Token Female Gamer

This is something that has been circulating in some of the WoW Blogs I read occasionally. Even though I don’t consider this a World of Warcraft Blog (though it could easily become one!) I thought it might be a good way to pay my respects to WoW.

And respect it deserves. World of Warcraft: The Lich King expansion has probably been my favorite game of the year (2009). I know, it was actually released in 2008, but I played so much of the game this year, I think it fully qualifies. =)

I’m pretty sure that I played WoW more this year then I slept. And so I award WoW the “Better than Sleep” award. =)

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Aion seems to be thriving, the servers are at decent concurrency levels, there aren’t overwhelming server problems, and most players seem genuinely happy with the game. China can’t add servers fast enough and North American and European sales have almost reached a million.

Really it appears that the Aion launch (in North America) was not only successful but also quite smooth. Not something very many MMORPGs can boast. (To be fair, it was also not as large of a lunch as some previous games have been, plus they launched in Korea and China before they did here. Clearly that gave them an excellent opportunity to work out some kinks.)

And though I may be finished with Aion, I’m extremely glad I tried it. Much of my playtime was quite enjoyable. It just turned out to not be for me, which is fine. No game can appease everyone’s needs.

So I’m closing out the Aion book with a proper review. =)

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Strategy

This really comes in two parts, strategy on how to play your character and strategy on how to be successful in an encounter. Both of these can be theorized ad nauseum, but nothing can make up for experience. So brush up online and then jump in.

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The Character

The single most successful way to increase character effectiveness is to focus on enhancing the character itself. This means choosing a purpose and then getting the various character aspects – talents, skills, equipment, buffs – synched so they properly support said choice. Essentially you figure out what you want your character to be able to do and then you set them up with the best options available.

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Taking the step from being a casual player, who runs a few heroic dungeons every now and then, into a player that is raiding effectively and with purpose (my definition of hardcore) is a massive undertaking. It requires far more focused knowledge and experience then just playing casually. Suddenly many aspects of your character, aspects that were easily ignorable before, become incredibly pertinent.

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It took me a while to get into the idea of Achievements in World of Warcraft, mainly because I disliked them so much on the console. Unlike the console version of achievements, which are essentially a glorified score board, the WoW achievements confer awards.

In fact it was one such award that started me on this crazy ride. My husband pointed out that one of the awards was a purple drake, a flying mount. As purple is one of my favorite colors I was immediately determined to get it.

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The second expansion for World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King (WotFK), graced us with its presents a mere year and ten months after the last expansion. (Woot! Our wait was cut by four months!)

Feature wise, it was very similar to the previous expansion, a new continent to explore, new higher levels to reach, more quests, more dungeons, and more loot. They even added a brand new class to play.

And yet, WotLK has been the more successful expansion. Clearly a lot was learned from the previous two games, because they somehow managed to keep and fine tune features that worked well while weeding out most of the irritating bits.

But not all the features are recycled, loads of new ones joined the frey, seamlessly blending new and old. A few of the most notable additions being: achievements and vehicle-combat.

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The Burning Crusade (BC) expansion was release just a bit over two years after the original World of Warcraft MMORPG went live, and boy was it long overdue. While there is no doubt that WoW was a massive achievement (feat of strength?), it was by no means content rich enough to remain engaging for two years.

It certainly didn’t hold my attention as I took a long break before BC came out. In fact quite a few of my friends took breaks at similar times.

But promises of new and more lured me back for The Burning Crusade. Two new races, a whole new continent, new dungeons, and loads of new loot were just some of the features that this expansion boasted.

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World of Warcraft has lived up to its name and turned the world of PC gaming into a world of WoW. The most successful MMORPG (massively multiplayer role-playing game) to date, boasting over 11 million subscribers (that’s more then the entire population of Switzerland!) and its showing no signs of slowing down as it nears its five year anniversary.

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My baby warlock finally made it. The challenge was made; my warlock and I rose to the occasion. The bounty was paid (although my husband used it as beer money).

In the end it took me four and a half months to make 36 levels; 12 days 8 hours total played time, much longer than I expected.

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