Saturday 9 February, 2008

Game Play

In the more advanced levels the gameplay remains fundamentally the same. Single player consists of repetitive quests and endless monster grinding (killing the same monsters over and over for experience).
Group combat is also the same; healers heal, damage dealers to damage, and tanks absorb enemy damage.

A feature available for players at the top level allows ranked PVP (player versus player) arena combat. Players can form teams and compete for rank, as well as accumulate points used for powerful gear. This new feature is enjoyable once again, based more on the social interactivity rather than the gameplay itself. The gameplay stays the same, but now I can play with a team of my friends against other people competitively.

Design

World of Warcraft designs its content to force players to interact socially, which makes the game fun. Players are forced to find groups to take down harder monsters, and each member must play an active role within the group for the group to function.

The fact that all the people on the screen are players also makes this game a more believable world, rather than a game. I went into a capital city, and it was filled with hundreds of players, talking, trading, repairing and socializing, just like a real city. Except full of trolls and orcs.

The artwork of the game is very stylized, more like a cartoon than realistic, and consistent. Orcs are stooped and exaggeratedly muscular. The people all look perfect, the men handsome and muscular and the women slim and beautiful. Orc cities are filled with spikes and yurts, while human cities have cottages and Though the art is certainly interesting, I would prefer a more detailed, realistic style. Many of the enemy characters also look the same, just with a different name and colored blue, or slightly larger.

The game is designed to be a social game. The cities have open forums for people to interact and trade on the auction houses. The instance dungeons require groups to complete. Arena combat requires teams of players. This social dynamic is what makes WoW so addicting. I've already made some friends by joining a guild (a player organization, complete with its own customizable tabard), and enjoy the feeling of comaradery when raiding or PVPing together with them. Despite the repetitiveness of the gameplay, and even the cartoony design, the social aspect of the game is keeping me hooked. The move to make WoW an open multiplayer world outshines the gameplay itself. Most of the time I log on now, I don't even "play" much, but help around the guild, chat, trade, or wander around. And I enjoy it!

This is almost exactly what we want in a gamelog. When you do the gameplay sections you should describe your game play durign the two sessions, and analyse why was it good or not,what was fun and what boring. Also the two entries game logs should indicate some difference in the two times played, i doubt you could have gotten from a basic lvl one to a lvl 30 or higher and so it imposible that your gameplay aspect is anything but a general description of the game from memory in part instead of from the however many hours of gameplay you spent on each gamelog.

Alon chanukov(grader)