Why World of Warcraft is evil

[Beldaran]

I completely agree with this article. (http://gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml)

[Brasel]

I had once considered playing WoW. After reading that, I'm kind of glad that I didn't. I was lured by the ability to play solo, or, "being alone together". The terms of service are pretty funny too.

[Glenn the Great]

It's perfectly fine to solo the game up until 70. Then you reach a point where you can't compete against other 70s unless you have an extensive social network plus a lot of time to faciliate dungeon grinding and raiding.

[DarkDragoonX]

That's a really old article. It's also largely outdated at this point, particularly in the "ZOMG time spent > skill" area. The arena system has leveled the playing field so much it isn't even funny. With a minimal time investment each week, even a mediocre team can obtain a set of very powerful equipment by the end of the arena season, and a talented team can do it very quickly, indeed. Not only that, but you can do this with the assistance of just 1 other person (though a 5-man team is admittedly faster)! The amount of solo-obtainable epics has risen quite a bit, as well.

Pre-BC, this article was largely accurate. Raid or Die was the motto of the hardcore player, a group which I used to belong to. Since the release of the burning crusade, however, I have begun playing much, much more casually, and I don't feel like I'm weak or missing out at all.

As for being introverted and not wanting to deal with others... I'm quite the introvert myself, but that never kept ME from joining a guild and making friends. For fuck's sake, the ENTIRE FUCKING MMO GENRE is built to be driven primarily by human interaction, and then people bitch because they don't want to have anything to do with other people. It's seriously just fucking retarded.

You don't have to raid any more to acquire powerful items, you don't have to dump tons of time anymore... that article had some merit when it was first published, but at this point it just looks like a silly rant by somebody upset that their MMO requires you to spend time and make friends.

[AtmaWeapon]

I think you missed a lot of the point DarkDragoonX; I'm going to state my feelings on the article then get back to you so go talk on vent with your guildmates about how you are totally going to solo an instance tonight with 39 other guys for a bit.

The article raised some good points and almost across the board I agree, but there is one spot where I disagree: that historically games have not held that time > skill or that time invested increases skill. He sets up this hypothetical street fighter situation: Gamer A and Gamer B are two equally skilled players. To prepare for a tournament, Gamer A learns a strategy and spends 10 hours perfecting it. To prepare for the same tournament, Gamer B competes with other players for 1,000 hours.You cannot tell me that Gamer A has some inherent advantage over Gamer B unless his "strategy" involves paying a hot girl to hold a big bag of cheetos and distract his opponent.

Strategy is important in gaming, but only those who have the time to learn the strategies and practice them are awesome. You cannot tell me that beating a game like Battletoads is simply a matter of reading a walkthrough and doing it; if games before WoW were that simple I doubt gaming would have ever been so popular. The whole point was that beating some of the games was an accomplishment that required the same amount of planning, training, and effort as many physical accomplishments. Sure, you won't get elected Prom King because you can sit down with a stack of MegaMan games and finish them in order without taking a hit, but I guarantee you the amount of practice and effort you put in to that task is on par with the amount of training and effort some guy that can hit a ball with a stick and make it fly really far put in.

That said I do believe a lot of MMOs either do not place a strong enough death penalty or stifle PvP to allow people to be idiots. I like games where PvP can happen anywhere and if you get caught with your phat rare loot then you better have the skills to not get ganked with it. It teaches you to run with training wheels until you actually know what you are doing.

Basically I see our society getting less and less clear on this whole "cause->effect" thing and less apt to take responsibility for actions; replacing social interaction with games like WoW puts you in the interesting situation where you can be a dickhead all you want and when people start stalking you and making your life miserable you just make another account and start over. To quote the crazy anti-video game mom in GTA "Life does not have a reset button!". There needs to be penalties for being stupid; they exist in life and they should exist in games.

OK DarkDragoon I'm ready to address you now. First you completely missed the point and you contradict yourself; I believe Glenn has a more accurate portrayal of the solo game. The point of the article was not that there is no solo content in WoW, but that the solo content is wholly inferior to the large-group content. You can't convince me that solo or 5-man raid groups get equipment that is competitive with 40-man raid equipment; there wouldn't be 40-man raid groups if there was an easier way to get the best loot.

