World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things? 577
Gamasutra has a 'Soap Box' editorial up discussing the bad lessons World of Warcraft teaches. From the article: "1. Investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill. If you invest more time than someone else, you "deserve" rewards. People who invest less time "do not deserve" rewards. This is an absurd lesson that has no connection to anything I do in the real world. The user interface artist we have at work can create 10 times more value than an artist of average skill, even if the lesser artist works way, way more hours. The same is true of our star programmer. The very idea that time > skill is alien."
Er... so what? (Score:1, Informative)
2. Good raid-quality gear *should* be better than easily obtainable gear you can get while soloing
3. The time it takes to get good raid-quality gear is the price to pay for having better stuff
This is not unique to WoW. Every MMORPG since the dawn of time has worked on a similar philosophy.
Not all MMOs have those problems -- try Guild Wars (Score:2, Informative)
It summarizes quite simply: for that person, WoW is the wrong game.
But that isn't a valid condemnation of WoW. He simply chose wrongly.
If you want to remain in the MMO genre but don't want any time sinks, and you want your personal skill to matter rather than time invested, and you want to be able to solo a lot of the time rather than suffer the incompetence of other people, and you don't want ridiculous mass guild raids in which you are just a cog in a machine, and you don't want the 101 other ills of traditional MMOs like EverQuest
But don't complain about WoW not being adequate. Horses for courses.
Re:Dear article writer (Score:5, Informative)
True, but for the exact same reasons as TFA, I don't feel very entertained by the values in WOW. I've avoided MMOGs like the plague because I so thouroughly dislike the fact that someone who spends more time on the game can whip my butt even though we both have the same skill.
When I play Unreal Tournament or Counter Strike, we all start the same. Though it's true that most players who've played alot will be more skillful, the fact is that their skill is in their own head and reflexes, not stored up in some 60th level ass-kicker of a character.
Imagine if were playing sand-lot baseball and one of the neighborhood kids showed up with his baseball-playing robot that has all the skills of Barry Bonds. Personally, I'd tell the kid to fuck off. But what if I couldn't get rid fo the kid because baseball was structured so that everyone got to bring their kick-ass robots any time they want? Well I'd say that the people who claim to be "playing baseball" aren't really playing baseball at all. They may, in fact, be competing at building robots or growing robots or earning money until they can buy the best robot, but they are not playing baseball.
When I show up to PLAY video GAMES, I want to play the game that's on the screan and I want to be playing against the skill of the other player. When I get in a sword fight, I don't want to lose to someones "skill" at buying a great character on e-bay. That, to me, is not "fun"
Life lessons be damned. I just want to play a real game. To me, WOW doesn't count.
TW
Re:Er... so what? (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, i know that i have almost no artistic talent at all, and my attempts at art throughout high school usually prompted ridicule. According to the WoW (or more genreally, ORPG view) If i keep drawing crap for a long time, suddenly i'll be a better artist than someone who may have had no lessons or anything, but turns out to be the next monet.
If i'm awful at sports, yet i've played a lot, will that make me better than a natural athlete?
Sure, practice at a skill can make one better, but the amount of practice doesn't completely overwhelm natural ability, like the WoW model seems to say it does. That's what the author seems to have the most problems with. If I were to play someone in another game like starcraft, warcraft, street fighter, counter-strike, etc. Yes, it's probably the person who has practiced the most who is going to be better, and going to win. But the reason they win is because they are the better player, and both people go into the game on an equal footing, and it's not the practice itself that determines the winner, but the skill that develops as the result of the practice. Compare this to WoW, where if you have played longer, you have a "better" character.
Sure, for a lot of jobs, if you put enough time into something you can do it well, but only the people with natural gifts are going to become famous athletes, musicians, artists, etc. and the way WoW works is the oppposite of that, it's not the people with the most skill who become the best at what they do, it's people with the most time.
Re:Dear article writer (Score:4, Informative)
fuck! I bought my kid GTA a few years ago and haven't bothered to check back since! I thought it would be okay!!
The other day I heard my 16 year old daughter telling a friend that you can sleep with the proffessor to get a good grade in the Sims 2 University expansion pack. To the best of my knowledge, the thought of this had never occured to her before playing this game. She's got very good morals and a strong sense of ethics, so I don't worry about her, but it sure made me think twice about how video games might affect them.
TW
To the Slashdot crowd: I know there's a humor potential here, but I'd appreciate your respect for my very real daughter. Thanks much
Re:On game enjoyment (Score:3, Informative)
That was really insightful. I'm just going to add some supporting evidence to your argument.
Since it's on a weekly timer and anybody who wants to run it more than once a week should probably be institutionalized, Molten Core takes about six months to farm for everything you want. In the guilds that run it regularly, you need to have some pretty awesome gear to even be considered as a recruit (+160 fire resistance for warriors and rogues). Here's a sample (I get to cut some corners because I'm an armorsmith):
So, if you roll together the items that just require time, and the items that require cold, hard cash, you get 6 items that require time only and 7 that require cold, hard cash - like, 450ish. Half of an epic mount. Damn, I'm tempted to buy gold.
Now, Molten Core is designed to gear you up for Blackwing Lair. In order to even attempt Blackwing Lair, everyone must be wearing a special cloak or they will die in one hit. And - get this - you can only make three of these cloaks per week, by killing a special dragon. 50 / 3 = 16 1/3, or about four months nonstop. And I wouldn't even attempt the next dungeon without a full set of gear from Blackwing Lair.
