The WOW Effect

I play World of Warcraft.

Yes, I confess to being an arcane fire spec1 mage, lvl 42, who loves his DPS2 spells and long walks on the always sunny beaches of Stranglethorn Vale. I can sheep spell you like Dick Tracy and I’ve twinked3 my armor enough to pwn4 even the toughest beastmaster hunter5.

It’s hard living the life of a WOWer. The constant smirks that appear across listener's faces as I describe the intensity of the large-scale MMOG (massively multi-user online game). Your audience becoming uneasy as they think back to the local news station’s report they watched on YouTube investigating the insanely addicted teenager who just couldn’t log off. His obsession causing his family emotional damage and destroying all hope for the salvation of his public image. They ask how it’s changed my life, as if this game guarantees some amount of loss to your sanity.

I’d like to think I still retain sanity while playing this game, and I’ll offer an insider’s perspective on why I think it’s one of the best developed and entertaining games available today.

Meet Deorex, my badass lvl 42 mage.

It all started nearly a year ago, when I first began to really pay attention to the growing talk of an elitist online PC game that was gaining popularity by the minute. I figured it another boring spawn of the EverQuest franchise that was trying too hard to be the next Lord of the Rings and I would ridicule those that subscribed to the absurd $15 monthly payment just to play. Why would I want to continue to pay for a game after I bought it in-store? In fact I was already more than satisfied with my Sims 2 game and all its glorious expansion packs that brought me virtual reality happiness by allowing me to build the house of my dreams and live a carefree life in it (with the help of a few money-making cheats). And occasionally when I felt the need to let out more aggression, I could command huge armies in RTS (real-time strategy) games like Empire Earth or Civilization and wage tactical warfare against rather smart computer players. My gaming choices were simple, but they offered me just the right amount of distraction and fun to get through the lameness of junior high and high school.

Towards the end of my junior year in high school though, I had several friends get free 14-day trial subscriptions of a new online game which they picked up at my local EB Games store. They spoke of an expansive world filled with tons of other people from around the world playing side-by-side. I was still skeptical of this new Warcraft game, but my parents had just invested in a new desktop PC and I was eager to test its gaming potentials. Plus the game’s developer, Blizzard Entertainment, a company based in Irvine, California, decided not to require a credit card number for the 14-day trail so I had no reason to not try it out. So I snatched a trial copy, waited for my computer to download and install the rather large amount of files, and soon was logged on as a lvl 1 Night Elf Druid (the class that can change into animals). I became a tall, attractive purple elf and within minutes I was learning the basics of the first-person game play and quickly leveling up in experience. Within days I was hooked on the game and absolutely loved chatting with new friends and questing throughout the world of Azeroth as a member of the Alliance fraction. As the joyous second free week ended I decided it was well within my budget to cough up the $30-something dollars it’d cost to legitimately by a copy of the game, and after the first free month I would make ends meet to bring more WOW to the table in the months following.

However much I enjoyed playing the game, I still felt the pressure to keep my online “second life” secret from most of my real-life friends. I became a chameleon, blending in with my peers at school and becoming a mythical hero in the silence of a dark computer room whenever I had the chance at home. But I soon desired to bring my friends into this brave new world of sorcery and lore. So I began to publicly reference WOW to my closest of friends in hopes of persuading them to take home with them one of the two 14-day trial CD-ROMs that came with my purchased version. I found myself again morphed into another character, only this time it was that of a Blizzard salesman detailing the awesomeness of a game to potential players and reaping the hefty prize of one month free for anyone who says I referred them. It was a business plan that should be revered, as I eagerly lobbied my friends to install the game and join me.
It wasn’t very long before I convinced a girl friend of mine, Sara, to take up arms and join the revolution of WOW. We decided to both create Human Warlocks and quest together to the great lengths of leveling and achieve level 60, the highest possible and most powerful at the time. She was quickly swooned by the relatively good looking graphics and addictive game play and for an early birthday present I bestowed upon her a purchased copy of the game. Within two months we were playing WOW as much as we possibly could and happily shoving $30 collectively down Blizzard’s expansive pockets every month.

