Come and play World of Warcraft

Randy Vowles sits cross-legged in a computer chair, a keyboard balanced in his lap and a flat screen monitor on the desk in front of him. He clicks the space bar, making his character in World of Warcraft, an Orc Death Knight named Rhime jump up and down.

“Played’s back,” says Daniel Abeyta, looking across the room to Vowles. She adjusts the mouthpiece of her headset back into place and taps the space bar of her own computer. Her Tauren Druid Olebessie jumps up and down along with Rhime.

All but one member of the 10-person team is huddled around the same corner of a stone island surrounded by lava. Across the stone waits Sartharion, a giant black dragon.

Played hops his way across the lava to join the group on the island and everyone casts protective magic and abilities to prepare for the battle.

Rhime looks above Sartharion to the cliffs and two blue dragons waiting above the lava.

Once Sartharion is attacked, Vowles knows he has about 90 seconds before the first of the two descends upon the group. It’s his job to tank, or to keep the blue dragons attacking him, while Olebessie tanks Sartharion.

This allows the rest of the group to center on damaging all three dragons and keep Rhime and Olebessie alive with healing spells.

Vowles leans over points at Abeyta’s computer screen, “You wanna be right there so Sartharion’s breath-weapon doesn’t hit the healers.”

WoW is a massive-multiplayer-online game that started in November of 2004. Since its release, it has become one of the most popular MMOs ever and has people of all ages and walks of life playing.

In WoW players can kill beasts, fight against other players, band together to take on a powerful foes or just chat with friends.

Vowles and Abeyta have banded together with ten other players in a raid called the Obsidian Sanctum and are ready to fight the final boss Sartharion.

The battle is difficult, even with 10 players, but Sartharion will drop more powerful items, or raid-quality items that can only be found by doing raids.

Olebessie shifts into bear-form giving her the extra armor needed to take the massive damage that Sartharion will be dealing out. The rest of the group prepares to do damage to Sartharion and heal Olebessie and Rhime.

A hunter casts “Misdirection” on Olebessie, transferring all the threat they would gain by damaging Sartharion for the next three arrow shots to Olebessie. The hunter shoots the dragon.

Sartharion charges across the stone to Olebessie while the rest of the group moves into position.

About 11.5 million people around the world log-on and play WoW as of Dec. 23rd, 2008 according to a press release by Blizzard Entertainment, its creators.

The players of WoW say they know why this game is fun to play, fulfilling, and time consuming.

At the start

“WoW was very popular at beta,” says Vowles, referring to the beta stage of game development.

Beta is usually where players are allowed to play-test the game in its last stage of development.

“A lot of people wanted to find the new game,” says Vowles, a 10-year veteran of MMOs.

Vowles, a pharmacy clerk, began playing the MMO Everquest in 1999 and played for five years.

He switched over to WoW to get away from the second job he felt Everquest had become.

“I can just jump in and achieve goals,” says Vowles about WoW.

A former player, Benjamin Priest says WoW was also presented in a manner that was easy to understand.

Priest, a pharmacy technician, began playing WoW at the games launch in 2004. He said he played because the game was new and streamlined.

New content, new time-sink

WoW has spawned two expansions: The Burning Crusade was released on Jan. 16, 2007, and Wrath of the Lich King was released on Nov. 13, 2008.

Wrath of the Lich King broke the all-time sales record for a single day, selling over 2.8 million copies in November of 2008, according to a Blizzard Entertainment press release. The record was previously held by The Burning Crusade.

With each new expansion and some updates, Blizzard Entertainment has released more content to keep its current players interested and pull new players into the expanding world.

Paul Dauffenbach, a security guard, says there is great variety in WoW. “There’s solo, playing with a group of friends, player versus player, and 10-or-25 man raids,” says Dauffenbach, who also started playing WoW in 2004.

Though Dauffenbach, who plays a Blood-Elf Warlock, says he prefers solo play or playing with a friend.

According to research on MMOs done by Nick Yee, a Stanford Graduate, Dauffenbach falls in with many other players.

Yee’s research, called the Daedalus Project, gathered data for over ten years on people who played MMOs. Solo content, completing quests and killing computer controlled enemies, received the highest average score in a survey.

“I like raiding,” says Vowles, talking about large 10-or-25 person raids, “it offers the highest potential [for reward] for the biggest amount of people.”

Abeyta feels the same way, saying that raiding allows the accomplishment of “big goals” and also gives the best equipment.

WoW has a total of 22 unique raids, ten from The Burning Crusade, and five from Wrath of the Lich King.

Why World of Warcraft

According to MMOGCHART.com a website that tracks the populations of MMO games; Everquest, which came out in 1999 and is the oldest MMO peaked with 550,000 players in 2004. The second highest MMO population, according to MMOGCHART.com, was Lineage, which rose to over 3 million players in 2004.

The reasons people play WoW come down to the specific niche that draws the player to the game.

“WoW is easy to pick up, difficult to master,” says Priest.

“It’s the goal finishing,” says Abeyta, who also enjoys the new achievement system.

“Final Fantasy XI you can’t really solo,” says Dauffenbach, “WoW you can play solo whenever.”

Playing a Death Knight, a new heroic class in WoW, is like playing a hero, says Vowles.

“I want the pets!” says Abeyta, speaking of the collectible pets that WoW has in the game.

And the maxim that many WoW players say, “Can 11 million people be wrong?”