Warcraft | Superior Realities

It’s that time again. The time where I give a new MMO a spin and let you know why I’m not going to keep playing it.

The newest victim is Neverwinter, a game I’ve nursed a mild fascination with for several months now. This time, I had the opportunity to post my thoughts on WhatMMO, so head on over if you’re curious what kind of a game Neverwinter is. It’s essentially the same review I would have given here. The only difference is I got paid for it this time.

I would like to add a few thoughts to what I said over there.

One thing that surprised me is that I actually rather enjoy the PvP in Neverwinter. Normally, I loathe PvP regardless of the game. But there are a few things that make Neverwinter’s PvP a bit more interesting.

One is that the teams are mostly silent. I think this is due to how much more active the combat is; you can’t type and fight at the same time. But the end result is that you don’t need to deal with the nerd-raging and general asshat-ery that marks battleground chat in WoW.

The other is that — at least at low levels — the fights actually take a decent amount of time. You’re not constantly getting one-shot. It takes some effort and coordination to bring down a player, especially a hardy one like a guardian fighter.

Although it should be noted that I am playing a class that is, by all reports, insanely overpowered. That may have something to do with how much fun I’m having. I did note that it seems to take at least two or three players dog-piling me to put me at any risk of death.

But with all that being said, I am already feeling my eye wander to other games for the simple reason that its story is abysmal. I just can’t maintain my interest in a game if it doesn’t have a good story.

I may dip back in every now and again to check out the new Foundry missions, though. I’m already amazed by some of the stuff players have come up with.

World of Warcraft subscription numbers:

I had this post all ready to go, and then Blizzard goes and drops a bombshell in the quarterly conference call.

World of Warcraft lost 1.3 million subscribers in three months, and now sits at 8.3 million active subscribers. This is the lowest that number has been since around the time Burning Crusade launched and only two thirds of what it was at the game’s peak in Wrath of the Lich King.

Perhaps most telling is that Blizzard is predicting even more losses as the year continues — they’re not even trying to put a good spin on it.

Now, I don’t think anyone in their right mind expected subs to actually go up at this stage of a game. I was certainly expecting a loss.

But not so much, nor so quickly. Even the haters seem kind of shocked by this.

Yes, it remains the biggest subscription game on the market by a wide margin, but still…

I’m honestly not sure how to react to this news. I’m not terribly happy with this expansion, and I’m tempted to make like everyone else and use this to back up all my complaints about the state of the game.

They did mention that they’re having trouble keeping casual players engaged, so I might actually have a leg to stand on for once.

But ultimately, I can’t conclusively prove that the things that are driving me away from the game are also driving everyone else away.

All I can say is that it just takes too much time to get anything done for my taste right now. Alts are what gave WoW its longevity for me, and I can’t play alts when I’m already totally burnt out on the game by the time I’m done doing everything I need to do on my main.

I’m just tired of Blizzard’s belief that more time spent in-game is always better, period, no argument.

Couple that with a really lackluster patch in 5.2 and several other games distracting me, and WoW just isn’t as sexy as it once was.

As much as I want to use this as proof that all my complaints are justified, though, I do think a lot of the drop is just the inevitable result of time.

Let’s be honest: WoW is a good game, but it’s not head and shoulders above the rest of the MMO world. Even when I was most in love with the game, I never would have claimed that it deserved the massive lead over the rest of the genre it enjoys. I don’t know what mixture of luck, timing, and inertia has allowed WoW to stay so big for so long, but it couldn’t last forever.

It is entirely possible that the sub loss is due to nothing Blizzard has done. It could just be time.

I think the really interesting, and perhaps worrying, aspect of this story is how Blizzard will react. It seems obvious to me that much of Mists of Pandaria’s design was based on a direct attempt to counter the complaints from Cataclysm, and I think a lot of MoP’s problems are due to over-corrections.

I’m worried about how Blizzard will over-correct this time.

On the other hand, if Blizzard really gets desperate, it could lead to a revolution for the game. WoW hasn’t taken a lot of big chances lately — or ever, arguably — and a major redesign of the game or certain aspects thereof, if done well, could really breath new life into WoW.

Or they could break it completely.

It’s definitely not going to happen anytime soon, but I hope for a day when WoW goes free to play, or at least adopts some kind of more relaxed business model. I’ve had it with subscriptions and the game design they encourage.

I do think something dramatic needs to be done if they want to halt this slide, but even then, there’s a pretty strong chance nothing will stop it. As I said, it may just be the inevitable result of time.

