Journal Block 3

Journal Block 3

-Nick Walker

Mass Effect

       In the article the author talks a lot about replayability in the form of dowloadable content and replaying the game. Mass Effect lends itself well to this because of the different classes and moral decisions that can be made through different playthroughs. However, recently I replayed through all three Mass Effect games and found that while I did make some different decisions from my first playthrough, a lot of my choices were the same. This may be just me or maybe others are the same but I could not do the “renegade” choices in most scenarios in Mass Effect. Even though I was playing through the game again and thus playing a different Shepard as before, I just never felt like the renegade choices fit the character very well. It probably has more to do with me than it does the character of Shepard, but to me Shepard is the hero of humanity and the galaxy so the paragon choices fit that persona a lot better for me.

World of Warcraft

       In the portion of the article were the authors talk about wow from a research perspective, the start off talking about how the looks of characters, weapons, and armor matter in the context of the game as well as the social elements within the game. They talk about how highly geared characters would stand in open areas of capitol cities as statues of their in-game success. I remember that when I played WoW I would also do this, while I was busy with something else on my computer but knew I would be playing WoW soon I would sit my character in Stormwind, on top of a fountain that was in between the city bank and auction house. I was on one of the more populated servers at the time and there were always tons of other players sitting around the city, idly riding fancy mounts, and just generally wandering the populated city. This social aspect of WoW was something that I had never really though of before this article. I know and love the more organized social aspect of the game, the guilds and high level raiding that I use to participate in are some of my fondest memories of the game. Now when I look back and think of how I would recognize other players within the city that I had never played with before and only knew by the look of their character I grow to appreciate the sense of community that WoW had when I played it, even though I never really realized it at the time.