Thursday 14 April 2011

THE END OF THE WORLD…of Warcraft (for me)

About two weeks ago, I decided it was time to leave Azeroth, the fantasy setting for the online video game World of Warcraft. I chose life.

The time-gobbling MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game), which has over 12 million subscribers, according to forbes.com (more than the entire population of Greece), has taken hundreds of hours of my life, and after nearly three years of levelling, questing, gearing and rocking the ‘/dance‘, I just couldn‘t ignore the glaring pointlessness of it all anymore.

I appreciate that we all do things with our time that aren’t exactly beneficial to humanity — or really even of any benefit to ourselves (such as measuring your penis with dental floss, or watching Snog Marry Avoid?) — but, in most cases, we do such things in the (mostly vain) pursuit of entertainment. For a good while, the World of Warcraft (a.k.a WoW) was, in my early days at least, a wonderful, rewarding experience. Discovering the beautifully realised fantasy locations, uncovering the world’s lore, levelling up my character and unlocking new spells all gave me a buzz, but that was before the endless, hopeless, grinding (which I shall discuss later), and my encounters with the utterly odious ‘ROFLGOBLS‘.

Beautiful locations and cool beasts are commonplace in the World of Warcraft.
Image ©2004 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. World of  Warcraft, Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or  registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or  other countries.

Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term ‘ROFLGOBL’, you can be forgiven, as it doesn’t really exist. I made it up. It’s a word I concocted to define a particular type of douchebag you may encounter whilst playing World of Warcraft. It’s a compound word don’cha know, comprising the netspeak acronym ‘ROFL’ (Roll On The Floor Laughing) and ‘GOBL’, like ’gobble’, the Turkey sound.

Don’t get me wrong, for the most part WoW is a friendly, helpful and approachable community; however, there are ROFLGOBLs abound. To clarify, the ROFLGOBL is a type of infuriating, socially inept gamer who flings around puerile insults in a hideous mishmash of netspeak and misspelling. They take the game far too seriously, focus heavily on statistics, overuse the word ’epic’ to a point where it loses all meaning, and use the words ’win’ and ‘fail’ as adjectives, like big repugnant twats. These are the types of morons who make you feel like you’re Dan Ashcroft from the TV show Nathan Barley, surrounded by deluded idiots spouting retarded buzz words. The ROFLGOBL is so deeply insecure, and thoroughly aware of their insignificance, that the only way to drown out the self loathing is by declaring that someone else is an ‘epic fail’. In reality, however, it is they who are failing at life very miserably.

Now, I’m aware that there are twats everywhere, but the World of Warcraft is designed in such a way that you may need to interact with, and even sometimes co-operate with these people to progress. When the in-game Dungeon Finder places you randomly into a group with them, and it’s a dungeon you really need to do, they can be unavoidable. This can be particularly annoying when these encounters are part of another problem with WoW, the grinding.

Now, when I say ’grinding’ I’m not referring to the rhythmic rubbing of your crotch or arse against something or someone, nor Bruxism of any kind. As fun those things are, I’m instead talking about the practise of ploughing hours of your time into repetitive, monotonous tasks in order to gain something rare or beneficial. It will be something like: kill 80 Jabberballs Walruses every day for 21 days to gain the Epic Slinky Sword of Erectile Hyperfunction, which gives you +200 thrustmagic. Yeah!

This concept is nothing new, indeed grinding is commonplace in many game genres these days, not just RPGs (Role Playing Games), so I accept it as part of the territory. However, my problem is when you, as a regular non-obsessed player of the game, encounter a group of ROFLGOBLs who have ploughed hours of their lives into obtaining ridiculous performance-boosting items that then become the standard. Co-operation becomes near impossible as they begin to spew out endless garbage, giving you absolute hell for not meeting their beefed-up performance ratings. The percentages or amounts they gripe about are usually very small (most likely like their genitals), and often the need for conflict is unnecessary, as the task at hand (progress through a dungeon) is usually being comfortably handled. Yet they still feel the need to make themselves feel better for wasting their lives away. Anyhoo, I’m done with those fools. Rant over.


My Undead Warlock and my girlfriend’s Blood Elf Mage. Crossdressing is a huge part of the game (honest).
Image ©2004 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. World of  Warcraft, Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or  registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or  other countries.

I will miss my game characters though. That’s been the biggest drag about cancelling my subscription, and it’s most likely the biggest thing that prevents many people from cancelling theirs. It’s the attachment and investment, the time and the care. You customise, hone, cloth, and feed your character, you take them travelling to cool places, watch them develop and learn skills. It can almost become like a bond with a child or a pet. But the truth is, really, they aren’t yours. Blizzard Entertainment has your child locked away, and you can see him or her for 9.99 Euros per month. It’s a ransom that, I’m afraid, I’m no longer prepared to pay. Sorry kids. Please be gentle with them, Blizz *sob*. Muertoplague likes his Moonberry Juice just before his ‘/sleep‘ *sob*.

 Well I had some fun playing WoW, but now I have nothing to show for my three years. In the real world I managed to get a degree in that time! Well, at least I’ve learned that life is a valuable, precious thing not to be wasted. Hmmm, that Rift looks quite interesting (that’s a jokey heheheho).

I promise my next blog entry will be less geeky.

Alteration:
December 2011 
- The mention that game had 12 million subscribers was sourced to forbes.com with a hyperlink.

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