From Free Realms to World of Warcraft. How Many More?

I didn’t know there were adults left in the world that wanted to play World of Warcraft and hadn’t yet.  This weekend I learned that they exist.  One of my female cousins called me Saturday afternoon.  We’re not on phone call terms.  I see her at family outings and we chat but we’re not close.  Distance is the primary reason we’re not more like friends.  I grew up in New York City.  She grew up in Oregon.

She got my number from my mother after hearing somehow that I play games on the internet.  Come to find out that she plays The Sims and her recent foray in a massive title, Free Realms, piqued her interest to play another game she’s heard people discussing at work.  Now that she’d bought a new PC, she really wanted to give the “other” game a try.

I did my best to convince her that she should try Runes of Magic.  Warts and all, you can’t beat the value of it as a free-to-play MMO.  I suggested that she test drive that to know if she’d even like a traditional MMO, which Free Realms isn’t.  “No,” she replied, “I have my heart set on trying Worldcraft.”  Conversation freezes.  With an eyebrow raised to my hairline, I turn into the camera for a Ferris Bueller sidebar response with the audience, “Oohkay.”  She knew what she wanted.  Who am I to tell her otherwise? 

I explained where and how to download the free trial for, and I spelled it out, “World of Warcraft”.  I told her how the install and patching worked.  I told her to call me when she had the game installed.  Phone rings a couple of hours later, “Hello…”  I’m sure you can guess who had called.  I’d already setup a trial account and patched my version of the game, just in case she followed through with her threat to join the MMO gaming masses.

We created our characters.  She already knew that she wanted to be a Mage like she is on Free Realms.  I created one too to simplify explaining things.  Moments later we emerged into my favorite racial zone.  We ran around for a couple of hours and she had a blast.  At first she thought she could safely run up to any mob like in FR.  It’s easy to understand how she got that idea since you start with the yellow mobs that won’t attack you, if you don’t attack them.  A quick death at the hands of the Defias and corpse run from the graveyard, disabused her of that notion.

We ended the session with her being amazed and awed by the splendor that is WOW.  Damn, I want to feel that way about a game again before I go!  I hadn’t played WOW in over a year.  Back in the day I’d enjoyed the graphics.  Several years and MMOs since, they look very long in the tooth to my eyes, even with everything set on high.  Regardless, there’s a reason WOW is so popular and those reasons were evident while I watched her play. 

Sunday afternoon she called to let me know that she wanted to subscribe to the game.  I’d guessed as much the day before.  I told her about the “Recruit a Friend” promotion and benefits.  I asked if there was anyone at work that would sponsor her.  She said that she wasn’t on “those” terms with the few people she’d heard mention the game.  Conversation freezes.  I’m Al Pacino, in The Godfather III, “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.”  I explained that I didn’t play WOW any more.  I didn’t go into the whole end-game thing.  That would have been too far over her head.  Sighing heavily, I decided to be her sponsor and give her the guided tour to level 20-something.  By that time she’d know if this was the game for her and she’d have her legs under her enough to continue on her own.  Of course, she could always call or email me, if she had questions.

I activated the Bryant household “Monster” account.  That’s the one where I’d transferred everyone’s max level characters to, as our household slowly unsubscribed from WOW.   These are unfortunately all on PVP servers.  She claimed to be fine rolling PVP.  I’m not positive she got the whole idea.  From my point of view, I wanted access to my own characters so that I could craft her some nice items before I disappeared.  I imagine that it’s hard for new players to get the gear locked away in the old world 5-man content.  Unless you have friends around your level or at least one person with a max level character, I imagine that getting items out of SFK, Gnomer, SM, etc. is hit-n-miss.  It’s unfortunate that new players don’t even get to see all that content.  Not much I can do about that but I could at least leave her nice supplies to have as she leveled.
 
For me to sponsor her, she had to create an account using a particular key that would tie her to me as a friend.  This meant starting over.  She had no problem doing that for the benefits she’d get if we played together some time.  Eh, I’d talked to her more in the span of a weekend than I had in several years so there was something to be gained.  She’s only 4 years older than me but growing up, 4 years is like night and day.  I did explain that I’m rather pressed for time this summer and not really gaming.  She understood and said whenever I happened to play, if we could pair up for the bonuses that would be great.

For me, there aren’t any classes left that I want to play.  Anything that I was even remotely interested in playing, I’ve been there and done it.  WOW levels 1 to 40 were amazing to me, regardless of how many times I’d done the GS to STV jaunt.  I created a new character again when she did for the promo.  I figured I’d at least make a race I’d never done before and created a Draenei Priest.  With the referral features, instead of me having to run my character over to Northshire Abbey, she was able to summon me.  Our adventuring time was at an end.  I had writing to do and needed to be on my way.  I parked my character in the Goldshire Inn and told her I’d see her later in the week.

Comments

[br3ntbr0]

I'd love to be able to look at WoW (or any game for that matter) with the wonder and excitement I had when I first began playing EverQuest. Getting old sucks, few things impress me any more :(

It is truly sad that new players don't get to experience Gnomer or any of the earlier instances if they are alone, since few (none?) of the populace bothers with those instances any more. Its a hard problem to tackle with linear progression, but I wish there was a viable way to make all that stuff relevant again.

[Bhagpuss]

Just to reassure you, there are other adults who have an interest in playing WoW but just haven't gotten round to it yet. When WoW launched, my girlfriend and I were in the EQ2 beta. We knew about WoW, but whereas we'd been playing EQ1 since 1999, we'd never played any Blizzard games and weren't especially interested in starting.

