I’ve been reading a lot of player analysis about what WoW Classic offers that retail doesn’t, and several times I’ve seen the sentiment that gamers enjoy not having explicit directions or omnipresent travel options at their fingertips. The phrase I saw that stuck with me was when one player said that she felt “pleasantly lost” in this game world in a way that regular World of Warcraft doesn’t allow.
I mean, there’s the bad version of feeling lost that I’m all too acquainted with in MMORPGs. This is when I have no idea where to go, or what to do to achieve a goal, or can’t figure out how to get from Point A to B on a map because of confusing terrain. But I get that this sentiment is different, because it speaks to an immersion that conveys a wild, unknown world around the player in which not everything is seen or understood.
When’s the last time you felt “pleasantly lost” in an MMO?