The questionable legitimacy of objective rewards

So I'm back with more tales from the warrior front. As I mentioned in my last post before my laptop went down, patch 4.0.1 revitalized my interest in the game by turning my warrior alt from a joke to a force to be reckoned with, one who can take down red-colored-level monsters and complete red-colored quests with ease. What was once something of a burden has become fun; so fun, in fact, that I didn't want to stop playing my warrior. Killing things became so fun that I started to resent any break in the process, including needing to go to a capital city to learn my new moves. It was when I realized that this was the case that I was a bit shocked; after all, isn't leveling up the whole point of the leveling process? Why was I suddenly not looking forward to hitting those levels?

I remember that back before patch 4.0.1 made leveling a warrior fun, I looked forward to each time I leveled up. I would count the little bars in my experience bar and watch them fill, waiting anxiously for that time when I would see that golden light. Though all levels gave me a bit of a rush, the even ones especially were the ones I looked forward to, for that was when I would get my new abilities. But more than that, each of those levels represented something I had accomplished, something I had worked for. Leveling at the lower levels was usually not that fun, and each time I leveled up, it was like the game was telling me, "You should feel satisfied with what you have accomplished." And I did, and thus, though the leveling process was a pain, it was worth it for the sense of satisfaction I felt upon ascending to each new level.

Now, however, things are different (for me, at least). As I play my warrior, I don't watch the experience bar at all; I've been taken by surprise by that golden light quite a few times, in fact. And while the odd levels are met with joy (I do get to spend a talent point, after all), the even levels are met with less enthusiasm, since I have to go out of my way to learn whatever new ability I get at those levels. In other words, as I play my warrior now, leveling up is merely incidental to the leveling process; it's just another event that happens along the way. And it has become that way because the leveling process is now exciting in its own right, because this class is finally fun to play.

But now I'm a bit jaded, because I have experienced the contrast between playing for the objective statistical rewards and playing in spite of them. I have experienced the contrast between playing the game for the end result and playing the game for the sake of playing the game, and I'm not sure I could go back to the former. To put this in terms that might be more familiar to people who don't level alts frequently, the difference I have experienced is like the different between running a raid because you want to say you killed that boss or because you want the loot upgrades they drop, and running a raid because you enjoy raiding. One mode of play is motivated by the end-result, the other is motivated by the playing itself, and that's what I'm experiencing on my warrior now.

After experiencing this shift in mode of play, I realized that much of the time I have spent playing WoW has been spent in results-oriented mode. Most of the heroics I ran were motivated by the emblems that dropped and the gear that could be obtained with them. Most of the alts I leveled were leveled so that I could experience playing them once they got their better abilities and became fun, but I ended up leveling even the few that I managed to get that far for the sake of that flash of golden light. Maybe that's why I was never able to get into raiding; I was there for the experience, not the loot, the achievements, or the bragging rights, so I had nothing to motivate me to gloss over the things I found tedious or frustrating about the whole process.

So what does that mean in the larger scheme of things? Well, for me, it means I have become skeptical of many of the rewards we get for playing and their purpose in the game. By a metaphorical show of hands, how many of you would play WoW if there were no gear, no leveling up, no achievements, etc.; just the gameplay? Some of you would, I'm sure, so the other question is, how long would you play a game like this? Would you have raided ICC for ten months (going on eleven) if the gear weren't there to motivate you or to pace your progress? Maybe you would have; I won't make any assumptions, I'm just presenting these questions as food for thought.

But where am I going with this? Truth be told, I'm not sure myself; this mode of playing WoW is so new to me that I'm still getting a feel for it, for its nuances and consequences. I suppose the only thing I can say for now is that, though levels, gear currency, achievements, and gear itself might serve larger purposes within the game, they should be incidental to the gameplay itself. They should be there as conveniences and game mechanics, not as motivators to play. When they do become players' reasons to play, that's a sign that the gameplay itself isn't enough to keep people playing, and that says to me that the game just isn't fun.

How did we put up with this for so long?

