Breakfast Topic: Are you a fan of Azeroth's sheer size or fine detail?
by Brandon Cox 
Sep 6th 2011 at 8:00AM
World of Warcraft certainly has a wide appeal. One need only look at the motley crew assembled on this news blog to take notice of that. Along with such a vast fan base come varying ways to appreciate the game world.
Depending on who you ask, Watchmen is either a great piece of popular literature, a great graphic novel, or an overhyped piece of junk. If you talk to somebody who falls in one of the former camps, you're likely to hear that one of the key reasons for the novel's success are the small details. Throughout the novel, a minor backstory involving Soviet aggression and the escalating chances of nuclear war in Dr. Manhattan's wake plays out in the form of newspaper headlines. It's one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it plot points, but it really helps to create a sense of reality in the novel's dystopian alternate history.
Such minor details are often the key to success in most artistic media -- and gaming is no different. Look no further than WoW's famed arguing NPCs Asric and Jadaar, or on a smaller scale the shifty vendor Griftah, whose magical amulets prove a little less than spellbinding. Such small aspects of a game world so massive can often go overlooked, yet it is there that the game finds its heart. On the other hand, few game worlds are as expansive and in constant flux as Azeroth. With four continents to explore and a growing story that evolves every few months, it's hard to downplay the brilliant sense of scale and scope that Blizzard has brought to Azeroth.
What sells the game world for you -- the details, or the big picture?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
mibu.work1 Sep 6th 2011 8:03AM
the boarders between zones could use some touching up, but the scale is truely a 'huge epic world' to quote yatzhee.
Artificial Sep 6th 2011 4:45PM
Interesting. I used to play Guild Wars, so to me, Azeroth seems kinda dinky and poorly detailed. It's substantially smaller than Tyria, not even considering Cantha and Elona.
Philster043 Sep 7th 2011 5:03AM
I've played & beat Guild Wars and all its expansions in a two-year period and now played World of Warcraft two years & became Loremaster on two different factions and strongly disagree.
It's taken me far longer to see all of WoW than GW. Also, whatever intrigue there is to be found in Tyria (plus Elona and Cantha) are restricted mostly to quests and the quest-givers and the main story. In WoW you can find new details everywhere you go. Including underwater... which GW can't offer. You can't cross rocks in GW, can't swim underwater, can't climb mountains.
To each their own though. You might've enjoyed GW's lore and landscapes more, which is fine. I enjoyed GW for what it was, but WoW is a far more encompassing game world in my opinion. GW2 may be just as epic, however.
Nina Katarina Sep 6th 2011 8:08AM
It's the scale, obviously. If you're at all a completionist, there's always one more profession you could be levelling, one more achievement to grind, one more mount to collect.
Revnah Sep 6th 2011 8:09AM
Definitely a combination of both. Back in the day, I used to play the browser-based game Runescape. One thing that always annoyed me was that you could walk/run from one end of the world to the other in a very short time. These were *continents* that you were meant to cross. It just didn't feel real.
When I first started in WoW, the size of the world was awe-inspiring, and I've managed to keep a sense of that. Even with faster flying it still takes a while to get to a place on the opposite end of a continent. Walking for the first levels, and then riding ground mounts to 60, reminds me even more of the awe and wonder I felt upon first entering Azeroth.
At the same time, it's the details that I love. Things like the rock paintings in the mountains high above Red Rock in Mulgore, or Shatterspear Vale which was hidden and almost inaccessible until Cataclysm. There is so much love for detail, even in places that few players will ever see and appreciate. I remember first discovering the village of the Shatterspears and thinking "I really love Blizzard for this".
TL;DR: It's the world I'm in love with, and the details that keep my interest and make me smile every day.
Daco Sep 6th 2011 12:35PM
Agree on the combination of both.
I was actually thinking about this very thing the other day. I was camping Lil Timmy's spawn spot in Stormwind, and thought about how it's little things like Timmy that make this so much fun. Here's a NPC that randomly spawns every 2-3 hours and whose only significance is to provide the opportunity to get a companion pet that has no effect on game play. And yet, here I am constantly checking his spawn location every time I'm in SW, or in this case leveling my fishing so as to keep an eye on the spot. And it's not Timmy per se; it's that there are so many Lil Timmys in the world of greater Azeroth that help keep me interested.
