:: WomenGamers - National Computer Camp Scholarship for Girls
:: 2009 Scholarship Winner

This years we received several interesting essays from young ladies who were essentially being tested on their ability to critically think about their favorite games. Applicants were asked to answer the following question: What is your favorite video game, and how would you change the design to improve it?

It was a tough choice. And although we would love to send all of the applicants to NCC, we had to pick one. Congratulations to Rachel A. (age 12) from California!  The winning essay belongs to you. And please do let WomenGamers.Com know how you've enjoyed your camp experience this summer.

 

2009 Winning Essay:

My favorite video game is World of Warcraft, or WoW. I like it because I've been playing it a long time. My brothers used to play it, I know a lot of nice people and guild mates who play it, and I know a lot of the game itself. I love MMORPGs, because I love playing with other people. There are three things I would like to change in WoW. The first thing I want to change in WoW is the female toons' skimpy armor and sexy looks to something less revealing. Next, I want to make the weaker classes stronger so they have a better chance of killing the overpowered classes. The last thing I want to change is putting back the week-long instances to what they were before they made easier.

The WoW females (especially the Draenei, Blood Elves, Night Elves, and Humans) are the fantasies of lonely mens' dreams. The Night Elves, Blood Elves, and Draenei are made to look really sexy and their clothing is very skimpy. The Human females' breasts are huge. I'm not kidding! They look like they had plastic surgery. It's not surprising that some lady gamers on WoW are playing as dudes. I would make the Elves and Draenei a bit more innocent-looking and reduce the Humans' teats a bit. I think they would look much better if they were a more natural size. Also, the WoW outfits for lady toons are super SKIMPY!! The way clothing looks on dude toons is totally awesome and on dudettes the same clothes are shrunk and turned into bikinis. In real life, if you wear a bikini, and rush into battle with a sword, you'd get totally slaughtered! Even though the abbreviated female clothing protects as well as the dudes', it's really annoying.

The second thing I want to change in WoW are the classes. The two most overpowered classes in WoW are Death Knights (the new and only hero class) and Paladins. The Paladins' Bubble/Hearth tactic is overused, and the Death Knights are very overpowered. They can easily kill a mob their level at half health. I've done it. I think the weakest classes right now are Warlocks and Priests (mostly Priests). I would increase the weakest classes' spell damage and reduce the attack power of Paladins and Death Knights. I think the duels should be more about skill and strategy and less about brute strength.

The last thing I want to change in WoW is how easy Blizzard is making some of the instances. Some of the instances used to be a week-long and you couldn't pick up a random group to do them. With the recent expansion packs, they made these instances much easier. For example, the Karazhan instance used to take a whole week to go through and you had to organize a raid group before you ran through it. Now it only takes 3-5 hours and you can use a pickup group, because Blizzard nerfed it hard. Rumor is that they're going to make the new week-long instances Ulduar and Naxxramas easy too. I want instances with a kick to them, and harder, not easier.

In conclusion, Blizzard screwed up the lady characters, the classes, and the week-long instances in World of Warcraft a lot. I would make make the lady characters' clothing / bodies much less revealing, make the classes more equal, and make the week-long instances into week-long instances again. I really do love World of Warcraft, but they can always improve on a great game.