WoW, Man, Can You Dig It?
Last night, my brain demanded recreation of some kind, any kind. As I've been in a recurrent mood for bright, flashy fantasy lately, I went back to WoW; as I've become rather bored with my blue space goat wizard, I started both a wargen warlock, and a pandaren fighter.
I AM A CLICHÉ.
Some things I noticed: first of all, both the wargen and the pandaren starting areas are way more interesting than the blue space goats'. Presumably this is because they were made later, in a post-grind-as-content environment that actually tries to have some story. I heartily applaud this.
Second, the two starting areas feel very different from each other; it's almost like playing two different games. The wargen starting area reminds me of Van Helsing, somewhere between Hollywood's version of Transylvania and 19th century Austria full of darkness and fog; the pandaren starting area is a Kung Fu vision of mythic china crossed with The Shire, full of cheerful toony panda-folk being very polite and going on about food.
That's just neat. :)
The net result of all this is that I stayed up past 3 a.m. happily leveling up multiple characters in a game which I had previously believed to be little more than a grind-fest. (I REGRET NOTHING!) Turns out the class/race combo you choose makes a big difference!
Mind you, the staying up past 3 a.m. part is not entirely because WoW was so exciting. I just needed the downtime. I could have easily been up that late reading a book or playing solitaire. But given that I was doomed to be up 'til the Whee! hours, I'm glad I was using the time to do something more fun than killing 10 rats.
-The Gneech
I AM A CLICHÉ.
Some things I noticed: first of all, both the wargen and the pandaren starting areas are way more interesting than the blue space goats'. Presumably this is because they were made later, in a post-grind-as-content environment that actually tries to have some story. I heartily applaud this.
Second, the two starting areas feel very different from each other; it's almost like playing two different games. The wargen starting area reminds me of Van Helsing, somewhere between Hollywood's version of Transylvania and 19th century Austria full of darkness and fog; the pandaren starting area is a Kung Fu vision of mythic china crossed with The Shire, full of cheerful toony panda-folk being very polite and going on about food.
That's just neat. :)
The net result of all this is that I stayed up past 3 a.m. happily leveling up multiple characters in a game which I had previously believed to be little more than a grind-fest. (I REGRET NOTHING!) Turns out the class/race combo you choose makes a big difference!
Mind you, the staying up past 3 a.m. part is not entirely because WoW was so exciting. I just needed the downtime. I could have easily been up that late reading a book or playing solitaire. But given that I was doomed to be up 'til the Whee! hours, I'm glad I was using the time to do something more fun than killing 10 rats.
-The Gneech