At the same time, in this day of old world flying and getting mounts much earlier than in days of old, it's easy to forget how large this world is. I love to think back to my first character 5 years ago (a night elf, natch), and before I even knew what addons were, much less having a map addon that would spoil things for me. I remember first setting foot at Auberdine and looking at the world map. All I could see in detail was Nordrassil and a tiny part of Darkshore. Everything else on both continents was this mysterious blank void. What a great feeling that was to think about how much exploration and discovery lay ahead.
HunterFromTheStart Sep 6th 2011 8:15AM
I love the little details, the little easter eggs. Of course, I always find more to do, making it a bit intimidating. But the overall picture, it's almost impossible to see, which means it's all the small things.
DarkmoonPodcast Sep 6th 2011 8:27AM
I'm torn between the choices here, but would have to say the details considering the overall size of the game. There have been some games out there that have size but no real detail. Granted, there are a few void spots out there, but the game has almost every nook and cranny filled with something.
MattKrotzer Sep 6th 2011 8:23AM
The big picture stuff keeps me coming back, but it's the small things that hooked me.
When I first started playing, I was AMAZED by the depth of details in even small things, like getting drunk. I laughed incessantly when I first saw the screen get fuzzier and fuzzier, then noted that my walking was no longer a perfect straight line.... and then even more when I realized that mobs "con" at a lower level when you're drunk, giving you "beer muscles" and thinking you can take on things that are stronger than they appear.
So much thought going into something so insignificant to the game as a whole. I knew this was a game I'd love. 6 years later, and I'm still hooked!
MrJackSauce Sep 6th 2011 8:30AM
The details
There could be so much more happening all over Azeroth. Everywhere you look everything is very static, outside of Orgrimmar or course.
I envisioned with cataclysm and all the hype; an immersive world.
This blacksmith doing that and this warrior coming up to him and getting it fixed after a hard days work out in the swamp of sorrows.
A goblin engineer is blowing himself up at various intervals out in desolace while trying to find a good mix of bone and dynamite.
I dunno. What I come up with never sounds as good as what I'm thinking when I'm actually looking at the game, but you get the picture i hope :)
I AM NOT COMPLAINING I LOVE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE. But like everyone else I had my own expectations attached :)
razion Sep 6th 2011 8:43AM
It's the little things that do it for me--and I love trying to find each and every one of them. Things like ships stuck on floating space-rocks in the Twisting Nether just a walk away from the rim of Outland are the sorts of things I love about the game. It gives the game a sense of adventure that I can find just about anything if I look hard enough.
I guess the size of the world ties into that in that I have to look through a large world in order to find all of these small things--but it's definitely the small things that do it, because otherwise, why look? I'm the type of person who would look through the woods for ruins, but wouldn't step foot in that same woodland otherwise. It's the thrill of actually finding something, rather than the journey for the find, that I find is really what makes it for me, although I'm sure some people love the journey just as much as the find, if not more. :)
Mortenebra Sep 6th 2011 9:09AM
I suppose in a way, the size of the world was impressive-- back in the day when using a taxi meant you were leaving one region for another and you could make yourself lunch while you flew. But it's all of the small things that keep me enthralled with the game. There are the pop culture/Earth-based references, the puns, the conversations between NPCs, the Easter eggs, the hidden nooks, even the quest texts (which often contain many of the aforementioned things).
When I think of "things that I'm fond of in the game," it's not the fact that my sandbox is ginormous. It's stuff like the fruit vendor and Cro in Lower City of Shattrath; or that my Elwynn Lamb gets eaten by a random wolf from nowhere. Lately with the talk of transmogrification, guildmates and I have been linking stuff we find that either looks really cool or really ridiculous. When the Armory still had the different animations for character sheets, I got the chance to notice my hunter reaching back for an arrow, then nock it to her bow, draw the bowstring back, and let it fly. Freezing my character in mid-reload is still my favorite stance.
And that's the sort of thing I love about this game. The amount of detail that goes into the game is amazing. There are still moments when I say, "Wow, they really thought of everything!"
ravyncat Sep 6th 2011 9:09AM
I love the details.
In Loch Modan there is a cave filled with robot chickens. Evil sentient robot chickens that will attack you at the appropriate level.
The barbershop in SW has gnome skeletons under the floor in the upper room. No info given as to what the hell went on there.
I love the weird Goldshire kids. Whatever is up with them...they are creepily awesome.
