Yeah, yeah, lore is fluff. But a lot of people (myself included, actually) find WoW’s backstory kind of interesting.  I certainly agree with David’ assessment over at Timesink - WoW has more compelling lore than EQ2 as an example.

I am fully aware that a lot of this is completely subjective, and people’s opinions will vary. I love EverQuest II, it’s a great game, but when compared to WoW, EQII does not feel like a “world” as oppsed to a bunch of loosely connected zones. I’m not criticizing EQII’s use of zoning, that never really bothered me, rather, EQII’s zones feel like zones. They feel like arbitrary areas created to adventure in with no connection or relation to any other parts, nor do they evoke any sense of historical importance.

I try to unravel the complicated threads of the Alliance racial backstories in my weekly WoW Exposed column for GameSetWatch.

While sci-fi’s played-out tropes have been rehashed and thinned down somewhat in recent years, we haven’t had a truly great genre shake-up for fantasy fans. The result is that even World of Warcraft, as successful and entertaining as it is, bogs down with an endless amount of backstory and genre cliches. Despite that, the lore of Warcraft is interesting stuff. There are a lot of compelling elements, individual tales that you can follow along through the thousands of years of sketched out storyline.

If you ignore the clap-trap about who specifically did what when or the endless back-and-forth between all-powerful entities, there are interesting characters and situations to focus on. Consider this the first in an ongoing series of articles looking at the backstory of Warcraft, with an eye towards making the material as approachable as possible.

I’m not sure if you were aware, but I’m actually part of two static groups nowadays. The adventures of the Shortiez are, of course, legendary. Or at least, well documented. Ahem. The other group, though a more recent addition to my MMO gaming, is shaping up to be legendary as well. Monday nights the ‘Fists of Ham’ get together to take on the instances offered up by World of Warcraft. Our group is a podcaster’s value-pack: Brent, Adam, Darren, Brendan, and myself.

We’re only in our mid 30s, so the number of instances we’ve hit is still on the low-side. Still, a big chunk of the xp we’ve earned over the course of our adventuring careers has been from these dungeons. We’re trying to play outside of our group as little as possible, but it’s been rough. At the lower levels where we are the instances don’t quite overlap enough to keep us on one fixed path. Even still … it’s been a great time working from the bottom to the top of WoW’s content.

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This week my video highlights surround the still-in-Beta title Mythos. I have been really crunched, mentally, as I juggle my last weeks of Slashdot with ramping up to full power at Massively. The in-and-out quickplay of Flagship’s Mythos, as a result, has been the perfect way for me to get some happy-fun-time in. I have to say: I’m liking Mythos a lot more than I ever enjoyed Dungeon Runners, another F2P Diablo-clone I’ve played quite a bit of. I’m not sure I could tell you why exactly; I really like the art aesthetic in Mythos, for one. My little Gadgeteer Gremlin dude, with his flintlock rifle and smoking cigar, is really evocative somehow. Today I’ve got three videos for you. Two are random combat snips, and the third is a more lengthy combat encounter with a boss - Zuriel the Kindler of Discord.

My random screenshots for the week touch on my time in SWG gathering screens for a Massively guide. They also cover some Alterac Valley sessions with my rogue, and the (to me) hilarious shot to the right of my baby Belf hunter standing over some dead spider-dudes.

Story of the week: I’ve been enjoying playing with the Hunter as an easily alt-tabbed distraction. As weak sauce as they are in PvP Arenas right now, they still are the kings of PvE soloing. I’m in Suncrown Village, on the edge of the Ghostlands, killing Nerubis guards. There’s one elite in particular, Anok’suten, that I have to down. To my surprise, he’s actually still an elite. I was under the impression most overland elites were taken out of the game a while ago. But I figure I have three levels on him so - what the heck, right?

I sic my kitty on him, and he immediately calls another guard to aid. I pull the guard off the cat, and immediately go back to helping him burn down the elite. At this point a patrol spawns in on me (I saw a warlock leaving the area as I approached, must have been her kills). So me and the cat are now taking on an elite and three guards. The result is as you see there: four dead, a ragged hunter and pet, lots of sparkely loot piles. And people say Paladin is EZ mode.

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I sat down earlier this week to write yet another blog post about why Blizzard (and MMO developers in general) should treat their mid-game content with more respect. I was inspired by a few posts around the sphere, from Cameron and Tobold. I’ve blathered about it so many times in the past, but this time I had something new sticking in my memory. A second post from Cameron, talking about comments from THQ’s Head of Development, really brought this discussion into focus.

Cameron makes the excellent point that if WoW has peaked, it’s Blizzard’s fault.

