraft was closer to what I imagined, a RPG without an ending, one that you always had stuff to do in even if you were the highest level. However, it turns out that sometimes what you think you want isn't what you want at all. My main problem with World of Warcraft—and by extension, all MMOs in general—is that there's no ending to them. If you get to level 70, you still need to get better gear. You need to run daily quests so you can make enough money to raise up your professions, raise reputation with factions, to buy the epic flying mounts, etc. You need to run instances and raid dungeons to get better gear. You need to do Arena or Battleground PvP for weeks to get the better gear that these offer. But at what point do you stop?? Even simplistic older games you could replay over and over, either for the fun of it or to get a better score, had concrete endings. But World of Warcraft does not. There is no ultimate boss or piece of equipment or whatever you are working toward. Meanwhile, working toward that non-ending takes far, far too long.
I never wanted to admit this to myself, but World of Warcraft began to feel like a job. As I think anyone will agree, when something begins to feel like a job, you don't want to do it anymore. It ceases to be entertainment and becomes tedium. After a certain point, I wasn't playing WoW for the fun of it anymore; I was playing it because my guild needed me or I was wasting my money if I wasn't playing it or I wanted to see all of the content. I felt as if I had to play every available moment of my free time to maximize my progress in the game. I had to run daily quests because they were refreshed every 24 hours and if I wasn't doing them every day I was wasting my opportunity to make money and progress toward various goals. I had to play so much because if I tried to play the game casually I would take even longer to achieve anything in the game. A few weeks ago I tried to tally up in my head how much time I was spending on the game, and I figured out, roughly, that I was playing the game as many hours as I was spending at work every week, if not usually more. I used to wonder why time was flying by this year, and you know, I didn't seem to be writing as much as I used to, or reading, or playing any other games. Well, there was my answer: I had another job. I was, metaphorically speaking, 'working' for World of Warcraft. I might even have been addicted. I certainly got angry when I had to do other stuff. Paying bills?? Bah!! Eating and showering?? Bah!!
People often write or talk about games like World of Warcraft in terms of addiction, ironically or otherwise. Everquest was dubbed “Evercrack” for its pull over the lives of otherwise responsible men and women. Well, there is a definite cycle of addiction to WoW even if we don't want to admit it, although maybe it's not so much a cycle as a downward arrow. I will allow that it's possible to play the game casually, but I, personally, never felt like it was possible to do so, and nobody I knew in the game or outside of it ever did. Blizzard would never admit this, but you are discouraged (actively and passively) from playing the game casually because all the 'cool' stuff it has can only accessed when you plunk hours upon hours per week into the game. Even with all the time I put into my level 70 character, and my alts, I was only seeing vertical slices of the game. To experience every race, class, different class builds, all the zones and dungeons, all the professions, and the PvP content...well, it would take years. The game has been out for close to four years and people are still playing it. Literally everything interesting in the game requires tremendous time sinks to experience. For the sake of comparison, I spent around 60 hours to finish Final Fantasy XII, though I didn't do much of the optional stuff. In order to hit level 70 in World of Warcraft, I put in 312 hours. That is 13 days. And I still wasn't “done” with the game. I still had professions to raise up, gear to get, dungeons to run, factions to earn reputation with, etc etc. ad infinitum. I'm not even counting the time I played past hitting 70 or the other characters I was playing. This is easily two weeks of my life spent playing this game.
I understand that many people see this as ideal. “Hey, I only have to pay 15 bucks a month and I get a game I'm never done with or bored of!!” On paper it sounds good, but in reality it's nowhere near this glossy. Let's assume you aren't playing WoW and you buy one game a month. That's a solid $50-$60 a month you'll spend on a game, versus the $15 someone would on WoW. This seems like a bargain until you realize you are doing the same things, over and over, in WoW. Blizzard trumpets the fact that they're always adding new content, but seen under a reductionist light, it's still the same content with new skins. You're still collecting items or killing X number of monsters or going through every style of quest you've already done throughout the whole game. Ultimately it comes down to semi-clever ways of disguising the fact that you're just making your numbers bigger. People who've played this game for a year or more boggle my mind because I got tired of the whole thing in a few months. Even if it were possible to experience all the content in the game—let's say this took two years—would you really feel enriched by the experience, as if your money had been well spent?? Honestly, the idea smacks of addiction and monomania. People who explain why they play the game, and why they've played it for so long, start to sound like they're justifying their addiction to you and themselves at the same time. You just spent three hours of your life to get a helmet that lets you cast a spell four times instead of three. You just spent a week of your life grinding with a faction so you can get an epic flying mount that is a manta ray, though is otherwise functionally similar to your other epic flying mount. I wonder if people even think about this kind of thing when they're doing it. I mean, I had fun playing the game, but I realize now that the fun I had was mostly contained in the times I played co-operatively with other people, not in doing those ridiculous time sinks. And those co-operative experiences were always but a small fraction of the time I put into the game; the other 90% of my two weeks was put toward grinding. Pure and simple, I was paying $15 a month to do the same repetitive, mindless things over and over so that every once in awhile I could play a co-operative, multiplayer version of a dungeon from a single player PC RPG. Or, you know, Diablo 2 with more people and better graphics. Some of my friends play the game still, but I think they'd readily admit the only reason they do is because they know people who play. World of Warcraft is not an engaging enough experience on its own for more than the equivalent length of any other game without other players to spur you on.
