Leveling with my baby!
Posted by Jay | Filed under Blog, Game Industry, World of Warcraft
When I think about the rewards that a game like World of Warcraft offer its long term subscribers, often the methods are overlooked by its players. Rewards from World of Warcraft come in the form of items. Always tangible, always taking up inventory space. In fact, the only rewards given by WoW that are not items, are in fact titles! Displayed with pride by the wearers. Such a sight!
It comes as no surprise then that with the introduction of heirloom items that indeed, they are items. Blizzard never disappoints! They scale and allow for a low level character that can’t find a regular instance group to gather necessary equipment. Since the leveling speed has been increased, the lower level areas are almost completely devoid of life. It’s nothing like it was 4 years ago. I would suggest anyone that began WoW post Vanilla, IE BC or Wrath to try an mmo they find interesting when it launches. I wonder if the denizens of Shattrath or even Hillsbrad ever get lonely? Remember those times when you spent countless hours at those locations? I certainly do. Those two locations were densely populated for roughly 2 real world years! I bet they do and they’ll never show it!
While reminiscing, it came as a surprise that I came home one day to find my baby playing on her shiny white mac. While macs reflect the sun, the screen reflected the World of Warcraft world. “O Rly?” I asked. “Ya srsly!” She replied. And so I sprinted to my PC, logged into my main, purchased a bazillion heriloom items, 3, weapon, shoulders, bow and created a hunter.
After numerous gaming sessions I’m realizing that my reward for the above isn’t one available through Blizzard. While they may be involved by the sole purpose of providing the arena, they aren’t reponsible for the adventure my baby and I are experiencing. Blizzard isn’t sitting next to my baby and training her on MMO terminology and game mechanics. Mmos are renown for not training players. Even I remember the first time I learned about “aggro”, “tanking” and DPS. Another useful lesson that came way to late; leveling a cleric in EQ meant that I should try to find a group and not solo!
Back to my baby!
They don’t even get to watch her freak out every time she has to kill a spider. While cute, on occasion a jump, “WHAT THE FUCK!” Followed by “EWWWYW EWWYWY EWYEWYY EWYEYWE” And then “GROOOSSSSS!”
No, my reward from leveling with my baby are different. They can’t be summed up with any heirloom item transferable amonst X characters on my server. They can’t be displayed in a title over my head. They can’t even help me level. No my rewards are memories and bonding. Now that’s leveling with my baby!
