I had a lot on my plate when I wrote Wednesday's post due to my claiming that Hyjal was a better zone than Vashj'ir and the fact that two of the currently three comments on that last post disagree with me. Fidjit claimed "Hyjal felt very 'been there, done that' to me," and Neverender agreed with Fidjit and added, "But all in all, I appreciate what Blizzard tried to do and applaud them for making Vash'jir such a beautiful zone to quest in." I appreciate their comments and can see where they are coming from, but one little blurb in Neverender's comment gave me insight into why I dislike Vashj'ir so much: "...I appreciate what Blizzard tried to do..." [emphasis is my own]. If you look at what Blizzard was trying to do with Vashj'ir, it is indeed a very praise-worthy zone, for their aspirations for this zone were clearly very high (why else would they make it so long?). This much I agree with.
The trouble in considering what Blizzard was trying to do with Vashj'ir is that when we quest in Vashj'ir, we are not playing in the zone that Blizzard tried to create; we are playing in the zone they did create. Considering that both Fidjit and Neverender agreed that my complaints about the zone were legitimate, I supposed that whether you think Vashj'ir is a praise-worthy zone ultimately comes down to whether you want to praise Blizzard for their efforts or their results. Which brings us to the question I ask today: in choosing to praise or criticizing Vashj'ir, should we choose to praise or criticize Blizzard for their ambition or for the end product? Should we praise the potential and innovation of a venture, or the actual quality of the venture when it ships?
To look at Vashj'ir again, the zone was most definitely a step away from familiar territory for Blizzard. It was innovative because the entire zone took place underwater, and Blizzard took quite a few risks is designing the zone that way. I find it telling that most of my complaints about Vashj'ir had little to do with the fact that the zone was underwater, because that means that Blizzard averted all of those risks. My complaints about Vashj'ir were that it was too large and its questline too lengthy,that it lacked a grounding location that allowed us to better comprehend our position within the zone, that creating the kind of tension that Vashj'ir was trying to create was simply impossible due to the game's mechanics, and that the ending was underwhelming and abrupt. Every single one of these flaws could just as easily have been made in the process of designing a land-based zone, though the underwater setting does make it more tempting to try to create the kind of mood Blizzard was trying to create with Vashj'ir. So really, Vashj'ir is a case where the innovation and potential of the zone do shine through, and it's its other flaws that bring it down. Thus it is perfectly reasonable to praise the zone for its innovation.
But that doesn't excuse the zone for having these flaws. In fact, it's all the more reason to criticize the zone, because the fact that these flaws could just as easily show up in any zone means that Blizzard should have known better. Blizzard has had years of practice designing zones, and these are flaws that those years of practice should have prevented. But no one is perfect, and the developers are going to make a few mistakes from time to time; they just so happened to make these mistakes while designing their most ambitious zone yet. It's almost a shame that they did manage to avoid the potential flaws that were directly related to that ambition (i.e. the typical pratfalls of most water levels), because those flaws would have been forgivable due to Blizzard's inexperience with designing entirely-underwater levels. But there's no reason that the kind of flaws that did show up in Vashj'ir should be any more excusable just because Vashj'ir was a water level.
So in the end, Vashj'ir deserves both praise for its successful innovation and criticism for its definite flaws. I guess whichever you prefer to focus on comes down to just how much the innovation amazed you (I was less than amazed once all the environments started to blend together) and was thus able to distract you from the zone's flaws, and how influential those flaws were in detracting from your enjoyment of the zone.
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Friday, January 28, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Gnomebliteration as a daily? Not so fast.
Suffice it to say that Gnomebliteration has become one of the most popular one-time quests in Cataclysm's content, and due to other fun quests being made dailies or repeatable quests, many have asked that Gnomebliteration receive the same treatment and be made either a daily quest or a repeatable quest. I myself also had a lot of fun with this quest, (though I had even more fun with the game that probably inspired it, which I highly recommend you check out if you haven't done so) and would love to jump on the "Gnomebliteration for daily!" bandwagon, but I could never let myself do that without really looking at the issue first and deciding whether becoming a daily quest really is the best fate for Gnomebliteration.
Let's get the obvious concern out of the way immediately. Gnomebliteration is a fun quest because there are often large crowds of gnomes or mechanoids to pick up or obliterate. If you had to go around looking for enemies to obliterate, it would not be nearly as fun of a quest. And if the quest were a daily or repeatable quest, you can bet that many people would be doing it at the same time. With a lot of people doing this quest, the number of gnomes and mechanoids to pick up or obliterate would go down significantly, and there goes the fun you might have had otherwise. Now, there are two ways to remedy this issue. One is to make the respawn rate on the gnomes and mechanoids dynamic, making it go up as more people are doing the daily. Considering how many people would probably do this daily at any one time, that would likely result in groups of gnomes spawning ludicrously frequently, with you obliterating some groups more by accident than intentionally when they happened to spawn right in front of you. That would ruin some of the fun of the quest, since the intentional rolling destruction of numerous gnomes is what makes this quest so fun.
The only other option is to give players their own phased environment through which to roll their fusion core. That way, we wouldn't have to compete with anyone else for gnomes to obliterate. Of course, this option is not without its own issues. Part of the fun of Gnomebliteration is seeing other people rolling their fusion cores around and sharing that sense of, "Isn't this so fun?" as you roll past them. And considering how popular this daily would be, I could see it putting a real strain on the servers to maintain that many "instanced" versions of the zone. Perhaps a limit would need to be put on how many people can do the quest as once.
But the biggest risk to making Gnomebliteration a daily is that it would risk losing its appeal. I don't think I need to expend too many words to convince you that, if you do something over and over again, it begins to lose its appeal. The fact that we expect Blizzard to make new content for us, rather than being satisfied with what we had at launch, is proof enough of that fact. And though this quest is without a doubt a cut above the rest, it, too, will begin to lose its appeal if we play it enough times. That is the fate of anything we play too much, not matter how much it may be a cut above the rest of what we play; "Embedded" by Job for a Cowboy is, in my opinion, Rock Band's funnest songs on guitar, and yet I don't play it as often as I used to because, like everything else, familiarity makes it lose its appeal. And if this quest is made into a daily or a repeatable quest, it, too, will lose its appeal.
Of course, you might say, this is all well and good; if players want to replay a quest until they are sick of it, that should be their right. I am inclined to agree, but I don't think Blizzard is, and I can see why. As it stands, if we want to level a new character, we have to go through all of the quests we have already played on our previous character without much deviation. The path we take on our first character won't be much different from the path we take on our second character, and these fun quests provide the high points that make the leveling worth it. If we were able to play them repeatedly, the leveling process would lose those high points that make it bearable for those who don't enjoy leveling new characters all that much, and that would make leveling a new character that much less fun.
So in the end, I say make Gnomebliteration a repeatable quest a la Return to the Abyssal Shelf: one that can be repeated several times a day, but provides no reward of any kind. This way, players can get to replay what is clearly one of the quests they enjoy the most in the whole game, but they'll have no incentive to keep playing it once it stops being completely enjoyable, which means they'll still enjoy when they come to it on a new character. Will Blizzard do it? Probably not, but hope is a free resource.
Let's get the obvious concern out of the way immediately. Gnomebliteration is a fun quest because there are often large crowds of gnomes or mechanoids to pick up or obliterate. If you had to go around looking for enemies to obliterate, it would not be nearly as fun of a quest. And if the quest were a daily or repeatable quest, you can bet that many people would be doing it at the same time. With a lot of people doing this quest, the number of gnomes and mechanoids to pick up or obliterate would go down significantly, and there goes the fun you might have had otherwise. Now, there are two ways to remedy this issue. One is to make the respawn rate on the gnomes and mechanoids dynamic, making it go up as more people are doing the daily. Considering how many people would probably do this daily at any one time, that would likely result in groups of gnomes spawning ludicrously frequently, with you obliterating some groups more by accident than intentionally when they happened to spawn right in front of you. That would ruin some of the fun of the quest, since the intentional rolling destruction of numerous gnomes is what makes this quest so fun.
The only other option is to give players their own phased environment through which to roll their fusion core. That way, we wouldn't have to compete with anyone else for gnomes to obliterate. Of course, this option is not without its own issues. Part of the fun of Gnomebliteration is seeing other people rolling their fusion cores around and sharing that sense of, "Isn't this so fun?" as you roll past them. And considering how popular this daily would be, I could see it putting a real strain on the servers to maintain that many "instanced" versions of the zone. Perhaps a limit would need to be put on how many people can do the quest as once.
But the biggest risk to making Gnomebliteration a daily is that it would risk losing its appeal. I don't think I need to expend too many words to convince you that, if you do something over and over again, it begins to lose its appeal. The fact that we expect Blizzard to make new content for us, rather than being satisfied with what we had at launch, is proof enough of that fact. And though this quest is without a doubt a cut above the rest, it, too, will begin to lose its appeal if we play it enough times. That is the fate of anything we play too much, not matter how much it may be a cut above the rest of what we play; "Embedded" by Job for a Cowboy is, in my opinion, Rock Band's funnest songs on guitar, and yet I don't play it as often as I used to because, like everything else, familiarity makes it lose its appeal. And if this quest is made into a daily or a repeatable quest, it, too, will lose its appeal.
Of course, you might say, this is all well and good; if players want to replay a quest until they are sick of it, that should be their right. I am inclined to agree, but I don't think Blizzard is, and I can see why. As it stands, if we want to level a new character, we have to go through all of the quests we have already played on our previous character without much deviation. The path we take on our first character won't be much different from the path we take on our second character, and these fun quests provide the high points that make the leveling worth it. If we were able to play them repeatedly, the leveling process would lose those high points that make it bearable for those who don't enjoy leveling new characters all that much, and that would make leveling a new character that much less fun.
So in the end, I say make Gnomebliteration a repeatable quest a la Return to the Abyssal Shelf: one that can be repeated several times a day, but provides no reward of any kind. This way, players can get to replay what is clearly one of the quests they enjoy the most in the whole game, but they'll have no incentive to keep playing it once it stops being completely enjoyable, which means they'll still enjoy when they come to it on a new character. Will Blizzard do it? Probably not, but hope is a free resource.
Friday, January 14, 2011
The lonely journey to the top
About five days ago, I earned Loremaster of Cataclysm, thus, for all intents and purposes, beating Cataclysm's solo content. I have done every quest I could find in Mount Hyjal, Vashj'ir, Deepholm, Uldum, and the Twilight Highlands, and in doing those quests, I noticed a particular absence, something missing that was once an integral part of the questing landscape. I noticed it in the way that I progress swiftly and almost effortlessly (comparatively, at least) through Cataclysm's zones. I noticed it in the way that I didn't need much help as I went through doing the quests. I noticed it in the way that I said nothing in general chat other than occasionally answering other players' questions about the new quests. That absence was the absence of group quests.
You remember group quests, I'm sure--those quests that recommended you bring an ally or two along with you to take down the baddie in question. They peppered the landscape throughout WoW's history, especially in Icecrown, and we had to group up with other players to do them. Yet it seems, if memory serves me correctly, that outside of the first few months of any given content's lifespan, there weren't many groups to do these quests with. In any given zone, I might have gotten lucky and found someone else willing to do them with me, but for the most part, I remember either trying to do those quests on my own (and learning ways to push each class to its limit as a result), or just skipping over them entirely. Thus these quests weren't, for me at least, group quests, so much as they were really challenging solo quests.
Now, this wasn't really a tragedy, because some of my proudest moments while leveling have been taking down the elites required for these group quests without the help of a group. Those were the true epic moments of my solo play, the moments that rivaled my memories of raiding in terms of satisfaction and challenge. Those battles were long and difficult, like raid fights, and required me to use all of the tricks that I could to take down these elite opponents. In the way that raids require raiders to maximize their awareness, their damage, their efficiency, these group quests required me to maximize my survivability, and I quite enjoyed them for that.
But while Cataclysm may lack group quests, it is not lacking in elite quests--quests where you take down an elite opponent--but these elite quests are a little different. Unlike the elite quests of yore, which were synonymous with group quests, these quests are fully designed to be accomplished on one's own. Yes, you do fight an elite opponent with a ridiculously large health pool, and these battles often go on for a good deal longer than most other battles, but unlike most elite enemies, these enemies will not kill you before you've taken away even a chunk of their health. Some of them are designed to have avoidable attacks, while others are fought while an NPC ally acts as the tank, thus you yourself take little damage. These kinds of quests peppered the Cataclysm questing landscape, and I'm pretty sure they were designed with the specific intention of taking the place of group quests.
Do they succeed in this regard? The answer to that question depends on whether they can accomplish the same thing group quests were originally designed to accomplish. Group quests, when I could actually get a group together for them, had an epic feel to them because I was taking down an enemy who was many times bigger or more powerful than me, and they also gave a bit of experience with the dynamics of grouping (tanking, healing, threat, etc.). Do Cataclysm's elite quests hold up to those parameters? They certainly feel epic, and they provide a very satisfying conclusion to whatever quests they end. But what about teaching group dynamics? You may not learn tanking or healing from these quests, but they do have some pretty sneaky ways of teaching you other important aspects of group content. In killing Skullcrusher the Mountain, you are encouraged to run around activating various relics which give you and your allies buffs to help you fight Skullcrusher, and you also have to right-click your fallen allies to revive them. This teaches you that you do need to do things other than attacking your target in order to succeed in a group environment. The fight against the Obsidian Colossus in Uldum teaches you how to not stand in the fire, as does the fight against Barron Geddon in Hyjal. These are things the old group quests didn't often teach, so I'd say that Cataclysm's elite quests teaching them to new players is an improvement.
But where these two kinds of quests differ most, and where Cataclysm's elite quests are much stronger than the previous expansion's group quests, in my opinion, is that two or three years from now, when most of the players are off questing in whatever new zones we find ourselves in in the next expansion pack, if you decide to level an alt and you find yourself in one of Cataclysm's zones, you will be able to complete these elite quests in spite of the fact that you will be one of three of four people in the zone (and probably the only person in the phase you are currently in). As it stood in the days of group quests, if you couldn't complete a group quest on your own (which, if you were the appropriate level for a zone, theoretically, you shouldn't have been able to), you would simply be unable to complete that quest, and if that quest should happen to advance the story of the zone, too bad; you'd just have to make up the rest. With Cataclysm's group quests, though, since they never required a group in the first place, players will be able to complete them well after Cataclysm's zones have been abandoned.
When you consider Cataclysm's linear quest-design structure (a structure which I don't mind and actually support), it really is a necessity for the elite quests to not require groups. If these quests did require groups and you couldn't complete one due to being unable to form a group, you would either be stuck in a zone's progression and be unable to continue, or you would have to leave the quest undone as you enter a new phase. The former possibility makes the solo content unplayable, and the latter makes certain quests become unavailable to players, something which they wouldn't be very appreciative of. So instead, we are left with group quests becoming something seen very rarely in Cataclysm. The only group quests we have now are dailies, which people will probably continue to do for a very long time (due to their being level-cap dailies), but can still be solo'ed pretty easily, and the Crucible of Carnage chain, which was probably added more out of tradition than anything else. Thus we are left with the conclusions that there really are no proper group quests in Cataclysm other than the Crucible of Carnage, which is it's own stand-alone quest-line and thus doesn't pose the potential issues brought up above, and for the reasons I have mentioned in this post, I don't mind that fact.