Yes, reductionism of this sort can be applied strictly enough to any game until it's seen, bald, as a time or money sink. Entertainment of any form, whether it can/does enrich your life, is escapism and a way to spend time when you aren't at work earning money. Life is the stuff that happens between death and taxes, and entertainment is a large part of life. Scaling back a bit, even other RPGs are time and money sinks. But World of Warcraft is different, because it asks for more time and money than any other game but simultaneously gives the player little sense of accomplishment and no possibility for an ending. Everything you achieve is overshadowed by the next thing you have to do. You hit level 40 and get a mount. Great, now you need to get to level 60 (or, 58, I suppose) and get to Outland. Now you're in Outland and have your epic mount. Now you need to get to level 70 and get your flying mount. Now you need to somehow make money, get better gear, get your epic flying mount, and so on. Achieving all of these things, and playing with your friends, is fun if you're into this kind of game. But it was a hollow kind of fun. I look back on the money and time I spent on the game, and other than the friends I made, I feel as if it was all a waste. This is how the game can trap you: to walk away from it is to throw away all the “progress” you made because you never finished anything and you never can. Even when you cancel your account—a creepy process in which you aren't allowed to cancel without telling them specifically why you're quitting—they're sure to tell you that you can come back at any time and your characters will still be there. As with any good addiction, the possibility for backsliding is left harmlessly open. Except when you throw out your pack of cigarettes, the pack doesn't have “don't worry, you can always get another pack” written on it. And the bartender doesn't call your cell phone asking why you don't come in for a few glasses of scotch anymore.
Going back to my ideal childhood game, I've come to realize that a game with no true ending isn't a game at all. It's just another job or addiction even if it starts out fun. Maybe 'habit' is a better word for this. Going back to the smoking thing, people who smoke all their lives are never done with it unless they quit, completely and forever. Even when you finish a pack, you can always get another. Even if you finish a bottle of beer, you can still get more. It's the same with WoW. When you finish something, there's always something else to do. You're only done when you quit completely and forever. Let me repeat: a game with no ending is a habit because it doesn't stop until you quit. Many, many people may love the idea, but I find it unsettling and scary. It's fun for awhile, or can be, but when you're playing it just to play it or because you feel you have to, it's officially gone from a game to a habit. Hell, I love non-linear games, or linear games with replayability, but they still have some kind of official end point. You can mess around in Oblivion for hundreds of hours, too, but there's still an ending. You can replay Diablo 2 over and over, but it still ends when you finish off Diablo (or Baal) even if you keep going to get more gear or go to the higher difficulty levels. But there's no conclusion to WoW. It just keeps going, and adding more things to do, so that you can never stop because you haven't experienced it all yet. Progress is slow and they keep adding more road that you need progress over at the same time.
I want to end by making clear that I don't hate World of Warcraft. Or the players. Or Blizzard. However, I do want to say that I didn't quit because of technical issues or the laziness of a player who didn't want to put in the effort to get to the cool stuff. No, my main point stands free of any of this: World of Warcraft is a tremendously flawed game, one that is fundamentally built on being a giant time and effort sinkhole with no attainable ending in sight. I can't help but think of what I could have done with the two weeks I put into the game, even if it was just playing other games. And beating them. At least that way I could have a sense of finality and not be playing the same content over and over, for $15 a month, with no end in sight.
A race I can never finish is a race I don't want to run. A game that is a habit is not a game I want to play.
Diablo II (PC)
For starters, Diablo II has twice as many character classes as the first game. Each of the six totally new classes have very distinct "builds" that you can pursue. This would carry over to World Of Warcraft, though I think that game does it a bit better because you can pay to re-jigger your skill point distribution at any point. As with WoW, two builds in Diablo II for the same class will play differently. The Druid class is probably the best case of this, since he can become a spellcaster, a frontline tank, a pet class, or some combination of these. Anyway, the addictive loot system of the original Diablo was back (and also better), but the new layer of figuring out builds and powerful skill combinations (especially with synergies letting certain skills boost others) gave the game greater depth.
Looking ahead to Diablo III, there are some things I hope get changed or dropped. For starters, the Stamina system has got to go. The original Diablo moves at a snail's pace compared to Diablo II, but even in this game you were limited to a certain amount of running until you have to walk for a bit. Moreover, I've always hated the light radius aspect of the game. To a lot of people this is a crucial element of the series, especially in maintaining its dark and devilish atmosphere, but I would like to see the game's environments even if it's more "realistic" to have the dark/underground areas limit your view. A few other things come to mind: being able to pay to redistribute skill points, a better way of looting (I dunno about you, but after awhile it gets annoying to have to click on every stack of gold, and sometimes I accidentally pick stuff up that I didn't mean to), a more balanced approach to elemental resistances (and poison, oh god, the poison), and some more direct control over mercenaries/pets/summons.
Graphically, there's a trade-off to Diablo II: it will run on pretty much any computer from the last nine years, but you're limited to a 800 X 600 resolution. It can take some getting used to if you're used to modern videogames and PC games, but once you're back in the swing you hardly care because the 'addictive' and 'fun' are forever but 'good looking' is ephemeral. As for sound and music, they're good but since you'll be playing the game for so long you'll probably do what I do and turn the music off entirely and listening to your own with the sound effects turned down.