So what makes this game so damn compelling? The ability to engage mass amounts of people of all different sizes and shapes, ages and ethnicities, and to keep them wanting to play more is something game developer’s consider a sort of golden standard. This game is far more than what first-glance may show. It is a game filled to the brim with its very own vocabulary (as seen in the first paragraph of this entry) and a difficulty level that slowly grows with the experience of the player. The more you play, the more rewards your character receives. Your basic stats that control everything from your health to your mana (the stuff used to cast spells) can be increased by buying updated armor or collecting them off NPCs (Non-Player Characters). It requires the ability to network with other players and form powerful groups to run through the many different instances, which mimic levels of an RPG game, with easier enemies towards the entrance and one or more elite bosses at the end. And as you progress in the game’s character levels, it becomes more necessary to join a guild, which is large group of players who hold ranks and plan instance runs with fellow guildies.

This was all elevated to a new level of sophistication when the much anticipated expansion, The Burning Crusade, came out on January 16, 2006, raising the level cap to 70 and adding two new races to the world, the Blood Elf for the Horde fraction, and the Dranei for the Alliance. The BE characters were an extremely attractive light-skinned race which gave a more pleasing aesthetic option to those who wanted to side with the Horde, which previously consisted of bull-like Tauren, skeleton Undeads, hunched over Trolls, and bulking Orcs. The Dranei gave the Alliance a tailed alien-like option to the ranks of Humans, Night Elfs, Gnomes, and Dwarfs (LOTR anyone?). This expansion opened the skies of Azeroth and brought high leveled players to the new Outlands. A far more difficult land outside planetary boundaries that offered even more wicked adventures.

Sara and I both soon agreed we simply NEEDED this $30 expansion to the game we now loved so much. So we bought ourselves two copies, expanded our game and then decided it was time to join arms with the Horde as sexy little blood elves. Since I’ve been through just two characters while Sara has stuck with her now level 70 warlock character, Kiity, and is in a rather professional guild which plans monthly raids on instances which require a good 4 hours of the 30 or more player’s time, gearing up her character with the highest possible armor one can get, and creating a wardrobe worthy of Azeroth catwalks. I had been leveling a priest BE, which specializes in the healing of other players, but my desire for more power finally took over and I decided to start a BE mage character, Deorex, and I'm currently in the process of leveling him to 70.

Is this all coming in clear? I’m sure it’s not the easiest thing to wrap your mind around for those who haven’t familiarized themselves with the concepts of WOW, but it’s fundamentally quite simple. Blizzard created a game with a global environment. One in which the more you do, the more you get rewarded, and players start out on a completely equal playing field and are allowed to grow as strong as they’d like, so long as they continue to pay the monthly fee. You are allowed to roam free and do as you so please, and make friends with people from all over the physical world. I believe this is where the game derives its successes, for no other game comes close to the social abilities that WOW offers.

Within it’s first year of hitting the shelves in November 2005, the smash hit game signed up around 4 million players worldwide, with nearly one million coming from the United States. Within the first three months of debuting in China, nearly 1.5 million players signed up. These numbers gave Blizzard roughly a $700 million annual revenue in that time frame. These numbers are absolutely staggering when compared to it’s closest rival at the time, EverQuest II, which had between 450,000 and 500,000 active users worldwide. Millions of people spending money every month (and in some countries by the hour) FTW6! What once was a gaming genre that game executives saw with narrow pessimistic eyes, believing that only a handful of gamers would continue to pay for a game they already paid for at the store, seems to have found the kind of continued demand to rival that of console games. MMOGChart.com shows an absolutely exponential trend in total active subscriptions of all current MMO games (http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart4). Although, to say the entire genre has been as successful as WOW would be a big overstatement. Another chart, (http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart7) shows that in the most recent month of February, Warcraft had a 62% market share. It’s closest rival is the free online fantasy MMOG Runescape, which holds a 7% market share. The remaining is split between a handful of other titles.

