Immersion in Virtual Worlds

Interesting video of an extremely rare happening/glitch in Warcraft. This shows a raiding party pulling a 40-man outdoor boss into one of the capital cities. Stormwind is a safe place, where you go to rest, to repair your armour, check mail, buy new stuff, learn new talents, talk to friends, whatever – it’s a safe home area.

I would have loved to see something like this. It would feel very similar to a disaster in real life, I would imagine – there you are, going to the post office, when all hell breaks loose and people are dying all around you. Incredible. It’s happened once on our realm, and once with one of the huge dragons. One of the GMs has to go in and pull him back out to where he’s supposed to be, and reset the server.

This immersion, the feel of feeling like “real life” is one of the things that I find most fascinating about gameworlds of this type. I first felt it when I took my night elf character from her violet, elvish home area to the snowy mountain region which is home to the dwarves. I felt very foreign, very out-of-place. Interesting.

And now they’re introducing weather into the game…snowstorms, rain, dust storms in the desert areas that make it difficult to see. We’ve downloaded that patch, and are looking forward to seeing it tonight. I would bet that, when I’m trudging through the snow in the high mountains, with snow falling all around, I will feel as though I need a sweater.

I love it.

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