Writing: Like I just said, repetitive sidequests are part and parcel of the RPG experience. But most RPGs (the good ones, at least) coat their sidequests in a veneer of good writing. For example, in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, almost every quest involves traipsing to some fort or cave, killing everything, and possibly collecting an important item or two. What Oblivion does to hide the soul-crushing sameness of these quests is to bookend them with context. You might be retrieving a lost artefact for a god, or collecting treasure for a wealthy buyer. Whatever the reason, the quests become more than just repetitive tasks; they have meaning.

WoW doesn’t care for meaning. When you click on a questgiver, you’re treated to a few paragraphs of pedestrian prose which offers some vague context for the task. When the quest is complete, you’re given some congratulatory remarks and a reward. The writing is so basic to be almost irrelevant, and it’s impossible to care. This is exacerbated by the fact that most people don’t even read the text. All they’re interested in the reward and the experience. Which brings me to my next point.

Incentive: Possibly my favourite RPG (and one of my favourite games) is Planescape: Torment. The game opens with you waking up on a mortuary slab and discovering that you’re immortal. Based, as it is, on the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset, levels are almost irrelevant. There’s also only a few areas in which you’re forced to fight; most of the game is based around conversation and decision-making. All of this means that the players’ incentive for continuing is not, “When will I reach the next level?” Instead, the incentive is finding the answers to the game’s questions: “Why I immortal? Who did this? How can I get my mortality back?”

World of Warcraft is the complete opposite. There is no complex narrative, no questions that demand answers. The player’s only incentive is the next level up. This is fine for some people; the success of games like Tetris and Bejeweled prove that people like mindless monotony. But a lot of gamers (including, I suspect, many WoW players) want more than cutting up swathes of woodland critters.

Role-playing: This is perhaps my biggest gripe with WoW. While many still cling to so-called “RPG elements” as the defining mechanic of the genre, the RPG is fundamentally about assuming and defining a role. Planescape: Torment, Mass Effect, Oblivion, the Baldur’s Gate series and countless others all allow the player to craft a unique persona and directly impact the events of the game.

Not so in World of Warcraft. There are role-playing realms, but these only require that the player observe guidelines concerning character names and out of character chat. There is no scope for actual role-playing; the only character-based decisions you could feasibly make would concern which quests to do, or whether or not your character would wantonly attack a certain type of spider. Despite WoW’s status as an MMORPG, the focus is still on mindless quests and beating on funny-looking animals.

I understand that many of the problems I’ve discussed in this series are a result of WoW being a MMOG. There are simply too many players with varying system specs and levels of commitment to warrant deeper gameplay mechanics. But as one of those “game as art” hippies I can’t help but think that, with the absolutely colossal amounts of money pouring into their bank accounts, it would not be difficult for Blizzard to improve the overall quality of their game. A talented team of writers and gameplay incentives beyond simple experience points could only help to World of Warcraft away from the object of scorn it’s rapidly becoming.

Of all the many aspects of WoW, the Horde is the one I find most interesting. Partly this is because everyone I know who plays WoW is part of the Alliance, so the Horde appeals to the non-conformist in me. But mainly it’s the races. While the Alliance allows you to play as the standard RPG races of Human, Elf, Dwarf, etc., the Horde gives you the chance to play as what are otherwise conventional RPG cannonfodder. There are Orcs, Trolls, big Minotaur guys, and zombies.

Creating my second character, I choose to join the legions of the living dead. The Forsaken, as they’re known in WoW, are an oppressed and misunderstood minority, a situation they respond to by killing everything. I like them already. I choose to stick with the Rogue class; the Night Elves’ contribution to the noble thieving professions may have been rubbish, but perhaps if I stick with the class it’ll surprise me.

Another intro video. The camera pans through a supposedly haunted forest; a variety of demonic-looking animals scurry around. The movie-trailer voice natters on about banshee queens and underground cities. Eventually the camera enters the small settlement of Deathknell, charges down the corridors of a ruined house and comes to rest behind me.

Turns out I’m recent addition to the army of darkness. There’s no explanation of how I became undead; I’m just some poor schmuck who died and was recruited by a horde of ravenous zombies. A kind of necromantic conscription.