Also lol at citing WoW as "social interaction". Just because you are doing something that is technically with other people doesn't mean you are adept at social interaction. Nine times out of ten guild leaders are just as awkward as all of the other nerds when they meet someone face to face, but when the interaction involves a keyboard they have no inhibitions. This goes back to having no penalties and the ability to completely restart anonymously; most people realize that if they act like a jerk in real life it will haunt them and they use the game to replace normal social interaction rather than learning how to function normally around other people.

I mean I express severe distaste for completely no-inhibition fratboys like goKi is attempting to convince us is the way, but there's nothing wrong with maybe going outside with friends from time to time (this doesn't mean raiding an outdoor instance you loser!).

*edit* also the ENTIRE MMO GENRE has its basis in MUD gaming with which I happen to have a history of ridiculous obsession; I ground an average of 6 hours per day (more on weekends) on my last one and finally quit when I started doing the math of what I needed to grow further. Each and every one of these games can be expressed by a sprawling Excel spreadsheet; you just play a frontend with nice graphics, but ultimately beating any "tough instance" involves calculating the DPS you expect to take, the DPS you expect to deal, how much you can heal, and what effect your damage has on the DPS that is dealt to you. It doesn't matter if "oh in this instance you want to aggro in this order" or "in this instance you start off taking more damage than you can heal but as you kill these spawns it gets manageable" you are still balancing the same factors that people have been balancing in these games for decades.

It's not about social interaction, it's about nerds who thought it would be cool if they were killing a dragon with a party just like that guy in that book they read; I'd be willing to bet if you could set up 39 bots to raid an instance with you plenty of people would be prefer to do it and have a 100% chance at loot than keep the continued comradeship of their guild.

It doesn't matter what you call it, tuna casserole is just fish and noodles. World of Warcraft is a MUD with pictures, which makes it an IRC chatroom with rules.

*edit 2* Above somewhere is the phrase "... of people would be prefer..." and I was going to correct it but it makes me laugh so IT STAYS

[Grasshopper]

You can't convince me that solo or 5-man raid groups get equipment that is competitive with 40-man raid equipment; there wouldn't be 40-man raid groups if there was an easier way to get the best loot.

There is now...its called Burning Crusade. 40-mans were terrible, and nobody like them because it was harder to get 40 people coordinated to do something at one time.

To me, WoW, or MMOs, or MUDs or whatever you want to call them is just like any other RPG where a person wants to grind their character up to as high as possible with the best gear. I did it on games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy, and I wanted to max out all my pokemon in the Pokemon games. The only difference to me is that other people are doing it at the same time. Its a collection game just like anything else worth or not worth collecting.

I only skimmed the article, but is this guy complaining about how no skill is required, or if you play more, you get better stuff? If so, he needs to be welcomed to the world of MMOs, and RPGs. Most seem to be like that, and some are easeir than others, but I think its strange he would compare World of Warcraft to Streetfighter. Apples and Oranges. Two completely different games.

But if anything RPGs and MMOs just consume too much time. MMOs are far worse. I would say that is why WoW is evil, because you have to invest a lot into it, to get more out of it, unlike an action game. Not because it takes less skill than Street Fighter. Thats why I don't like to play RPGs anymore. I don't want some 60-hour game to play. I want some quick action romp I can pick up, play for 30 minutes or more and get instant gratification.

[Glitch]

Few things.


February 22, 2006
Date the article was wrote. The game has changed quite a bit since then.


40 Man raids
No longer exist. The largest raid content (current content) required 25 people, which isn't that hard to get ahold of in such a big game.


It's perfectly fine to solo the game up until 70. Then you reach a point where you can't compete against other 70s unless you have an extensive social network plus a lot of time to faciliate dungeon grinding and raiding.

World of Warcraft has become a game where you can choose to do PvE or PvP. You no longer have to focus on one part to do any good at the other. You can solo plenty of stuff at 70, just not raid content. If you could solo raid content why would you ever go with anyone else? If you're going for server firsts and always wanting to be on the cutting edge of content then yes, you do need a lot of time. But it is far from required to experience the various parts of the game.


I looooooooooove when people call WoW a useless timesink that destroys people's personal lifes. Fucking love it. When people feel the need to blame their inability to control their playtime on the game itself it just means they are truely pathetic.

I have played since a month after release. It hasn't effected my personal life and I have managed to play all aspects on the game. Including: raiding, grinding pvp rank pre-BC, running a guild and it's website, leading countless battleground groups and kicking ass in arena.

