In Emergencies

While the world* around me is currently burning down to the ground in a smoky haze, I find myself ignoring the news and my drained, beeping cellphone to turn on my computer and log into this one game that you might have heard about somewhere.

Hi, my name is Pauline, and I am addicted to World of Warcraft.

To be perfectly fair, I started charging my phone while I was waiting for authentication, and then pulled up a browser to check on the latest news while my character was loading. But when the game loaded, revealing funky jack-o-lanterns and a giant apple-bobbing tub in honor of the Hallow's End celebration, my browser was shoved hastily away. I then entered into a rapid-fire exchange about the firestorm with my guildmates, some of whom also live in the region.

This isn't to say, of course, that I believe WoW is (or should be) a glorified chat program, or another Second Life. The game, as with all games, contains three basic elements that can reel in customers and keep them interested enough to shelve out a continuous stream of money per month. Gameplay -- the meat of the program, the part that makes a game a game and not just a story -- is perhaps one of the biggest attractors to a video game. After all, if a game isn't fun to play or even remotely engaging, players have very little incentive to keep playing. Plot is also an important part of a game, whether it be a contrived, shaky premise or an elaborate lore encapsulated within a veritable collection of books, as is the case with World of Warcraft.** Having a story for a game provides context, which (theoretically) encourages to player to be attached to the game, and thus serve as further encouragement to continue progressing through it. Lastly, the multimedia elements involved with the game -- such as graphics and music -- are also crucial additions to video games; their appeal to the senses helps to create a more immersive, entertaining gaming experience. Although one can argue that MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) such as the twenty-year-old Avalon*** prove the relative unimportance of multimedia elements when compared with the more 'crucial' gameplay and plot elements, these text-based games are also significantly less popular than modern games today, having faded into the background.

However, I firmly believe that the social networking afforded by World of Warcraft, and by similar games, provides much of the continued attraction. That said, the community is not without its flaws and issues, many of which have shaped the image and appeal of the game, both to the customers and to the outside world. Briefly put, this is the (hopeful) focus of this blog, rather than the more technical aspects and developments of the game (unless they relate to the focus).

And that's all, folks.

* And by that, I mean the general Southern California region.
** The consistency of the lore in the Warcraft universe is being contested, I know. I'll address it in a later post, I swear to beans!
*** Twenty years is an era in a world where news is automatically old after twenty-four hours. Avalon also happens to be one of the oldest MUDs (essentially a text-based online RPG, only on a smaller scale than MMORPGs like WoW) on the internet, and remains active to this day.