You remember group quests, I'm sure--those quests that recommended you bring an ally or two along with you to take down the baddie in question. They peppered the landscape throughout WoW's history, especially in Icecrown, and we had to group up with other players to do them. Yet it seems, if memory serves me correctly, that outside of the first few months of any given content's lifespan, there weren't many groups to do these quests with. In any given zone, I might have gotten lucky and found someone else willing to do them with me, but for the most part, I remember either trying to do those quests on my own (and learning ways to push each class to its limit as a result), or just skipping over them entirely. Thus these quests weren't, for me at least, group quests, so much as they were really challenging solo quests.
Now, this wasn't really a tragedy, because some of my proudest moments while leveling have been taking down the elites required for these group quests without the help of a group. Those were the true epic moments of my solo play, the moments that rivaled my memories of raiding in terms of satisfaction and challenge. Those battles were long and difficult, like raid fights, and required me to use all of the tricks that I could to take down these elite opponents. In the way that raids require raiders to maximize their awareness, their damage, their efficiency, these group quests required me to maximize my survivability, and I quite enjoyed them for that.
But while Cataclysm may lack group quests, it is not lacking in elite quests--quests where you take down an elite opponent--but these elite quests are a little different. Unlike the elite quests of yore, which were synonymous with group quests, these quests are fully designed to be accomplished on one's own. Yes, you do fight an elite opponent with a ridiculously large health pool, and these battles often go on for a good deal longer than most other battles, but unlike most elite enemies, these enemies will not kill you before you've taken away even a chunk of their health. Some of them are designed to have avoidable attacks, while others are fought while an NPC ally acts as the tank, thus you yourself take little damage. These kinds of quests peppered the Cataclysm questing landscape, and I'm pretty sure they were designed with the specific intention of taking the place of group quests.
Do they succeed in this regard? The answer to that question depends on whether they can accomplish the same thing group quests were originally designed to accomplish. Group quests, when I could actually get a group together for them, had an epic feel to them because I was taking down an enemy who was many times bigger or more powerful than me, and they also gave a bit of experience with the dynamics of grouping (tanking, healing, threat, etc.). Do Cataclysm's elite quests hold up to those parameters? They certainly feel epic, and they provide a very satisfying conclusion to whatever quests they end. But what about teaching group dynamics? You may not learn tanking or healing from these quests, but they do have some pretty sneaky ways of teaching you other important aspects of group content. In killing Skullcrusher the Mountain, you are encouraged to run around activating various relics which give you and your allies buffs to help you fight Skullcrusher, and you also have to right-click your fallen allies to revive them. This teaches you that you do need to do things other than attacking your target in order to succeed in a group environment. The fight against the Obsidian Colossus in Uldum teaches you how to not stand in the fire, as does the fight against Barron Geddon in Hyjal. These are things the old group quests didn't often teach, so I'd say that Cataclysm's elite quests teaching them to new players is an improvement.
But where these two kinds of quests differ most, and where Cataclysm's elite quests are much stronger than the previous expansion's group quests, in my opinion, is that two or three years from now, when most of the players are off questing in whatever new zones we find ourselves in in the next expansion pack, if you decide to level an alt and you find yourself in one of Cataclysm's zones, you will be able to complete these elite quests in spite of the fact that you will be one of three of four people in the zone (and probably the only person in the phase you are currently in). As it stood in the days of group quests, if you couldn't complete a group quest on your own (which, if you were the appropriate level for a zone, theoretically, you shouldn't have been able to), you would simply be unable to complete that quest, and if that quest should happen to advance the story of the zone, too bad; you'd just have to make up the rest. With Cataclysm's group quests, though, since they never required a group in the first place, players will be able to complete them well after Cataclysm's zones have been abandoned.
When you consider Cataclysm's linear quest-design structure (a structure which I don't mind and actually support), it really is a necessity for the elite quests to not require groups. If these quests did require groups and you couldn't complete one due to being unable to form a group, you would either be stuck in a zone's progression and be unable to continue, or you would have to leave the quest undone as you enter a new phase. The former possibility makes the solo content unplayable, and the latter makes certain quests become unavailable to players, something which they wouldn't be very appreciative of. So instead, we are left with group quests becoming something seen very rarely in Cataclysm. The only group quests we have now are dailies, which people will probably continue to do for a very long time (due to their being level-cap dailies), but can still be solo'ed pretty easily, and the Crucible of Carnage chain, which was probably added more out of tradition than anything else. Thus we are left with the conclusions that there really are no proper group quests in Cataclysm other than the Crucible of Carnage, which is it's own stand-alone quest-line and thus doesn't pose the potential issues brought up above, and for the reasons I have mentioned in this post, I don't mind that fact.
Friday, January 7, 2011
The problem of subjectivity in dungeon finder policing
Heroics haven't been a completely pleasant experience as of late, since not all players have been willing to adjust to the demands of the new design of heroics. As discontented people are wont to do, many people have been trying to think of ways to improve the heroic experience. Some of the ideas for ways to make the dungeon finder "suck less" have included systems for rating players; systems where you can "friend" players, i.e. mark them as good players and be more likely to be grouped with them in the future; and other ideas, most of which are based on the idea of players policing themselves.
The intentions behind these ideas are good, and in theory, they could work, but they all share the problem of having the potential to be abused by players. Some people will always look for a way to game the system if they can, and some people are just jerks, so no matter what Blizzard might do to try to prevent the system from being used as it wasn't intended to be used, someone will either benefit unfairly or be unfairly penalized. It's tempting to think the system could be designed to avoid that, but no design is foolproof. As an example, someone in the comments section of the WoW Insider post above had the idea to make it so that you can only mark players as bad players, which will increase their queue time. There would be no consequences for new players under this system because they would not be locked out of fast queues by a lack of up-ratings, which would be one of the worst consequences if players could be rated as good players, in addition to bad players. After all, up-rated players would be given shorter queue times (or else why up-rate players?), and if the up-rated players are being grouped together, that would give the newer players no one to group with.
But as another commenter pointed out, some players would just down-vote everyone they group with just because they can. Even worse, since down-votes would move the down-voted player farther down the queue, any down-rate you give another player would theoretically move you up the queue, assuming the down-rate isn't reciprocated. This would give players real, tangible motivation to down-rate people who don't deserve it; in other words, it wouldn't be just the jerkass players who down-rate everyone. In an attempt to moderate this kind of abuse, I had the idea of changing the system so you can still mark players as bad players based on their performance, but the more negative votes you give players, the less your negative votes will count against other players. This would discourage players from trying to game the system because the more they try to do so, the less of an effect they will have. Of course, players could abuse this system as well by just abstaining from down-rating players, which would give their votes more weight, and then using that weight to grief players they personally don't like by voting them down. Did another player win the roll for an item you wanted? If they're the only person you've ever down-rated, that could really increase their queue times. Isn't vengeance sweet?
Now, sure, Blizzard could tweak the formulas to prevent this kind of abuse, too, but the issues of players always looking for a way to game the system aside, this kind of system would still suffer from the issue of being a subjective system. A down-ranking system like the one described above depends on players down-ranking other players based on criteria shared by every other player, but people are subjective, and this might not be the case. Some players would down-rank players based on lack of skill, others would down-rank players for their attitudes, and some would probably only down-rank good players just to be ironic. Rather than a unified system for judging players, we would get players using their own standards to rate other players, standards which are not universal, and thus won't improve the dungeon finder for everyone.
What is needed is an objective system to help weed out the bad players (or at least increase their queue times). Some players have suggested that certain statistics be used to rank players, rather than a rating system. These statistics could include whether or not they use crowd control, whether they were healing efficiently, average healer mana when the tank pulled, etc. These are nice ideas, but they also have their own issues. What stats will we choose to use to judge a player? What if the player runs with a guild that chooses to run heroics in an unconventional way, a way that is successful but won't reflect well on their statistics? Or what if they consistently run with bad players and thus can't use crowd control, because their crowd control ends up being broken anyways? The fact is that it's very difficult to objectively measure player skill, no matter what statistics you use.
Another possibility is an idea I had a while ago, inspired by the achievement Ready for Raiding. What if a series of quests was set up to help players learn the skills they need to run heroics? These quests would be phased quests in which players would have simulated party members, and they would run through various typical heroic situations and train players in the skills they need to be successful in heroics. Tanks could learn to wait for the healer to regain his mana, how to hold threat against multiple targets, how to position targets, etc. DPS could learn how to crowd control, how to move out of the fire, how to prioritize kill order, etc. Healers could learn how to heal efficiently, how to best use their cooldowns, etc. All this could be done in a phased environment where the player would really be tested on whether or not they had the skills needed to run heroics. Now, players would probably feel uncomfortably forced if these quests were mandatory to run heroics, so perhaps they could be option and could reward some valor points to sweeten the deal, as well as an achievement--perhaps called "Ready for Heroics".
Or we could all just wait a few months until everyone out-gears heroics and they don't require skill to run anymore. It'll happen, it just needs time.
The intentions behind these ideas are good, and in theory, they could work, but they all share the problem of having the potential to be abused by players. Some people will always look for a way to game the system if they can, and some people are just jerks, so no matter what Blizzard might do to try to prevent the system from being used as it wasn't intended to be used, someone will either benefit unfairly or be unfairly penalized. It's tempting to think the system could be designed to avoid that, but no design is foolproof. As an example, someone in the comments section of the WoW Insider post above had the idea to make it so that you can only mark players as bad players, which will increase their queue time. There would be no consequences for new players under this system because they would not be locked out of fast queues by a lack of up-ratings, which would be one of the worst consequences if players could be rated as good players, in addition to bad players. After all, up-rated players would be given shorter queue times (or else why up-rate players?), and if the up-rated players are being grouped together, that would give the newer players no one to group with.
But as another commenter pointed out, some players would just down-vote everyone they group with just because they can. Even worse, since down-votes would move the down-voted player farther down the queue, any down-rate you give another player would theoretically move you up the queue, assuming the down-rate isn't reciprocated. This would give players real, tangible motivation to down-rate people who don't deserve it; in other words, it wouldn't be just the jerkass players who down-rate everyone. In an attempt to moderate this kind of abuse, I had the idea of changing the system so you can still mark players as bad players based on their performance, but the more negative votes you give players, the less your negative votes will count against other players. This would discourage players from trying to game the system because the more they try to do so, the less of an effect they will have. Of course, players could abuse this system as well by just abstaining from down-rating players, which would give their votes more weight, and then using that weight to grief players they personally don't like by voting them down. Did another player win the roll for an item you wanted? If they're the only person you've ever down-rated, that could really increase their queue times. Isn't vengeance sweet?
Now, sure, Blizzard could tweak the formulas to prevent this kind of abuse, too, but the issues of players always looking for a way to game the system aside, this kind of system would still suffer from the issue of being a subjective system. A down-ranking system like the one described above depends on players down-ranking other players based on criteria shared by every other player, but people are subjective, and this might not be the case. Some players would down-rank players based on lack of skill, others would down-rank players for their attitudes, and some would probably only down-rank good players just to be ironic. Rather than a unified system for judging players, we would get players using their own standards to rate other players, standards which are not universal, and thus won't improve the dungeon finder for everyone.
What is needed is an objective system to help weed out the bad players (or at least increase their queue times). Some players have suggested that certain statistics be used to rank players, rather than a rating system. These statistics could include whether or not they use crowd control, whether they were healing efficiently, average healer mana when the tank pulled, etc. These are nice ideas, but they also have their own issues. What stats will we choose to use to judge a player? What if the player runs with a guild that chooses to run heroics in an unconventional way, a way that is successful but won't reflect well on their statistics? Or what if they consistently run with bad players and thus can't use crowd control, because their crowd control ends up being broken anyways? The fact is that it's very difficult to objectively measure player skill, no matter what statistics you use.
Another possibility is an idea I had a while ago, inspired by the achievement Ready for Raiding. What if a series of quests was set up to help players learn the skills they need to run heroics? These quests would be phased quests in which players would have simulated party members, and they would run through various typical heroic situations and train players in the skills they need to be successful in heroics. Tanks could learn to wait for the healer to regain his mana, how to hold threat against multiple targets, how to position targets, etc. DPS could learn how to crowd control, how to move out of the fire, how to prioritize kill order, etc. Healers could learn how to heal efficiently, how to best use their cooldowns, etc. All this could be done in a phased environment where the player would really be tested on whether or not they had the skills needed to run heroics. Now, players would probably feel uncomfortably forced if these quests were mandatory to run heroics, so perhaps they could be option and could reward some valor points to sweeten the deal, as well as an achievement--perhaps called "Ready for Heroics".
Or we could all just wait a few months until everyone out-gears heroics and they don't require skill to run anymore. It'll happen, it just needs time.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
The other faction: my friend or my enemy?
This post contains minor spoilers for the quests in Deepholm and Vashj'ir. They're nothing major, but if you wish to avoid them, here is your warning.
As I have already written about, WoW circa Cataclysm has been less than consistent with its storytelling, and the same sort of mood-whiplash I wrote about before relating to our motivations in Uldum compared to our motivation in Cataclysm's other zones has shown up again. This time, it has shown up in how inconsistent Cataclysm's storytelling is in terms of how we should view the other faction: the Horde. Different people may have different opinions on how the other faction should be viewed, but I think we can all agree that if Blizzard wants us to feel a particular way about the other faction, they'll be much more effective at making us think a certain way about them if they can be consistent in enforcing that viewpoint. Now, Blizzard has said that they want there to be more faction conflict than there was in Wrath of the Lich King, so you would think that, with Cataclysm being a complete redesign of WoW, they would design the game to foster that kind of combative atmosphere, yet Cataclysm hasn't been very consistent with that goal.
This inconsistency shows up best (for the Alliance, anyway) if you quest in Vashj'ir first and then move on to Deepholm. In Vashj'ir--from the Alliance perspective, anyways--your entire reason for going there is to fight the Horde, for they have attacked us in our attempts to scout out a new land mass. But after finishing up Vash'ir, you go to Deepholm, where while searching for a fragment of the World Pillar, you discover that the Horde ship that was delivering it might have been attacked by the Alliance. Upon returning with this news to Stormcaller Mylra, she has this to say:
"The Earthen Ring is a neutral organization, [name]. We cannot pick sides in the war between the Horde and the Alliance. Look around you -- our members come from all backgrounds. Our mission would be compromised should racial tensions be put above our goal. Let's try to keep this under wraps until we have more information."