Ever since, as the WoW juggernaut built and rolled, WoW has been a game we probably might get round to, some time. But after EQ2 there was Vanguard, some EQ2 expansions, then we went back to EQ1 twice, and there was some WAR and Wizard 101 and half a dozen other MMOs and somehow we never got round to WoW.

One day soon, maybe...

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@br3n - Scaling content. Blizzard is on the right track with the instance difficulties. All future instanced content should be scalable down to duo levels. To keep the more traditional players from blowing their gaskets over the idea (more content for solo and casuals), remove all loot. It's just XP runs when you drop it to that level. They can scale the mob health and damage down and let people at least do the content and get XP. Who would be harmed by this method? Everyone could see content without a hassle, especially when the population mean level has moved on to the expansion zones. A lot less content would be come obsoleted.

@Bhag - Certainly makes sense. I just hadn't thought of it in that manner. This many years and that many players, I figured the pipe was dry. However, suppose that's why the numbers remain stable. The bleed off the top is getting replaced by new blood come in the bottom, with a high core % remaining stable.

[Shawn]

That's an interesting transition: FR to WoW. I just recently wrote a WoW Player's Guide to Free Realms, but I never even thought about it going the other way! Fascinating :)

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Shawn - Hi Shawn!! Yes, it is interesting. Buried in a comment thread I mentioned that one of my daughters who never played MMOs was questing in FR. My jaw hit the floor. I told her about FR just for the mini-games. She does Bejeweled and all the Mario type console games.

A week later when I asked about FR she said that she was running around delivering things, cooking and killing stuff. I said, "You're questing?!?" She didn't know what "questing" meant but yes, after I explained. You could have knocked me over with a feather!

[Blacknimbus]

It's odd...I've tried a bunch of MMOs and prefer the graphics and animations of WoW most of all. CoH and Eve are right behind that I guess. I couldn't make a character in EQII, War, Tabula Rasa, RoM, or LotRO that I didn't at least dislike somewhat. And even with fewer pixels, I'm still amazed by the WoW artwork.

And since you are back in WoW at least for the moment, please please please go make a Death Knight...if only for the starter quests. And if you get a chance, I highly suggest doing the Wrathgate questline if you haven't done it.

Especially if you haven't seen the phasing yet.

[Sören]

*sigh* I, too, remember my first day in WoW. It's now two years ago when I tried it and one year ago when I quit ;)

I'd bought the boxed version and thought to simply install it and say hello to the job mates who had persuaded me to WoW. This was around 11pm. Then the update odyssee began until ca. 4am (patching a non-BC version to something 2.x) Nevertheless I started my first steps as gnome/warlock in Dun Morogh. The first walk up the Coldridge was really great and there was no similiar impression later. When I start a character nowadays, it's just MMO-business.

Around lvl 5 (and 6am) I was invited by a pair of players who obviously levelled up some alts. They were racing through the quests and I could barely follow.

From that time, btw, I love icy regions: Dun Morogh, Winterspring (a bit far and empty), Conall Valley (at least some snowy corners), Ystra (missing the foot steps in the snow like in WoW).

About skipping the "old group content": I've been in DM, SM, Gnome, ZF and once for fun in ZG. But I miss the instances lvl 50-60 because I headed directely onto BC content.

[Iggep]

LOL, Sayla don't you know by now you can't reasonably expect to change a woman's opinion? :)

[Letrange]

Actually it doesn't surprise me at all. It's like all truly new forms of entertainment. There will be early adapters (EQ1 players) and then there will be a push to popularize it (WoW - Free realms) and there will evolve various strata of the genre.

Sort of like: Free realms is pop music, WoW is rock and roll (heck it even has Ozzy adds) and EVE is Heavy Metal. It's all music but not a lot of people get into Heavy Metal. We're at the stage were a lot of parents are wondering what their kids are getting into (the pop) but are looking for something a little more grown up (and yes cartoony graphics not withstanding WoW is more grown up than Free Realms).

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Iggep - Yes, I should have known. The whole worldcraft thing had me silently laughing my ass off on my end of the phone. Guess it's not too far from the truth, WOW is pretty much dominating the world of MMO gaming.

@Letrange - Excellent analogy! Never thought of it that way.

[asdf]

I wish WoW would take a page from the EQ2 book and add in mentoring. For any who arn't familiar mentoring allowed higher level characters to scale down their level to that of the lowest party member and get experience from the lower level content. This might not bring droves back to the old world but I think it would help.

[Tesh]

Honestly, I'd love to be a WoW tour guide. That's pretty much why I play the game in the first place; to see the sights and wander around. It's just that all that *game* stuff gets in the way.

...I wish the WoW model viewer wasn't dysfunctional. :(

[Sören]

@Iggep - You dont have to change a womans opinion. Just wait five minutes and she will do it herself ;-)

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

Whoa now. No woman bashing on a woman's blog. LOL

[RomaGoth]

@adf - I really like that idea!! It would most definitely make old world stuff relevant again.

@Saylah - you really should roll a death knight for the opening quest line. I was rather *iffy* towards it myself at first, but when Lich King came out I could not resist, and it was worth it. I have never experienced questing like that before or after. You really feel like a DK.

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

Yes, I'm going to roll a DK just to see those quests everyone is talking about. I just haven't had the time yet.

[Tesh]

I took a quick spin in the DK starting areas, and wrote a fairly lengthy blog post about them. Long story short, I'm impressed technically, but the theme is very offputting, and the lore is a bit... eyeroll worthy.