I was thinking about World of Warcraft some today and I started to realize the game is lacking something important for long term enjoyment. There really is not any good fluff stuff to keep you entertained when you get tired of questing. No player housing, no player music, no player stores, no good fun pointless stuff. Of course, we always hear that things like this are being worked on and will be introduced to the game at some point. But really how many times do we need to hear that stuff? Put it in already.
My brother is playing WoW every day and he is having a blast, so maybe I’m totally off base. Don’t get me wrong, the game is just about perfect for me. I play maybe 6 hours in a week. I will not run out of things to do for a long time.
Blizzard would point out that there is PvP and Alliance vs Horde to entertain us. They are putting in battlegrounds so we can fight each other for various goals and rewards. Maybe that is going to be fun, but so far I’ve never found any fun in PvP in a level-based game. Unless any character has a chance against any character, PvP is reduced to min-maxers and those with uberloot. Neither of those apply to me as a 6 hour per week player.
As bad as Star Wars: Galaxies was, it did a lot of things right in this area. You could build your own house, heck even your own town. Add a shuttle craft port in your town so you could fly in and out of it. Complete control of the inside (color, paintings, furniture, statues, etc) and outside of the housing. Allow others to come in to your house, or keep them out. You have full control. They also have musicians and dancers. Sounds silly, but going into a cantina was often just like going into a real one. There was always a band playing and people dancing. The band and the dancers are always other players too.
Things like that allow you to make an impact in the world, make your own personal mark. MMORPGs need this. I can only hope that WoW will add this stuff and soon, otherwise many hardcore players will have come and gone.
Akela Talamasca at Massively posted today about why he enjoys soloing through his favorite MMOs. This is something that I find myself enjoying as well and I’d like to share a few more reasons why it can be fun.
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