The interest in making WoW “the best game ever” simply doesn’t exist. Instead, they seem to be fine with doing just enough to make sure that people pick up the next expansion pack and sit on the cushy laurels of 10 million subs … A game that keeps you playing is good enough. They’ll worry about the long term tomorrow, and screw the players that they’re alienating– there’s nine million more where you came from.

That was when it hit me. We talk and we gab and we wring our hands over this game, because we *get* it. I’ve been writing about games professionally just a month or two longer than WoW’s been commercially released; in that time I’ve seen the impact, I know what this game really *means* to the players.

Blizzard? Even they don’t know what they have on their hands. And that’s terrifying.
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My third post in the World of Warcraft exposed column jumps up and down on the machinima genre till stuff comes out of its tearducts. I tried to make it a bit more than just “look at the funny videos”. Please judge for yourself.

Societal norms, language, and even art forms all evolve from the interaction of so many creative individuals in one ‘space.’ World of Warcraft is no exception to this rule, and in fact the artistic culture surrounding WoW may be the most deep and varied of any online society.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the wildly successful ‘machinima’ scene surrounding the game. Machinima, the art of creating a film entirely within a gamespace, has been popularized in general gaming culture by work in the Halo games. These works are primarily humorous in nature, typified by the wildly popular Red vs. Blue series. For World of Warcraft players, machinima has grown to fill many roles; humor is often a part of the experience, but drama, instruction, passion play, bragging, and a number of other motivations fill YouTube with a host of Azerothian films.

This week the Friday films are all about traveling. First up we’ve got a quick clip of Jacob’s Ladder, my faithful City of Heroes character, as he makes his way through the troubled streets of Paragon City. Then there’s a pair of clips from the first night Blizzard opened up the Arena server (on the 1st). It was bedlam and chaos as people waited forever to get into Arena events - mostly PvPing each other to pass the time.

The last clip comes with a story. In it you’ll see Grodin, my Dwarven Paladin, fighting with Arakkoa in Hellfire Peninsula. I shut off FRAPS’ video capture just a second before another birdman rushed my character. He was joined by one of those blasted owls, and the fight was really on. I held my own for a bit, took out the birdman, but it was quickly obvious I was going to lose to the owl. So I did what any self-respecting pally would do: I bubbled and ran, down into a cave I’d partially cleared out along the chasm’s floor. Unfortunately as I ran I managed to pull another Arakkoa. I healed a bunch but I was OOM and I was sure I was done for. At this point I was quite a ways away from the owl’s spawn, so I backed up some more hoping he’d de-aggro and leave me alone. All of a sudden there was a burst of light, and I was at full health and mana. I whipped out the big guns and dropped both of the mobs in no time flat.

I realized, as I stood there over the corpses, that I’d dinged. And not just any ding - an exploration ding. By backing up just that bit farther I’d gotten the XP gift for finding the Den of Haal’esh proper, leveled up, and had my health/mana restored. Hilarious. An instant from death and I’m saved by a lousy 1000 xp or so. Priceless, and one of the many reasons I play these games!

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I have a double dose of external me-links today. On GameSetWatch my second weekly World of Warcraft column has gone up - this one a sort of pre-newbie guide. It looks at the races and classes in the game with an eye towards trying to explain the *rationale* for playing a character - IE, why you’d want to play a Blood Elf, or what kind of play style the Paladin class supports.

There are so many people playing World of Warcraft today, it’s almost a joke. At game conferences it’s almost become a sort of mini-game: “Who’s the most obscure person in your life playing WoW?” One guy I spoke to at GDC this year pretty much won the game forever by claiming that his mom and her hairstylist had a gripping conversation about questing in the zone of Westfall while a perm set. WoW’s widespread playerbase is a direct result of the game’s accessible gameplay, a topic we discussed in last week’s column.

Despite that highly-regarded accessibility, there are still a number of things you should keep in mind when jumping into World of Warcraft for the first time. While Blizzard’s monolith is much better than other MMOs when it comes to making irreversible decisions, there are still many important choices you have to make at character creation. Today we’ll run down the most important things you need to keep in mind before you ever set foot into Azeroth. We’ll discuss class roles, racial benefits, servers and transfers, and (an ever-important element to RPGs) the question of motivation. Read on, and then get rolling.

I know, I know - this seems very off-topic for me. It was also noted in the comments for the last post that there have been *just* a few articles on this subject matter. I concur - but I also think that there’s room in the medium for a very broad approach to the game. Besides … this is fun! It’s really nice being able to write these up on a subject matter I know so well. That base let me really put some thought into what could have been just a toss off. (3000+ words is not a toss off for me, trust me.)

Anyway, hope you find it at least vaguely interesting.