World of Warcraft

Vastly more complicated than just hitting a lever for a banana, World of Warcraft is an adventure game with a great story that unfolds as you play. If you grew up loving fantasy books such as Lord of the Rings, and social interaction games like Dungeons and Dragons, you will probably like World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft may not be appropriate for uptight, impatient, junior-college behavioral psychology students, who were never allowed to play games as a child and therefore have no understanding of their value.

Cheers!

Edit: Revamps and additions ruined the game, had to walk away.

Excitement, adventure, and amazement unfolded when the game first came out, like opening the gates of a wonderland. Focused on polished game play and community, World of Warcraft learned much from its declining predecessors and impressively has this original version in tact. Role play servers were for role-players and was a norm both in random interaction as well as guilds.

Customer service is a definite highlight, changes are positive as they are in response to player's interests/requests. Finding quests can be a bit of a challenge at times and in the series, this version is the most difficult to survive questing especially solo.

Although Classic is still around today, the wave of nostalgia players have come and gone (now that Burning Crusade Classic is the rage). This means there's not really much of a community anymore as well as little to buy/sell at the auction house. Few role players can be found on the role play server. On the upside, there's no competition for questing, nuisance chat or spam, so the world feels big again. Difficulty is up, finding groups, earning gold, and a good-fit guild is down.

So, World of Warcraft... is it a great game you can spend days, weeks, months and even years on? The answer lies somewhere in between. I've had some really really great times playing wow and I've had some really really boring moments. The secret to loving WoW is to keep it somewhat at bay, do not let it ruin your life. I admit there were some weeks and even months where I did nothing but play WoW. And because of that I got so sick of it I hated myself when I was playing. WoW is highly addictive and it can consume you. I have friends who have done nothing but play WoW for over a year. 10+ hours of gaming every day of the week. I know for a fact that for lots and lots of people this is what they do. You always want that next thing which is slightly better than the one you've already got. You want to see your character looking all hot and being able to churn out lots of damage or keep the members in your party alive so you can prevail and yell "Victory!".

I've had many great times and met a lot of great people during my time in Azeroth and Kalimdor. I started out as Horde and it'll always be dear to me to see trolls, taurens, undead and fellow orcs. But this game takes its toll. You have to decide on how much time you want to spend on it. Level 1 to 60 is great for casual gamers who play some hours a day a few days of the week. And then when you hit level 60 you can just chill out and do the 5-10 man instances for the best and nicest blue gear possible from them, and have a hell of a good time doing it with good friends. But after you've done all that you have three choices. Option 1: Continue with that character and get him/her in a raiding guild to do some ZG/MC/BWL/AQ/Naxx and outdoor bosses. But this is not for everyone. Here you have to spend about 5 hours on each raid night and often several days of the week. And few people will not see the valid logical reasons for this. There must be a better way to spend your real life time on. Option 2: You continue playing but on another character. Either you want to try out the opposite faction or just another class so you can experience the game from a different point of view. Downside here is that the game won't feel as fresh as before and leveling can become a bit boring as you've done most of the quest before. Option 3: Simple. You logout and cancel your subscription and you quit playing WoW. Here you say to yourself, it was a great game and fun while it lasted. But it's time to move on.

World of Warcraft is a great game if you can manage to control your game time. You meet great people and it's fun to see your character getting stronger and wiser. But after a while (after level 60 sometime) you find yourself at a crossroad. It's up to you which road you want to follow.

Gold is easier to amass.

The new LFG system is one of the best additions ever to the game.

Recruit a friend bonuses and perks make for fast leveling.

Heirloom items bound to account make leveling Alts fun and very smooth.

The Game has never been this well rounded before.

I've played since original launch and have never had this much of a good time playing.

The new LFG system is painless and you are able to gain emblems with extreme ease.

Recruiting a friend makes the whole game a lot more fun. each of you gain perks and special abilities.

cant wait for the next expansion.

For those of you that are familiar with behaviorism, this game is one big operant conditioning experiment on YOU.

It is a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. You don't know how many responses (ie - attacks on an enemy, or whatever) it will take to get the payoff (experience, treasure, or just the buzz from watching a creature die). A VR schedule produces the highest rate of responding, in chimpanzee, pigeons... or YOU. That is why it is the most common schedule of reinforcement in the game.

The game also uses fixed interval schedules, when certain tasks can only be completed at certain times of the day or month.

One of the keys in a reinforcement schedule is to not have the payoff require too many responses, otherwise there is ratio strain (too much effort for too little reward).

The game gets around this by creating a strong reinforcement history, having a small Variable Ratio schedule maybe VR4 (an average of 4 attacks will kill a creature at level 1 or 2). Once you have been conditioned, the reinforcement schedule is "thinned" (it takes 10, then 20, then 40, then 200, then 1,000 attacks to get the reward).

"Thinning" is done slowly - they are training you to do more and more for less and less - one step at a time.

Behaviorists have trained monkeys to press a lever 10,000 times for a single banana in this manner. They will press the lever until they tear muscles, break their own bones, bleed themselves, for hours.

Are you feeling smart now? For more information, look up behaviorism, or reinforcement theory, on the net.

When you are done reading, delete your character, cancel your account, and chop the game disks into small pieces with a sharp pair of scissors.