[DarkDragoonX]

[QUOTE]Basically I see our society getting less and less clear on this whole "cause->effect" thing and less apt to take responsibility for actions; replacing social interaction with games like WoW puts you in the interesting situation where you can be a dickhead all you want and when people start stalking you and making your life miserable you just make another account and start over. To quote the crazy anti-video game mom in GTA "Life does not have a reset button!". There needs to be penalties for being stupid; they exist in life and they should exist in games.

Y'know, despite all the immature kids running around, there are also plenty of perfectly polite players (myself included) whp DON'T behave like imbeciles. Likewise, chat programs such as IRC experience similar behavior, hell, even FPS games like the aggravatingly-popular Halo experience the same behavior. Trying to pin this down as WoW-exclusive, is silly... it's a phenomenon that stretches across the internet as a whole.


Also lol at citing WoW as "social interaction". Just because you are doing something that is technically with other people doesn't mean you are adept at social interaction. Nine times out of ten guild leaders are just as awkward as all of the other nerds when they meet someone face to face, but when the interaction involves a keyboard they have no inhibitions.

This has never, EVER been my experience in all the time I've played WoW. I've been a member of 3 major guilds, and all of them were wonderful. Nobody was an ass, and we all had fun chatting with each other. I (and others) frequently join raids that we have no reason to go to just so we can shoot the breeze with our friends. Some of my guild members are real-life friends, but there are many others that I have never met in real life, and never will.

I recently quit WoW for 2 months before re-activating my account at the beheast of an aforementioned online friend... now, he had no gameplay reason for wanting me to come back. I'm not the only warrior in the world, and the guild trundled along just fine without me. But we're good friends, and although I had kept in touch outside of the game, well, we all like to play with our friends, right?

Again, social retardation is not a WoW-centric phenomenon. It's a problem that spans the entire internet, and WoW just happens to have the right setting and the right size to make it more apparent. If you don't believe any real socialization occurs online, then why bother going to these formus? Why bother chatting? Yeah, there's a lot of social ineptitude online, mostly originating from kids under college age. Even so, there IS meaningful social interaction to be found, whether you believe it or not. Online socialization is not a replacement for personal interaction, but it's more than just faux-socialization, as well.


*edit* also the ENTIRE MMO GENRE has its basis in MUD gaming with which I happen to have a history of ridiculous obsession; I ground an average of 6 hours per day (more on weekends) on my last one and finally quit when I started doing the math of what I needed to grow further. Each and every one of these games can be expressed by a sprawling Excel spreadsheet; you just play a frontend with nice graphics, but ultimately beating any "tough instance" involves calculating the DPS you expect to take, the DPS you expect to deal, how much you can heal, and what effect your damage has on the DPS that is dealt to you. It doesn't matter if "oh in this instance you want to aggro in this order" or "in this instance you start off taking more damage than you can heal but as you kill these spawns it gets manageable" you are still balancing the same factors that people have been balancing in these games for decades.

Okay. RPGs are basically the same bloody thing. Meet the mininum statistic requirements to defeat encounter, defeat encounter, build up for next encounter. MMOs are just on a larger timeframe. I see no issue here.


It's not about social interaction, it's about nerds who thought it would be cool if they were killing a dragon with a party just like that guy in that book they read; I'd be willing to bet if you could set up 39 bots to raid an instance with you plenty of people would be prefer to do it and have a 100% chance at loot than keep the continued comradeship of their guild.

Yes, there are many people like that. But there are ALSO those of us who play, and will continue to play, because we enjoy shooting the breeze with our friends, where WoW provides an excellent opportunity to do just that in the context of a rather enjoyable little RPG.


*edit 2* Above somewhere is the phrase "... of people would be prefer..." and I was going to correct it but it makes me laugh so IT STAYS

Can't argue with that.

[Glenn the Great]

I personally hate being forced to group to advance in MMOs.

I've been playing WoW since fall of 2005. I hit level 60 after about 2-3 months. During that time, I'd say that 95% or more of my progression was solo-based.

I had friends in the game (including half a dozen real life friends who got me into the game in the first place,) and I really enjoyed doing things with them.

What I've found, is that I like to solo for character progression, and to group for fun RP social type stuff.

I never want to group to fight anything, and only do so when I have no other choice.

I like to do things at my own pace. Sometimes I'll drop what I'm doing in the middle of a quest, and just go sight-see, or I'll find a safe place and start browsing my inventory or stats. If you do this in a group, people yell at you to keep up the pace.