So in two sequential zones, we go from being entirely motivated by the need to fight the other faction to being expected to cooperate with them. Something just doesn't add up here.
The animosity in Vashj'ir was to be expected. Like I said, Blizzard has said that they want Cataclysm to reignite the fires of war between the Alliance and the Horde, and they have shown some effort towards making that happen. The Worgan starting area is an example of this kind of effrt, for it contains much Forsaken aggression against the innocent Gilneans, the kind that makes me as ready to fight them as they clearly are to fight me. This is exactly the kind of animosity that it seems Blizzard wants players to have for the other faction, and yet when we get to Deepholm, we are asked to put that animosity in check for the sake of saving the world. Many players have expressed their desire for the factions to stop their bickering and come together to save the world, and for once, we actually get it. But why now? Why, after so many instances of being told that we should hate the other faction, do we get to cooperate with them now?
We saw this inconsistency in other parts of the game, too. Northrend featured the event that forever cemented that the Alliance and the Horde would never cooperate again (the Wrathgate), yet also includes numerous examples of the players putting aside their differences to help out one of the many neutral factions on Northrend (the Kirin Tor, the Argent Crusade, the Sons of Hodir, etc.). And yet, in addition to this cooperation, we also saw many examples of faction animosity in Northrend (the quest Catch More Dispatches, the Gunship Battle in Icecrown Citadel). In Hyjal, we rallied behind the Guardians of Hyjal to save the mountain, and in Deepholm, we rallied behind the Earthen Ring to save the world. Yet in the face of trying to take down one of the biggest threats to Azeroth at the time (the Lich King), the factions still had an air battle. So it seems as if the only time we can get the Alliance and the Horde to cooperate is when we have a third party that they are both rallying behind; in other words, having a common enemy just isn't enough to get the Alliance and the Horde to put aside their differences. I guess that's just what it takes to get the two to cooperate.
As a non sequitur, I have often noticed that if you read the story that unfolds in WoW like a novel, it seems that the theme of that novel would be the destructive nature of faction conflict and how much good can be wrought when the two sides put aside their differences. In Hyjal and Deepholm, the Alliance and the Horde work together and save the mountain and the world, respectively. In Vashj'ir, we ride into battle ready to face some Horde scum, and we are attacked by a kraken and almost die. When we cooperate, good things happen, and when we don't, bad things result. Perhaps that's the whole moral of WoW, that cooperation is good and needless conflict is bad. That could explain why we veteran players often complain about the damage wrought by faction conflict: we have already learned that moral, and to see new content that is still trying to teach it to us means the game is re-teaching us something we already know. When that thing we already know is a moral lesson, and the game tries to teach us that lesson through demonstration, watching those demonstrations of why faction conflict is bad long after we have realized this fact is just frustrating.
As I have already written about, WoW circa Cataclysm has been less than consistent with its storytelling, and the same sort of mood-whiplash I wrote about before relating to our motivations in Uldum compared to our motivation in Cataclysm's other zones has shown up again. This time, it has shown up in how inconsistent Cataclysm's storytelling is in terms of how we should view the other faction: the Horde. Different people may have different opinions on how the other faction should be viewed, but I think we can all agree that if Blizzard wants us to feel a particular way about the other faction, they'll be much more effective at making us think a certain way about them if they can be consistent in enforcing that viewpoint. Now, Blizzard has said that they want there to be more faction conflict than there was in Wrath of the Lich King, so you would think that, with Cataclysm being a complete redesign of WoW, they would design the game to foster that kind of combative atmosphere, yet Cataclysm hasn't been very consistent with that goal.
This inconsistency shows up best (for the Alliance, anyway) if you quest in Vashj'ir first and then move on to Deepholm. In Vashj'ir--from the Alliance perspective, anyways--your entire reason for going there is to fight the Horde, for they have attacked us in our attempts to scout out a new land mass. But after finishing up Vash'ir, you go to Deepholm, where while searching for a fragment of the World Pillar, you discover that the Horde ship that was delivering it might have been attacked by the Alliance. Upon returning with this news to Stormcaller Mylra, she has this to say:
"The Earthen Ring is a neutral organization, [name]. We cannot pick sides in the war between the Horde and the Alliance. Look around you -- our members come from all backgrounds. Our mission would be compromised should racial tensions be put above our goal. Let's try to keep this under wraps until we have more information."
So in two sequential zones, we go from being entirely motivated by the need to fight the other faction to being expected to cooperate with them. Something just doesn't add up here.
The animosity in Vashj'ir was to be expected. Like I said, Blizzard has said that they want Cataclysm to reignite the fires of war between the Alliance and the Horde, and they have shown some effort towards making that happen. The Worgan starting area is an example of this kind of effrt, for it contains much Forsaken aggression against the innocent Gilneans, the kind that makes me as ready to fight them as they clearly are to fight me. This is exactly the kind of animosity that it seems Blizzard wants players to have for the other faction, and yet when we get to Deepholm, we are asked to put that animosity in check for the sake of saving the world. Many players have expressed their desire for the factions to stop their bickering and come together to save the world, and for once, we actually get it. But why now? Why, after so many instances of being told that we should hate the other faction, do we get to cooperate with them now?
We saw this inconsistency in other parts of the game, too. Northrend featured the event that forever cemented that the Alliance and the Horde would never cooperate again (the Wrathgate), yet also includes numerous examples of the players putting aside their differences to help out one of the many neutral factions on Northrend (the Kirin Tor, the Argent Crusade, the Sons of Hodir, etc.). And yet, in addition to this cooperation, we also saw many examples of faction animosity in Northrend (the quest Catch More Dispatches, the Gunship Battle in Icecrown Citadel). In Hyjal, we rallied behind the Guardians of Hyjal to save the mountain, and in Deepholm, we rallied behind the Earthen Ring to save the world. Yet in the face of trying to take down one of the biggest threats to Azeroth at the time (the Lich King), the factions still had an air battle. So it seems as if the only time we can get the Alliance and the Horde to cooperate is when we have a third party that they are both rallying behind; in other words, having a common enemy just isn't enough to get the Alliance and the Horde to put aside their differences. I guess that's just what it takes to get the two to cooperate.
As a non sequitur, I have often noticed that if you read the story that unfolds in WoW like a novel, it seems that the theme of that novel would be the destructive nature of faction conflict and how much good can be wrought when the two sides put aside their differences. In Hyjal and Deepholm, the Alliance and the Horde work together and save the mountain and the world, respectively. In Vashj'ir, we ride into battle ready to face some Horde scum, and we are attacked by a kraken and almost die. When we cooperate, good things happen, and when we don't, bad things result. Perhaps that's the whole moral of WoW, that cooperation is good and needless conflict is bad. That could explain why we veteran players often complain about the damage wrought by faction conflict: we have already learned that moral, and to see new content that is still trying to teach it to us means the game is re-teaching us something we already know. When that thing we already know is a moral lesson, and the game tries to teach us that lesson through demonstration, watching those demonstrations of why faction conflict is bad long after we have realized this fact is just frustrating.
Friday, December 31, 2010
What will happen if our sub-culture goes mainstream?
We as gamers are a subculture that still has not seen total mainstream acceptance. We may have a wider variety of people under our umbrella than we used to, but as the Real ID scare showed us, not everyone is comfortable associating themselves with the gamer label. Sure, some people wear t-shirts or buttons proclaiming their gamer pride, and I've been known to wear my druid t-shirt out in public (though the fact that non-WoW-players wouldn't understand the meaning of that kind of shirt is part of the reason why I'm so comfortable donning it for a public outing), but the people who I see wearing t-shirts that explicitly state their identity as a gamer tend to be the ones who fit the "gamer stereotype" more than most of us do; after all, there is still a stigma attached to gaming, so if one can get away with not immediately being associated with our subculture, it's generally beneficial to do just that.
In many ways, I find being a member of the gamer community to be a lot like being a member of the gay community, and I can say that because I am a member of both communities. Membership in either community isn't immediately obvious to others if one don't fit the stereotypical image of their respective community. (For the gaming community, it's the overweight, glasses-wearing antisocialite; or the gay community, it's the flamboyant man or the butch woman.) In other words, unlike race or religion, being a member of the gamer community or the gay community has more to do with what you do than who you are, so the only way someone can identify you as a member of either subculture is to see you participate in either subculture's defining activities, see you proclaim that you are a member of either subculture, or see that you fit the stereotypes about the subculture and make an assumption based on that fact. Both communities also have varying levels of acceptance in different circles and different areas, though gay acceptance seems to vary more by geographical location than gamer acceptance does, but both definitely vary by the average age of the members of the circle in question.
Of course, being a member of the gaming community somewhat more of a choice than being a member of the gay community, which could lead to the gaming community being more of an acceptable target than the gay community. However, I would argue that we don't choose which activities appeal to us the most, so though being gamer might not influence our lives as much as being gay influences the lives of members of the gay community, being a part of the gaming community isn't as much of a choice as it is made out to be.
So why do I bring up these similarities? I bring them up because I have recently read an article about the end of gay culture, which proposes that as the gay community becomes more accepted in mainstream culture, the "gay subculture" will fade away, becoming less of a defining aspect of our community. To quote the latter part of the article:
So, too, the majority of gay men and lesbians want nothing more than to raise families behind picket fences. There are other signs of increasing conformity in the gay world. Leather is seen by most younger men as more silly than hot. While they may exercise, younger men mostly don’t strive for Adonis physiques. It goes on. (Lesbians are way ahead of the curve on this. They’ve been mating and nesting for years.)
Is this bad? Probably not. We’ve been fighting for acceptance. Now that we’re getting it, it’s up to us to do what we want with it. If younger gay men and lesbians want the same things as their straight counterparts, so be it.
Have we lost something? Probably. Just as blacks lose their jive and soul when they become middle-class suburbanites, and Jews lose their Yiddishkeite, so we shed the camp, the bitchy humor, the diva worship, and the other facets that defined “gay” for so long. [Emphasis is my own]
Most people, however, would consider it a fair tradeoff.
In other words, as the gay community becomes more accepted as part of the mainstream culture, we could start to shed the trappings once thought typical of gays and lesbians. And this doesn't surprise me at all. It's not uncommon for members of a culture that hasn't been accepted into the mainstream to act as exaggerated versions of their culture, and for that to cease once they have been accepted into the mainstream. After all, the thinking behind it goes, if people aren't going to accept us for who we are, even if why try to earn that acceptance, why try to earn it? Let's instead be as gay (or what have you) as we possibly can; they won't accept us if we try to act like them, so let's act as unlike them as possible for the sake of preserving our sense of identity. However, once the mainstream does accept a sub-culture, members of that sub-culture have a reason to try to fit in with the mainstream culture. After all, for all that we may put individuality on a high pedestal, we humans are social animals, and the desire to fit in is hardwired in our brain for that reason.
I witnessed this phenomenon myself in high school and college. My high school was in a fairly wealthy, very white suburb, so the school was mostly comprised of white students; I could count the number of black students I knew of who lived in that town and went to that school on one hand. As part of a program to try to give inner city children better education, we also had black students from urban areas nearby bussed in to attend school with us. Now, the school wasn't racist by any stretch of the imagination, but these inner city kids didn't fit in, and they knew they didn't fit in and would never fit it, so they would act very "thuggish". I have read that this phenomenon is not isolated to the high school I attended, and it happens for the very reason I outlined above. Contrastly, the college I currently attend has a very racially diverse student body, and though I have met my fair share of thuggish black students, I have also met a lot more subdued, not-so-thuggish black students in my time at college, and I think it might have something to do with the fact that they stand a chance of fitting in if they don't act like exaggerated versions of the stereotypes about their subculture.
In short, we once had the choice between trying to fit in and not being accepted, or acting like exaggerated stereotypes and not being accepted, and since both would lead to the same result, we picked the latter, because it was more fun and didn't force us to sacrifice our identity in vain. Yet now we have the choice between trying to fit in and standing a chance of being accepted, or acting like exaggerated stereotypes and not fitting in. Since we stand a chance of actually being accepted for who we are, the former option is starting to look a lot more attractive.
The question I want to ask is, what will happen to the gaming community if we are accepted into the mainstream? Will we lose the jive and soul, the Yiddishkeite, the camp, the bitchy humor, the diva worship of our community, whatever that may be? And if we do, will that really be a bad thing?
In order to answer those questions, we need to ask what it is that we stand to lose if we become accepted by the mainstream. What, exactly, is our jive and soul, our Yiddishkeite, our camp, bitchy humor, and diva worship? Well, if we look at what these staples of each community have in common, it is that they are the result of members of those communities putting forth time and effort to be a part of something that defines their subculture. Being "camp" in a showy way takes time and effort, time and effort a gay man might not otherwise spend if he stood a chance to fit in if he didn't act camp. Perhaps when a subculture is assimilated into the mainstream, its members start putting forth effort towards fitting in rather than standing out, since the former can actually lead to them being accepted. Are there exceptions? Certainly; long after gays have been assimilated into mainstream culture, I'm sure there will still be members of our community who try to be as campy as possible and who will still spend time worshiping divas and all that, but it will likely be more rare than it is now.
So what is a staple of the gaming community that takes this kind of time and effort? An easy answer would be giant LAN parties, midnight release parties, and gaming conventions, which could very well be what we lose if we go mainstream. After all, if gaming became more mainstream, you would see a lot more gamers who have much bigger lives outside of gaming than the typical LAN-attending, convention-attending, midnight-release-attending gamer does. These would be gamers for who gaming is not as big of a part of their lives as it may be a part of ours, so they won't have the time to go to and arrange LAN parties or conventions or midnight releases. We could also see people who now spend a lot of time gaming start doing other things outside of their gaming hobby as less and less stigma is attached to it. With this disappearance of stigma will come more acceptance of gamers in non-gaming circles, and that acceptance could motivate once-hard-core gamers to start doing things outside of the realm of gaming. After all, we are all social animals, and social experiences brought about through gaming (like the ones brought about by WoW itself) can only do so much for us.
In other words, I think the best conclusion to draw from this logic is that if gaming becomes more accepted by the mainstream, we will see a decline in the number of hard-core gamers. It wouldn't surprise me if the current stigma attached to gaming is what drives hard-core gamers to play as much as they do in the first place; they know they can't fit in with mainstream culture, so rather than trying to fit in, they just do more of what they love: gaming. Once that stigma no longer exists and gamers are more accepted by the mainstream, maybe they will no longer be driven to these isolating levels of dedication to their hobby. Just as the black community lost their soul brothers, just as gay community may lose it's flaming queens, we may lose the most extreme members of our community to mainstream assimilation.
Is that a bad thing? That's a topic for another post, though I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on whether it is or not in the comments section.
