I'm "wow" for WoW

What is it about World of Warcraft that is so appealing? I don't know about you guys, but I've never been able to leave it permanently. No matter how many times I have gotten bored with it and canceled my subscription, I still managed to come back and play with newly found enthusiasm.

Actually I have a love-hate relationship with WoW, mainly because Blizzard loves to jump from one extreme to another. And it can be frustrating. Firstly, they make it extremely difficult to acquire materials for high level crafting patterns. I would spend weeks grinding for money and materials only to find out months later that healing and spell damage does not matter anymore because everything has been dumbed down to spell power. All of those hours spent grinding for materials are totally wasted.

I can guess why - to make it more user friendly for people who play hybrid classes.
On one hand it is great because a holy priest would still be able to do damage while questing, but on the other the same holy priest and a warlock would have a cat fight in a raid about who should get a +spell power staff.

During the Burning Crusade the conflict between Horde and Alliance has been completely undermined by the arena PvP system because it allowed teams of the same factions to fight against each other. The fights between the Horde and Alliance teams resembled more of a friendly sparring than an actual conflict. Of course Blizzard outdid themselves in the Lich King by reigniting the war between the two main factions through the chain of events in Dragonblight. Apparently the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" philosophy is outdated in the latest expansion.

However, some things have been improved. I love the fact that reputation is not only exclusive to specific instances anymore, like it was in the Burning Crusade. The Lich King introduced the tabard system to the new factions. Now all you need to do is wear a tabard and run any high level instance and the rep is easily yours.

Despite the fact that I have several high level characters and think that the Lich King could have introduced more class variety instead of just new talents, I still have fun leveling my second Death Knight. It's probably because I amuse myself with the though that tanking is fun and I could maybe, probably, one day bring myself to actually do it. Even though Blizzard almost destroyed the dark setting that was present in the Warcraft series by adding a lot of pop culture references and silly events during the holiday seasons, I still look forward to having my character run around with candy buckets during Halloween and sharing Christmas milk and cookies with friends.

Those Darn Fanboys

Fanboys are like leeches, they have to suck all of the fun out of video games, movies, music. A new game comes out and it is already bombarded by an army of overzealous fans yelling that it's going to fail or that it's a poor copy of something else.

Take Warhammer Online. It's an MMO based on the popular tabletop called Warhammer. I don't even know how many of the loyal World of Warcraft fans had to drag it through dirt with their random outbursts that it is a "cheap" copy of WoW. Here is a little history lesson, kids: the Warcraft franchise started in 1994 with the release of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. Warhammer existed since 1980s, ten years prior to the first Warcraft installment, but in the board game form. And Warhammer Online took its story and artwork from the board game. So how exactly did Warhammer copy WoW? I guess it's just too hard to actually play the game and then make an intelligent argument against it.

Another game that suffered from the fanboys' and critics' intellectual handicap is Rise of the Argonauts. The game is an RPG, it is not an action game. But it had to be compared to God of War. Let me guess! Because both games feature Greek mythology, wow, they MUST be the same! (not!) Then why not compare it to Titan Quest? Silly me, God of War and Rise of the Argonauts have to be the same because they have similar camera views. I cannot think of any other reason to explain this nonsense. WTB logic and common sense. Rise of the Argonauts is actually a lot like Mass Effect. Both of them are RPGs with a very similar game play that lacks the fast paced action style of God of War.

But, boy, was I mad with the Diablo III fiasco when the fanboys actually had the audacity to file a petition for Blizzard to change the graphics of the game. They are supposedly not dark enough! Well, where have you kids been for the past decade? Have you played Diablo II at all?! The graphics were already different in that one! Diablo II was definitely not as dark as Diablo. But that did not make the game bad at all. It was a very popular game that had a huge fan base and many people still play it today.

Bottom line is that people love to jump to conclusions every time there is a change in something that they feel comfortable with. The topic has already exhausted itself in someone else' rants and I'm late for the party. But if someone listens, then I've done something right.


PS: The above picture of a unicorn is a satirical response by Blizzard to the fanboys who claimed that the graphics of Diablo III are too "happy" for a Gothic fantasy role playing game.