A farewell to WoW

The contract has been drawn and signed. A farewell to WoW. Those that know what these letters mean might understand the tragedy. For those that don’t, let me explain.

WoW stands for “World of Warcraft”, a multi-player online role playing game, or, as these are affectively called by the game veterans, a MMORPG. This means that this is a game in which you create a character and let that character explore and fight in a virtual world, inhabited by computer-controlled characters (NPCs, non-player characters) and the characters of other players, the PCs.

Much of the fun in such a game comes from exploring new lands, defeating enemies, completing quests, gaining experience to level up, becoming stronger, learning new spells and abilities that make you even stronger, but also from teaming up with other players to together reach a larger or more difficult goal, for example to beat extremely tough opponents such as dragons, or to organize a raid on an enemy town.

As I said, I’ll say farewell to World of Warcraft. Only - I’ve never played it. It is a bit like saying farewell to a beautiful girl who was your colleague for four years but you did not dare ask out on a date. Stopping a relationship which is still at the most public, unintimate level. So what is my relationship to World of Warcraft, and why am I stopping it?

Obviously, not because I am disappointed with the game, such as the warlock who wrote that he had cancelled his account since the warlock class was “gimped” (= too weak relative to the other classes). There is no hate or bitterness on my part towards Blizzard, perhaps just a bit of sadness at our parting. And still, Blizzard is a game company I admire (and occasionally fear) because of the quality of their products.

My first “blizzard” was probably also the first blizzard product ever: “Warcraft: Orcs versus Humans” (or named something like that). As was usual at that stage of my life (I was approximately 20 years old), I encountered it via one of my friendly computer-science studying acquaintances who happily let me copy it to my hard disk. And then it was time to play.

Hours I spent on finishing the missions. First the human mission number one, then the orc mission number one. Then the human mission number two, etcetera. Each mission getting more diverse troops, from archers and spearthrowers to priests and necrolytes, knights and wolfriders, and even catapults.

Then disaster struck. In one of the later human missions (mission 7 or such) I got stuck. If I tried to free the imprisoned peasants by sending a large part of my troops to slay their captors, the orc counteroffensive came too quick to reunite my troops. If I sent too little troops, they were slaughtered by the guards. I pondered and puzzled an entire day – perhaps even two, and then decided I would never play Warcraft again! I removed the game thoroughly from my hard disk, which would forever discourage me from again playing it, since I would have to repeat all those hours getting back to my old position.

Years later, I found in a game manual that the solution was actually quite easy, though it was a tactic I hadn’t used before: use a small group to lure the guards back to your main force which could easily destroy them, so you could free the peasants without suffering too much damage yourself. Thus you could still survive the enemy offensive.

In any case, some years later (when I could access internet via my university) I read in the game reviews that there was a sequel to Warcraft, Warcraft II. It got a very good review, and perhaps because I remembered the fun I had had playing Warcraft I, perhaps also because I wanted to get revenge for my loss and wanted to prove that I could complete Warcraft II, I asked it as a birthday present, one of my first (perhaps even my first) legally bought non-discount games.

I played Warcraft II and I enjoyed it very much. I even completed it! Well, then I started to play the expansion set “Beyond the Dark Portal” but our old CD-ROM-drive broke down, and when I tried it on my new computer the game ran much too fast to be playable. I believe the CD-ROMs have now found their final resting place in the rooms of two of my younger first cousins once removed. Of course, this did not stop me from spotting a discounted version of Starcraft, another Blizzard product, and completing it. And when I was just starting my PhD-research, temptation struck in an even more beautiful guise: Warcraft III, which offered not just orcs and humans but also the insidious undead and the beautiful night elf race to play.

Though purists could complain that compared to Starcraft the races still looked suspiciously much like one another (though fortunately less than in the earlier Warcrafts), Warcraft III was at least as addictive as its predecessors. Perhaps the better graphics, perhaps a better story, perhaps the addition of heroes, who became your “acquaintances” after a while and for whom you started to care, and wanted to know what would happen to them. Warcraft III was the first game (and so far, the last) which was so addictive that I played it through the night without wanting to go to bed, and only at 10 am, when I had finished the human campaign, I staggered away from my computer to go to the university to work. As you would expect, it was not a very productive day. I got a huge headache and had much trouble not to fall asleep. So I went home early. However, I had to take out the trash at the designated time, and while waiting for that time (in Leiden you get fines if you take the trash out early) I decided to play Warcraft. Incredibly, my entire headache and tiredness vanished, and I could play again for a long time. I do not remember if I got enough sleep that night, however, after a week or so I had finished the game and could get back to normal.

A year later- Warcraft III, expansion set. The day I bought it I could play a bit, but the next opportunity was when I was packing my bags for the ULLA summer school. So I believe that after guiding the night elves through their first few missions, I had to set my alarm clock to go off in one hour and 45 minutes, and got a little bit of sleep before I had to pack for Paris and catch my train. In general, one could say that for me Warcraft was so much fun that it was quite disruptive – but I kept coming back for more, since the fun part was too big to ignore. Perhaps the only thing that saved me from a Warcraft-ruined career was that I was mostly curious for how the story would unfold, and not so interested in multi-player games.

