T w e n t y S i d e d

Goldshire is the name of one of the newbie areas in the game. It’s the hub town for human characters between levels 5 and 12. (Give or take.) It’s a cute little farming village surrounded by woodlands. It’s also a natural crossroads. It’s just a two minute walk from both a major city (Stormwind) and the spawning area for new Human characters. I don’t think there are any other towns that offer this level of access.

For whatever reason, Goldshire has become a nexus of insanity and idiocy. Despite the fact that each server has its own self-contained copy of the world, every single iteration of Goldshire on all of the servers of WoW is a raging madhouse.

During busy hours you’ll find high-level characters dueling in the street. There are often several duels going at once, so the center of town is a swirling tempest of colorful particle effects, fire, and summoned beasts. Characters run naked (underwear) through the buildings and roleplay obscene or preposterous vignettes. The chat box is a rushing torrent of strange emotes and melodramatic shouting.

Like a town in a Stephen King novel, the place looks peaceful but is filled with crazy people!

In order to explain further I’m going to have to resort to anecdotes:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “World of Warcraft:
Goldshire”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

So now I’ve sunk some real time into WoW. I’ve rolled up a character from almost every race. I’ve played a few of the classes past level 10. I’ve seen most of the early-game content (Alliance-side) and I’ve taken part in both solo and group play. Given the size of this thing, I am still a newbie, but I think I have enough of a handle on the game to start talking about the mechanics and gameplay without flailing about in ignorance.

But even a couple of hours into my first session I could see what imbues the game with its addictive properties. It provides a tremendous number of highly polished activities and goals for the player to pursue.

WoW is a rich source of expansive scenery. In the past I’ve praised Oblivion for it’s size, although that game feels like a couple of parking spaces next to the immense gameworld we have in here. The locations are large, beautiful, and varied. Some people fault the game for its chunky, cartoony style but I’d rather have strong art direction than photorealism any day.

What have I been up to in the game? I’ve been roaming through the golden fields of Westfall in late afternoon, hunting down the infamous Defias gang and bringing those sons of bitches to repeated justice. I’ve enjoyed soaring over the mountains at sunset on one of the in-game taxis flying gryphons, rushing through that narrow cleft in the snowy peak to enter the roaring underground city of Ironforge, last remaining stronghold of Dwarven kind. I’ve been prowling along the beaches of Darkshore at night, hunting the scuttling crabs while dodging clusters of Murlocs as they feasted on the carcass of some beached leviathan. I’ve been lost among the towering ancient trees of Teldrassil. I’ve seen the crazy purple crystals and those freaky moths they have around the ruined Exodar. I’ve been diving for treasure, climbing mountains, digging through dungeons, and winding my way through darkened woods.

I’ve been places, is what I’m saying. I’ve seen more spectacle than a dozen other games might offer, and I’ve seen less than a third of the World of Warcraft.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “World of Warcraft:
Addictive Gameplay”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This is going to be a strange series. WoW is a cultural phenomenon and the 800lb. gorilla of PC gaming. Ten million subscribers. (That number gets thrown around a lot. Is that concurrent, or all time? I ask because that number hasn’t changed in years. 10 million subscribers x $20 a month = fountain of eternal green.) I have no doubt there are people who read this site who played the game for months, got sick of it, quit, relapsed, quit again, got back into it when the expansion came out, hauled a few characters to level 70, tapered off, and now think of the game in terms of the distant past.

And here I am, going to come in and review this thing like I’m covering new ground. It’s crazy, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

As soon as I figure out where to start.

What should we discuss? The art? The gameplay? The races and sides? The player culture? The various servers? I keep looking for some approach to this series that will let me tame this deluge of information.

Some people become “addicted” to WoW, in the sense that they play, talk, and think about it more than they should. But other people seem to be able to take it or leave it in a responsible manner. As I feared, I’m the former, so it’s very important that I be exceptionally careful with this game.

The game isn’t what I expected. Detractors keep describing it as a level-grind, and I was thinking “Diablo II” type mob-killing and item harvesting. And that gameplay is indeed part of Wow. But saying this game is about leveling is like saying Grand Theft Auto is a game about driving. You certainly do a lot of it, but usually in pursuit of other, more interesting goals.

But let’s describe all the parts of the game for the benefit of those who haven’t played:

Ha! I’m joking. There are entire wikis out there dedicated to describing the game, and even at that they have bare spots and missing articles. No, what we’re going to do here is a very reckless, half-assed overview of the game:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “World of Warcraft:
First Impressions”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.