I originally had the impression that World of Warcraft had extremely cartoonish graphics. I was surprised to see the sheer amount of eye candy scenery present.
Guild Wars is always "beautiful", as can be seen from this screenshot from the seaside. I love looking at picturesque snapshots in Guild Wars.
But World of Warcraft is "pervasive". Blizzard is a large and rich company, with very high quality control. The world looks very realistic, in a huge, all-including way.
Here is my shaman running through the vast desert wilderness at night. I'm no stranger to the desert landscape, and this electronic world looks very much like the real thing. It was like I was running around Arizona, minus the threat of dying of thirst.
Suddenly I come upon the Kodo Graveyard (a type of large lizard), where Kodos go to die.
Along a pebbled seashore, I find a village of trolls, and a faint background drum music. I follow the sound of drums through cottages decorated with beads and carvings, up a winding staircase, to find three drummers going at it Japanese style.
Here is a screenshot of my shaman dancing to the drums:
There are also places with a more fantasy or tolkien feel. Here is the insides of a mountain turned pass. It felt like Moria when I was walking through it, complete with the bridge over rivers of lava.
Finally, I see a pair of doors and the outside world behind them.
The two good things about World of Warcraft: It is very cute and pretty.
Secondly, the world is huge and detailed. I can catch fishes, cook them for food or render them into oil, and then use the oil with herbs to make potions, which then can be quaffed or used by tailors to make magical garments. I can travel around by bats, boats and zeppelins, or mounts (I have my wolf form though, so I didn't get one).
The two bad things about Worlf of Warcraft: sterile game mechanics, and distasteful population.
I will admit I am spoilt on the "almost everything works" design of CoX, and the M:tG card mixing design of Guild Wars. (I positively loved messing with my mesmer's bar in Guild Wars.) Standard Holy Trinity style MMOs just don't cut it for me anymore. Tank tanks. Healer heals tank. DPS kills something. Everyone lives in holy (trinity) terror of aggroing too many mobs. You need to pull them in tiny groups or risk a wipe. I'm not sure about the tanking part, but healing (as a shaman and priest) felt like some desperate race between conserving mana, keeping people alive, and not drawing aggro. Yes, healing people aggros mobs.
The population of the game really leaves something to be desired. Then again, you can say that the PUGs I have been getting in CoX leave something to be desired. Still, you thinkg of CoX as a small game, and the fact that so many people are brain damaged is less mind-boggling on a small scale. When you have the huge number of people in a hugely populated game all acting like retarded children, then you start worrying about humanity.
It could be an illusion. If a huge percentage of humanity is retarded and selfish, then that percentage will be there in a small game population or a large game population. It simply does not have the full leeway of expression in a game without much loot or economy. Even in Guild Wars, expression of greed and retardedness is hampered by the game design of an upper power limit in equipment, leaving most loot largely cosmetic.
There is no such limit in World of Warcraft. If they raised the level cap from 50 to 60, then raised it from 60 to 70 (recent Burning Crusade expansion), it can continue rising. Yet the essential gameplay is unchanged except for an ever-continuing rat-race for yet another better piece of equipment -- equipment that is everything.
In a virtual world, we see the true outcome of the prisoner's dilemna. In a PuG, you are essentially without moral constraints to ninja-loot, scam, cheat your teammates in whatever way you see fit to benefit yourself. In a large community, you will never see the person you cheat, ever again. The solution, apparently is to join one of the large guilds that are run like military organisations. This is still the prisoner's dilemna realised. It is simply the variation with repeated encounters.
Recently, I've started doing barters, instead of dealing with the gold-grabbing auction houses. I will ask a teammate to create something I need for me, in return for some potions. Everyone wants potions, so I'm lucky I created Ravenhill :) as a voodoo medicine man.
Loot and crafting brings about complexity in a game, beyond the simple kill mob for xp. It is fun to walk around a huge realistic landscape picking herbs and then mixing potions. It's fun to do something other than kill monsters, create things other people can use.
Loot and craft brings about a ratrace and human expression greed. In an electronic society without law to constrain human behaviour, nor a village-style reputation, people act like bandits. Nine year olds with strange names spew obscenity and cheat each other like Nigerian scammers.
Which way will CoX go, once crafting is implemented in Issue 9? Both ways? Neither way?
Will it be as Hobbes said, a war of every man against every man? Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?
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