Then, my occasional internet visits to Blizzard and game-review sites alerted me that there was a new Blizzard product on the horizon: World of Warcraft, an online MMORPG. If it has been not clear by now why I was drooling, I will give additional info.

Not only did I know that Blizzard’s games were generally extremely fun and addictive, I had also developed into a fan of role playing games. While a 'Wizardry' had rolled my way but had been tossed aside after a while, the discount game “The Magic Candle 2”, bought for about fifteen guilders in the university bookshop, stole my heart. The graphics were crude, the characters and monsters quite square, the music squeaky, but the story was great and you experienced many adventures, in locations ranging from dungeons to lost cities, from catacombs to trade posts, from hobbit villages to dwarven mines. Lots of text, lots of story (you even needed the "research" skill to find the necessary information in the libraries scattered across the land), which I created a sort of alphabetical encyclopedia for to bundle. I even finished the game after a holiday or so of playtime. The Magic Candle 2 was followed by many more games, most of which were only of passing –often VERY passing- interest, though ADOM still stands out of the crowd, and the successors of Magic Candle 2, MC3 and bloodstone, were nice but did not compare to the “original” MC2 (I’ve later found the original Magic Candle, but it was very difficult to get started due to equipment and money shortages, so I stopped playing after a while). I did spend much playtime in “Shadows of Amn”, and even finished what I consider one of the most interesting and certainly best-written game I’ve ever encountered: “Planescape Torment”. I’ve got about five pages of quotes from that game, more than from any book that I’ve read. The dialogues ranged from witty to philosophical, and the background story was sufficiently complex, the characters multidimensional, and the world detailed and intricate to warrant role playing at its best. Despite the large pile of “RPG-junk”, games like the Magic Candle and Torment have made it my favourite genre.

So enter “World of Warcraft”. A whole new world to explore! An unfolding story! Many quests to fulfill! And all probably with the improbably high Blizzard-quality. A Blizzard RPG would for me be dreamlike combination comparable to a Miss World with a PhD-degree from Harvard. But unlike such a lady, this bounty would also be available for me, for a modest monthly fee.

What stopped me from being sucked right into the jaws of World of Warcraft? One factor was probably a cautionary feeling that this could run out of hand, not for a week but for a month or more. And for a PhD-student finishing his thesis this would not be good. Secondly, a certain laziness coupled to the horror of the remembrance of the last time I upgraded my “easily disassemblable” PC. Having to tug at the plastic front pane till about the breaking point (which was, according to the university shop, the official way of opening it) and having to fight through a graph-theoretically not-untanglible horde of wires just to get a DVD drive installed, I instinctively recoiled from having to install the memory upgrades necessary to play it. So I seemed safe. But was I?

Like a fly that is drawn towards the sun but is inside the house and smashes itself repeatedly against the window, I, being unable to play myself, was able via the internet to keep an eye on WoW. I could visit the official website, the many more unofficial websites, the fan sites, the previews and reviews, the forums, the download pages, etcetera. For hours I have meandered through the internet, learning about the different kinds of spells and abilities of each class, PvP, the talent system, the racial advantages, pets, the different dungeons and some of the quests. Buzz. Buzz. I’ve heard the complaints of warlock players, the strategies of rogues, the talent builds of mages and the boasts of shadow priests. And still there was more to read, more to learn…

Yesterday, though a official free day, I visited the university to do some small programming jobs that I wanted to have finished before the official work week began again. I had scheduled in two hours, which should be sufficient.

After three quarters of an hour I had solved the first problem, and I took a well-deserved break with a cup-a-soup (we nowadays have a soup-vending machine near our lab) and decided to look for a few moments on www.worldofwarcraft.com. When I looked up again it was almost two hours later. I hastily added some functionality but it was not sufficient to finish the project. Then I had to hurry home since a friend would visit me that evening. A relaxed afternoon – filled with something that was not useful at all. Warcraft's world grabbed my attention, but I learned little. It was amusing, but void. And it was not the first time.

Looking back over the past few months I have spent far too much time looking at websites and following the developments of a computer game, while I should spend my evenings writing my thesis and looking for a new job to do after my contract finishes.

I should. That is also the problem. In life, there are so many things to do, reasonable things, commanded things, necessary things and “necessary” things. World of Warcraft provided a dream world to explore and understand, an escape. And perhaps escapes are necessary in life. Yet sometimes one should face his problems and tackle them. And a good general knows that his men will fight harder if he blocks their escape routes.

It may be that I find a different route, but perhaps this pause will give me a chance. Perhaps if I find the obvious route blocked, this may give me enough time to come to my senses again and look at the things I really want to do, the goals I want to achieve.

Now just hope that this blog won’t absorb the extra time…


Thought for today (actually, based on a dialogue between the main character and the gitzherai fighter/mage Zak'kon):

We know ourselves by the questions we ask, and the questions we don't ask.

For example, I have often asked how I could be more attractive to girls, or how I could become a better scientist or writer. But I never asked how I could earn more money, or get revenge on my enemies. Perhaps this says something about my desires and the things I find important in life. Perhaps next time I ask a question, it may be good to ask myself then: why am I asking this question?