Great gameplay, quality graphics, and compelling storylines can make or break a game. Without interesting things to do in a visually appealing setting for good reasons, games tend to fall on their faces. Beyond that, Interface is probably the biggest hurdle between a good game and a great game. An extremely fun game with a terrible interface will get played just as often as a boring game. With the history Blizzard has for fun gameplay and excellent interface design, it should come as no shock to you that World of Warcraft is a treat to use as well as play. The most enjoyable aspect of this interface is the ease with which you can get into it. Right clicking does the “default” action in most cases. You know what action this will be by hovering your cursor over the object or NPC you wish to interact with. If the icon is a little sword, you can attack them. If it is a little chat box, you talk to them. If it’s a dollar sign, they’re either a merchant and you can shop with them or you can learn skills from them. Right clicking brings up the appropriate box to do what you need to do with the object/npc.

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Back again with another entry in my Beta Journal. The Beta is now about 5 days old, and you’ve probably had a chance to see the game from a few different angles at this point. The level cap in the game is currently 30, and there are already plenty of people (mostly Alpha folks) who have hit against it. I’m still plodding along at a slower pace, hampered by things like my “fiancee” and “work”. I’m only level 13, and unlikely to get to 14 before Thursday. But, I’m at least high level enough to begin to discover some of the higher level maps. Westfall, to the west of the Elwynn Forest, and Loch Modan, to the northeast of Dun Morogh, are great examples of how the game pulls you out and away from the newbie areas with breadcrumb quests.

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For the duration of the World of warCraft Beta test Random Dialogue is going to be a running commentary on Blizzard’s upcoming massively multiplayer game. I’m going to try to touch on something different every time. If there is something in specific you’d like to see me talk about, feel free to bug me about it. Today I’m going to be talking about my initial experiences getting into the Beta and as a new player. In one word, simply, plainly, World of Warcraft is fun. Azeroth as Blizzard has created it may not be a fully realized virtual world, with predator prey simulations and super-realistic physics. World of Warcraft is a game. And what a fun game it is.

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The mandate of our site is usually limited to Massively Multiplayer Games. Beyond that scope is an increasing number of virtual worlds built for very different purposes than pure hack and slash gaming. Education, socialization, even military training is occurring in virtual spaces nowadays. For text worlds this isn’t news at all. Text-based MUDs, MUSHes and MUCKs have been used for purposes other than gaming almost as long as there have been text based world. Graphical worlds are another matter. Today I’m going to take a moment to talk about the realities of virtual worlds with nary an elf or alien in sight.

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When it comes to rolling your own campaign setting in a table-top game, my favorite part has always been creating the geography of the world. Massively Multiplayer Game developers have similar goals when the work on a setting begins. Decisions that seem trivial may have a lasting impact on the world once it is populated with players. Today I’ll discuss issues of zone design, flow, and the effects of those decisions on players.

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Beyond a choice of setting, the most fundamental decision that you can make about a virtual world is the level of persistence that the world will use. By persistence, I refer to the level of continuity that the world exhibits. In the real world, a broken vase is forever broken. Not so in many virtual worlds. In fact, epic life events in the lives of NPCs are often repeated…daily. Yesterday, in Qeynos Hills I was hanging out with my pal Martin Sayer. I returned to him his son, taken by the gnoll Lord Elgnub. In return he gave me the powerful sword Gnoll Slayer, which he’d been hanging on to for years. I was leaving the smithy Sayer runs when I heard, behind me, another player … returning Sayer his son. The Gnoll Slayer may be no-drop, but it is not unique. Today, I’m discussing continuity within virtual worlds, and the level of persistence they exhibit.

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