In many ways, I find being a member of the gamer community to be a lot like being a member of the gay community, and I can say that because I am a member of both communities. Membership in either community isn't immediately obvious to others if one don't fit the stereotypical image of their respective community. (For the gaming community, it's the overweight, glasses-wearing antisocialite; or the gay community, it's the flamboyant man or the butch woman.) In other words, unlike race or religion, being a member of the gamer community or the gay community has more to do with what you do than who you are, so the only way someone can identify you as a member of either subculture is to see you participate in either subculture's defining activities, see you proclaim that you are a member of either subculture, or see that you fit the stereotypes about the subculture and make an assumption based on that fact. Both communities also have varying levels of acceptance in different circles and different areas, though gay acceptance seems to vary more by geographical location than gamer acceptance does, but both definitely vary by the average age of the members of the circle in question.
Of course, being a member of the gaming community somewhat more of a choice than being a member of the gay community, which could lead to the gaming community being more of an acceptable target than the gay community. However, I would argue that we don't choose which activities appeal to us the most, so though being gamer might not influence our lives as much as being gay influences the lives of members of the gay community, being a part of the gaming community isn't as much of a choice as it is made out to be.
So why do I bring up these similarities? I bring them up because I have recently read an article about the end of gay culture, which proposes that as the gay community becomes more accepted in mainstream culture, the "gay subculture" will fade away, becoming less of a defining aspect of our community. To quote the latter part of the article:
So, too, the majority of gay men and lesbians want nothing more than to raise families behind picket fences. There are other signs of increasing conformity in the gay world. Leather is seen by most younger men as more silly than hot. While they may exercise, younger men mostly don’t strive for Adonis physiques. It goes on. (Lesbians are way ahead of the curve on this. They’ve been mating and nesting for years.)
Is this bad? Probably not. We’ve been fighting for acceptance. Now that we’re getting it, it’s up to us to do what we want with it. If younger gay men and lesbians want the same things as their straight counterparts, so be it.
Have we lost something? Probably. Just as blacks lose their jive and soul when they become middle-class suburbanites, and Jews lose their Yiddishkeite, so we shed the camp, the bitchy humor, the diva worship, and the other facets that defined “gay” for so long. [Emphasis is my own]
Most people, however, would consider it a fair tradeoff.
In other words, as the gay community becomes more accepted as part of the mainstream culture, we could start to shed the trappings once thought typical of gays and lesbians. And this doesn't surprise me at all. It's not uncommon for members of a culture that hasn't been accepted into the mainstream to act as exaggerated versions of their culture, and for that to cease once they have been accepted into the mainstream. After all, the thinking behind it goes, if people aren't going to accept us for who we are, even if why try to earn that acceptance, why try to earn it? Let's instead be as gay (or what have you) as we possibly can; they won't accept us if we try to act like them, so let's act as unlike them as possible for the sake of preserving our sense of identity. However, once the mainstream does accept a sub-culture, members of that sub-culture have a reason to try to fit in with the mainstream culture. After all, for all that we may put individuality on a high pedestal, we humans are social animals, and the desire to fit in is hardwired in our brain for that reason.
I witnessed this phenomenon myself in high school and college. My high school was in a fairly wealthy, very white suburb, so the school was mostly comprised of white students; I could count the number of black students I knew of who lived in that town and went to that school on one hand. As part of a program to try to give inner city children better education, we also had black students from urban areas nearby bussed in to attend school with us. Now, the school wasn't racist by any stretch of the imagination, but these inner city kids didn't fit in, and they knew they didn't fit in and would never fit it, so they would act very "thuggish". I have read that this phenomenon is not isolated to the high school I attended, and it happens for the very reason I outlined above. Contrastly, the college I currently attend has a very racially diverse student body, and though I have met my fair share of thuggish black students, I have also met a lot more subdued, not-so-thuggish black students in my time at college, and I think it might have something to do with the fact that they stand a chance of fitting in if they don't act like exaggerated versions of the stereotypes about their subculture.
In short, we once had the choice between trying to fit in and not being accepted, or acting like exaggerated stereotypes and not being accepted, and since both would lead to the same result, we picked the latter, because it was more fun and didn't force us to sacrifice our identity in vain. Yet now we have the choice between trying to fit in and standing a chance of being accepted, or acting like exaggerated stereotypes and not fitting in. Since we stand a chance of actually being accepted for who we are, the former option is starting to look a lot more attractive.
The question I want to ask is, what will happen to the gaming community if we are accepted into the mainstream? Will we lose the jive and soul, the Yiddishkeite, the camp, the bitchy humor, the diva worship of our community, whatever that may be? And if we do, will that really be a bad thing?
In order to answer those questions, we need to ask what it is that we stand to lose if we become accepted by the mainstream. What, exactly, is our jive and soul, our Yiddishkeite, our camp, bitchy humor, and diva worship? Well, if we look at what these staples of each community have in common, it is that they are the result of members of those communities putting forth time and effort to be a part of something that defines their subculture. Being "camp" in a showy way takes time and effort, time and effort a gay man might not otherwise spend if he stood a chance to fit in if he didn't act camp. Perhaps when a subculture is assimilated into the mainstream, its members start putting forth effort towards fitting in rather than standing out, since the former can actually lead to them being accepted. Are there exceptions? Certainly; long after gays have been assimilated into mainstream culture, I'm sure there will still be members of our community who try to be as campy as possible and who will still spend time worshiping divas and all that, but it will likely be more rare than it is now.
So what is a staple of the gaming community that takes this kind of time and effort? An easy answer would be giant LAN parties, midnight release parties, and gaming conventions, which could very well be what we lose if we go mainstream. After all, if gaming became more mainstream, you would see a lot more gamers who have much bigger lives outside of gaming than the typical LAN-attending, convention-attending, midnight-release-attending gamer does. These would be gamers for who gaming is not as big of a part of their lives as it may be a part of ours, so they won't have the time to go to and arrange LAN parties or conventions or midnight releases. We could also see people who now spend a lot of time gaming start doing other things outside of their gaming hobby as less and less stigma is attached to it. With this disappearance of stigma will come more acceptance of gamers in non-gaming circles, and that acceptance could motivate once-hard-core gamers to start doing things outside of the realm of gaming. After all, we are all social animals, and social experiences brought about through gaming (like the ones brought about by WoW itself) can only do so much for us.
In other words, I think the best conclusion to draw from this logic is that if gaming becomes more accepted by the mainstream, we will see a decline in the number of hard-core gamers. It wouldn't surprise me if the current stigma attached to gaming is what drives hard-core gamers to play as much as they do in the first place; they know they can't fit in with mainstream culture, so rather than trying to fit in, they just do more of what they love: gaming. Once that stigma no longer exists and gamers are more accepted by the mainstream, maybe they will no longer be driven to these isolating levels of dedication to their hobby. Just as the black community lost their soul brothers, just as gay community may lose it's flaming queens, we may lose the most extreme members of our community to mainstream assimilation.
Is that a bad thing? That's a topic for another post, though I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on whether it is or not in the comments section.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Don't you know there's a Shattering on? Redux
The last time I asked the question, "Don't you know there's a Shattering on?", it was because I was struck by the nonchalance the citizens of Stormwind seemed to have taken towards the recent destruction of their world, and I was able to formulate a reason as to why they were so calm after a gigantic dragon had just ravaged their city. Now I am forced to ask this question again, this time by the Hero's Call board. Allow me to copy a line from the Hero's Call quest for each Cataclysm zone (the Alliance versions of those quests, that is) that succinctly sums up your purpose going into each zone:
Vashj'ir: "Recent attacks by the Horde on our trade ships must be met with swift and just force!"
Mount Hyjal: "Our brothers in the Cenarion Circle report that Deathwing's minions have launched a destructive offensive against the world tree and threaten to burn it to the ground!"
Deepholm: "The Earthen Ring requires our aid! They report that the elemental plane of Deepholm threatens to overtake our world and destroy all life on Azeroth!"
Twilight Highlands: "King Wrynn requires a trustworthy and proven hero for a mission of the utmost importance."
Uldum: "Be one of the first to enter glorious Uldum and claim its treasures in honor of the Alliance!"
One of these things is not like the other... I mean, what's up with Uldum? The way that your motivation for going into Uldum stands out from your motivation for going into all of the other zones becomes even more clear as you accept the introductory quests for each zone:
Vashj'ir: "As you may have heard, the Horde's attacking just offshore. The fighting's been fierce and relentless. We need every able body out there repelling the enemy!"
Mount Hyjal: "It is good that you've come here just as Azeroth finds itself in a time of great need. Deathwing's minions are attacking Hyjal and seek to bring the destructive Ragnaros back into our world."
Deepholm: "Deathwing's return to our world left a rift open between Azeroth and Deepholm. If we don't mend the breach, this land will be torn asunder."
Twilight Highlands: "Great burdens have been placed on my son's shoulders in his short lifetime, and I fear his responsibilities are only going to grow. He will never learn leadership confined to the keep, but I am loathe to send him forth without escort.[Name], your deeds in the wake of this cataclysm are already legendary. You would be an excellent mentor for young Prince Anduin."
Uldum: "The ancient region of Uldum has been exposed! Treasures beyond your wildest dreams, free for the taking! We just need a bit of an escort, what with the bandits and all..."
Let's look at each zone individually. In Vashj'ir, the Horde has attacked Alliance ships out near an island that has recently surfaced, and we need to go out and defend ourselves, lest we loose even more lives to the conflict. On Mount Hyjal, the mountain threatens to burn if we don't do something about it, and Ragnaros might be brought back, which would be an even greater threat upon the world. In Deepholm, the world threatens to tear apart if the world pillar cannot be reconstructed. For the Twilight Haghlands, though Varian doesn't exactly make it clear what is wrong in that zone, the tone of the quests give the impression that it is important and consequential. In Uldum, there are treasures to be found! Yes, one of these things really isn't like the other.
In other words, it seems as if our actions in every zone in Cataclysm minus Uldum are motivated by the basic need to save the world or ourselves, or at the very least, some grander purpose. We are out there to do things for other people, as is our character's motivation for much of the game. But when we get around to going to Uldum, we suddenly find ourselves motivated purely by the treasures we can find. Sure, the quests may try to gloss over that by saying that we are looking for these treasures "for the glory of the Alliance" or that we are really helping this caravan get into Uldum, but at the end of the day, rather than being there to help, we are there for fame and glory. In every other zone, we are there to make a difference, to help the innocent, to save the world, but in Uldum, we are there for easy treasures... what.
This dichotomy was especially apparent to me because I only quested through Hyjal and Deepholm before starting Uldum, and in both of those zones, we narrowly avert widespread destruction though swift and timely action. In Hyjal, we narrowly avert the destruction of the mountain by fighting back those responsible; in Deepholm, we narrowly avert the destruction of the whole world by resembling the world pillar. Between these two zones, the mood of the expansion is set as one where the world is constantly teetering on the brink of destruction, and only by acting quickly can we save it. That's why it's pretty jarring to spend two zones saving a world that is very close to destruction, then to be lead to a zone where our only reason for being there is to see what treasures we can find. As the people in that caravan asked me to escort them into the desert, I couldn't help but ask myself, don't you know that there's a world out there that could be lost if we don't go help? Don't you know there's a Shattering on?
The one possible reason I could think of for Blizzard to put in a zone with such a different mood is that they wanted to show that our characters are not the spotless paragons of good they might otherwise seem to be. They may be heroes, but perhaps Blizzard wanted to show that they are by no means perfect, and they can get excited about personal gain just like anyone. I can understand why they would want to do this. After all, they are trying to tell a story, and we are simply playing the part of the protagonist of that story. If the protagonist of a story is too perfect, he becomes a Mary Sue, and the story becomes unbelievable. But our characters do have flaws, the most prominent of which might be their gullibility. The way we help Tyrus Blackhorn, Drakaru, Teron Gorefiend regain their power in Mount Hyjal, Grizzly Hills, and Shadowmoon Valley, respectively, show just how easily our characters trust others, a trust which is often taken advantage of. But being that that is the only flaw that comes to mind (for me, at least), perhaps they are a bit too close to being Mary Sues, which is why Blizzard wants to add self-centered greed to the list of their flaws by sending them to Uldum to look for treasure.
Does it work? I suppose this is a matter of opinion, but I'm of the opinion that it doesn't. Our characters spend so long being near-perfect heroes (with gullibility as their only flaws) that for them to show this interest in more selfish motivators so suddenly feels more like character derailment than character development, even if there isn't much character to derail in the first place. Now, maybe I need to level an alt through the old content so I can see that our characters really can be pretty self centered, because the truth is that I haven't leveled a character past level 14 since the start of the expansion. Hell, it probably isn't out of character at all for goblins. But I can say that two large zones' worth of setting our character up as a grand world-saving hero is enough to establish our characters suddenly taking on the role of a treasure hunter as decidedly out of character.
And even if this concept did work, it would completely ignore the fact that the world is teetering on the brink of destruction, as was made clear to us in Hyjal and Deepholm. No amount of character development or any other such justification can mask the fact that Hyjal and Deepholm probably aren't the only areas in need of being saved by our characters, and to be forced to go treasure hunting when the world is teetering on the brink of destruction forces our characters to show an uncomfortable amount of disregard for the world at large.
Vashj'ir: "Recent attacks by the Horde on our trade ships must be met with swift and just force!"
Mount Hyjal: "Our brothers in the Cenarion Circle report that Deathwing's minions have launched a destructive offensive against the world tree and threaten to burn it to the ground!"
Deepholm: "The Earthen Ring requires our aid! They report that the elemental plane of Deepholm threatens to overtake our world and destroy all life on Azeroth!"
Twilight Highlands: "King Wrynn requires a trustworthy and proven hero for a mission of the utmost importance."
Uldum: "Be one of the first to enter glorious Uldum and claim its treasures in honor of the Alliance!"
One of these things is not like the other... I mean, what's up with Uldum? The way that your motivation for going into Uldum stands out from your motivation for going into all of the other zones becomes even more clear as you accept the introductory quests for each zone:
Vashj'ir: "As you may have heard, the Horde's attacking just offshore. The fighting's been fierce and relentless. We need every able body out there repelling the enemy!"
Mount Hyjal: "It is good that you've come here just as Azeroth finds itself in a time of great need. Deathwing's minions are attacking Hyjal and seek to bring the destructive Ragnaros back into our world."
Deepholm: "Deathwing's return to our world left a rift open between Azeroth and Deepholm. If we don't mend the breach, this land will be torn asunder."
Twilight Highlands: "Great burdens have been placed on my son's shoulders in his short lifetime, and I fear his responsibilities are only going to grow. He will never learn leadership confined to the keep, but I am loathe to send him forth without escort.
Uldum: "The ancient region of Uldum has been exposed! Treasures beyond your wildest dreams, free for the taking! We just need a bit of an escort, what with the bandits and all..."
Let's look at each zone individually. In Vashj'ir, the Horde has attacked Alliance ships out near an island that has recently surfaced, and we need to go out and defend ourselves, lest we loose even more lives to the conflict. On Mount Hyjal, the mountain threatens to burn if we don't do something about it, and Ragnaros might be brought back, which would be an even greater threat upon the world. In Deepholm, the world threatens to tear apart if the world pillar cannot be reconstructed. For the Twilight Haghlands, though Varian doesn't exactly make it clear what is wrong in that zone, the tone of the quests give the impression that it is important and consequential. In Uldum, there are treasures to be found! Yes, one of these things really isn't like the other.
In other words, it seems as if our actions in every zone in Cataclysm minus Uldum are motivated by the basic need to save the world or ourselves, or at the very least, some grander purpose. We are out there to do things for other people, as is our character's motivation for much of the game. But when we get around to going to Uldum, we suddenly find ourselves motivated purely by the treasures we can find. Sure, the quests may try to gloss over that by saying that we are looking for these treasures "for the glory of the Alliance" or that we are really helping this caravan get into Uldum, but at the end of the day, rather than being there to help, we are there for fame and glory. In every other zone, we are there to make a difference, to help the innocent, to save the world, but in Uldum, we are there for easy treasures... what.
This dichotomy was especially apparent to me because I only quested through Hyjal and Deepholm before starting Uldum, and in both of those zones, we narrowly avert widespread destruction though swift and timely action. In Hyjal, we narrowly avert the destruction of the mountain by fighting back those responsible; in Deepholm, we narrowly avert the destruction of the whole world by resembling the world pillar. Between these two zones, the mood of the expansion is set as one where the world is constantly teetering on the brink of destruction, and only by acting quickly can we save it. That's why it's pretty jarring to spend two zones saving a world that is very close to destruction, then to be lead to a zone where our only reason for being there is to see what treasures we can find. As the people in that caravan asked me to escort them into the desert, I couldn't help but ask myself, don't you know that there's a world out there that could be lost if we don't go help? Don't you know there's a Shattering on?
The one possible reason I could think of for Blizzard to put in a zone with such a different mood is that they wanted to show that our characters are not the spotless paragons of good they might otherwise seem to be. They may be heroes, but perhaps Blizzard wanted to show that they are by no means perfect, and they can get excited about personal gain just like anyone. I can understand why they would want to do this. After all, they are trying to tell a story, and we are simply playing the part of the protagonist of that story. If the protagonist of a story is too perfect, he becomes a Mary Sue, and the story becomes unbelievable. But our characters do have flaws, the most prominent of which might be their gullibility. The way we help Tyrus Blackhorn, Drakaru, Teron Gorefiend regain their power in Mount Hyjal, Grizzly Hills, and Shadowmoon Valley, respectively, show just how easily our characters trust others, a trust which is often taken advantage of. But being that that is the only flaw that comes to mind (for me, at least), perhaps they are a bit too close to being Mary Sues, which is why Blizzard wants to add self-centered greed to the list of their flaws by sending them to Uldum to look for treasure.
Does it work? I suppose this is a matter of opinion, but I'm of the opinion that it doesn't. Our characters spend so long being near-perfect heroes (with gullibility as their only flaws) that for them to show this interest in more selfish motivators so suddenly feels more like character derailment than character development, even if there isn't much character to derail in the first place. Now, maybe I need to level an alt through the old content so I can see that our characters really can be pretty self centered, because the truth is that I haven't leveled a character past level 14 since the start of the expansion. Hell, it probably isn't out of character at all for goblins. But I can say that two large zones' worth of setting our character up as a grand world-saving hero is enough to establish our characters suddenly taking on the role of a treasure hunter as decidedly out of character.
And even if this concept did work, it would completely ignore the fact that the world is teetering on the brink of destruction, as was made clear to us in Hyjal and Deepholm. No amount of character development or any other such justification can mask the fact that Hyjal and Deepholm probably aren't the only areas in need of being saved by our characters, and to be forced to go treasure hunting when the world is teetering on the brink of destruction forces our characters to show an uncomfortable amount of disregard for the world at large.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Failure to adjust: whose fault is it?
Being that I am still level 84, I have not yet had the "pleasure" of stepping into Cataclysm's heroics, but if Allison Robert's look at the unbearable suckhood of pugging is anything to go on, I'm not missing much. I can't say I'm all that surprised that in the wake of Blizzard making some pretty significant changes to heroics in Cataclysm--crowd control is necessary, DPS can't be healed through avoidable damage, triage is more important that fast healing, kill order and interrupts are important again--it seems the playerbase has been less than willing to adapt to these changes. Now, we are still in the first few weeks of the expansion's life time, and given time, players might learn and change their ways (especially when their current ways deny them their epic loot). But if Allison's post and other horror stories I have heard from other players and other bloggers are anything to go on, people really aren't do well in adapting to the changes made to heroics in Cataclysm. But does the fault really lie with those who "refuse" to adapt to the times and the demands of a new era? Or might the fault lie elsewhere?
When heroics were introduced in Burning Crusade, they were difficult, and wiping was common. When Wrath of the Lich King came out, that changed. Heroics were not all that difficult, especially as the expansion wore on, and the fact that we kept running heroics long after we outgeared them lead to players developing some pretty bad habits for running them. It was bad enough when Wrath heroics allowed us to ignore kill orders, not interrupt spells, and AoE down trash at the beginning of the expansion; once the emblem system allowed us to get amazing gear without leaving heroics, it was all downhill from there. Runing heroics took the same amount of skill as doing old-world quests for Loremaster; that is to say, it took none, but people still did it, and as a result, they developed some pretty low expectations for how difficult heroics should be. Players who try to run heroics now using the strategies that they used in latter Lich King era heroics are like level-80 players who try doing Cataclysm quest content using the strategies they use to do low-level quests for Loremaster (which, if you've ever killed low level enemies for any reason, you know would end in disaster). I don't know for a fact that those players exist, but if they did, they'd be comparable to today's heroic runners.
But let's look at Wrath's heroic dungeons more closely. You had heroics, which took almost zero effort and a minimal investment of time and awarded great gear, and raiding, which took a great deal of time and effort and award superb gear. Considering that heroics took infinitely less ability and commitment to run and awarded gear that wasn't much worse than what raids awarded, it's no wonder players flocked to them, even those without the skills that are usually necessary to succeed in group content. And when they went there, they obtained gear that trivialized the very content that awarded it, but they kept playing because they liked these shiny epics they could earn. Because of this design, players associated heroics with zero-effort rewards and started playing under the assumption if their zero-effort approach did not yield victory, it meant someone was playing badly, an assumption which hampers their ability to adapt to today's heroics. The expectation of reward for zero effort also keeps players in heroics who have no business expecting to succeed in a cooperative environment, further hindering our efforts. And whose decision was it to design Wrath's heroics to start out easy, become even easier when the gear they awarded trivialized them, and thus create this mess in the first place? Blizzard.
Now let's fast forward to the development stages of Cataclysm. Wrath of the Lich King is coming to a close, and many non-raiders (a category which includes a startlingly large players, if a poll I ran a while ago on my blog is anything to go by) continue running heroics because that is the only thing they have left to entertain themselves, thus further cementing the bad habits they have developed over the course of the expansion pack. Meanwhile, in all of their interviews and press releases, Blizzard makes clear their intention to make heroics challenging again, to make them require crowd control, kill order, interrupts, strategy, etc. They make this clear at BlizzCon, in miscellaneous interviews, and as a result, us players who keep up with WoW news online are well aware going into Cataclysm that things are going to be different, that the strategies we used for old heroics won't work in this new expansion, and that we're going to have to change the way we do things. We knew this, but the players who don't follow WoW news online didn't.
I don't know exactly when I started following WoW news online, but if I had to put a guess to it, the earliest I would be willing to guess is November of 2008. Now, I started playing WoW in September of 2005. That's sixty three months I have been playing, and I have only been following WoW news online for, at the most, twenty five of them. That's less than half of my time spent playing WoW, and it means it took me more than three years to realize that WoW had an online community. Now, I'm sure the community has grown more robust as the game's popularity has grown, meaning someone who started playing after I did would probably have an easier time discovering WoW's online community than I did. But I bring up the duration of the time during which I was oblivious of WoW's online community to illustrate that not every player is privy to the information we often take for granted. For anyone who did not keep track of news about Cataclysm, the sudden rise of difficulty in heroics is something they had no way of anticipating.
So, we have Blizzard creating a situation that leads to players developing really bad habits in heroics, and then doing nothing to convey to players who don't follow news about WoW online that they are increasing the difficulty of heroics come Cataclysm. It's beginning to look like the fault for these players who didn't adjust to Cataclysm's heroics is resting on Blizzard's shoulders. The question is, was it Blizzard's responsibility to prepare players for this change?
Blizzard hasn't exactly been transparent when it comes to information about their game. When they expanded the armory to include a wowhead-like database of items, it was a big break from convention, to say the least. They have put other detailed information, like boss strategies or walkthroughs, on the official website, the kind of thing you would get on other sites. Sure, they'll release general information about the game, like overall descriptions of the classes and zones, but they've never been one for revealing specifics. This is especially the case in-game, where we go into most situations blind without any of the information we take for granted because we know so much information about the game that we acquire online. We may pick up on general patterns that can help us in entirely new situations (such as, one should generally not stand in the fire), but those assumptions are formed in response to general patterns of game design; they do not influence the game design itself. In other words, we know not to stand in the fire because developers usually make fire harmful; they don't make fire harmful because we usually don't stand in it.
What this means for heroics is that just because we players grow accustomed to certain facts in game (fire is bad, heroics don't require strategy) doesn't mean Blizzard owes it to us to keep those facts consistent or to warn us when they change. They can design the game however they like--within reason, of course, or else they'll lose subscribers--and its our responsibility to adapt. Part of that adaptation process is assembling information in online databases with boss strategies, item statistics, etc., which results in websites like wowhead and WoWWiki, as well as blogs that detail changes to the game, like heroics being made more difficult) This is all part of the process of adapting to changes made to the game, and knowing heroics were going to become more difficult by following Cataclysm news was part of that adaptation process. By taking that knowledge for granted, we took our adaptive abilities for granted, but some players haven't learned the process of adaptation as well as others. Those are the players who struggle in heroics now, and while it might not seem fair that we have to suffer for their inability to adapt, that's just the nature of group content.
When heroics were introduced in Burning Crusade, they were difficult, and wiping was common. When Wrath of the Lich King came out, that changed. Heroics were not all that difficult, especially as the expansion wore on, and the fact that we kept running heroics long after we outgeared them lead to players developing some pretty bad habits for running them. It was bad enough when Wrath heroics allowed us to ignore kill orders, not interrupt spells, and AoE down trash at the beginning of the expansion; once the emblem system allowed us to get amazing gear without leaving heroics, it was all downhill from there. Runing heroics took the same amount of skill as doing old-world quests for Loremaster; that is to say, it took none, but people still did it, and as a result, they developed some pretty low expectations for how difficult heroics should be. Players who try to run heroics now using the strategies that they used in latter Lich King era heroics are like level-80 players who try doing Cataclysm quest content using the strategies they use to do low-level quests for Loremaster (which, if you've ever killed low level enemies for any reason, you know would end in disaster). I don't know for a fact that those players exist, but if they did, they'd be comparable to today's heroic runners.
But let's look at Wrath's heroic dungeons more closely. You had heroics, which took almost zero effort and a minimal investment of time and awarded great gear, and raiding, which took a great deal of time and effort and award superb gear. Considering that heroics took infinitely less ability and commitment to run and awarded gear that wasn't much worse than what raids awarded, it's no wonder players flocked to them, even those without the skills that are usually necessary to succeed in group content. And when they went there, they obtained gear that trivialized the very content that awarded it, but they kept playing because they liked these shiny epics they could earn. Because of this design, players associated heroics with zero-effort rewards and started playing under the assumption if their zero-effort approach did not yield victory, it meant someone was playing badly, an assumption which hampers their ability to adapt to today's heroics. The expectation of reward for zero effort also keeps players in heroics who have no business expecting to succeed in a cooperative environment, further hindering our efforts. And whose decision was it to design Wrath's heroics to start out easy, become even easier when the gear they awarded trivialized them, and thus create this mess in the first place? Blizzard.
Now let's fast forward to the development stages of Cataclysm. Wrath of the Lich King is coming to a close, and many non-raiders (a category which includes a startlingly large players, if a poll I ran a while ago on my blog is anything to go by) continue running heroics because that is the only thing they have left to entertain themselves, thus further cementing the bad habits they have developed over the course of the expansion pack. Meanwhile, in all of their interviews and press releases, Blizzard makes clear their intention to make heroics challenging again, to make them require crowd control, kill order, interrupts, strategy, etc. They make this clear at BlizzCon, in miscellaneous interviews, and as a result, us players who keep up with WoW news online are well aware going into Cataclysm that things are going to be different, that the strategies we used for old heroics won't work in this new expansion, and that we're going to have to change the way we do things. We knew this, but the players who don't follow WoW news online didn't.
I don't know exactly when I started following WoW news online, but if I had to put a guess to it, the earliest I would be willing to guess is November of 2008. Now, I started playing WoW in September of 2005. That's sixty three months I have been playing, and I have only been following WoW news online for, at the most, twenty five of them. That's less than half of my time spent playing WoW, and it means it took me more than three years to realize that WoW had an online community. Now, I'm sure the community has grown more robust as the game's popularity has grown, meaning someone who started playing after I did would probably have an easier time discovering WoW's online community than I did. But I bring up the duration of the time during which I was oblivious of WoW's online community to illustrate that not every player is privy to the information we often take for granted. For anyone who did not keep track of news about Cataclysm, the sudden rise of difficulty in heroics is something they had no way of anticipating.
So, we have Blizzard creating a situation that leads to players developing really bad habits in heroics, and then doing nothing to convey to players who don't follow news about WoW online that they are increasing the difficulty of heroics come Cataclysm. It's beginning to look like the fault for these players who didn't adjust to Cataclysm's heroics is resting on Blizzard's shoulders. The question is, was it Blizzard's responsibility to prepare players for this change?
Blizzard hasn't exactly been transparent when it comes to information about their game. When they expanded the armory to include a wowhead-like database of items, it was a big break from convention, to say the least. They have put other detailed information, like boss strategies or walkthroughs, on the official website, the kind of thing you would get on other sites. Sure, they'll release general information about the game, like overall descriptions of the classes and zones, but they've never been one for revealing specifics. This is especially the case in-game, where we go into most situations blind without any of the information we take for granted because we know so much information about the game that we acquire online. We may pick up on general patterns that can help us in entirely new situations (such as, one should generally not stand in the fire), but those assumptions are formed in response to general patterns of game design; they do not influence the game design itself. In other words, we know not to stand in the fire because developers usually make fire harmful; they don't make fire harmful because we usually don't stand in it.
