Do other games change the way you play?

It was the first thought I had when the WAR Closed Beta was over, NDA lifted and people started blogging their experiences about Public Quests (PQ’s), and I logged in to WoW to play my human warrior after almost a half a year hiatus. Before that, you had to hunt for a party, on both horde and ally, in the Old World content, to even enter a dungeon, let alone an instance.

Now the parties came hunting for me. I was just in the neighbourhood and I started to get invites for a quick Deadmines run. First of all, Deadmines is never quick. Second, it slows down the levelling which I was so anxious to do to catch my brothers (some 12-15 levels gap back then). And as always, a PUG is a PUG.

After the first –miserably failed- PUG run I thought that this was just a lucky incident. But as this has been going on ever after, I have started to think over the causes to this change. Of course, currently I cannot verify if this is the situation in the horde side, too, but in ally side it seems to be the norm. I log in and within the first half an hour I get invited or asked to join for an appropriate level instance run.

It cannot be only the fact that I have a warrior, because my brothers have reported similar incidents, though not as often. To me this has changed over something that has changed the thinking of the levelling players.

Could it be, that the evaluations and reports about WAR PQ’s have had an impact on the players of WoW, who are trying to recapture the ‘open party’ mentality?

We are all influenced by what we read and/or hear. Why not to the point that we start to wonder if it was possible to do something differently for a change? Because in the PUGs I’ve joined I have asked people how long they have played, and mostly they have been levelling their xth toon. I’d say that 4 out of 5 have been long time players and 1 out of 5 claims to be a newbie. Which I do not buy myself, knowing how easily I claim to be one, too. But that’s another story.

It’s easy to see how we are influenced by others just by following the blogosphere. One post which gets our eye follows us to our next own post and it seems as if majority of the bloggers are thinking about the same problem. It’s not that, its just the influence of the surroundings, which in case of MMO-blogging are quite few and far.

As I have already noticed. Newbie.