Project Lore

In the past month or so, I've had a lot more time to really sink my nails into playing WoW. While getting caught up in the hype of gold, dungeons, scoring a hot new flying mount and figuring out how to best spend my emblems is fun, more and more I'm coming to realize that there are so many amazing, intricate aspects to gameplay that I've come to expect to the point of no longer appreciating.

Now let me preface this by saying that Blizzard knows its business. If executives want WoW to remain the top MMORPG out there, they undoubtedly know that they have to stay on top of their game and keep coming out with challenging, fun, cutting-edge material to keep players engaged. And, for the most part, they do. There's always insatiable audiences who constantly demand more content, but all in all, I think Blizzard pretty much tops the industry in keeping subscribers happy.

Let me also say that I am in no way informed about the actual process behind creating content. I'm happy with myself when I can just successfully get an addon functioning, so make what you will of that. So perhaps I'm in the minority when I say that sometimes, it's those simple things in the game that can most amaze me.

I think a lot of this has hit me during my recent jaunt in exploration. Sometimes the large size of a zone would be daunting while leveling. And yes, even annoying. Running back and forth across an expansive area to complete quests wasn't my favorite aspect of the game. But by the same token, I wouldn't have enjoyed the actual questing if everything was crammed into one tiny, crowded area. I remember when flight paths were a godsend. Each discovery of one of those tiny green exclamation points was reason to celebrate. But eventually, they grew to be expected. And when there were areas without enough flight points, it was disappointing because it would throw off my leveling agenda. Certainly I'm not the only one who has felt this way; the Patch 3.2 implementation of mounts at lower levels makes me think I'm in the majority, not the minority.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I suppose I also can be demanding of Blizzard. Why shouldn't I be? As subscribers, most of us probably do feel entitlement in some form or another. I just try not to be an ass about it because in the end, I'm still having fun playing. But its during those instances of annoyance that I try to remind myself of just how awesome this game is - without even going into the expansive lore, which alone is enough to draw me in.

When I can't find an NPC because (lightheaded isn't working and) their location isn't clear enough on a quest description, I instead find joy in the hunt. When I was leveling and couldn't squeeze in all the quests I wanted because they were so spread out, I instead popped into an inn and decided to make up the difference on rested XP another day. And (before the days of being able to trade BoP items with raid members) when I had to put in a GM ticket to swap a piece of loot, I focused on the fact that Blizzard cares enough about keeping players happy that they will do something trivial like allow me get a gear upgrade.

Now I'm even more amazed by some of this after reading WoW.com's report the other day that Blizzard tracks 180,000 bugs at any one time. That's a hell of a lot of content to be weeding through and still find time to make one individual's gameplay experience a priority.

So perk up and show some appreciation. We'll always find things to complain about, but there's so much more to be excited about. If you need further proof, just take a look at Project Lore's blog page on any given day and learn about what Blizz plans next.