(Pretend you’re reading this last night.)

It’s true; I’ve had Internet access since the 10th. I like to think I’ve been too busy to update, but I think laziness plays a much larger factor than busyness. In any case, this update should be several degrees of massive, with an extra helping of large dangling precariously from the top. Watch as I successfully blend a wide range of (video game related) topics into a single update, effortlessly transitioning between subjects and holding your interest throughout. Or don’t. It’s probably easier on both of us that way.

So, World of Warcraft. It’s difficult, almost impossible even, to describe World of Warcraft to someone not intimately familiar with the MMORPG genre. WoW is not the grand revolution in online gaming many of us, myself included, have been so desperately waiting for. It doesn’t stray too far from the gameplay conventions first established by Meridian 59, Ultima Online, and Everquest nearly a decade ago (and the MUDs before that). And it is criminally excellent in spite of them.

World of Warcraft is very much a traditional MMORPG. The level treadmill, the time sinks, and the monthly bill are all there, but they’ve been stripped to their very essences and built up again in such a way that it’s now nearly impossible to see where the seems once laid. To describe what makes World of Warcraft so much fun is to describe tiny design decisions and minute changes which eventually add up to a noticeably different whole. Quests, despite being varied and generally amusing, ground you to the world, for once giving you a reason to kill those wolves mindlessly wandering about the landscape or pushing you to move on and explore the massive world around you. Trade skills are no longer a hit or miss gamble, but a guaranteed success, given that you have the materials needed. Though only eight races, and just as many character classes, are available to you, each is distinctly unique and surprisingly fun to play (even the priest and warrior are interesting!).

Simply put, the game is fun. Not so simply put, the game makes you feel like a hero the second you step foot into the world. You’re never mindlessly killing rats in a basement or hunting roaming dogs. Instead, you’re fighting huge, menacing creatures from the get go, taking on and completing quests which leave an impact not only on your character, but on the gameworld. Additionally, you’re working towards more than just your next level, as you’re also working to complete a quest or two (or twenty), building up your trade skills (soon to be professions), gaining reputation with a specific faction (as of the next patch), increasing your weapon and defensive skills, earning talent points, and gaining loot. And all of it is inter-related. You’re simultaneously slaying murlocs for coral which is part of a quest related recipe, earning experience, finding items, and searching for trade skill materials at the same time. Every few swings you get a little better at using that sword and a little better at defending yourself, and once you’re done you’ll head back to town, up your reputation with the local NPCs, and gain some more abilities from that last level up. The game offers a tremendous sense of progress, surpassing even Diablo 2 and its famous skill tree system (which returns as the talent tree) in that regard. And yet you’re playing for more than the inevitable ding/gratz. There’s things in the world that need doing, and you’re the only one who’s going to do them.

World of Warcraft is also a beautiful game. It is a beautiful game like few other games are beautiful games. Personally, I’d call it a better looking game than Doom 3, Half-Life 2, or Quake 4 (honestly, have you seen those screenshots?). It might not push as many polygons or feature fully bump mapped textures, vertex lighting, or normal mapping, but it has one thing few games really have going for them: consistent, and by all accounts brilliant, art direction. The small batch of screenshots I generated over the two and a half days I spent in Azeroth (which now refers only to the world and not the nation according to official Warcraft lore) can be found here. There’s nothing in there that’s incredibly noteworthy, though I’d suggest checking out that view from Ironforge. And even those screenshots really don’t do the game justice. World of Warcraft is really a game that deserves to move. Sure, you might look at a shot and see nothing more than decent quality textures wrapped over low polygon models, but see the game in motion, watch the trees sway in the wind, see a coyote chase down a jack rabbit, fly by a cascading waterfall on the back of a feathered gryphon, and we’ll see how long you maintain that Doom 3 is the prettier game.

