MeinMMO Demon Cortyn has been really into the Plunderstorm mode in World of Warcraft. But one thing is annoying: the other players. But not in the way you might think.
Last March, I took some vacation. Since World of Warcraft is currently in the “end of a season” phase, I actually wanted to set the game aside a bit and focus on other things.
That worked out well. At least until the Plunderstorm mode appeared and practically forced me to play.
Even though I already know from the comments of previous articles how the reaction to this statement will be, I say it anyway:
Plunderstorm is the most fun I’ve had in World of Warcraft this year.
I admit, at first, I didn’t like the prospect of farming around 100,000 Plunder at all. At first glance, it looked like a long, arduous grind, and I thought I would skip it.
But it only took 3 matches before I was caught in a rush and probably played 10 hours a day over the next 3 days – thanks to vacation.
And that was already the “mandatory part” done.
In the meantime, I am at well over 300,000 Plunder – simply because I enjoy the mode so much, even though there are no desirable rewards left for me.
If you don’t know Plunderstorm yet: it’s a new, temporary WoW mode that has little to do with the other WoW versions. Here you play as a pirate (not the hero of Azeroth) and get thrown into a Battle Royale in Arathi Highlands.
There are no regular class abilities. Everyone plays as a pirate who can only hit things. You can find additional abilities in the match from NPC enemies, in crates, or from defeated opponents who drop their skills upon death.
The whole chaos is usually over quite quickly. No match lasts longer than 10 minutes – if you get eliminated earlier, it’s even much faster.
Plunderstorm is not the problem – the players are
What really annoys me in Plunderstorm are the other players.
No, I don’t mean those who hit me in the match, ambush me from behind as a bush, or cast the “Spin-to-Win” flame storm on me until I look like a pizza I forgot in the oven for 1-5 hours.
I’m talking about the “heroes” who loudly announce in every lobby that they absolutely hate this mode, that they have to “suffer for another 14 hours,” and that they are having “no fun at all.”
When you ask critically why they are playing the mode if it’s so terrible: “The mount.”
If you are suffering through a mode with more than 24 hours of pure playtime that you actually don’t like, then Blizzard isn’t the fool that developed a bad game mode. You are the fool who evidently cannot assess the effort-to-reward ratio correctly.
I wouldn’t even think about playing a mode for so long that brings me no joy, just to get my 700th mount.
This is also the reason why I don’t possess many PvP rewards in World of Warcraft yet. I like to collect, and I collect just about everything. But the prospect of playing something for days that gives me no joy at all – that goes very far from why most people play a game anyway.
What annoys me even more, however, is that these players have to share their dissatisfaction with everyone. I don’t understand the motivation behind logging into a game and telling the 59 other people first that you don’t like the game at all and that everything is annoying. That poisons the mood of the entire match.
Then there are the friendly individuals who must attach a quick whisper message to their demise in Plunderstorm mode, in which they have creative suggestions about what I should do with my mother.
Plunderstorm is good for WoW, even if you don’t like it
It is clear that Plunderstorm is polarizing. While some – like me – love the mode with all its facets, tactical possibilities, and at the same time the swift chaos, there are others. Many cannot relate to Plunderstorm at all. On the one hand, because it is a PvP mode (which I understand), and on the other hand because it is “no longer WoW” (which I don’t understand).
I find it hard to comprehend how one can criticize the development of Plunderstorm as such. On one hand, it is always criticized that there are no major innovations and no experiments in WoW. On the other hand, people are dissatisfied when a novel, temporary PvP mode with numerous rewards comes along.
What most seem to forget here: Plunderstorm is an experiment and at the same time the proof of what is possible in World of Warcraft when developers invest time in such experiments.
The success (or failure) of the mode does not mean that there will now always be new PvP modes, but rather that so much more is possible in World of Warcraft than previously thought. That you can experience good, different game concepts like “Battle Royale” or the “Vampire Survivors” mode hinted at through data mining in World of Warcraft.
That the developers have the resources to try out such modes and simultaneously equip them with numerous rewards is good news for the future of World of Warcraft.
Because exactly Plunderstorm shows that WoW does not only do “the bare minimum” to keep players engaged. Finally, it is clear that the developers are daring more, experimenting more, and simply taking new steps to keep the game fresh and interesting in the future.
Whether a player likes this mode or not is not relevant to that at all.
