The WoW-Experience

Since the term is finished and we´ve got lots of time (theoretically…*stares at term papers*), GongShi and I have started to play the game almost every person in the world seems to play: World of Warcraft. A friend with a paid account had invited us for 10 days of free play, so I took the chance to find out what´s so goddamn special about it. To forestall the conclusion: In my eyes, there´s nothing too special about it. Most of the time, it´s fun to play, sometimes it gives you headaches (of anger), like dozens of games out there, too. But let me start from the beginning.

There are two sides in the WoW-World: The Alliance (Good guys (?)) and the Horde (The ugly bad guys). Since the said friend has only characters fighting for the Horde, we were bound to the races available for that group. I took my first steps in Mulgore by choosing a female hunter Taurus. This was the first time I got badly disappointed: For a game this extensive, the character builder is a mere joke. You can only choose between a handful of physical attributes (about 5 hairstyles, faces, skincolors). No chance to customize the way you like. So, if you´re done – yay, you look just like about 1 Mio other characters! For me as a girl – big deduction of points.

So, there was my little cow, standing in the widths of the prairie, starting by doing various quests. Let me tell you the following: Once you ran around on a giant, unclear map like this, you know how some players manage to waste hours and hours of lifetime playing a stupid game without doing anything at all. Not very beginner friendly.
It turned out that the Taurus was not a good choice for me (besides the fact that those plains just made me go crazy. CRAZY I say!), so I started over again, this time choosing a blood elf. Same here with the character builder, but at least you could choose your hair color – plus the fact that an elf is much more beautiful than a cow = more fun for an eye person like me.
So I started running around with pretty little Noinda in this pretty (but yet disturbing) pink elf country where ownerless brooms clean the streets and everyone´s sooo nice and stoned esoteric (Disney´s „Fantasia“, everyone?). But I don´t want to speak badly about it: Elves are a much more comfortable to play class than the Tauren and their world is not that plain and unfriendly and OMFG you are even able to finish your quests without running around senselessly for hours so I reached LVL 10 without bigger complications.

All in all I can´t say that I didn´t have any fun by playing WoW. But I definitely didn´t get the point why there´s people out there who´re seriously addicted to this game and don´t even go outside/to school/work anymore. There are so many better, more original (free) games. At least in my opinion. I will definitely finish my 10 free days, but I don´t think I would be buying more play time after that.

If you like playing WoW, I can highly recommend you:

• Ragnarok Online (best MMORPG ever. Plus it´s cute and original.)
• Perfect World (Shame on you, WoW! This game is free and it has a WAY better character builder!)
• Silk Road Online (for those of us who like it a bit more Asian.)