Perhaps the best aspect of World of Warcraft is that it takes place in the world of Warcraft (SHOCK!). Though anyone, from the casualist of casual gamers to the hardest of the hardcore will be able to pick up the game, play the hell out of it, and enjoy every minute of it (even in its very unfinished (by Blizzard’s standards) state), WoW is truly a game for the universe’s fans. Human players begin their lives at Northshire Abby. Yes, that Northshire Abby. A few levels later, as they enter Stormwind, they’ll find themselves in the Valley of Heroes, its sides lined with statues of mighty warriors who lived and died by their command in Warcraft games past. Should they hop on a gryphon and head to Ironforge, they’ll fly past Blackrock Spire and may even catch a glimpse of the Blackrock Stronghold itself. Night Elf players will run along roads protected by Ancient Protectors and enter cities populated by Ancients of War. Undead players will travel through the ruins of Lordaeron, and the very room in which Medivh delivered his warning to King Terenas, before entering The Undercity. World of Warcraft is a world saturated with the lore of three prior games, two expansions, one cancelled game, and several novels, and it’s a world many, many people will feel honored to finally experience first hand come some still very mysterious point in the future (by money’s on December).

Speaking of money (see what I did there?), I finally got around to reading Sharkey’s excellent Sims 2 feature over at 1up today. It’s not like I’ve had a host of other pressing matters which desperately needed my attention and were thus preventing me from reading it until now. I’m just lazy, is all. I think I mentioned this before. Anyway, the feature pretty much convinced me to order the game, so be forewarned, as it might cause similar results in you, easily persuaded reader.

None of you remember reading about that video game special, titled The Video Game Revolution, that aired on PBS a week or two ago. It was reported at Games Are Fun and everything. Tonight I’m just illogically turning the wrong words into links, by the way. Well I do (remember the show, not turn the wrong words into links, though I do that as well). In fact, I watched the damn thing, in all its two hours of commercial free glory. And you know what? I was extremely impressed.

The show basically served as an answer to anyone who’s ever asked, “What’s up with those video game things?” Besides acting as an abbreviated history of the medium, hitting historically important games from Tennis for Two and Spacewar to Super Mario Brothers, Everquest, and GTA 3. The show followed the industry through the arcade boom, the industry crash, and all the way through the present. Additionally, it also covered aspects of the gaming community, if there even is such a thing, such as LAN parties, online clans, girl (grrl) gamers, violence in video games (surprise, surprise), and Lily, a blind girl with an extreme love for Pokemon. It was all extremely interesting, even to self-proclaimed losers like me who already knew everything that was being presented. PBS even managed to obtain exclusive interviews with a multitude of industry giants including Shigeru Miyamoto, Ralph Baer, Peter Molyneux, Will Wright, Sid Meir, Chris Taylor, and Seamus Blackley amongst others.

However, the program was far from perfect. For one thing, they constantly showed the wrong footage when talking about specific games. They showed much more footage from Super Mario Brothers 2 (US) and Super Mario World when discussing Super Mario Brothers and showed clips from Counterstrike when discussing America’s Army. The Legend of Zelda 2 was shown in place of A Link to the Past, and every single piece of footage used during the Playstation montage was from a Playstation 2 game. Also, the stuff about video game violence, which kept surfacing and resurfacing over the course of the show, was pretty one and a half sided, which still makes it infinitely better than anything else ever televised on the subject. The conclusion they seemed to reach was “video games sure are violent” rather than “video games make you rape your mother and kill your neighbors,” which is refreshing, I guess.

Finally the closing segment on MMORPGs, their past, present, and future, as all as the social problems which might arise out of their rise, was one of the best elements of the show. It was extremely interesting and extremely intelligent, with many of the industry greats having lots to say on the subject. Overall, the show was far better than anything that’s ever aired on G4 and Tech TV because it treated the industry and the medium with the respect it deserved. It wasn’t EXTREME in any way and featured a host 99% of the world wouldn’t readily associate with video games. It was far from perfect, of course. There were some factual errors and the aforementioned editing problems, but it was still the best show about video games I’ve ever seen, all hyperbole aside. If you happen to catch it, I strongly recommend sitting down to watch it through to the end.

I wonder how many people will read this thing up until this point. My guess: not many. Though we’ve certainly had longer updates in the past.

Finally, my copy of Halo seems to have stopped functioning. It’s not a problem with the CD or the game itself, but with Microsoft. At first, I thought the problem stemmed from my using the ATI Catalyst 4.9 beta drives, as they lack a WHQL signature (or something to that effect). However, having downloaded the final version of the very same drivers, the problem seems to persist. I guess this means I won’t be murdering any Covenant any time soon.

P.S. This was all gravely important