Regular readers will by now know that Van Hemlock is a very solo-friendly website, and whines about Enforced Grouping any chance it gets; mostly because of stuff like this:
Van Hemlock: Another Typical Day At The Office
So having heard how solo-friendly World of Warcraft also is, I was already looking forward to getting stuck in. I did my homework and decided, on the basis of previous experience, on a pet-class, to further remove any need for human interaction from my massively multiplayer online experience. Hunter or Warlock. I picked Warlock in the end, mostly because Gnomes are cool, but unable to be Hunters.
And off I went, exploring, fighting, questing and all that stuff, bathed in the wonder of a new world. I did well, much better than I was expecting. My last previous game of this type was Everquest II, and progress in WoW seems much less a matter of blood, sweat and tears, and just something that happens by accident while working through various quite interesting quests. Of course I’m still in the ‘honeymoon’ period, and at lower levels these games are generally more fun and involved anyway, so it’s hard to be objective, but on the whole it does seem to be a bit more casual-friendly than normal.
However, there did seem to be something missing, and it took me until I encountered ‘The Deadmines’, the first of the instanced dungeon-crawls, to work out what that was. I was actually missing grouping. It turns out that pretty much all classes can solo fairly well, and there doesn’t really seem to be a need to group ever – with the possible exception of the dungeons. I joined a party and we had a go, but it quickly became apparent that as a Warlock, I didn’t have an awful lot to offer a group. Real tanks work better than my pet and real Mages work better for nuking than I do. Surprisingly frustrating, all in all.
It’s odd, but precisely because I don’t have to group, I find myself actually wanting to, and in the end this got to me so much that I hung up the Warlock, and started again, as a Priest, purely so I could be more useful in groups! As a reward for my selflessness, it turned out that contrary to most fanstay MMOs, Priests, although not quite as efficient as Warlocks, are perfectly capable of soloing as well, if need be. Oh the irony.
For me though, it’s a bit of an epiphany, because after many years of Rallos Zek induced paranoia and trauma, I’m finally starting to trust Other Players again. After a few tours of duty bringing The Holy Light to the masses of Westfall, Loch Modan and Darkshore, I’m also starting to realise that quests aren’t always the real adventures; sometimes people are. One thing Blizzard do seem to have gotten right, is my own long-held assertion that grouping should be a social and bonus thing, not a required and normal thing.
And of course, people are funny, whether they mean to be or not, and are always a good source of blogable material. More soon!