I am wondering if many Indonesians have actually played, or even heard about, a MMORPGH (Massively Multiplayer Online  Role Playing Game) game called "World of Warcraft". A friend of mine used to told me a joke about how unlikely we could find any Indonesian in this online game mainly due to lacklustre internet service in Indonesia.
I was playing this game throughout the year of 2007 mainly because of drastic shift in my social life due to a transition from a full time university student to a full time employee, and also my sudden relocation to a new suburb. Well, I can tell you honestly this game was quite revolutionary and creative, but it was (and still is) highly addictive. Thank God, I have set myself free in the beginning of 2008 partly by convincing myself that investing more time in real life will result in good tangible relationships, promising career and also good results in my postgraduate study. And Yes, all of them were true! If you are interested, I would like to present to you an overview on the world's most controversially addictive game (read here: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/games/world-of-warcraft-addicts-to-get-ingame-shrinks-20090827-f0h6.html). Well you might not have heard any similar occurrence in Indonesia, but it is definitely happening in our world!
The World of Warcraft game, famously abbreviated as WoW was first launched in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment (Blizzard), intended as a successor to the best-selling series of "Warcraft" computer game. To date, Blizzard has launched two expansions, such as The Burning Crusade/BC (early 2007) and The Wrath of Lich King/WOTLK (end 2008), to the original version of the game. Alas, to keep playing this game, you have to actually pay approximately U$14 per month for a subscription into the "world". With more than 12 millions players subscribing to this game, you can imagine why Blizzard employees couldn't ask for more pay rise, and why you should consider working for them instead of aiming for Microsoft or Apple.
Of course, you also will need a reliable internet connection, a decent computer and most importantly, your precious TIME!
As the name implies, this game will allow player to literally enter a virtual world of Azeroth and then interact with other players from around the globe. In the last two expansions, you will need to travel to the new worlds of Outland and Northrend. Due to massive numbers of players, Blizzard have to group these players into different realms depending on their actual locations/continents. Now back to the world of Azeroth, you can join the game by selecting one or more character(s). As far as I could remember, you can save up to six characters in each realm. There are several classes that you can assign to your characters namely Warrior, Paladin, Rogue, Hunter, Mage, Warlock, Priest, Shaman, Druid and a brand new class Death Knight (newly introduced in the WOTLK expansion set). The characters can be chosen from different races which are teamed together into two opposing fractions, the Alliance and the Horde. The available races in Alliance are Human, Gnome, Dwarf, Night Elf and Draenei, while the available Horde's races are Orcs, Tauren, Undead, Troll, and Blood Elf.
A new character will start from Level 1 in the capital city of a region occupied by selected race. In order to advance to higher levels, the player is required to accept and finish numerous quests to help various NPCs (non-player character) and to adventure across the three worlds. To date, the highest level any character can reach is Level 80. To spice up the game, Blizzard have created a storyline (called a Warcraft Lore) that will be followed by all the quests that have to be accomplished by each player.
People who play this game can also choose the type of game play or even swap them anytime they wish. The available types of game play are PvE (Players versus Environment/Computer) or PvP (Player versus Player). A player is engaged to PvE encounter as soon as the first quest is started, because every single quest requires interaction with the computer characters controlled by Blizzard. At the highest level, a player can choose to run endless numbers of dungeons and raids which require collaboration with other players. A number of players who feel comfortable to play with each other will usually form a virtual guild. In guild, they can literally plan their next raid time, share virtual resources and even socialise in the virtual world (I mean literally, it's more than what SIMS can offer you!). Well, the fourth and fifth alphabets from MMORPGH suggest that your class should take a role in a guild, a raid or even a casual group play. Playing in a group is compulsory to fight much bigger enemy or to enter high-level raid dungeon. Broadly speaking, there are three roles you can play in the game, namely Tank, Damager Dealer (DPS) and Healer/Utility. As these names imply, tank will hold the enemy's(ies) advance and is supposed to take most of the damage, while the DPS will hurt the enemy's(ies) as much and do the killing as fast as possible. The healer will be responsible to heal the parties especially the protective tank.
Not only the game evolves around the quests and raids, but it also requires players to "survive" through the content by equipping themselves with items (i.e. clothes, boots) providing various plus values to the player's statistics (i.e. stamina/health, mana, damage points, speed, etc) and also to collect golds as virtual currency. In recent development, Blizzard have introduced Achievement Point which really gives a player some kind of pride-driven motivation.
To make the game even more appealing to non-hardcore gamers, the game's creator has allowed every character to choose some forms of in-game occupations such as Blacksmithing, Engineer, First Aider, etc. Eventually, these occupations will enable players to produce items or enhancements which can either be used or be traded in a virtual auction house. Player can also individually trade items and gold with other player in addition to sending each other an in-game mail. Some of China-based and US-based players or organisations have been known to have sold golds to the desperate players in exchange with real money paid using credit cards or bank transfer (http://www.susanexpress.com/).
Sounds complicated? Sounds interesting?
I will continue a further discussion on this topic in the next post. So stay tuned...