I like mottos. There are certain sayings and slogans by which I try to live my life: “Better safe than sorry,” “credit where credit is due,” and so forth.

But perhaps the most important is, “When in doubt, Elves.”

I like Elves. They are perhaps my favourite part of the fantasy genre, and that’s saying a lot. It occurs to me I haven’t spent much time talking about how awesome Elves are on this blog, and that’s an injustice that needs to be corrected.

Why do I like Elves?

Like so many things in my life, my love of Elves goes back to Warcraft. I was about six or seven years old when Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness came out. This was early enough in my life and the history of the real time strategy genre that ranged units were enough to impress me.

The ranged unit for the Alliance was the Elven archer. While the other units were getting themselves killed in melee, the Elves were hanging back and sniping their enemies down from afar. It didn’t take me long to figure out the Elves had the right idea.

Couple that with their snazzy capes, calm and confident voice-overs, and epic hair, and you had a unit that was, to my childish mind, the epitome of cool.

I’ve talked before about how my love of Warcraft’s Elves — who later became the High Elves, and then the Blood Elves — blossomed as they grew up along with me. The edgy, morally ambiguous Blood Elves were like candy to my teenaged mind.

But even before the Blood Elves earned my unending love and devotion, I was already utterly obsessed with the concept of Elves.

You see, Elves are everything I’m not. I’m clumsy and awkward, but Elves are graceful and elegant. I’m young and inexperienced, but Elves are ancient and worldly. Elves are beautiful, and I’m… yeah. Where Elves are powerful and remarkable, I’m ordinary and uninteresting.

There’s a certain catharsis to Elves, too. They understand what fools we humans can be. They see us as the petulant children we are. Elves would not ravage the environment as we do. They would not brutalize the animals of the world as we do.

The alien nature of Elves fascinates me, as well. Proper Elves don’t quite think like humans, and I’ve always loved any character or fictional race that has a different way of thinking than we do. I could probably fill a whole other post on the reasons for that…

I recognized all these things at a young age, and Elves quickly came to dominate my life. In any video game, I always played an Elf when given the option. In the make believe games I played with my friends, I was always the Elf. I wrote stories about Elves. I coloured pictures of Elves. For a while when I was a kid, I even dreamed of getting plastic surgery to add points to my ears — though I’ve since abandoned that ambition.

To the haters:

Now, I know a lot of people out there like to hate on Elves and complain about their over-exposure. I can’t escape the feeling that most of these people are simply being hipsters and hating Elves for no other reason than because Elves are so popular, but a few people actually come up with reasons for their Elf-prejudice.

Let me explain why these reasons suck.

One of the most common arguments is that Elves are too perfect, but there are a number of flaws with this line of reasoning.

For one thing, every writer has a different take on Elves. To simply write the entire archetype off is ridiculous. I’ve seen dozens of different depictions of Elves over my life, and many were far, far from perfect.

Which brings me to my next point: Elves usually aren’t perfect. Even putting aside Drow, Dark Elves, and the many other incarnations of Elves that are just downright evil, Elves are usually at least as flawed as any other fantasy race.

The Night Elves are brutal, closed-minded, holier-than-thou, and xenophobic. Blood Elves are arrogant, reckless racists who will do absolutely anything to survive. Tolkien’s Elves were indifferent bastards who were happy to leave Middle Earth to its fate. I could go on listing examples, but I think you get the idea.

Another complaint that comes up about Elves is that they’re too pretty. Imagine someone writing off a fantasy race — Dwarves, for instance — simply because they’re ugly, and you realize how shallow this argument is.

I’m not saying there’s no one out there who has legitimate complaints about Elves, or that there aren’t some depictions of Elves that are just bland and boring, but for the most part, I find all this hipster Elf hate just silly.

My Elves:

Oddly enough, Elves have appeared very little in my own writing, despite my love for them. There are no Elves in the World Spectrum, or in any of the other major writing projects I’ve done.

But this is not out of any desire to avoid writing about Elves, nor any lack of love for the archetype. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I have not yet done much writing about Elves because I want to get my Elves right. I have been planning my books about Elves since childhood. I’ve poured all my best ideas and all my creativity into them. I will not write them until I’m absolutely sure I can do them justice.

But they’re always in my mind. I’ve worked hard to make them the best example of the Elf archetype I can. They are radiant in their beauty and terrible in their fury. They are elegant, deadly, wise, and alien. And one day, I will bring them to life.

Some day, Seesha. Some day soon…

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: Warcraft

Cheating on WoW: Neverwinter + WoW Loses 1.3 Million Subscribers

When in Doubt, Elves