There is an ongoing debate as to how much World of Warcraft actually helps the MMO genre, as it continues to hold a monopoly over subscriber-based gamers. Current up-to-date statistics of players are hard to come by when factoring in the worldwide audience and the ability to create as many characters as one would like, but a reliable WOW census site, WarcraftRealms.com, has recorded 6.7 million active users in the past 30 days from the US and Europe alone, 3.9 million from the US and 2.8 from the EU. These vast numbers of users are divided into hundreds of different realms where on average 10,000 to 30,000 can be found interacting on each. What this information shows above anything else is that players are willing to play this game month after month, year after year. But they don’t seem to want to experiment with other titles outside World of Warcraft. This is great for Blizzard, but other companies have almost entirely given up efforts to try to steal away some WOW players.

Having a truly massive scale online community that stays active and logged on allows players to have a legitimate second life online. It seems as though whenever I log on I can be sure to get a friendly hello and maybe even an invite to quest. I have friends who I know in the real world, and friends from across the country who I’ve only had the chance to interact with in game. I am a member of a guild that is always chatty and helpful, and I make new friends and interact with new people on a daily basis. So why does this game seem to have such a negative stigma surrounding it when someone brings up its social effects?

I think the best way to understand the point of view that WOW somehow disrupts and impairs “normal” social behavior is to look at my friend Sara, aka Kiity, lvl 70 warlock, during an epic raid. With her headphone/microphone combo headset armed and her stat buffs set, she leaves the room in every form but the physical to partake in a 2 hour long journey that is rivaled only by the likes of Indiana Jones and Empire Strikes Back. She speaks, but not to those near her. Instead she communicates simultaneously with 30 to 40 other members of her guild as they go from room to room slaying gigantic monsters and powerful villains. Being a fellow WOWer I understand how intense the action is and I don’t bother to keep up a legitimate conversation, as such an attempt would prove futile anyways. But if I was a worried mother of a younger player with high level responsibilities, you bet I’d be a little concerned to have my child be so consumed with a video game that they don’t hear what you say to them only a few steps away. To ease the fears, consider this: many “normal” people spend hours on the internet browsing various different pages and viral videos. Even more people spend several hours sitting in front of their TVs watching reruns of Oprah and Dr. Phil. And a majority of people around the world take some time every so often to sit down for a good 2 hours to watch a good movie. I find all of these activities to be in the same league with playing WOW. Obviously moderation is a beautiful thing, and too much of any of these things and many other entertainment stimulants can be sure to cause some problems in a user's life. But when you compare the entertainment value of those outlets listed, Warcraft offers a unique form of fun. It seamlessly merges social networking, gameplay, friendly competition and decent short stories and plots together to be a truly evolved gaming experience. And it does it with impressive graphics and landscapes.

So the next time you or someone else happen to bring up WOW in a conversation, or you walk by the boxes stacked up in your local Wal-Mart, I hope you'll second guess jumping on the hater bandwagon too quickly. Instead, realize that WOW is the future of gaming. As we can see with the successes of the Halo franchise and Call for Duty 4 on consoles, social gaming is practically a necessity both for profits and for public interest. Soon, if not already, social interaction will become a mandate for deciding whether or not a new title sinks or swims in the ever changing gaming market. So buff yourself, armor up and wield your weapon for an epic journey into the world of Azeroth, and into expanding world of social gaming.

player's livin' the good life in Azeroth.

Arcane Fire Spec1 - spec, short for specialization, refers to the area of expertise you can choose to train your character in. There are three options available for each class and you can mix and match your spec by spending your talent points, gained from leveling, however you’d like.

DPS2 - Damage Per Second, a form of fighting that puts damage given in a short amount of time over damage taken over a longer amount of time. This usually results in less health for the player.

Twinked3 - a term used to describe a lower level player who has the ability, either through a past higher level character or a generous friend, to spend a lot of money buying up the best possible armor, giving them an advantage over their level peers.

Pwn4 - A term originated in a grammatical mess up in the game Warcraft II, when a game developer misspelled owned in “you got owned!” Since it has grown into a widely used gaming term to take place of the word “own.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn)

Beastmaster Hunter5 - A specialization in the hunter class that has a very good advantage over the mage class and usually easily pwns them.

FTW6 - For The Win, a term used to show excitement for or importance of anything in WOW. (“mage damage FTW!”)

References:
1. Conqueror in a War of Virtual Worlds by SETH SCHIESEL. (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/arts/design/06worl.html) Sept 6th, 2005.
2. http://www.warcraftrealms.com/index.php
3. http://www.mmogchart.com/