What this means for heroics is that just because we players grow accustomed to certain facts in game (fire is bad, heroics don't require strategy) doesn't mean Blizzard owes it to us to keep those facts consistent or to warn us when they change. They can design the game however they like--within reason, of course, or else they'll lose subscribers--and its our responsibility to adapt. Part of that adaptation process is assembling information in online databases with boss strategies, item statistics, etc., which results in websites like wowhead and WoWWiki, as well as blogs that detail changes to the game, like heroics being made more difficult) This is all part of the process of adapting to changes made to the game, and knowing heroics were going to become more difficult by following Cataclysm news was part of that adaptation process. By taking that knowledge for granted, we took our adaptive abilities for granted, but some players haven't learned the process of adaptation as well as others. Those are the players who struggle in heroics now, and while it might not seem fair that we have to suffer for their inability to adapt, that's just the nature of group content.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Guild perks and guilds "for guild's sake"
After putting it off for a week or so, I have finally broken down and joined a guild. I didn't join one to raid or anything like that; as you learned in Monday's post, I am a happy solo-er and have no desire to change that fact. So rather than join a raiding guild which would level up quickly and need to live a lie every time I log in, I posted the following message to my realm's trade chat:
Solo-er looking for guild. I'm not looking to raid or PvP, but if you let me into your ranks, I will help your guild level and earn guild achievements. PST, but please don't just send an invite; I want to get to know you before I join.
And so, the serially guild-less player has joined a guild, all because he couldn't resist that 10% mounted speed increase or those items awarded by the guild achievements. What have I done differently since joining this guild? Well, I've killed a lot more critters and had a conversation about archeology... so really, not all that much has changed. As I said in my post on Guild perks and the death of the independent player, I was happily guild-less until Cataclysm came out, so when I joined a guild, I didn't plan on changing much about my playstyle. Still, considering that I have enjoyed the conversations I have had since joining the guild, I suppose this change to my playstyle has been, overall, positive, and also fits my prediction as to why Blizzard seemed to be targeting us solo players with these guild perks.
See, in my post that I mentioned above, I theorized that part of Blizzard's motivation for putting in these guild perks was to get willingly guild-less players like me to join guilds (or, at the very least, it was an unintentional positive side-effect). This would be good for Blizzard because being guilded makes a player less likely to quit should he/she get bored. If it's a raiding guild, the player risks losing his spot or falling behind in the progression if he/she takes a break. If it's just a social guild, that social element could be what keeps the player playing after he/she has stopped finding the game itself interesting. But in my searching for a guild, I found many people who had come up with some ways to obtain these guild perks that didn't really mesh with Blizzard's seeming intentions in putting in these guild perks. I found people who had created guilds comprised of only their characters. I heard tell of people who had created guilds for the sole purpose of avoiding being asked to join guilds, guilds which didn't even have a chat channel, and which would now also serve the purpose of giving members the guild perks, but served absolutely no other purpose.
These guilds seem to me to be a sign that some people would rather work around the encouragement Blizzard is providing to join guilds and would rather just go for the rewards. In other words, Blizzard is encouraging players to play one way and giving them incentives to do so, but players would rather work around the system put in and try to get those incentives without conforming to Blizzard's pro-guild ideals. If these perks were put in to encourage players to join guilds, the fact that these "for guild's sake" guilds exist shows that not all players are willing to play as socially as Blizzard wants them to.
Now, I'm sure that encouraging guild-less players to join guilds wasn't the only purpose of these guild perks. The fact that it takes a long time to level up a guild means that these perks reward guild longevity, as well as discouraging players from reacting to guild drama by breaking off and starting their own guild, instead encouraging them to actually work through their issues. The fact that leveling up a guild actually requires the members to do something (questing, PvP, raiding, etc.) means that the guild perks rewards guilds who seek out members who are active participants, rather than seeking out large numbers of players just to have an impressively sized roster. And if nothing else, the guild perk and guild achievement systems breathe some life into what has long been a very stagnant and simple system. Still, one can't deny that those perks also discourage players from remaining guildless; the fact that these "for guild's sake" guilds are popping up prove that they do. Whether these other benefits to the perks system actually materialize remains to be seen, but if, as I theorized, Blizzard wants players joining guilds because it will discourage them from quitting, than the "for guild's sake" guilds show that they haven't exactly been successful in that goal, because those guilds don't provide any incentive to keep playing after the game has gotten boring.
All this makes me think that the guild perk system has failed in its purpose of bringing guild-less players into guilds, simply because it hasn't meaningfully changed their playstyle or made them more likely to keep playing when they get bored. What does this say about the system as a whole? Well, it's entirely possible that it was never Blizzard's intention to change the playstyle of us serial solo-ers, so perhaps it hasn't failed because it was never trying to do that in the first place. It also says something about us players, something which I don't think will surprise anyone: some of us are quite stubborn. You can see this stubbornness in the refusal of some people to adapt to the new methods of play required by this expansion (crowd control, triage, etc.), but if these guilds for guild's sake have shown us anything, it's that that resistance to change applies outside of combat as well.
But if it was indeed Blizzard's intention to use these perks to make us guild-less players join guilds, then the fact that they have failed shows that some of us aren't going to change that easily. We players who don't look to play WoW socially may be rare, but we do exist, and we don't like being told how to play. It's bad enough when other players and our friends try to "convert" us to a more social playstyle ("Raiding is fun, you just haven't found the right guild yet!"), but when Blizzard does it too, that's especially infuriating. But perhaps that's just Blizzard's way of saying, "This is our game, and we get to tell you how to play it. Now be social!" Fine, Blizzard; you have won this round, because I have indeed joined a guild and started being more social. Just don't think you can push this much farther.
Solo-er looking for guild. I'm not looking to raid or PvP, but if you let me into your ranks, I will help your guild level and earn guild achievements. PST, but please don't just send an invite; I want to get to know you before I join.
And so, the serially guild-less player has joined a guild, all because he couldn't resist that 10% mounted speed increase or those items awarded by the guild achievements. What have I done differently since joining this guild? Well, I've killed a lot more critters and had a conversation about archeology... so really, not all that much has changed. As I said in my post on Guild perks and the death of the independent player, I was happily guild-less until Cataclysm came out, so when I joined a guild, I didn't plan on changing much about my playstyle. Still, considering that I have enjoyed the conversations I have had since joining the guild, I suppose this change to my playstyle has been, overall, positive, and also fits my prediction as to why Blizzard seemed to be targeting us solo players with these guild perks.
See, in my post that I mentioned above, I theorized that part of Blizzard's motivation for putting in these guild perks was to get willingly guild-less players like me to join guilds (or, at the very least, it was an unintentional positive side-effect). This would be good for Blizzard because being guilded makes a player less likely to quit should he/she get bored. If it's a raiding guild, the player risks losing his spot or falling behind in the progression if he/she takes a break. If it's just a social guild, that social element could be what keeps the player playing after he/she has stopped finding the game itself interesting. But in my searching for a guild, I found many people who had come up with some ways to obtain these guild perks that didn't really mesh with Blizzard's seeming intentions in putting in these guild perks. I found people who had created guilds comprised of only their characters. I heard tell of people who had created guilds for the sole purpose of avoiding being asked to join guilds, guilds which didn't even have a chat channel, and which would now also serve the purpose of giving members the guild perks, but served absolutely no other purpose.
These guilds seem to me to be a sign that some people would rather work around the encouragement Blizzard is providing to join guilds and would rather just go for the rewards. In other words, Blizzard is encouraging players to play one way and giving them incentives to do so, but players would rather work around the system put in and try to get those incentives without conforming to Blizzard's pro-guild ideals. If these perks were put in to encourage players to join guilds, the fact that these "for guild's sake" guilds exist shows that not all players are willing to play as socially as Blizzard wants them to.
Now, I'm sure that encouraging guild-less players to join guilds wasn't the only purpose of these guild perks. The fact that it takes a long time to level up a guild means that these perks reward guild longevity, as well as discouraging players from reacting to guild drama by breaking off and starting their own guild, instead encouraging them to actually work through their issues. The fact that leveling up a guild actually requires the members to do something (questing, PvP, raiding, etc.) means that the guild perks rewards guilds who seek out members who are active participants, rather than seeking out large numbers of players just to have an impressively sized roster. And if nothing else, the guild perk and guild achievement systems breathe some life into what has long been a very stagnant and simple system. Still, one can't deny that those perks also discourage players from remaining guildless; the fact that these "for guild's sake" guilds are popping up prove that they do. Whether these other benefits to the perks system actually materialize remains to be seen, but if, as I theorized, Blizzard wants players joining guilds because it will discourage them from quitting, than the "for guild's sake" guilds show that they haven't exactly been successful in that goal, because those guilds don't provide any incentive to keep playing after the game has gotten boring.
All this makes me think that the guild perk system has failed in its purpose of bringing guild-less players into guilds, simply because it hasn't meaningfully changed their playstyle or made them more likely to keep playing when they get bored. What does this say about the system as a whole? Well, it's entirely possible that it was never Blizzard's intention to change the playstyle of us serial solo-ers, so perhaps it hasn't failed because it was never trying to do that in the first place. It also says something about us players, something which I don't think will surprise anyone: some of us are quite stubborn. You can see this stubbornness in the refusal of some people to adapt to the new methods of play required by this expansion (crowd control, triage, etc.), but if these guilds for guild's sake have shown us anything, it's that that resistance to change applies outside of combat as well.
But if it was indeed Blizzard's intention to use these perks to make us guild-less players join guilds, then the fact that they have failed shows that some of us aren't going to change that easily. We players who don't look to play WoW socially may be rare, but we do exist, and we don't like being told how to play. It's bad enough when other players and our friends try to "convert" us to a more social playstyle ("Raiding is fun, you just haven't found the right guild yet!"), but when Blizzard does it too, that's especially infuriating. But perhaps that's just Blizzard's way of saying, "This is our game, and we get to tell you how to play it. Now be social!" Fine, Blizzard; you have won this round, because I have indeed joined a guild and started being more social. Just don't think you can push this much farther.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
How linear is Cataclysm, really?
Larisa has a post over on her blog in which she remarks on how linear Cataclysm's quest design is. Rather than allowing movement between the various parts of the zones, we are restricted to a set path by which we can progress through the quests. She compares it to "the moving walkway in the room where they keep the royal jewels at The Tower of London. The only way you can see them is by standing on that walkway, and it passes those jewels at set, nonnegotiable pace." And though I have only just completed the quests in Mount Hyjal and am thus ill-equipped to judge the expansion as a whole, I have to agree that the quest design in that zone was indeed very linear. It could have been worse, though; there were sometimes two quest hubs one could choose to go to, and you could choose which order you did the quests in each "round" of quests at each hub. Yes, it could have been a lot more linear, but for an MMO, a genre supposedly defined by an open world, it was indeed pretty straightforward.
Why did it take me so long to get through one zone, you might ask? As I mentioned in Friday's post, questing is not the only thing I have been doing since Cataclysm came out. I have done the fishing and cooking dailies every day, fished in Hyjal's lakes and rivers, searched the world for archeological fragments, and even taken some time just to fly around the old world (oh the flying, oh how I love it) and see the changes wrought by Deathwing's return. After all, questing isn't the only thing that has been changed or added in this expansion, and it would be a pretty poor way to experience it to focus solely on that aspect of this new Azeroth. But what's this? Choice in what I play when I play WoW? But I thought this game was supposed to be linear? (That's not a personal jab at you, Larisa; just a jab at the idea of WoW being linear.)
This is where I take issue with the idea that WoW has become "too linear", an idea I have heard elsewhere, aside from Larisa's blog. Yes, the questing has become more linear, but as the commenters on Larisa's post that I linked to earlier have pointed out, that's a necessity for phasing to be as prevalent as it is, and phasing is a necessity for us to think that our changes are having any effect on the world around us. But questing isn't all there is to World of Warcraft. There's PvP, dungeons, professions, secondary professions, and even just exploring the world to see what can be found. And even if some of these things themselves are pretty linear (professions especially; gone are the days of searching the AH for recipes or the world for vendors who sell them in a limited stock; we get our recipes from a pretty limited selection of sources these days), we are completely free to choose which ones we engage in and when. There's no "negligence punishment" mechanic put in to keep you in one part of the game when you'd rather be doing something else, outside of the fear of falling behind your guild.
Now, this does mean that in order to experience the true non-linearity of WoW, you need to take the initiative to do something other than what the game will direct you to do; the quests won't tell you to take a break and go try out archeology or PvP or fishing. The best you'll get is an occasional quest that will direct you to a dungeon of the appropriate level. I bring up this little detail because, in the past, I talked about the decline of Wrath of the Lich King heroics and the players' reacting to this decline by being more creative about how they ran heroics. In that post, I concluded that the player's running the heroics in unconventional ways was indeed a sign that the heroics had gone into decline, because players were running them in ways they weren't intended to be run. The implication of the conclusions I came to in that post was that if the game doesn't tell you specifically to do something, and you have to do that something to make the game interesting, then the game is a failure. If we apply this logic to Cataclysm's design, then that would mean that the fact that game can only be non-linear if players do something of their own accord to make it so--rather than because the game told them to--then the game fails at being nonlinear.
But the reason I concluded that players doing things in Wrath's heroics to spice up their heroic runs was a sign that heroics had declined was that the heroics weren't designed for that kind of play. Wrath's heroics were designed to be run in particular ways, and that fact that players weren't running them in those ways meant that they had failed. Cataclysm, however, is designed to support players doing things other than questing. If it weren't designed that way, archeology and all of the other things we can do aside from questing wouldn't be in the game. Cataclysm-era WoW is designed so that it can be played in a non-linear way, if the player chooses to do so. And therein lies the crux of the problem: WoW's linearity is inversely proportional to how much initiative you take to seek out other things to do within the game. Someone without that initiative will probably limit themselves to questing and the occasional dungeon run, and in doing so, they'll find WoW to be a very straight-forward game.
But in a way, I don't mind WoW being designed this way. It reminds me of the way that the story was told in the GameCube game Metroid Prime. In that game, you collected bits of the story (similar to the way we collect bits of lore through archeology) with your scan visor, including logs by space pirates and stories told by those who inhabited the planet where the game takes place before they were wiped out. You can also find vanity text aplenty by scanning various things in the environment, which adds even more to the atmosphere of the game. The beauty of this system was that it allowed players to experience exactly as much of the story as they wanted to. If they wanted a straight shoot-em-up, they could eschew the scan visor completely and just go in with gun ablazing. If they just wanted the background story but didn't want to hear all of the little details about the world itself, they could keep an eye out for the red scan nodes which would indicate a lore entry that would reveal the background of the world, while ignoring the other ones that just added to the atmosphere of the present situation. And if they wanted as many details as they could sink their teeth into, they could scan everything, which would tell them a lot about the story and about the world itself.
In a way, the non-linearity of WoW's design is like the depth of the story in Metroid Prime; both are at the control of the player. Just as players of Metroid Prime chose how much of the story they cared to experience, players of WoW choose how linear they want their experience to be. Are you looking for a game with a wide variety of things to do? Go out and find them; they're there for you. Are you just looking for a straightforward quest-based adventure? Fine, just follow the quests and do what they tell you. You'll miss out on a lot, but if that's how you want to play, who are we to say no? And if you don't want a linear experience, but you haven't taken the initiative to check out the other things there are to do in WoW? If that's the case, then who's really to blame?