Also, mistakes are much more tolerable when you are by yourself. I know when I've made an error in my gameplay, and don't need to be told by some jackass, who is then going to tell his guild.

Then, like previously mentioned, is the whole aspect of having to share and distribute loot. In my post-60-pre-BC days, I quit playing for several months on two separate occasions. I had just gotten so burnt out from the stresses of trying to progress in raids.

There is nothing like spending 8 hours in a 40 man raid dungeon listening to people bitch on voice chat, having some really nice piece of equipment drop, and then lose it on a random roll to someone else. It's extremely de-moralizing.

Blizzard is trying to address this a bit, I can see... by making the heroic instance bosses drop a token that everyone in the group gets one of. The tokens are later redeemed for good loot from vendors.

I like the concept a lot. The problem with it is that you have to have a whole lot of these tokens to get anything good, and what you do get is not as good as the things that have to be sorted out.

Who says that the social aspect has to be tied directly to advancing your character? The more valuable social moments in the game are found at times where loot isn't at stake. Whenever you mix social stuff and progression, it only creates stress and frustration.


Online socialization is not a replacement for personal interaction

I disagree. Online socialization is many times more gratifying than IRL socialization to me. I'm almost always met by disappointment when dealing with people in real life.

[MottZilla]

Personally I find it gets real boring because of the time frame of the game. It takes entirely too long to do anything different. You constantly do the same boring task 10,000 times before it's time to go do something else. And it's the same bunch of clicking a few buttons to tell your character to do some things. It's fun for awhile and would be fun for longer if it wasn't so horribly drawn out. MMORPGs like it has been said, take too much time and are too much of the same thing.

[phattonez]

Except for graphics, how is it any better than Runescape?

[MottZilla]

Because it's Blizzard and the WarCraft universe ofcourse.

[AtmaWeapon]

I disagree. Online socialization is many times more gratifying than IRL socialization to me. I'm almost always met by disappointment when dealing with people in real life.WELP
http://www.atmaweapon.org/images/AGN/81146a-docevil.gif

[biggiy05]

Blizzard is releasing another expansion for WoW. The new level cap is 80, a new profession and some other "goodies" that they haven't explained very well.

There are going to be so many people that are going to go 24 or hours or more to hit level 80 just to so they can be on top.

I'll buy the expansion but not the day of the release or even for a few weeks after.

[MottZilla]

Don't worry, when Blizzard's profits start to drop off from where they want them there will be another expansion that goes to 90.

[biggiy05]

Don't worry, when Blizzard's profits start to drop off from where they want them there will be another expansion that goes to 90.

I don't think they are bringing out the expansion because they are losing money but to keep the story line they have built to keep going and bring new things for players to do. Instances, battlegrounds, raids, the new profession etc...

9 million subscribers is one big cash cow for Blizzard.

[DarkDragoonX]

Furthermore, yearly expansions is fairly routine in the MMO world... the fact that WoW went so long before The Burning Crusade came out is actually fairly remarkable.

EDIT: At 15 bucks per person, with 9 million subscribers... that's 135 million dollars a month. 1.62 BILLION dollars a year. Shit, It's like printing money, ain't it?

[MottZilla]

I don't think they are bringing out the expansion because they are losing money but to keep the story line they have built to keep going and bring new things for players to do. Instances, battlegrounds, raids, the new profession etc...

9 million subscribers is one big cash cow for Blizzard.

They're not losing money, they just want to make sure they keep raking it in, which mean entertaining their current group of subscribers as long as possible. They'll want to keep raking in the money as long as possible.

[{DSG}DarkRaven]

At 15 bucks per person, with 9 million subscribers... that's 135 million dollars a month. 1.62 BILLION dollars a year.

Technically, since that is a global count and includes the massive and rapidly growing chinese playerbase (which pays far less per month than americans do, for instance), those figures aren't entirely accurate. Still, though, it's more than enough to keep Blizzard financially stable for a long, long time.

More content keeps players in, brings new players in, and brings old players back (who, for the sake of nostalgia, are very likely to repeat much of the existing content again). The price of the expansion pack mostly pays for itself, development-wise, and the subscription fee continues to pay for the rest of the game fees.

[Grasshopper]

which mean entertaining their current group of subscribers as long as possible.Yes, Yes, entertaining me. :D I'm pleased to hear about Wrath of the Lich King..not to be confused with Rise of the Witch King. :eyebrow: