World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor

Nothing too interesting happened today as far as I know, so lets talk about video games.

As I have pointed out a time or two in the past, I have been known to play World of Warcraft a bit, indeed it nearly caused the end of my relationship with Zena at one point, after a lengthy break I returned to the game a couple times with a bit more of a relaxed attitude to it and play to this day.

My most recent return to the game was just a few months ago, the current expansion Warlords of Draenor had been out for a while and the final content patch was released shortly afterwards so I was a newbie playing a game that everyone else basically knew already. After some acclimating that went away and I settled in to the usual questing and raiding that I always did.

As of yesterday evening I finished the last accomplishment I wanted to get done in the expansion and officially had nothing else I wanted to do, which means I must wait until Legion, the next expansion, comes out on... Tuesday. I feel like now is as good a time as any to talk about my feelings on the game.

... I don't really know if it is all that good.

Like, I more or less enjoy myself, but I don't know if I am having fun with the gameplay or if is just the satisfaction of seeing my numbers improve slightly as I find new gear if that makes any sense. I like the story, the Warcraft universe is over twenty years old and has had a half dozen games and a crapload of books and comics, plus a movie, to build lore with and for the most part they do a good job, with compelling characters and interesting threats. But I don't know if the actual things I do while playing the game are fun. Like if I finish running a dungeon and don't get anything, a common occurrence at the level of gear I have right now, can I honestly say the time investment was worth it because of the entertainment inherent in simply playing? I don't really know.

I know I did have fun at the beginning, Warlords of Draenor starts with a breakneck tour around the new adventuring areas, as you and your allies are pursued by the titular villains across the titular world, the Warlords in question get cinematic and cool introductions that make them feel like real threats, and there is a sense of urgency and threat that is really hard to get across in a game where death is literally a slap on the wrist of a penalty.

Then the first couple of hours of gameplay end and the usual leveling up process begins and it's pretty much the usual deal that has been going on for a decade or so now, there is still supposed to be this sense of urgency, the whole goal is to defeat the Warlords and Gul'Dan before they can enact their plan to summon the Burning Legion into Azeroth. It all has to do with time travel as well and alternate timelines or something that is never really made clear to my satisfaction. The problem is the majority of those Warlords are end game stuff, so you have to get to maximum level and pretty good gear before confronting them, the act of gearing up sort of diminishes the urgency of the whole process, and eventually you just forget about it entirely and go back to looking for the next cool piece of loot.

Now I have probably described a problem that is endemic to the MMORPG genre in general, and certainly WoW handles it as well as it may be possible to do, but I still don't know if I can describe the game as fun in the way that most non MMORPGs are.

That said I am still gonna play Legion, if nothing else because I want to know what happens.