Finding Progression
On the hunt for the perfect MMO
WORLD OF WARCRAFT has long been a major part of my life. For 13 years, I’ve played the MMORPG avidly. I’ve gamed with some of the best players in the world, designed award-winning user interfaces, and even lead teams of up to 25 people for months on end, to take out some of the toughest challenges that this pixel-packed epic can throw at us. It brought me into the heady world of Photoshop, introduced me to Lua scripting, and was a big part of what set me off tinkering with PCs.
It’s a beautiful game, and it has changed radically since I first started playing it back in 2004. Not all for the better—however, rose-tinted goggles aside, it’s infinitely more impressive than when it first debuted. Recently, though, I’ve fallen out of love with the title—with little time to commit to any sort of schedule (something that’s pretty impractical as a journalist), my progress in the MMO was stunted by a lack of social interaction, which is a good thing, because it is, after all, a multiplayer game.
Still craving that sense of progression, however, I’ve recently been delving into other MMOs, in an attempt to satisfy that itch, from TERA, to Guild WarsII, to FinalFantasy XIV, and even Elder ScrollsOnline. All of them have unique attributes, and are well worth a shot (especially as TERA and GWII are now free to play), but, for me, they all seem to lack the fluidity and satisfaction that the base engine in Worldof Warcraft bakes into its combat. So, spurred on by the recent Race for World First, and Method’s phenomenal Mythic kill of the latest end boss (taking over 700 attempts to defeat), I’m now back in the game once more, leveling yet another character. I guess I just gotta be a bit more social, eh?