As an addendum to this, I'd like to point out that everybody I know in an uber raiding guilds really and truly knows what they're doing. Time is what determines your gear, but you're never getting a shot without a brain. Skill probably isn't the right word. Extensive, in-depth knowledge and the ability to follow instructions and communicate come to mind. I don't think there's any other useful definition of skill in an MMO. Johnny Rogue may do 2% more damage than Billy because he hits buttons faster, but if everybody dies because Johnny doesn't follow directions, that's when people get mad.
Re:Dear article writer (Score:1, Informative)
Long list... (Score:3, Informative)
Silent Service (submarine simulator): Patience and careful approach. If you gave full-ahead, you had the destroyers with depth bombs on your head in matter of seconds. Lie in wait on the route of the convoy, or approach at 1/4 the power. And don't fuckin' move when the destroyers approach! (helped me a lot with handling horses. They require the same approach even if you don't launch torpedos at them afterwards...)
The Last V8: Gradual increasing of difficulty will be more efficient in teaching than maxing out and trying to get further with each try on max difficulty. (you had to drive the car to the goal within a time limit. The car was very fast but very easy to crash. The way to finish the game was to drive slowly without crashing till time ran out and then trying slightly faster until you finally reached the goal, instead of driving at full speed at once and trying to crash further from start than at the previous try. You were bound to fail while driving slowly, but you learned where you can't drive any faster and where you can speed up that way, instead of just blaming crashing on not braking fast enough). That way I learned programming. Don't dig up the heavyweight techniques unless you mastered the easy ones.
Gunship 2000 (helicopter simulator): Being a good manager can take you further than being a skilled worker. If you can't do it yourself, you can still manage well. (when you get wingmen, set difficulty to maximum, way over the top, something just impossible for you to beat. Then don't even start the engine, let the wingmen do all the work, they will do just fine. And you're likely to get a medal you'd never get on lower difficulty and you won't get yourself killed the moment the wheels rise off the ground. Of course wingmen get killed all the time, too bad. You're alive and fine though.)
Eye of Beholder 2: Versatility beats specialization. Nuff said.
Body Blows Galactic: Once you've mastered the rules, you find out that great most of them don't make sense at all, some of them make sense only little of the time and there are maybe very few rules total that when properly applied allow you to retain your master level. (I kept playing the game with lots of people. One character, three or so moves, and I was totally unbeatable. Defense at all times, a very fast attack when the enemy drops their defense.)
Ufo: Enemy Unknown (or XCOM: Defense): If you can afford over-the-top solutions, they tend to be cheaper in the long run than cautious resource management. Invest more to earn more. (my favourite weapon: Blaster Launcher, HUGE blast. If the enemy -may- be in given area, I don't check if they are there, I just make sure they aren't there anymore. No wounded/killed soldiers, always enough alien remains to sell and restock, any collateral damage is not -my- damage.) - was helping me at school, preparing to difficult exams by covering -all- the bases, preparing both for passing by learnt knowledge and by cheating, to always have a fallback solution when the other one fails.
UT2000: If you're too weak, RUN! You can always get back later when you're stronger. Not so, if you're dead.
Tetris: Stay cool. Strong emotions dull your senses.
This is actually a very bright observation (Score:3, Informative)
In any case, this is one of the reasons why I stopped playing WoW after about a week.
You can't become good.
You can become experienced, you can invest a lot of time and thus get a higher experience level, you can build a large network of people to chat with... But you can't become a skilled WoW player.
Just about the only skill you can obtain is learning all the maps and the missions. The rest of the time is being spent doing the same thing over and over again in order to raise your XP. Even games that I utterly dislike, such as CS, allows you to become skilled. Actually, most glames do, but not the MMORPGs. I honestly don't understand why. Perhaps it's because most people are not prepared to practice something? Perhaps WoW is just an alternative to planting oneself in front of the TV, watching MTV? (i.e. no intelligence required). I don't know, and by now I don't really think I care.
Now that I'm writing a post about WoW, I have to add my pet peeve as wel:
Playing WoW, it feels like I'm trapped in the Twilight Zone. I walk around in a living world, things happen all around me, but no one can really see me. I'm like a walking shadow, somehow being able to touch things, but still not. Anything I do have absolutely zero effect on the world. It really kills the immersion for me when an NPC tells me that I need to save the village by killing this or that monster. I do it, I arrive in a triumphant return... but... No... Wait... Nothing changed! The village is apparently still held in the grasp of this monster, since the very same person is still handing out the same quest to other players. I'm still the same no-one I was before, altough with a couple of more experience points, and the world laughts in my face saying: "Don't think you can be someone special. You're always doomed to be a boring no-one, and you'll never affect the world".
I think that's the real problem with WoW.
Re:Servers for "light players" ? (Score:3, Informative)
And, of course, to actually play
Also, the game has a smaller, more mature player-base than the more popular MMOGs. You rarely see 14-yr-old "l33t n00bs" like in WoW or EQ. Check it out: [eve-online.com]http://www.eve-online.com/ [eve-online.com] The game universe is huge. There's over 5000 solar systems, and they keep expanding it. I've been playing for a few months and have only scratched the surface (granted, I don't play every day).