Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

When people hear the phrase “massively multiplayer online game”, images of shining knights, dark wizards, and evil monsters fly through their minds and click into place like pieces in a puzzle. As each piece snaps into another, a flowing mural begins to form, painting a land of glory and adventure on the minds of the young and old alike. As such, it comes as no surprise that there's one critical mechanic in the genre that generally gets ignored by all but the most passionate: crafting.

Crafters are the quiet backbone of the heroic warrior battling the forces of evil. They are the beating heart of a game's economy. With each blow of their hammers, or pass of their needles, they create the items of legend that players crave with the ravenous appetite of a starving dog. At least that's what they'd have you believe.

The truth is, I've always felt it took a certain type of player to be a crafter. No matter which game we're talking about, I've had a tendency to associate those that loved crafting to those that live for cleaning: they’re both a little OCD. They have a distinct need to follow specific patterns over and over to achieve the results they desire. As such, I've always harassed my friends that enjoy such activities with some good natured ribbing.

Why buy a sweet chestpiece when you can make it?

The harassment I've doled out over the years has finally come back to bite me square in the ass just like the shockingly painful jolt of a horsefly bite. Not content to eat this crow by itself, my recent addiction has seen fit to come complete with a slice of humble pie as well. Not only am I crafting like a fiend these days, I'm crafting like a fiend in World of Warcraft. Kill me. Kill me now.

I now have four characters that I'm advancing in WoW for the sole purpose of being able to train in the next crafting tier. Rather than striving for that uber set of armor in dungeon X, I'm striving for that next set of uber armor I can make. To say that feeling this way in a game is foreign to me is the understatement of the year. Ask our resident Harvester of Ponies, Ralsu. He just about had a cow when I told him that I was crafting like an evil dwarf trying to outfit an army. He just couldn't fathom it.

Crafting in WoW is the first system that I found, for lack of a better phrase, easy enough to be accessible and not require a Master's degree in Engineering to figure out. In its current state, I think about the crafting in WoW about as often as a woman thinks about chocolate, or a man thinks about sex. Ok, even I can't think about crafting that much, but you get the idea.

As mentioned before, I've tried crafting in lots of other game and have had different degrees of fun, ranging from a decent tan to a light sunburn. At some point in each game though (normally within the first few levels), I've always decided the crafting system was either too complex, or far too dependent on other spheres. Some players absolutely love these types of systems and find them more engaging than the latest episode of CSI. In their opinion, the more convoluted the steps are or the more you're forced to interact with your fellow crafters, the better. That's not the type of crafting I've ever enjoyed.

Color coding goodness!

I want to have the ability to go out into the world, mine my little material node, then skedaddle back to town for some relaxing button pushing to get my skills up. I don't want to have to depend on Joe Shmuckatellie making me that silvery doodad just so I can increase my own skill levels.

WoW has a very simple system of gathering the right materials and clicking create or create all. The easy color coding system makes it perfectly clear whether or not you will get a skill point for creating a particular item or not. Orange is guaranteed to increase your skill, yellow is a probable chance, green is possible, while grey has no chance. On the surface, this sounds insanely boring, but it’s the ease and accessibility of the system that makes it so addicting.

So is it the game itself that turned a normally docile individual like myself into a maniacal crafter of multiple spheres, hell-bent on getting to that next tier, or was this a side of my inner being I've simply suppressed for the last decade? I'd sit here and debate the issue with you, but I've got to run… there’s a new set of black mageweave clothes begging to be made!