There are a lot of negative things I could say about patch 4.0.1. I could talk about Warlocks losing the names of pets that they have had since long ago, names they grew attached to, before a bug took them away (but that's going to be fixed, anyways). I could talk about how atrocious I find the new tree of life model, but time and accepting that I'm probably done healing on my druid has turned my abhorrence into utter indifference. I've already talked about the loss of tree of life as a permanent form, so no point in belaboring that point. Of course, the fiasco of post-4.0.1 class balance is a topic rife with discussable points, but I can't be angry about any of these things. I can't be angry about them because of the changes this patch has made to my warrior alt.

You see, I rolled my little warrior (currently residing at level 25; he was level 22 when the patch hit) as a way to enjoy this game before Cataclysm comes out, but leveling him was a very trying process. Heroic strike, the ability we were supposed to use while fighting one-on-one, consumed so much rage that using Thunder Calp, an ability meant for AoE combat, was actually more rage efficient, even against one enemy. Of course, this meant the damage of a low level warrior was incredibly sub-par, for there weren't many other abilities I could use to increase my damage. I could use Rend, a damage over time ability; Overpower, which I could only use after one of my attacks was dodged, i.e. not all that frequently; and Victory rush, which I could only use once per battle, anyways. In short, at low levels, warriors lacked the abilities they needed to be viable in one-on-one combat.

With patch 4.0.1, however, that all changed. My warrior went from level 22 to 25 (granted, I was two bars away from 23 when 4.0.1. hit) probably as quickly as he went from 21 to 22 thanks to the new move set he has. What you might not know if you've only been following the level-cap changes in patch 4.0.1 is that this patch brought with it changes to how and when we learn abilities at low levels. We only need to learn an ability once, after which it scales as we level. Because of this, Blizzard spread out the rate at which we learn new abilities, so that we have more to learn at higher levels than we would if they had kept it the same. In the process, they reevaluated the order in which we learn abilities and shifted it a bit. This was also the patch where they changed the nature of our abilities. What this all adds up to is that, thanks to the new (new for my level, at least) and improved abilities this patch gave my lowly warrior, he is suddenly viable in combat and--dare I say... fun.

Yes, I said it... ok, I really implied it, but I'll say it now: leveling as a warrior was just not fun in the 1 to 22 range before this patch. Having abilities that weren't viable sitting unused on my bar while using abilities that weren't meant for the situation I was in because the abilities that were meant for the situation I was in were practically useless wasn't fun. Now, all of a sudden, leveling as a fury warrior actually feels like playing a berserker. We have a lot more rage now, thanks (I think) to the rage normalization, and we have abilities that we actually want to spend that rage on. Playing as a fury warrior in low levels is now a frenzy of trying to use the abilities available to you as quickly as possible, since you actually have the rage to do so, rather than an exercise in waiting for Thunder Clap to come off its cooldown and hoping you have enough rage to use it when it does.

So why am I gushing about the new playstyle of low-level fury warriors? Well, after playing as my warrior for an hour or two last night; after surviving a battle against seven enemies of my level, all attacking me at once, when four doing the same thing could have easily done me in before the patch; I had to ask myself: why did we put up with the absolutely terribad playstyle of low level warriors for so long? In fact, I'm sure warriors aren't the only class whose low-level play has been vastly improved by this patch, so I have to ask; why did we put up with bad low level playstyles for so long?

Well, part of the answer is that many people didn't. I know quite a few players who hate the leveling process, and the way some classes play at low levels played no small part in their hatred of that part of the game. Of course, alt-aholics like me really had no choice other than putting up with the bad low-level content, hoping it would be worth it with the higher level content. Part of it could be the idea that we are somehow earning our fun, that the bad low-level playstyle is the price we have to pay to get to the more fun playstyle. That idea is reinforced by the idea that any sort of bad experience we go through makes us able to better appreciate the good experiences we go through, a truism I have often heard in real life.

It could also have something to do with a little condition called learned helplessness. The idea of learned helplessness is that if we accept that we have no control over a situation, it causes us to accept the misery that situation brings upon us, even if a way out is presented. There wasn't a lot we could do to improve the playstyle of classes that were not at all fun to play while leveling, other than not leveling those classes, so those of us who wanted to level those classes just had to accept that the early levels were going to be unenjoyable. (And boy were they. Priests? Paladins? Warriors? Druids? I'm looking at you.) So we gritted our way through those early levels, because we had no other choice if we wanted to get to the part where the classes become fun to play (and I can tell you from personal experience that priests and druids got much more fun to play as you approach the later levels).

Could it really be that bad, though? Could us hopeless alt-aholics really be suffering from the same condition that keeps battered spouses and depressed people in their predicaments? As the blog post I linked to mentions, when someone suffering from learned helplessness does get out of their situation, they often have a hard time committing to anything afterward, and tend to continue believing in nihilism and futility, rather than having hope and being optimistic. When I first logged in to my warrior, I had my doubts about whether he would be any more fun to play, but I gave it a try anyways. As you can tell, I was blown away once I did, but the important thing was whether I hesitated at all. Well, I did find it a bit tedious to need to go to the trainer and learn new moves, and viewed rearranging my action bar with the same weary view. In fact, that fact that I started playing again after rearranging my abilities doesn't really do much to disprove the learned helplessness theory, because I still expected playing to not be all that enjoyable; the surprise came from the fact that I enjoyed play my warrior, not from the fact that I did, in fact, play him. Thus I was engaging in old behaviors with the same kind of futile outlook; all that changed was the result.

So perhaps we alt-aholics who braved our way through the early levels of the unfun classes did suffer from learned helplessness, but patch 4.0.1 is here now, here to liberate us from the previous doldrums of the early levels. Along with this forced liberation comes the force relocation (metaphorically speaking) to a much more fun game design; in other words, we are being flat-out prevented from going back to the situation that caused our learned helplessness in the first place. We have been forced into our escape, forced into a more hopeful situation, and though we might not have been cured of that helplessness, at least we have been saved in spite of it. What this means for the future of low-level playing and us alt-aholics, though, remains to be seen.

Should Blizzard buff/nerf classes based on popularity?

This question has been on my mind ever since I read a WoW.com post that said that because druid tanks were the least popular kind of tank, Blizzard was hesitant to nerf them. This was part of a longer article about the relative popularity of certain tank classes, which showed that warriors were the most popular tanks by far, with druids being the least popular. The article speculated that the reason for this was that warriors have always been viable as tanks, but paladins and druids only became popular as tanks with the advent of Burning Crusade. Even then, paladins were arguably better tanks than druids, and only recently have druids become truly viable as tanks. Death Knights have been popular ever since they were added to the game, which explains why they had no problem carving out a part of the tanking community for themselves.

But I digress. The fact that Blizzard was hesitant to make any changes to an unpopular class got me thinking: should Blizzard buff or nerf classes based on how popular they are? Although the popularity of a class can be viewed as an indicator of its relative strength compared to other classes, such a comparison is misleading. After all, for the longest time, hunters were the most popular class in the game due only to the fact that they were a good class for newbies. Death knights are now by far the most popular class, but I would argue that this is due to their newness, and not their relative strength compared to other classes. The popularity of a class can be based on many things, meaning you cant take it to be an indicator of that class's relative strength.

This means that Blizzard can't use class popularity as a guide on how the classes should be buffed and nerfed, but does that mean that it shouldn't factor in at all? In an ideal world (of warcraft), it wouldn't. The classes would all be able to stand out on their own merits because they would all be fun to play, and thus you would have players dedicated to their class who would play it come hell or high water, even if their class were nerfed into the ground. Thus, if every class is fun to play, then Blizzard doesn't need to factor their popularity in how they buff/nerf them, since that class's devotees would continue to play as that class.

This begs the question, though; are the classes fun to play? Having limited experience with the various class, I can't truly say. I suppose the fact that, aside form death knights and paladins, the other classes have more or less equal representation at level 80 could be a sign that people enjoy playing all of them. Each class and each class's specs are unique in their own way, meaning there is something about each the ten classes and 30 specs in the game that appeals to some kind of player. That said, there are certainly specs that are more limited than others in terms of how they can perform their role (holy paladins, balance druids) and perhaps they could be fleshed out a little bit more, but people still play them, so they must be enjoyable in some way.