Onlife #41

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

What can I say? I'm still hopelessly addicted to WoW, as are several million of you out there. The fact that I love the game so much makes me uneasy, though night after night, I log in and wile away the hours. It's a wicked addiction, and definitely something that I feel might just be detracting from other aspects of my life. But whatever, this is all just noise. I'm going to keep playing, and I'm going to play a whole lot more than I currently do when the expansion launches. My shelved 60s will get the dust blown off them with the new level cap, and you can bet your booty that I'm going to roll a Draenei as soon as it's humanly possible to do so.

I have to admit, I got a lot of laughs out of the playerbase's reaction to the Draenei. Man, that was a riot. The WoW boards were rife with comedy gold for a good week following the announcement, and I feel a little bit guilty admitting that I ate it all up. Here is my favorite product of this magical moment in MMO history: http://lorelol.ytmnd.com/. Anyway, yeah, The Burning Crusade is gonna kick my ass. World PvP FTW. Gimme gimme gimme.

Fury

Fury was literally the last game I saw at the show, and I have to say, I was mighty impressed by it. Personally, a lot of what keeps me playing MMOs after I burn out on the end-game content are the PvP elements. I simply can't devote a large amount of time to a game if it doesn't have a strong PvP element. Being able to whoop people's asses is what motivates me to improve my character, and if that motivation isn't there, then I don't think I'd be able to take a game seriously. Fury is kind of an interesting case, though: it's all PvP. You level by killing players, you gear up by killing players, and you can change the very nature of your character's abilities instantly. It's like Guild Wars minus all the PvE elements.


I had trouble wrapping my head around it at first, but after talking with the game's lead designer for a good bit at the show, the game's structure made a lot of sense. Scout's honor, we'll have our preview up very soon, so until then, check out the game's official site.

Ride On, Hunter...

I'm going to end this column on a sad note. A few of us at the GameSpy offices play WoW together, and on the last day of the show, we got word that one of our good friends in-game was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident the night prior. William Hunter Freeman, known in-game as Achillees, died at the young age of 22, leaving behind a guild full of bereaved friends, several of us at GameSpy among them. Hunter was one of the most sincere and generous people I have had the good fortune of meeting throughout my stint as an MMO player, and the news, frankly, hit me like a ton of bricks. It's easy to dismiss the depth of the personal relationships that you develop in these online worlds, but when something like this happens, it becomes evident that it's more than just code and pixels populating these worlds. Hunter's voice on Vent was warm and cheerful, and he inspired a unique feeling of comradeship in those around him. I know I don't speak only for myself when I say that it was an honor to know him. Rest in peace, brother.