A mushroom in Zangermarsh has a human looking skeleton next to a hookah. I always wondered if it was Alice.
Ok...so most of my favorite details seem to have a creepy undertone but I love the happy things too. I love exploring and finding new neat things. They are aren't essential--just cool.
MisterRik Sep 6th 2011 11:40AM
A couple of my favorite details like this are found in Nagrand, on floating rocks:
On a small floating island above Skysong Lake, just south of the Throne of Elements, there is what appears to be an old murder scene. There's an apple tree, a crate somebody was using to gather the apples ... and a skeleton sitting against the tree trunk with a big axe pinning its skull to the tree. It looks like the apple picker was taking a nap against the tree and somebody came up and whacked him.
The next floating island to the south, close to Garadar, has what looks like a smallish, dragonlike skeleton embedded in the dirt several feet below another tree.
Marius W. Sep 6th 2011 5:19PM
Dont get me wrong, the revamp of Vanilla was great and I enjoy being able to fly pretty much anywhere other than the belf zones.
What I do miss is the exploring. Yes, it is still there but they closed up and put up walls for a lot of it. Once you could sneak into places like the kara crypt. The hours and hours and hours I spent trying to see the ironforge airfield.
Now you can fly anywhere and there aren't really secret places anymore. I liked the secret places. I want them back.
I know Blizz didnt like it when we visited places they tried to hide from us, but it was all out of appreciation for what they did.
The Kara Crypt is still there and it sucks that it has bars up and no way in. What a great place to just hang out in. What a waste of a lot of good art too.
Gendou Sep 6th 2011 9:14AM
Both, to be honest.
Because rarely is such a LARGE world realized so completely with such attention to SMALL details.
Sure, I remember Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. It was HUGE. It was also very empty. Or repetitive. Or procedurally generated.
Or, in the case of the horrible, horrible dungeons: All three. For 1996, it was fantastic. I still love the game, and the series.
But it also reminded me that bigger doesn't mean better if the details aren't there.
Blizzard tends to hand-lay their terrain, and it shows. Sure, the buildings and caves tend to get reused, but they generally feel different because even if the layout is the same, the contents tend to be different. (plus they added some new cave layouts in Cataclysm, which helped)
Blizzard has always been fantastic when it comes to details, and World of Warcraft proves they can devote themselves to that attention to detail even in such a large world as Azeroth.
Hal Sep 6th 2011 9:16AM
I'll take the opposite vein and say it's the big picture that gives me the most satisfaction with the game. Saving bunnies and bears, finding someone's long-lost family heirloom, driving off bandits, those things can be fun. I don't play the game for that stuff, though; I play to be a part of great things, to kill the Lich King, save Azeroth, stop an invasion, and be a capital "H" Hero.
Sometimes I feel like a lot of the emphasis has fallen off of that stuff.
Yes, if you raid, you get to kill Arthas and Ragnaros and Nefarian (again) and Cho'gall (again), but all of the non-killing stuff no longer happens in the foreground. I haven't read the novels or the short stories or the comics, and I'm surely not the only one. When do I get to see the politics of the factions play out? When do I get to have a sense of the scale of the conflict at hand? I just don't get that sense anymore, especially when the questing experience constantly side-tracks.
Shinae Sep 6th 2011 10:17AM
I don't know... in the 80-85 questing experience, it neither side-tracks nor takes away your character's personal heroism. These zones tout your character as "The Hero" to the point of being overdone.
After all, from one's perspective, it is one's character who has single-handedly awakened the Ancients on Mount Hyjal, recovered the fragments of the World Pillar, been the one to represent the Earthen Ring to Therazane, saved the Ramkahen Tol'vir from Alakir's plans, and... all that stuff that happens in Twilight Highlands.
Some of the new 1-60 level questlines have similar stories about your character taking center-stage as the hero, too.
Shinae Sep 6th 2011 10:20AM
I just thought I'd add that I agree that too much of the important plot points of the game have been told outside of the game, in books and comics.
Hillazon Sep 6th 2011 10:25AM
That's pretty much one of the major problems with Cataclysm in a nutshell. All the lore & plot was outsourced to novels and comics.
In Wrath I knew exactly what was going on, who Arthas was, and why we wanted to kill him. Epic.
In Cataclysm, had I not read The Shattering, I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on. And even with that knowledge, Cataclysm was pretty thin gruel.