I know the drill; I click on the nearby questgiver. My first task is to kill a random number of zombies lurking around outside this settlement.

Wait, what? Why am I killing zombies? I’m a zombie. I’m informed that these particular zombies are not civilised fellows like us, but “Mindless Ones”, nothing but unenlightened ghouls. Essentially, freelance zombies. It seems the undead are having union troubles.

Anyway, I begin the increasingly familiar routine of venturing into the forest, killing an arbitrary number of things and returning for congratulations. I do this several times; I’m sent out to eradicate spiders, demonic dogs and big bats. Eventually I collect enough loot to buy a whole new wardrobe, so I wader back to town to find a merchant.

While looking for shops, I come across something new: trainers. No, not stylish footwear, but characters with skills to impart. Each class has their own specific trainer, who will sell you a variety of class-specific abilities. My local Rogue trainer has several interesting abilities: backstab, steal and, most tempting, stealth.

Unlike the Night Elf’s hide in shadows ability, proper WoW stealth lets you move around undetected. This is especially useful when used in conjuction with the backstab skill, as that is only useable when behind an enemy.

I empty my bulging wallet and buy all the currently available skills I can. The Stealth ability is indeed better than the Night Elf’s, but Backstab leaves a lot to be desired. Enemies unaware of my presence move around so much that it’s difficult to time a backstab effectively. And in the middle of a fight it’s almost impossible to get behind an opponent. Stealing is also largely pointless. I can only steal from enemies, and they rarely have anything good on them.

With that said, it is nice to have some proper thieving abilities, even if they don’t reach my exacting standards. I decide it’s high time to blow this one horse town and set off in search if grander adventure. According to my map, there’s a larger settlement someway to the east. I make sure all my weapons and armour are up to scratch and head off into the big wide world.

The monster’s in this area of the forest are considerably stronger than those back at home, but luckily I gained quite a few levels performing mindless repetitive tasks for exclamation marks. There is one strange thing about the monsters here, though; they’re exactly the same as the ones in Deathknell. Except for their names. What might have been a Flabby Hellhound is now a Well-toned Helhound. Feasibly, if I were to reach a high enough level, I’d start encountering Ultra Mechanised Atomic Hellhounds.

After decimating several entire woodland populations, I reach the town of Brill. It’s larger than Deathknell, with a variety of shops, trainers, exclamation marks and other players. Having hardly walked three paces into town, one of these players asks me to duel him. I decline. Instantly, a message pops up in the communication centre at the bottom of the screen: “Plz duell me ”. I reply with a firm “no” and walk away quickly.

It’s in Brill that I come across the first semblance of a narrative in WoW. A questgiver on a horse wants me to deal with a group of Scarlet Crusaders. The Scarlet Crusaders are a medieval Christian-style military organisation apparently hell-bent on the eradication of the Forsaken. So obviously they have to be stopped.

The problem is, once I get to the Crusader camp, they seem more than happy to let me wander around unmolested. It’s only when I proceed to stab one of their number in the face that they become hostile. Which is quite reasonable, really. Are we sure that these Crusaders are the vile eaters of kittens they’re made out to be? It doesn’t really matter; I kill them all and return for my reward.

I do a few more of these Crusader quests. As they progress, I’m tasked with killing ever escalating numbers of them, or pilfering McGuffins from their camps. The Crusaders eventually become hostile (my reputation precedes me), and that’s when the problems start.

When facing off against multiple enemies, I like to use the Baldur’s Gate Strategy (so called because I first devised it whilst playing Baldur’s Gate). This involves edging just close enough to a group of enemies to lure a small number of them toward me without alerting the whole group. It’s a strategy that’s served me well over the years.

I can’t use the BGS in WoW, though. It’s as if, by virtue of my very existence, every enemy in a (stupidly wide) area knows I’m there. The problem comes to a head when I’m asked to take out a Crusader captain. He’s holed up in some fort and is, of course, surrounded by an entire battalion of Crusader cronies. Whenever I get within spitting distance the whole lot of them descent upon me like monkeys at a safari park. It’s all I can do get away without dying.

After countless attempts and one death (which, incidently, sends me to the nearest graveyard as a ghost, whereupon I must search for my corpse to rise again – I shit you not), I give up. And I don’t mean just the quest: I give up on World of Warcraft. This might seem like an extreme reaction to a problem that could have been solved with a few extra levels, but to tell you the truth, I’d been looking for an excuse to stop playing for several hours.

Find out why in Part Three, in which I discuss my many problems with World of Warcraft.

Part One

At the last count, Blizzard’s all-conquering MMORPG World of Warcraft had 11.5 million players. That’s more people than live in Belgium. Anything that garners a following that large will attract curiosity. From me, at least. That’s why I recently decided to give the WoW’s free trial a go. This is an account of my brief stay in Azeroth.

The first thing to decide (after installing the game and ignoring no less than three licence agreements) is which realm you want to join. Realms are like gameplay modes; each offers a different experience based on the players preferences. There are four types of realm: Normal, Player versus Player (PVP), Role-playing (RP), and Role-play PVP (RP-PVP).

Normal is your default playing experience: kills things, collect loot and complete quests, while your social life withers and dies. PVP lets players kill each other; I can only assume it consists entirely of high-level twats slaughtering every newbie they see. Role-playing is more in depth; you must stick to certain strict rules governing behaviour and communication. Finally, RP-PVP is high-level twats slaughtering newbies because it’s “in character”.

After weighing up my options, I choose Normal; this MMORPG lark is complicated enough already with some internet Dungeon Master watching my every move while a high-level twat stabs me in the face.

I’m then taken to the character creation screen. “Finally,” I say to myself. “This is what RPGs are all about.” Unfortunately, WoW offers one of the most basic character creation tools I’ve encountered. You can choose your race, class and hairstyle, and that’s your lot.

With those disappointingly slight tools at my disposal, I decide to be a Night Elf Rogue with purple hair. I chose to be a Rogue because ever since playing Thief: The Dark Project ten years ago, I’ve a soft spot for stealth-based characters, and the Night Elf race offers the ability to hide in shadow.

With that done I enter the game proper. I’m treated to an introductory video. We’re in a forest. The camera swoops through trees and little foresty houses as a deep film-trailer voice drones on about…stuff. Something about immortality, magical trees and druids. So far, so clichéd.

Eventually the camera settles behind my avatar, and I’m in control. I give the controls a little test. Movement with the arrow keys seems easy enough. Moving the camera by holding down the right mouse button seems unnecessarily awkward, but the mouse is mostly used for the cursor, so I guess it was unavoidable. There’s a jumble of icons at the button of the screen, but I assume I’ll learn what they all do as I play.

The game prompts me to speak with the “questgiver” in front of me. Questgivers are guys with big exclamation marks above their heads. It makes them look like they’ve just had a fantastic idea. Which, in a way, they have: get 11.5 million people to perform arbitrary tasks over and over again. Anyway, I click on the questgiver. Turns out he’s Elfy McPointyears and he wants me to kill some blue cats and a few orange pigs.

And so it begins. You see, quests in WoW fall under two categories. The first is “Collect X amount of McGuffins.” The second, like the quest I’d just been given, is “Kill X amount funny-looking things for whatever tenuous reason.”

The reason in this instance is because there’s too many blue cats and orange pigs. These Night Elves are quite violent for forest-dwelling hippies. But anyway, off I go to slaughter innocent animals. How very vegan of me.

Combat is simple. Click on an enemy and you start basic attacks. You can use abilities, either by clicking on the icons at the bottom of the screen, or by hitting their hotkeys. It’s suggested that each attack gives a certain number of combo points. Some abilities can only be used when a certain amount of combo points have been gained, and others do more damage based upon how many combo points you’ve chained together. It’s not very clear, though; sometimes I’ll think I’ve got X amount of combo points, but when I try and pull off an ability which uses them, I’ll be told I haven’t got enough.

The Night Elf’s hide in shadow ability is a bit pants, too. I turn invisible, but as soon as I move, the ability ends. I really can’t see the point, unless there are hidden lesbian slumber parties later on.

Whatever. I kill the required number of beasties and return to Elfy McPointyears. “Well done,” he says. “Here’s a wrist band.” Turns out you can get armour pieces for every conceivable part of the body: wrists, arms, legs, chest. I wonder if there are special cod pieces?

