World of Grindcraft

It’s 18:05, and World of Warcraft has just started downloading itself. I keep getting into arguments about Warcraft and MMORPG’s in general. “You can’t say MMO’s are rubbish when you have only played Runescape, Lineage II, and Guild Wars, you have never played WoW, it’s like me saying FPS’s are shit when I have only ever played crap ones” To me, playing Runescape, L2 and GW should give a decent enough spectrum to the MMO thing. However, I’m informed that “Runescape is free, L2 is a ‘Korean grind fest’, and Guild Wars…isn’t Warcraft” Well fine, let’s end this once and for all.

Now, I have to say that to get to the installer took three hours of downloading. Thats fair enough, it’s nearly 4GB of download for the game client, and they basically use a torrent system to make it nice and speedy. After the install, it decided it needed to patch itself…with around 3GB of patches. This, my friends, did not make me very happy. With that amount of patching, why not update the client you are giving to people?! Anyways, it gets there in the end, and I fire it up. Before logging in, I set myself three rules:

1. Go in with an open mind. It must be good with how many people rave about it, just let yourself enjoy it.
2. Don’t ask your friends for help. Go in as a new player, and let the game do what it does.
3. Keep in mind, that while WoW is an MMO, it’s still a game, and you can’t ‘let it off’ with things because it’s an MMO

With those in mind, I make myself a character. I don’t really like the look of any of the races. I want to play Horde (the baddies), but the closest thing they have to something that looks ‘shifty’ is a zombie thing. I choose that and play as a rogue as…well thats what I like.

So, I am brought to life in a Crypt, and let loose on Azeroth. Here, my adventure begins.

I’m told to go down the road a bit and speak to a priest. It takes me a second or two to get used to the controls, I was expecting a ‘right click to move’ affair, but I have to middle click or use wasd. Fair enough, bit weird but I’m sure there are reasons. The priest gives me the usual spiel about ‘we are at war with ‘the baddies’, you are nothing but a servant for us, do our bidding or bad things will happen’. You know, usual RPG stuff. He then tells me to go kill 16 zombies. Right. Straight out of the gate then, we are going grinding.

Rule 1 fires into my head. Players obviously need to be let in gently, and this is no worse than ‘Training camp’ or a target range on any FPS. I go and kill the 16 zombies, and it’s fairly fun. I come back to the priest, and he instructs me to go kill 8 bats, 8 dogs, and 12 skeletons. *sigh*.

Some of these creatures inexplicably have useful items on them, and I manage to kit myself with something that looks half-way cool. While it’s not very rogue like, its better than the tatty shit I started out with.


I head back to the church and stumble upon two people chatting – Tacomaetr and Ahri. Just as I walk in Taco exclaims “I’m bored”, with “So am I” coming from Ahri. Come to think of it, I’m a bit bored. I get chatting to Taco, and it turns out everything I say is hilarious. I can’t say a sentence without a lol, but hey, maybe he’s just excited. He seems OK anyway, and just before I can ask him if he wants to team up or something, he disconnects. The other person, Ahri, is long gone now…looks like I’m gonna be on my own.


The quest giver hands me a new task, which to be honest sounds quite interesting. Its something along the lines of ‘Go kill this guy, then bury his remains in the graveyard next to his late wife’. I go and find the abandoned camp he should be staying in, when I discover Ahri there. In the camp are two regular looking zombies and a big one. I say hello to Ahri, and explain that I think I have to kill the big guy. She thinks she has to as well, but we are both a little intimidated by his size. Balls to it, I run in and take him out…with relative ease actually. She congratulates me, then I realize I killed the wrong thing. “It’s one of the other zombies” she tells me. I target one, who turns out to be called ‘Daniel Ulfman’ (a nice nod to Danny Elfman, who composed the music for Nightmare before Christmas), so I kill the other one and grab his remains. Me and Ahri are getting on quite well and she comes back with me to complete the quest. That was quite fun.


We go back and get another quest…go kill 20 spiders. *sigh*. We go off in completely the wrong direction. I take the opportunity to find out if this is really a girl. I know guys that pretend to play as girls for free stuff (or maybe they get a kick out of it), and I just find it a bit weird. I just come straight out and ask, assuring her/him that ‘I’m not going to come on to you or anything, and I’m not giving you any free stuff’. Not exactly silver tongued, but I just want to cut to the chase. She assures me she is in-fact a she, and I believe her. We find the spiders in the end, and it’s all fairly uneventful. I have some fun with my rogue skill of ‘Sneak’ (or something like that), making me mostly invisible, but thats about it. Ahri then leaves ‘for a bit’, so I go back for another quest. I now have to go kill some Scarlet clan for their bracelets. I get utterly lost in the process, and the locals aren’t being too helpful.

I finally find the clan (after remembering how to follow instructions and use a compass), and get to try out a new skill I picked up – back stab. Basically, I sneak up to someone, and stab them in the back for loads of damage. This actually means I have to put a bit of skill in to get my kills, however, I soon realize its more effort than its worth, and I’m far better off just killing people normally.

I collect eight bracelets before I give up. I’m bored. Gaming should be fun, interesting, exciting. This is dull…very very dull.


Before everyone gets pissy with me, let me get some things straight. As much as I tried to go in with an open mind, I probably didn’t. I was hoping to be surprised and inspired by WoW, but as soon as it started asking me to go grinding, I switched off pretty quick. My prejudice to MMORPG’s runs far too deep now for me to be able to let some grinding pass me by. I went in not liking MMO’s, and whether it’s the best MMORPG or not, its irrelevant. If you dont like cheese, you can try the finest cheese ever made, you’re still not going to fucking like it. The cheese might be more subtle, more refined, and have a deeper flavor, and you might well appreciate that, but at the end of the day, it’s still cheese, and you still don’t like cheese.


I can see that WoW is different from the other MMO’s. I have no doubt it’s more varied, deeper, and more interesting, but it’s still restricted to those same MMO barriers. There is still grind, there is still a severe disconnection from the combat, and there is still a bloody subscription fee that I will never be prepared to pay. What’s more, the art style of WoW really grates on me. It just looks ugly to me, and while thats fairly shallow, it’s still a factor in my enjoyment of the game.


Something tells me (and some people actually) that about 2 hours of play just isn’t enough. Warcraft is deep, long winded, and slow paced. This isn’t a criticism, thats just the way it is, and thats how it should be, but I can’t get on with it being that slow. On the other hand, I have to think about rule 2. If the first 2 hours of any none MMO were full of grind and tedium, I wouldn’t put up with it, so why should I with Warcraft?


I can see why people like it, there is an obvious link to work and reward. The social aspect is fun, and no doubt deeper into the game it gets a lot more enjoyable, but I just can not deal with grinding, any of it. If I were going to play an MMO, from what I have seen, it would be WoW. It does seem to make everything easier and with less hassle, but, alas, here, my adventure ends.