World of Warcraft is awesome but...

So it has been a couple weeks now since I loaded up World of Warcraft for the second time after a long break. And in my previous post I talked about how the game had changed since I last played it and how awesome it is to be playing it again. But (and you knew it was coming), like everything else created by man, it does have its flaws.

The PvP aspect of World of Warcraft seems to be the one thing that is really keeping me interested. I look at it much like any other online game I play, I like to interact and do things with REAL people, not just with AI and while the PvE content in WoW is ridiculously cool, it's just not something I can continously do without a break. So the PvP fun is a very good way for me to keep the game flowing and interesting (and I happen to be reasonably good at it, which always helps).

But today I'm here to talk about the 'not so glossy' aspects of WoW that have become apparent to me over the last couple weeks. I'm level 53 now (a whole 20 odd levels higher than the last character I played) so it's safe to say that for now, WoW is a keeper. But seriously, WTF is up with the party system?

For all you shooter fans out there, you'd probably refer to it as 'matchmaking' but the basic understanding is that you put yourself into a queue for both dungeons (PvE) content and PvP. What you end up with at the end is anyone's guess. And herein lies the inescapable problem. WoW's popularity.

If you've played a decent amount of MMORPGs you'll know that there are many out there that are just utter crap. So when someone gets it right (as the team at Blizzard seem to have done), the gamers become spoiled little brats. Why bother staying in groups when you can get your loot and leave? Why bother keeping a group together when there is no penalty for leaving it and why bother caring when there are thousands of people waiting in the queue to party up? The 'rate a player' system for Xbox Live gamers comes to mind here. If you have a particularly poor gaming experience with someone, you can record and rate the player which then shows up in their profile as a percentage of 'Avoided' or 'Preferred' players. Sure, there will always be grounds for abuse for this sort of thing but hey, it's better than having no deterrent for bad behavior at all.

It becomes increasingly frustrating when you're trying to find a decent group only to have people leave in the middle of a dungeon or worse, right after they've looted the gear they need. The same thing happens in PvP as well where gamers will just leave a team if they don't score first. Alot of the matches I've played would have gone a whole lot better if the team I was on didn't toss in the towel like little wussies. And then there's the griefing which unfortunately, is a part of any game but is consistently annoying in WoW. Yes, it's unavoidable but still, if the people QQing away in a global chat channel spent half as much time concentrating on their game, they'd play a whole lot better.

Moral of the story is: WoW is great but... no game is perfect. Now, to level my Warlock to 60 :P

Image via Wikia