With my first quest under my belt, I wander off to find more. The area I’ve started in is built around a small settlement seemingly occupying a giant tree. There are ramps climbing up to various buildings in the branches, and other players and NPCs milling around. I find another exclamation mark and initiate a conversation.

“Dearie, dearie me,” moans Mrs. McPointyears (no relation). “My friend has gone missing, possibly next to a giant spider nest. Find him.” Serves him right for hanging around giant spider nests. But hey, that’s part and parcel of RPGs, saving idiots. So I head over the giant spider nest and tell Mrs. Pointears’ friend (who is strangely unharmed) that she’s looking for him. He thanks me, and then remains where he is. Wonderful. I return to Mrs. McPointyears with the news of her friend’s stubborn stupidity, and she seems unfazed. That’s friendship for you.

After two quests, I’m already bored of these Elves. Everything is so unoriginal, and there’s a crushingly-forced quaintness about the quests. I’m only level 2; perhaps I should abandon this Elf and try out another race?

Tune in soon for Part Two, in which I join the ranks of the living dead and steal everyone’s shit.

Along with the tremendous praise heaped on Mass Effect 2 since its release in February, there has also been a growing number of people criticising the game for its apparent lack of RPG elements. Gone is the clunky inventory system of Mass Effect, replaced with a small selection of upgradeable weapons and armour pieces. In-depth character customisation is also missing; instead, Shepard and chums have only a handful of skills and talents, with only four tiers to each. But possibly most sacrilegious of all, you no longer gain experience from killing enemies; it’s now awarded in huge chunks at the end of missions.

These are fair criticisms, and go some way to backing up claims that Bioware dumbed-down the gameplay for this sequel. But all this whining about “RPG elements” raises the question: do these people even know what an RPG is? From their numerous complaints, a complete outsider might gather that an RPG is a game in which you invest acquired points and items into improved skills and equipment. The thing is, you do these very same things in Resident Evil 4. And in Batman: Arkham Asylum. And the Need for Speed games. But no one in their right mind would call any of these games an RPG.

These so-called “RPG elements” are prevalent in almost every genre of game you care to mention. And yet, the gaming community still insists on using these elements to define the singular genre of the RPG. Doesn’t this seem a little absurd?

Let me suggest something radical. (You might want to sit down for this. Or at least take a few deep breaths.) The Role-Playing Game is not defined by levelling up skills and micromanaging bloated inventories. The Role-Playing Game is defined by (wait for it) playing a role.

You could argue that almost every game allows you to assume a role. But in, say, an FPS, that role is clearly defined from the beginning; every characteristic and decision of the protagonist has been mapped out for you. You’re just along for the ride. What sets RPGs apart is the ability tailor the protagonist to your own liking. A good RPG will allow you to involve yourself in the game’s major decisions and the very minutiae of the character.

In Batman: Arkham Asylum, for example, you can level up Batman’s abilities. But Batman’s decisions and actions have been pre-defined. An early objective is to stop Victor Zsasz killing a guard he’s taken hostage. You’re told that the best way to deal with the situation is to take out Zsasz without him seeing you. The game does let you just barge into the room, but as soon as you do this, Zsasz kills the guard and the Game Over screen pops up. You can’t make Batman’s decision’s for him. You can’t role play.

There is a similar situation in Mass Effect 2. Thane’s loyalty mission ends with a hostage situation; Thane’s son Kolyat is holding a Turian politician at gunpoint. Unlike Batman: Arkham Asylum, the game gives you several options. You can distract Kolyat with a gunshot, punch him, or even be a complete arse and shoot the hostage. Your decision will be based upon how you have been playing your Shepard. In other words, the role you’ve been playing.

There may not be as many “RPG elements” in Mass Effect 2 as we might have wanted, but in a way that’s our fault. The fans begged for better combat and a more intuitive inventory system. And Bioware listened. The thing is, good shooter combat is incompatible with the kind of “RPG elements” seen in the first Mass Effect. But the actual role-playing is just as good, if not better. So there’s no shooter in my RPG. There isn’t even any RPG in my shooter. There is, however, a completely mental Commander Shepard who’s just as likely to shoot you in the kneecaps as offer you some medigel.