Why did it take me so long to get through one zone, you might ask? As I mentioned in Friday's post, questing is not the only thing I have been doing since Cataclysm came out. I have done the fishing and cooking dailies every day, fished in Hyjal's lakes and rivers, searched the world for archeological fragments, and even taken some time just to fly around the old world (oh the flying, oh how I love it) and see the changes wrought by Deathwing's return. After all, questing isn't the only thing that has been changed or added in this expansion, and it would be a pretty poor way to experience it to focus solely on that aspect of this new Azeroth. But what's this? Choice in what I play when I play WoW? But I thought this game was supposed to be linear? (That's not a personal jab at you, Larisa; just a jab at the idea of WoW being linear.)
This is where I take issue with the idea that WoW has become "too linear", an idea I have heard elsewhere, aside from Larisa's blog. Yes, the questing has become more linear, but as the commenters on Larisa's post that I linked to earlier have pointed out, that's a necessity for phasing to be as prevalent as it is, and phasing is a necessity for us to think that our changes are having any effect on the world around us. But questing isn't all there is to World of Warcraft. There's PvP, dungeons, professions, secondary professions, and even just exploring the world to see what can be found. And even if some of these things themselves are pretty linear (professions especially; gone are the days of searching the AH for recipes or the world for vendors who sell them in a limited stock; we get our recipes from a pretty limited selection of sources these days), we are completely free to choose which ones we engage in and when. There's no "negligence punishment" mechanic put in to keep you in one part of the game when you'd rather be doing something else, outside of the fear of falling behind your guild.
Now, this does mean that in order to experience the true non-linearity of WoW, you need to take the initiative to do something other than what the game will direct you to do; the quests won't tell you to take a break and go try out archeology or PvP or fishing. The best you'll get is an occasional quest that will direct you to a dungeon of the appropriate level. I bring up this little detail because, in the past, I talked about the decline of Wrath of the Lich King heroics and the players' reacting to this decline by being more creative about how they ran heroics. In that post, I concluded that the player's running the heroics in unconventional ways was indeed a sign that the heroics had gone into decline, because players were running them in ways they weren't intended to be run. The implication of the conclusions I came to in that post was that if the game doesn't tell you specifically to do something, and you have to do that something to make the game interesting, then the game is a failure. If we apply this logic to Cataclysm's design, then that would mean that the fact that game can only be non-linear if players do something of their own accord to make it so--rather than because the game told them to--then the game fails at being nonlinear.
But the reason I concluded that players doing things in Wrath's heroics to spice up their heroic runs was a sign that heroics had declined was that the heroics weren't designed for that kind of play. Wrath's heroics were designed to be run in particular ways, and that fact that players weren't running them in those ways meant that they had failed. Cataclysm, however, is designed to support players doing things other than questing. If it weren't designed that way, archeology and all of the other things we can do aside from questing wouldn't be in the game. Cataclysm-era WoW is designed so that it can be played in a non-linear way, if the player chooses to do so. And therein lies the crux of the problem: WoW's linearity is inversely proportional to how much initiative you take to seek out other things to do within the game. Someone without that initiative will probably limit themselves to questing and the occasional dungeon run, and in doing so, they'll find WoW to be a very straight-forward game.
But in a way, I don't mind WoW being designed this way. It reminds me of the way that the story was told in the GameCube game Metroid Prime. In that game, you collected bits of the story (similar to the way we collect bits of lore through archeology) with your scan visor, including logs by space pirates and stories told by those who inhabited the planet where the game takes place before they were wiped out. You can also find vanity text aplenty by scanning various things in the environment, which adds even more to the atmosphere of the game. The beauty of this system was that it allowed players to experience exactly as much of the story as they wanted to. If they wanted a straight shoot-em-up, they could eschew the scan visor completely and just go in with gun ablazing. If they just wanted the background story but didn't want to hear all of the little details about the world itself, they could keep an eye out for the red scan nodes which would indicate a lore entry that would reveal the background of the world, while ignoring the other ones that just added to the atmosphere of the present situation. And if they wanted as many details as they could sink their teeth into, they could scan everything, which would tell them a lot about the story and about the world itself.
In a way, the non-linearity of WoW's design is like the depth of the story in Metroid Prime; both are at the control of the player. Just as players of Metroid Prime chose how much of the story they cared to experience, players of WoW choose how linear they want their experience to be. Are you looking for a game with a wide variety of things to do? Go out and find them; they're there for you. Are you just looking for a straightforward quest-based adventure? Fine, just follow the quests and do what they tell you. You'll miss out on a lot, but if that's how you want to play, who are we to say no? And if you don't want a linear experience, but you haven't taken the initiative to check out the other things there are to do in WoW? If that's the case, then who's really to blame?
Friday, December 3, 2010
The curse of being genre savvy
This post contains spoilers revealed during the Lich King fight in Icecrown Citadel. At this point, I consider said spoilers to be fair game, but if you are trying to avoid them for some reason, you have been warned.
On my recent post about the seeming lack of panic in our post-Shattering world, Tesh of Tish Tosh Tesh left a comment which gave me quite a bit of food for thought:
"What strikes me as odd in the whole thing is that yes, it's later, but instead of prioritizing defeating the dragon, Varian and Garrosh are playing the whole "Orcs vs. Humans" game again.
I want a third, neutral faction for playable characters. The Horde and Alliance are both being led by dimwits."
Preach, brother! As I have said before, we can't influence our leaders in WoW the same way we can influence them in the real world, which leads to some very frustrating results as we see Azeroth suffer for their incompetence. In the face of these disappointments, it is tempting to wish we could strike out on our own, ignore this destructive faction conflict, and actually do some good for the world. It's tempting to wish such a thing, because we players are cursed with being genre savvy.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, genre savvy usually describes a character in a fictional universe who, if not knowing outright that they are in a work of fiction, at least know enough about the rules of that fictional universe to avoid some of the most common pratfalls characters in that universe would otherwise make. Scott from the Austin Powers series is a good example of a genre savvy character, endlessly mocking his father's overly elaborate plans, constantly asking why he doesn't take the simple routes that would guarantee him success. The Lich King is the closest thing World of Warcraft has to a genre savvy character (aside from the players, of course), in that he knows that if he lets "Azeroth's greatest champions" get stronger and more powerful by facing his best minions, they'll simply become even more powerful minions when he eventually kills them and enslaves them, making them even more useful. You can find more examples on the page linked to above if you still are a bit iffy on the concept.
So how does the idea of genre savvy play in to our frustration when we see the leaders of the Alliance and the Horde ignore the significant threats in favor of old conflicts that serve no purpose? As I mentioned briefly just now, we players are extremely genre savvy, pretty much by definition. After all, the definition of a genre savvy character is one who does all of the things the viewers know are the intelligent things to do in a given fictional situation, so you can't get much more genre savvy than the viewers themselves. As such, we knew that the conflict between the two factions is largely pointless and serves only to distract us from the more important threats, like Deathwing's return. We know this, and thus we are genre savvy, but our avatars do not, and thus they are not.
As I said in my post about the doomsday cultists who showed up before the Shattering, what we players know and what the characters we control know are two entirely different sets of knowledge, and this includes our knowledge about faction conflict. We know that the there is no reason to fight the Alliance or the Horde (depending on what side you play), because we know players on the other faction and know that they are good people too. Our avatars, however, are not privy to this knowledge, and their only experiences with the other faction are in battlegrounds, hardly the place for building camaraderie and friendship. It is this disconnect between our knowledge and the knowledge of our characters that creates the frustration we feel due to being genre savvy. Though we know what we know, we cannot impart our knowledge to our characters and make them act in a way that would be more conducive to a beneficial outcome. In other words, we cannot make our avatars genre savvy.
Now, this is typical of 99% of media. Most media simply doesn't contain particularly genre savvy characters, because those characters would know how to circumvent much of what creates tension and conflict in those universes, and the same can be said for WoW. And yet, as we control our characters going through this evolving world, we wish we could make our characters genre savvy. We wish we could do things like break off in to our own faction and make the world right again by disregarding faction conflict entirely. Yet this is not something I see as often in the communities surrounding other games. There are plenty of other video games that are story driven, with equally dedicated communities surrounding them, following their story lines with bated breath. Why don't they have the players of those games have the same reaction to genre-blind characters as we WoW players do to our game?
In my eyes, the biggest reason for this difference lies in the way that story is presented to us. Most games don't constantly evolve the way WoW does, with constant updates to the game and the story. In most games, the story is written, put together, and shipped complete to the customer, climax and all. All console games are like this; players simply experience a story that has already been written, and if they don't like it, tough, it's already been determined. In WoW, however, the story is constantly evolving right in front of us, and with as big of a community as WoW has, we often find out about changes to the story long before their consequences have been fully realized. If Cataclysm were a console game, we would boot it up, find out that Garrosh and Varian are acting really stupid, then experience the consequences of that as we play. As it is now, however, we see them being genre blind, and it pains us because it is happening now, and we know the consequences are going to be bad, but we can't do anything about it. Playing a console game with a plot determined long before the player starts playing is like watching a news story about an event that has just happened; we may not like what happens, but there's nothing we can do to change it. Watching the evolving story of WoW, however, is like watching live coverage of a tragedy half way across the world; we want to do something about it, and we think we can, because it is happening right now, but we are really powerless to change the course of events.
So not only are we cursed with genre savvy while our characters are not, but we are cursed to watch the story take place right before our very eyes and be unable to do anything about it. That is the true tragedy of being a WoW player who is invested in this game's storyline; we can only watch as the world goes to hell right before our very eyes, for we are powerless to do anything about it.
On my recent post about the seeming lack of panic in our post-Shattering world, Tesh of Tish Tosh Tesh left a comment which gave me quite a bit of food for thought:
"What strikes me as odd in the whole thing is that yes, it's later, but instead of prioritizing defeating the dragon, Varian and Garrosh are playing the whole "Orcs vs. Humans" game again.
I want a third, neutral faction for playable characters. The Horde and Alliance are both being led by dimwits."
Preach, brother! As I have said before, we can't influence our leaders in WoW the same way we can influence them in the real world, which leads to some very frustrating results as we see Azeroth suffer for their incompetence. In the face of these disappointments, it is tempting to wish we could strike out on our own, ignore this destructive faction conflict, and actually do some good for the world. It's tempting to wish such a thing, because we players are cursed with being genre savvy.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, genre savvy usually describes a character in a fictional universe who, if not knowing outright that they are in a work of fiction, at least know enough about the rules of that fictional universe to avoid some of the most common pratfalls characters in that universe would otherwise make. Scott from the Austin Powers series is a good example of a genre savvy character, endlessly mocking his father's overly elaborate plans, constantly asking why he doesn't take the simple routes that would guarantee him success. The Lich King is the closest thing World of Warcraft has to a genre savvy character (aside from the players, of course), in that he knows that if he lets "Azeroth's greatest champions" get stronger and more powerful by facing his best minions, they'll simply become even more powerful minions when he eventually kills them and enslaves them, making them even more useful. You can find more examples on the page linked to above if you still are a bit iffy on the concept.
So how does the idea of genre savvy play in to our frustration when we see the leaders of the Alliance and the Horde ignore the significant threats in favor of old conflicts that serve no purpose? As I mentioned briefly just now, we players are extremely genre savvy, pretty much by definition. After all, the definition of a genre savvy character is one who does all of the things the viewers know are the intelligent things to do in a given fictional situation, so you can't get much more genre savvy than the viewers themselves. As such, we knew that the conflict between the two factions is largely pointless and serves only to distract us from the more important threats, like Deathwing's return. We know this, and thus we are genre savvy, but our avatars do not, and thus they are not.
As I said in my post about the doomsday cultists who showed up before the Shattering, what we players know and what the characters we control know are two entirely different sets of knowledge, and this includes our knowledge about faction conflict. We know that the there is no reason to fight the Alliance or the Horde (depending on what side you play), because we know players on the other faction and know that they are good people too. Our avatars, however, are not privy to this knowledge, and their only experiences with the other faction are in battlegrounds, hardly the place for building camaraderie and friendship. It is this disconnect between our knowledge and the knowledge of our characters that creates the frustration we feel due to being genre savvy. Though we know what we know, we cannot impart our knowledge to our characters and make them act in a way that would be more conducive to a beneficial outcome. In other words, we cannot make our avatars genre savvy.
Now, this is typical of 99% of media. Most media simply doesn't contain particularly genre savvy characters, because those characters would know how to circumvent much of what creates tension and conflict in those universes, and the same can be said for WoW. And yet, as we control our characters going through this evolving world, we wish we could make our characters genre savvy. We wish we could do things like break off in to our own faction and make the world right again by disregarding faction conflict entirely. Yet this is not something I see as often in the communities surrounding other games. There are plenty of other video games that are story driven, with equally dedicated communities surrounding them, following their story lines with bated breath. Why don't they have the players of those games have the same reaction to genre-blind characters as we WoW players do to our game?
In my eyes, the biggest reason for this difference lies in the way that story is presented to us. Most games don't constantly evolve the way WoW does, with constant updates to the game and the story. In most games, the story is written, put together, and shipped complete to the customer, climax and all. All console games are like this; players simply experience a story that has already been written, and if they don't like it, tough, it's already been determined. In WoW, however, the story is constantly evolving right in front of us, and with as big of a community as WoW has, we often find out about changes to the story long before their consequences have been fully realized. If Cataclysm were a console game, we would boot it up, find out that Garrosh and Varian are acting really stupid, then experience the consequences of that as we play. As it is now, however, we see them being genre blind, and it pains us because it is happening now, and we know the consequences are going to be bad, but we can't do anything about it. Playing a console game with a plot determined long before the player starts playing is like watching a news story about an event that has just happened; we may not like what happens, but there's nothing we can do to change it. Watching the evolving story of WoW, however, is like watching live coverage of a tragedy half way across the world; we want to do something about it, and we think we can, because it is happening right now, but we are really powerless to change the course of events.
So not only are we cursed with genre savvy while our characters are not, but we are cursed to watch the story take place right before our very eyes and be unable to do anything about it. That is the true tragedy of being a WoW player who is invested in this game's storyline; we can only watch as the world goes to hell right before our very eyes, for we are powerless to do anything about it.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Don't you know there's a Shattering on?
When I logged in to my server for the first time after patch 4.0.3 dropped, I was struck by many things, not the least of which was just how much the world had changed. Though I was excited to see those changes, I decided to wait on giving them a really good look until I could fly around old-world Azeroth, since that would be much more efficient and freeing than walking around on foot. So plopped myself in Stormwind, waiting in the main city until Cataclysm came an unlocked that very basic amenity. From there? Who knows. Maybe I'll focus on Archeology, maybe I'll try to level my fishing and cooking skills, maybe I'll go right for the quests in the new zones, or maybe I'll just fly around a lot and see just how much our world has changed. But as I walked into Stormwind, I knew there would be no time for these considerations; there's a dragon on the loose! And he has torn our world asunder! We must rush to assess the damage, to rescue the innocents, to... wait, why is everything so quiet?
