Friday, November 19, 2010

Where does our pride come from?

This post discusses some experiences I had with a real-life friend of mine who I know reads this blog and whom I make some conjecture about that could be patently wrong. You'll know who you are once you start reading, and if what I say is wrong or portrays you in the wrong light, you have my sincerest apologies. But think about it this way; no one else will know it's you I'm writing about.

I have been playing WoW for more than five years now. I don't say that to show off at all, just to provide background information for the story I'm about to tell. I have a friend who has been playing WoW since the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King (about two years now) and has spent most of that time raiding. As such, he has procured some pretty impressive epics, including the Ring of Rapid Ascent, the Amulet of the Silent Eulogy, and the Gunship Captain's Mittens. Now, he and I have the kind of friendship where we occasionally show off to each other, but never in a legitimate attempt to make the other person jealous; just friendly boasting. As such, one day he logged in to show me his gear. Now, as someone who has no motivation to raid and who is rarely impressed by numbers alone, I wasn't as impressed as he expected me to be, so he asked me to show him what I had accomplished. He should have known better, for he knows I have been playing for more than five years.

You see, when you play for that long, you tend to accumulate various rewards here and there that really add up over time. My friend got the first hint that asking me to show off might be a bad idea when he saw my 4605 achievement points, more than double his 2200 (give or take). We were looking at my armory profile, mind you, so he decided to compare achievements, and his dread became a bit more apparent when he saw that he had many times more raid achievements than I (that was where most of his achievement points came from). Then we logged in to look at my character, and he was greeted by my 85 pets (including my Magical Crawdad, my Kirin Tor Familiar, and my Argent Squire with bridle), my 25 exalted reputations (including Netherwing, Ogri'la, and the Kalu'ak) my Onyx Netherwing Drake, my Chef title, my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, and my Violet Proto-Drake. See, I'm a big solo player, and when you are a solo player who has been playing for five years, you tend to accrue these kinds of things without giving it too much thought, and at this point, most of these things were just trophies of past exploits, things I hardly even thought about now.

My friend, however, was extremely envious of my acquisitions, and vocally so. I made a point of telling him that everything I had acquired was not difficult to get, just time consuming; of course, having played the game for five years, I had a lot of time to put in to getting those things, but I left that part out. See, this friend of mine is a Kingslayer, something he put a considerable amount of time and effort into achieving, and he is also a raid leader, so he spends more time on raiding than the average Kingslayer. My thought was, if he could put forth that much time (to raid management, the multiple attempts, etc.) to getting Kingslayer, why couldn't he put forth the same amount of time it would take to get any of the things I had gotten? His claim was that he just didn't have the patience to go for something as time-consuming as the Violet Proto-Drake or the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, so I let it rest at that.

But there was a disconnect about the whole thing that piqued my interest. Here he was, with his epics and his raid achievements, quite proud of them, and here I was, with my pets, mounts, and solo-ing achievements, and I had never given most of them a second thought. They were just trophies of parts of the game I enjoyed playing, many of which I probably would have played even if there was no reward (getting exalted with Netherwing certainly falls in that category), so I had no particular pride in most of them, and yet my friend was quite jealous of them. Why this difference between us?

My first guess was that it was just a matter of his inability to obtain what I had that made him jealous, but I realized that I myself had similarly accepted that I would probably never raid and never get epics and achievements like him. If it were that "forbidden fruit" effect that had caused him to be jealous of my acquisitions, then I would be similarly jealous of his epics and achievements. Yet here I was, sitting back as he showed me the things he had achieved, beaming with pride, and I just sat back and nodded, not at all jealous of what he had experienced and obtained that I hadn't. Of course, I thought, maybe I've just had longer to accept that I won't get these things, so I'm more at peace with it than he is about never obtaining the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or Violet Proto-Drake.

But I found my potential answer in a comment he made as he was showing me his gear and achievements. When he had sufficiently impressed upon me just how much time he has spent raiding, how much time he has put in to get to the point he's at now, he said only half sarcastically, "I hate this game." It was just a joke at the time, but upon reflection, I realize there may be more to read into in his words than I initially thought. My friend may not be the most honest of people (he's not dishonest by any stretch of the imagination, but as someone who legitimately has difficulty with lying, I can say he's more liable to stretch the truth than I am), but perhaps he was being honest when he claimed he disliked that game at this point. I can't help but ask myself, if he really grew to dislike this game, then why did he keep playing? Perhaps he was one of those players who played for the achievements, the loot, the bragging rights; perhaps he had become the type who plays for the objective rewards.

I, on the other hand, am not the type to play for objective rewards, at least I'm not anymore; I may have been that type back in the day, but no longer. I'm definitively in the subjectively-driven camp now, in that I play for the experience more than the end result. Don't get me wrong, the end result is important to me in some respects, but it's the earning of the end result that is most important to me. Perhaps the difference between how my friend and I view the spoils of our exploits lies in this difference in motivation; perhaps he was prouder of his gear and achievements and jealous of my pets and mounts because he was focusing of the rewards, not the process of obtaining them. I, on the other hand, am not at all jealous that he got to experience raiding--which is how he got his achievements and loot, after all--since I don't enjoy raiding. When I saw those purples, I saw the frustration, the time commitments, the needing to deal with other people and depend on them for your success; I saw all of the inconveniences associated with earning that loot, not the loot itself. When you look it that way, is it any wonder I wasn't jealous?

3 comments:

  1. It seems common to me that playing for the fun of playing tends to lead to plenty of "rewards" accrued, but playing just for the rewards tends to lead to burnout and resentment.

    A life lesson with many applications, methinketh.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is great topic, one that I've thought about often myself. I've been a member of several different progression guilds and been on both ends of the spectrum - both hardcore realm first chasing raider and casual guildie who only hops in to help when the first-string team is shorthanded.

    It's certainly been my observation that, while there are certainly lots of raiders who do raid for the fun and the challenge, a surprisingly large percentage of serious raiders seem to openly dislike raiding.

    I've heard comments that are surprisingly similar to your friend's, and it often seems to come in the same kind of scenario. Someone will be recounting tales of all the work they put into earning Light of the Dawn, or getting their first M'uru kill, and then they'll sigh and lament, "I hate this stupid game." I've even heard the statement, "People weren't meant to live like this."

    I feel like it's perhaps a case of buyer's remorse, if you will. The player began raiding not because they liked the idea of raiding, but because they wanted those elusive objective rewards that only raiding provided. In recalling the drudgery or frustration of earning their cherished mounts and titles, they perhaps are disappointed that the rewards don't feel like they were worth the "cost".

    If the raiding experience wasn't enjoyable to them, they were essentially treating it as a job, with the loot as payment. I think the prevalence of this kind of mindset and playstyle is what drives a lot of the loot drama that occurs in WoW. If that's how you view raiding, then anyone who in some way interferes with you getting the gear or achievement you want, they are essentially coming between you and the paycheck you "deserve" for your hard work.

    I raid solely for the enjoyment of the experience itself, and the gear upgrades are simply the vehicle that gets me there, allowing me to carry my weight and successfully clear the content. Back in Ulduar I was able to finish the majority of the prerequisites for the Ironbound Proto-Drake, but once I had seen all the content and I lost my enthusiasm for raiding and just was not motivated to wipe endlessly while working toward that achievement.

    I never completed the remaining hard-modes or earned the rewards, but I also don't regret it at all. I have very fond memories of Ulduar; those were good times and I enjoyed them.

    As Tesh said, in a video game environment like WoW it seems that all too often players who pursue objective rewards despite not enjoying the experience itself end up burning out as they come to the realization that those rewards are not as fulfilling to them as they had expected. It also explains why there is such a tremendous outcry whenever Blizzard makes some achievement or some aspect of the game easier. The players who put so much "work" into earning these objective rewards are incensed that others are gaining the same benefits with less dedication, as though the other players are co-workers who have lesser job performance but get the same pay.

    Thanks for bringing up this topic; it's interesting food for thought.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If you looked an any one of my multiple alts, they'd not look that impressive. Some not levelled, others at 80 with a mixture of i251/264 gear from badge running. Only one ever raided, and stopped after completing Naxxramas.

    As WoW player who mostly plays solo, I take pride in a few things:

    My sense of pride has come from looking at my Horde and Alliance toons: each one has a unique "story", each one having experienced the game in unique way.

    There's the undead warrior I started so I could tank all old world instances before Cataclysm. My level 80 Alliance pally that raided Naxx as ret, and then became a healer. My level 80 NE hunter that levelled mostly through BGs and has been travelling the world collecting exotic pets. "She" now has a collection of tamed boss pets from Outlands and Azeroth.

    When I started raiding in this expansion I was determined to become a Kingslayer. But after the months of grinding the same instance night after night, I realised raiding was not for me. Some people love it, however I felt there was always so much more to see in WoW, and being locked into the raiding treadmill limited my options.

    Sure, I loved finishing Naxx, but it was enough to experience the raiding lifestyle once and be satisfied that I could do it if I *really* wanted too.

    However my "best" moment this year for WoW came not from raiding or bringing down a boss, but running a low level alt in a LFG PuG.

    I was tanking an early instance when the healer dropped... I suggested we kept going without a healer. In the end we finished the instance by drinking potions, eating and having a hunter's pet "off tank". I had to strategically choose my pulls and have strict kill orders. We didn't wipe.

    In the end one player - someone with a 80 tank he raided with - that was the most "pro-tanking" moment he'd ever seen.

    I screenshot-ted that comment, and as I leveled this toon again and again I'd get the comment "that was some pro-tanking". So now I have a special folder with screen shots, which are my WoW "postcards" of great tanking moments.

    I'll look at them and think, "Yeah that was some good tanking".

    ReplyDelete