#2: World of Warcraft (2004)
Unfortunately, there was no winner to the challenge posted yesterday. Never mind, the blog's never been about such things. Today, I'd like to be your dealer. For just $15 a month, I've got the good shit...
The graphics were fantastic. The cartoon-style just worked... The balance was just right between humour/ridiculousness and realism. It was playful and fun. The soundtrack was memorable. In short, the production values were exactly what you'd expect, if Blizzard were tasked with designing a drug.
The instances were dungeons that, once you entered them, served only your party. No-one could randomly come in. Ahhh, Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps, Gnomeragan, Scarlet Monastery, Blackrock Depths...I'll always remember those. This was the so-called PvE (Player vs. Environment) aspect of the game. Your only enemies were the game and its monsters.
Where things really started to become dangerous for me, was the PvP (Player vs. Player). There were three arenas where you could purposefully engage in combat against others, other than that which you encountered by just walking around randomly and perhaps, a player jumping you (ganking). They were called battlegrounds, Warsong Gulch (Capture-The-Flag), Arathi Basin (Domination) and Alterac Valley (a massive, sprawling, Assault-like endeavour). Oh man, I cannot tell you how I enjoyed playing against others. It made all the grinding to get better stuff worthwhile. I would have spreadsheets with the best possible gear at the "twink" levels. A twink was when you had a max-level character but then really pimped out an alt, and ran with him, holding experience kinda and only jamming at the maximum battlegrounds levels (19, 29, 39 etc). I even made a video, much in the style of others at the time; kick-ass tunes while at the same time, kicking ass. Cordell riding his mount, a horse, beating his little spank bunny at every level from 15, being soulstoned and getting up unexpectedly to massacre some gnomish wannabe... I wish I still had it.
I joined a guild, Horde Solutions Inc., and we downed some of the most respected 40-man raid bosses, like Ragnaros in Molten Core. We used a program called Ventrillo to communicate, though nowadays you can probably use Skype. I still remember the bitch-fights between the two leaders of the guild (were they a real-life couple? I think so.), Anjele and Uzbad. We were like little kids listening to their parents bicker. It was, HILARIOUS.
I had around 4 max-level characters in total: Awshucks the Orcish Warlock, Cordell the Human Rogue, Majikat the Dwarven Fighter, and Cyla the Night-Elf Huntress (Shut up! She's mine, E.) I had many more alts (I refuse to call them twinks, some might know why). I dedicated, the game would be nice enough to tell you, on average 20 FULL days to these max-level characters, sometimes more. Around 2500 hours spent on this game. Honestly, it seems like more. That is an INSANE amount to spend on any game. I had the conversation, just the other day, with a D&D buddy from Centurion, saying how we could NEVER do it again, but that we were glad to have experienced it.
Still never got the ultimate low-level item, the Lucky Fishing Hat in Stranglethorn Vale, even though I dedicated many hours to it. Maybe it's better that way.
This is the heroin or crack-cocaine of games, and that's one of the only reasons it doesn't claim the top spot. I feel it almost should-be-illegal...our children should be protected! We were a group of four guys who used to play together, and we were totally extreme. We all slept at my house until 19h00 (wake up in the gutter), quickly went downstairs to make some toast (score our drugs), then raced back to our PC's to play until 07h00 in the morning (shoot up). We did this in order to get better pings, because Telkom's ADSL offering shaped traffic during the day to help out businesses. It was a 4-month-long binge. We were addicts, plain and simple. You know that scene in Trainspotting when he's passed out on his bed with a used needle lying next to him? Like that.
The graphics were fantastic. The cartoon-style just worked... The balance was just right between humour/ridiculousness and realism. It was playful and fun. The soundtrack was memorable. In short, the production values were exactly what you'd expect, if Blizzard were tasked with designing a drug.
The instances were dungeons that, once you entered them, served only your party. No-one could randomly come in. Ahhh, Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps, Gnomeragan, Scarlet Monastery, Blackrock Depths...I'll always remember those. This was the so-called PvE (Player vs. Environment) aspect of the game. Your only enemies were the game and its monsters.
Where things really started to become dangerous for me, was the PvP (Player vs. Player). There were three arenas where you could purposefully engage in combat against others, other than that which you encountered by just walking around randomly and perhaps, a player jumping you (ganking). They were called battlegrounds, Warsong Gulch (Capture-The-Flag), Arathi Basin (Domination) and Alterac Valley (a massive, sprawling, Assault-like endeavour). Oh man, I cannot tell you how I enjoyed playing against others. It made all the grinding to get better stuff worthwhile. I would have spreadsheets with the best possible gear at the "twink" levels. A twink was when you had a max-level character but then really pimped out an alt, and ran with him, holding experience kinda and only jamming at the maximum battlegrounds levels (19, 29, 39 etc). I even made a video, much in the style of others at the time; kick-ass tunes while at the same time, kicking ass. Cordell riding his mount, a horse, beating his little spank bunny at every level from 15, being soulstoned and getting up unexpectedly to massacre some gnomish wannabe... I wish I still had it.
I joined a guild, Horde Solutions Inc., and we downed some of the most respected 40-man raid bosses, like Ragnaros in Molten Core. We used a program called Ventrillo to communicate, though nowadays you can probably use Skype. I still remember the bitch-fights between the two leaders of the guild (were they a real-life couple? I think so.), Anjele and Uzbad. We were like little kids listening to their parents bicker. It was, HILARIOUS.
I had around 4 max-level characters in total: Awshucks the Orcish Warlock, Cordell the Human Rogue, Majikat the Dwarven Fighter, and Cyla the Night-Elf Huntress (Shut up! She's mine, E.) I had many more alts (I refuse to call them twinks, some might know why). I dedicated, the game would be nice enough to tell you, on average 20 FULL days to these max-level characters, sometimes more. Around 2500 hours spent on this game. Honestly, it seems like more. That is an INSANE amount to spend on any game. I had the conversation, just the other day, with a D&D buddy from Centurion, saying how we could NEVER do it again, but that we were glad to have experienced it.
Still never got the ultimate low-level item, the Lucky Fishing Hat in Stranglethorn Vale, even though I dedicated many hours to it. Maybe it's better that way.
Someone got close though!
ReplyDeleteWhatever do you mean, my good sir?
Deleteas I read this I had many urges to log on to WoW, its been a struggle for many years to get over the addiction... but I definitely loved every moment playing with mates, always going for the next almost impossible feat that would take 2 months of dedicated game play to "maybe" get it. But on a side not If I blew my whistle, Cyla's heels made music running in my direction.. that's all I'm saying... she knew who her pimp was
ReplyDelete