Yes, as I walked in to Stormwind for the first time after the Shattering, what struck me the most was not the damage to the city or the upgraded design of the city or the newly unlocked areas; what struck me the most was just how quiet everything was. The world had just been ravaged by the aspect of death, and everyone's walking around as if it is just old news. The guards aren't rushing to help anyone, the citizens aren't running for safety; people are just going about their daily lives. Were I in this world myself, I wouldn't be able to help but say to these people, "Look, I know it takes a lot of courage to see the world destroyed and not even bat a lash, but this is kind of a big deal. Why aren't you panicking? Don't you know there's a Shattering on?"
The answer as to why they were not panicking came to me while I was in the middle of catching some supposedly hard-to-catch fish for Catherine Leland just to prove I was up to the challenge. ("Really, Catherine? The world has just been torn apart by a dragon who could end all of our lives if he wanted to. I should be going out and helping people recover from this calamity, and you want me to go catch you some fish... for the sake of catching you some fish?") The answer as to why these seemingly brave citizens were not panicking lay in the fact that this World of Warcraft we inhabit now is not an immediately post-Shattering WoW; it is a WoW that we will experience now, that our alts will experience a year from now, and that future players will experience a few years from now, unless Blizzard decides to change the old-world again. All of these theoretical players will experience the same WoW I am experiencing now, because though the time when I logged in was immediately after the Shattering in real-world time, it was not immediately after the Shattering in in-game time.
As I have said before, WoW is really a very static game, and the lack of panic I saw in the citizens of Stormwind that day proves it. We are not playing a game whose timeline is moving as time itself moves in the real world; we are playing a game shown to us as a snapshot of one moment of its universe's timeline. By playing, we advance that moment a little bit, but if we roll a new character, we start from the beginning. The fact is that what those citizens are doing now, they are going to keep doing for a very long time, until Blizzard sees fit to change the old-world again. So suppose they were panicking; because that snapshot would continue to define the world of WoW for the next few years, players years from now would run in to Stormwind and see citizens running around, shouting that it's the end of the world, when that end came and went eons ago. It would seem silly, really.
What this means for us and the seeming bravery that these citizens show in the face of the end of the world is that we can explain their seeming stoic-ness with the simple fact that we are not experiencing an immediately post-Shattering WoW. We are playing in a world where some time has passed between the Shattering and the present time. Though the recovery process is by no means complete, things have started to settle down. Those who need to go out to help have done so, and will soon call upon the heroes of Northrend (us) to assist them in their tasks. Everyone else who isn't in immediate danger has gone back to trying to make the best of what has happened and live out their lives as best they can. And for some of them, that means inviting daring adventurers to try their hands at fishing in a nearby lake, to see if they can catch a rare elusive fish.
So yes, Catherine, I am up to the challenge of catching some Hardened Walleye, and I shall prove it to you. Sure, Robby Flay, I'll swim in the Stormwind canal and pick up some crabs so the King can have is crab legs. It's good to see that you both have found a way to keep on keeping on, ever since that... well, you probably don't want to talk about it, do you? I understand. The past is the past, and we have to move on.
Yes, as I walked in to Stormwind for the first time after the Shattering, what struck me the most was not the damage to the city or the upgraded design of the city or the newly unlocked areas; what struck me the most was just how quiet everything was. The world had just been ravaged by the aspect of death, and everyone's walking around as if it is just old news. The guards aren't rushing to help anyone, the citizens aren't running for safety; people are just going about their daily lives. Were I in this world myself, I wouldn't be able to help but say to these people, "Look, I know it takes a lot of courage to see the world destroyed and not even bat a lash, but this is kind of a big deal. Why aren't you panicking? Don't you know there's a Shattering on?"
The answer as to why they were not panicking came to me while I was in the middle of catching some supposedly hard-to-catch fish for Catherine Leland just to prove I was up to the challenge. ("Really, Catherine? The world has just been torn apart by a dragon who could end all of our lives if he wanted to. I should be going out and helping people recover from this calamity, and you want me to go catch you some fish... for the sake of catching you some fish?") The answer as to why these seemingly brave citizens were not panicking lay in the fact that this World of Warcraft we inhabit now is not an immediately post-Shattering WoW; it is a WoW that we will experience now, that our alts will experience a year from now, and that future players will experience a few years from now, unless Blizzard decides to change the old-world again. All of these theoretical players will experience the same WoW I am experiencing now, because though the time when I logged in was immediately after the Shattering in real-world time, it was not immediately after the Shattering in in-game time.
As I have said before, WoW is really a very static game, and the lack of panic I saw in the citizens of Stormwind that day proves it. We are not playing a game whose timeline is moving as time itself moves in the real world; we are playing a game shown to us as a snapshot of one moment of its universe's timeline. By playing, we advance that moment a little bit, but if we roll a new character, we start from the beginning. The fact is that what those citizens are doing now, they are going to keep doing for a very long time, until Blizzard sees fit to change the old-world again. So suppose they were panicking; because that snapshot would continue to define the world of WoW for the next few years, players years from now would run in to Stormwind and see citizens running around, shouting that it's the end of the world, when that end came and went eons ago. It would seem silly, really.
What this means for us and the seeming bravery that these citizens show in the face of the end of the world is that we can explain their seeming stoic-ness with the simple fact that we are not experiencing an immediately post-Shattering WoW. We are playing in a world where some time has passed between the Shattering and the present time. Though the recovery process is by no means complete, things have started to settle down. Those who need to go out to help have done so, and will soon call upon the heroes of Northrend (us) to assist them in their tasks. Everyone else who isn't in immediate danger has gone back to trying to make the best of what has happened and live out their lives as best they can. And for some of them, that means inviting daring adventurers to try their hands at fishing in a nearby lake, to see if they can catch a rare elusive fish.
So yes, Catherine, I am up to the challenge of catching some Hardened Walleye, and I shall prove it to you. Sure, Robby Flay, I'll swim in the Stormwind canal and pick up some crabs so the King can have is crab legs. It's good to see that you both have found a way to keep on keeping on, ever since that... well, you probably don't want to talk about it, do you? I understand. The past is the past, and we have to move on.
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?
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?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
The limitations of our measurement of success
I have not yet had time to log in to see phase four of the elemental invasion, but something else has captured my attention lately; namely, a comment on MMO-Champion's post about phase four of the elemental invasion starting. 'Tis but a simple comment, but the implications it had for my reflections were many:
any FoS for killing them, tabard, etc? if not what the point?
Larisa of Pink Pigtail Inn wasn't pleased upon reading such a comment, for she saw it as a sign that WoW has become nothing more than a game where we play just for the stimuli, for the objective rewards. I have talked about the differences between playing for objective rewards and playing for subjective rewards before, but in that post, I didn't realize the implications of said differences. This comment, though, has made me realize just what those implications are: which rewards we play for changes how we measure our success, and how we measure our success changes how we play.
Success might not be the best word to describe what I am writing about; productivity might describe it better, for I am talking about the general sensation that our play has been fruitful, that some good came out of it. For someone focused on objective rewards, successful play might be defined by the gear he gets or the rank he achieves in arenas or the pets he collects. For someone focused on the more subjective aspects of play, successful play might be defined by whether he had fun or how deeply he was able to immerse himself in his playing or how much of the story of WoW he was able to experience. For someone like our MMO-Champion commenter above, it appears that fruitful play is defined by some sort of tangible reminder of his actions; it seems he cannot be satisfied with his experiences in-game if there is not some visible indicator of what he has done, and thus those objective rewards are his measure of success.
As tempting as it might be to claim that it is somehow better to play for those subjective rewards than to play for objective rewards, both motivators have their drawbacks. Someone who plays for objective rewards will miss out on content that they might otherwise enjoy if that content doesn't give them some sort of tangible reward, and they might continue to play content they don't enjoy for the sake of those tangible rewards. Still, even in that latter case, at least they find the acquisition of those rewards fun, even if they don't find the process enjoyable, and considering how many parts of this game do give some sort of objective reward, it's rare that someone motivated by objective rewards won't find something in an experience to convince them to play. Phase 4 of the elemental invasion just happens to be one of those rare cases.
But what drawbacks could there be to playing for subjective rewards? Self-limitation. Someone who plays the game to have fun, for example, might avoid parts of the game he doesn't think he'll find fun. He might avoid PvP because he enjoys the relaxed pace of questing, potentially missing out on something that he'd find quite enjoyable if he just gave it a try. Someone who plays for deep immersion might not go back and do old quests because he feels that killing enemies easily kills the immersion for him, when he might enjoy the lore he discovers by doing those quests he skipped while leveling. Someone who plays for the lore might skip out on raiding because he doesn't find it to be very story-heavy compared to other parts of the game, which prevents him from seeing the evolving lore to be found in raids and from experiencing a part of the game he might enjoy if he gave it a shot. In all those cases, it is the player himself that is responsible for his measure of success limiting how much he can enjoy the game, and it is the assumptions he makes that hold him back.
From this perspective, whether playing for one kind of reward is better than playing for the other kind depends on whether you think it is better to be limited by the game's design or by your own inhibitions. Now, if players didn't have hesitation about getting into a part of the game they haven't tried yet, then playing for subjective rewards would be the best way to go, without a doubt. But players are human, and one of the many flaws some people have is an unwillingness to go outside of their comfort zone, to try new things that they don't know for a fact will give them satisfaction. For someone like this, it could be better to be motivated by the objective rewards of the game. Sure, it means they can't overcome the limitations on what they play by willpower alone, as someone limited by their own assumptions might be able to, but there are enough objective rewards within the game to motivate someone to try something they might not try otherwise. So, though our intrepid commenter up there might not have wanted to partake in phase four of the elemental invasion because it didn't give him any objective rewards like feats of strength or a tabard, perhaps those rewards have motivated him to try other parts of the game he might not have tried otherwise. Is that so bad?
Now, again, in an ideal world, players would be willing to try all parts of the game, regardless of the objective rewards they receive for doing so and regardless of their own reservations about trying something that they don't think will be fun for them. But again, we don't live in an ideal world, and humans are flawed, and though the two situations I have presented here (avoiding parts of the game without objective rewards and avoid parts of the game that won't reward you with the subjective reward you seek) represent only two possibilities in a sea of ways to WoW, all I mean to say is that given the choice between the two of them, playing for objective rewards doesn't seem as bad as people make it out to be, for it might motivate you to try more parts of the game that playing for subjective rewards might. Whether playing for subjective rewards will allow you to have more fun, though... well, the jury is out on that one.
any FoS for killing them, tabard, etc? if not what the point?
Larisa of Pink Pigtail Inn wasn't pleased upon reading such a comment, for she saw it as a sign that WoW has become nothing more than a game where we play just for the stimuli, for the objective rewards. I have talked about the differences between playing for objective rewards and playing for subjective rewards before, but in that post, I didn't realize the implications of said differences. This comment, though, has made me realize just what those implications are: which rewards we play for changes how we measure our success, and how we measure our success changes how we play.
Success might not be the best word to describe what I am writing about; productivity might describe it better, for I am talking about the general sensation that our play has been fruitful, that some good came out of it. For someone focused on objective rewards, successful play might be defined by the gear he gets or the rank he achieves in arenas or the pets he collects. For someone focused on the more subjective aspects of play, successful play might be defined by whether he had fun or how deeply he was able to immerse himself in his playing or how much of the story of WoW he was able to experience. For someone like our MMO-Champion commenter above, it appears that fruitful play is defined by some sort of tangible reminder of his actions; it seems he cannot be satisfied with his experiences in-game if there is not some visible indicator of what he has done, and thus those objective rewards are his measure of success.
As tempting as it might be to claim that it is somehow better to play for those subjective rewards than to play for objective rewards, both motivators have their drawbacks. Someone who plays for objective rewards will miss out on content that they might otherwise enjoy if that content doesn't give them some sort of tangible reward, and they might continue to play content they don't enjoy for the sake of those tangible rewards. Still, even in that latter case, at least they find the acquisition of those rewards fun, even if they don't find the process enjoyable, and considering how many parts of this game do give some sort of objective reward, it's rare that someone motivated by objective rewards won't find something in an experience to convince them to play. Phase 4 of the elemental invasion just happens to be one of those rare cases.
But what drawbacks could there be to playing for subjective rewards? Self-limitation. Someone who plays the game to have fun, for example, might avoid parts of the game he doesn't think he'll find fun. He might avoid PvP because he enjoys the relaxed pace of questing, potentially missing out on something that he'd find quite enjoyable if he just gave it a try. Someone who plays for deep immersion might not go back and do old quests because he feels that killing enemies easily kills the immersion for him, when he might enjoy the lore he discovers by doing those quests he skipped while leveling. Someone who plays for the lore might skip out on raiding because he doesn't find it to be very story-heavy compared to other parts of the game, which prevents him from seeing the evolving lore to be found in raids and from experiencing a part of the game he might enjoy if he gave it a shot. In all those cases, it is the player himself that is responsible for his measure of success limiting how much he can enjoy the game, and it is the assumptions he makes that hold him back.
From this perspective, whether playing for one kind of reward is better than playing for the other kind depends on whether you think it is better to be limited by the game's design or by your own inhibitions. Now, if players didn't have hesitation about getting into a part of the game they haven't tried yet, then playing for subjective rewards would be the best way to go, without a doubt. But players are human, and one of the many flaws some people have is an unwillingness to go outside of their comfort zone, to try new things that they don't know for a fact will give them satisfaction. For someone like this, it could be better to be motivated by the objective rewards of the game. Sure, it means they can't overcome the limitations on what they play by willpower alone, as someone limited by their own assumptions might be able to, but there are enough objective rewards within the game to motivate someone to try something they might not try otherwise. So, though our intrepid commenter up there might not have wanted to partake in phase four of the elemental invasion because it didn't give him any objective rewards like feats of strength or a tabard, perhaps those rewards have motivated him to try other parts of the game he might not have tried otherwise. Is that so bad?
Now, again, in an ideal world, players would be willing to try all parts of the game, regardless of the objective rewards they receive for doing so and regardless of their own reservations about trying something that they don't think will be fun for them. But again, we don't live in an ideal world, and humans are flawed, and though the two situations I have presented here (avoiding parts of the game without objective rewards and avoid parts of the game that won't reward you with the subjective reward you seek) represent only two possibilities in a sea of ways to WoW, all I mean to say is that given the choice between the two of them, playing for objective rewards doesn't seem as bad as people make it out to be, for it might motivate you to try more parts of the game that playing for subjective rewards might. Whether playing for subjective rewards will allow you to have more fun, though... well, the jury is out on that one.
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