Tuesday 15 January, 2008

Game Play:
I the next time I played I decided to keep going till I hit level ten. During this time I continued to explore Teldrassil, which is the beginning night elf lands. I eventually to go to the night elf city Darnassus. The reason why I wanted to reach level ten was so I could tame a beast as my pet. This made me extremely happy because I got my pet Owl. Another thing that made me exited was getting to meet Tyrande Wisperwind who is the leader of the night elves. I thought that she was a really cool character in Warcraft III. Now that I'm level ten and I have my pet, I am ready to start exploring the rest of Azeroth and eventually the Out-lands. I find it really fun and exciting that some of the quests I will eventually get to do and places I will eventually get to go to tie into the story of Warcraft III.
During my playing time I interact a lot with other people. I really like talking to my friends who play and since they are a higher level they come help me complete quests. Also I talk and complete quests with other people who I do not know. It is normally beneficial for someone who is also try to complete the same quest as me to join a group with me. This makes fighting enemies easier especially when there is a lot of them. some of the time the people were really annoying and sometimes they were pretty cool.

Design:
I thought that the overall game design was pretty good. The graphics were fairly decent and the creators did a good job at making the world seem very three dimensional. The leveling system was pretty good i thought. At first I was leveling really fast then after level five my leveling slowed down. As I become higher and higher I will level slower and slower. With each level my character is able to obtain higher quests and equip higher armor and weapons.
The challenges in the game is completing the quests. Sometimes the thing or the enemy I'm looking for are hard to find. Sometimes the thing I'm trying to kill is to difficult for me so i keep dying which is very frustrating. One thing I would change would be make sure every quest I'm trying to complete gives an exact description of where to go to complete the quest. The game has a lot of social interaction weather it be getting help from people on quests and talking to them or fighting people who are of the other group. what makes the game fun for me is trying to level up my character and getting her the best armor and weapons in order to make her cool looking. Also what makes it fun is the connection I have with my character and the way she seems almost real and important.

(Nicolas Kent - grader)

Your section on Game design sort of describes the design of an MMO in general, with little information specific to WoW. What makes WoW stand apart from others? How are areas laid out? What makes things easy or hard to find? Are enemies too frequent or too rare? You mentioned it bothered you that you had to kill an owl and it bothered you. Is there a way you could have gotten around it? Would avoiding that quest have significantly hurt your progress? How does that make you feel about the design of the game.

What is it that makes having a pet in games so appealing? I agree with you, pets rule, and Owl's are way up there, just under Caracals and Quetzals, but what is it about a simulated representation of an animal with a limited AI following you around in a game that is so compelling?