Sirlin Article
My 2 best friends and I took a snowboarding trip last year. On the drive we had a discussion that was nearly identical to this article.
Me way on the "MMOs suck" end (and often using Street Fighter as an example of whats right with games and WoW as whats wrong), one friend on the "MMOs rule" end and one in the middle. Sirlin touches on much more of the "group > solo" aspect than I ever thought about and some interesting points about "being alone together."
Anyway, it's an excellent read as are many of Sirlin's articles.
Me way on the "MMOs suck" end (and often using Street Fighter as an example of whats right with games and WoW as whats wrong), one friend on the "MMOs rule" end and one in the middle. Sirlin touches on much more of the "group > solo" aspect than I ever thought about and some interesting points about "being alone together."
Anyway, it's an excellent read as are many of Sirlin's articles.
posted by Brad Merritt at 11:23 AM
8 Comments:
The article is dead on for me. It brings up the holes in the game IMO. I don't like to play the same content 1000 times and I don't care about the gear. Running with my closest friends and some people I met along the way are the reasons I played and loved it.
The idea of a skill based MMO is quite interesting. The problem is that most people want the knowledge that if they sit there for 24 hours they will get better stuff than me and quite possibly beat me in an encounter. A fully geared average player beats a somewhat geared good player. Ask Trouble while they left for another server, they were outmatched in gear and to compete took way more skill than guilds who ran MC all day long.
The thing about skill based games also is that sometimes you don't ever get it. I can't kara-throw in SF3 so I probably can't ever win the national tournament. I might win some local tourneys but that is about it. So lots of people quit from the game because they will never ever be the best, just like real life.
But... If you can play 24 hours a day you might be the most well known best geared player in WoW. On the server I used to play on I would periodically battle against the "best" player on horde, a warrior named Natural. I can beat him despite his gear but one slip and I was dead. I liken it to the match between say Chun Li and Ibuki. Ibuki can win but she is in for a long day either way. But Natural got to open the AQ Gates for the horde on my server and got the epic bug and now is getting all the new teir 3 crap. Next time by green 52 armor is going to carry me against him.
In its own weird way it is balanced for 90% of people. Better gear may give someone with less skill a better chance but it doesn't mean they win. There is no such mechanic is skill based games. If you can't dragon punch and you play Ken you are probably not winning no matter what.
The alone together is pretty interesting as well. I like the movement of other characters and I like finding a lone enemy and facing him up knowing that you could be facing someone who will trounce you. Kind of walking into a random arcade and playing someone you don't know. Some of the most tense/exciting moments in WoW is squaring up against a enemy across a few yards then throwing down. But at the end of the day I don't want to Raid day in and day out. I want to run with a few friends. Maybe complete an instance, maybe kill some horde.
Ah well.
I'm definitely on your side of this argument. I wish the article had gone into a little more detail about the time investment people put into leveling and questing in WoW, as compared to console RPGs.
It's ridiculous that the ToS forbids players from using exploits that are part of the game. I realize that the action in WoW isn't designed to be as dynamic as console adventure-RPGs, but threatening to ban a player for using terrain to their advantage? That's daft. Like with any online PC game, if there's a serious problem, patch it. Penalizing the players for the game designers not doing their job right just doesn't make sense.
As for Street Fighter, while I know I'll never be a great player, I still enjoy playing it. At its best, it's a constant source of friendly competition that allows for far more expression of indiviuality through skill and playing style than the superfluous appearance of race, weapons, and armor in MMOs can.
It would be nice if someone did an article on real-world social interaction of WoW players. So many people at work play on the same server (and many in the same guild). Get a group of my co-workers together that has non-WoW people in the minority, and the WoW people seem to be slightly uncomfortable that the non-WoWers are around. Even people who say they're not heavily into playing it are like this. Fortunately, most of the WoW people seem to be fine as long as they're hanging with a group where non-WoW people are in a large majority.
This article has spawned quite a bit of discussion here in the office too which I wish I could include on here. Oh well.
Your point about real world WoW player interactions is interesting. When WoW players outnumber non-WoW players I think it becomes like any other group of people interested in a common subject. Conversation always gears towards the majority's common interest.
Jargon is used the minority doesn't understand, stories that non-players don't get are told, etc. I think gamers in general are uncomfortable in this situation because gaming often has a stigma of being "uncool."
The author’s article is a walking contradiction. He’s making an argument that video games teach real life lessons and then he attacks Blizzard while completely ignoring his own argument. Blizzard is stating there are rules that you must agree to when playing in their environment and they decide the laws and dish out the punishments, just like the government does in real life. The author's article is dishonest, ignoring his own logic to make contradictory arguments.
In the real world, there are laws, and there are consequences for breaking those laws. You can steal from a grocery store because there’s an exploit in their security, but you shouldn’t. The author claims you should. His entire article is about bad lessons that WoW is teaching, and that playing a game should teach you about real life. But, you can’t just go exploiting and exploring anywhere you want in the real world, and even if you can get into places you shouldn’t be, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get punished for being smart enough to. Fucking duh.
I mean, I might be smart enough to hack into a bank and transfer money into my account but that doesn’t mean it’s ok. According to the author, I was just exploring the limits of my world.
Forbidding players from using exploits is important. A group of players who have access to and use the exploit to get very rare gear much quicker and more easily have than the rest of the community, creates a huge imbalance and causes a major uproar from the average, hard working player base. Yes, they should fix them, and they do, but often these fixes are not easy to make in a timely manner and you have to take steps to discourage people from taking advantage.
It's like saying it's ok for people to loot during a crisis. I mean, the power is out and the police can't get there. Hey government, fix your broken system, but until then, we're gonna keep looting because we can and we’re not wrong for doing it. It's a perfect analogy. Blizzard is the government, it’s their world and they govern it as they see fit.
An MMO is far more complicated than Street Fighter. You really can’t compare the two.
And in response to the argument that the game designers should preconcieve all potential exploits in advance, that's nigh impossible and a ridiculous thing to expect in something as complicated as an MMO.
In Street Fighter, there are bugs, exploits, unblockables, etc. When somebody uses them to their advantage, only the person they are currently playing against is affected, and in the end all that is won or lost is a match. Capcom should have known that Chun Li is overpowered, but it took the community playing and experimenting to find out. There's a reason people play Ken and Chun Li, and there's a reason people groan when their opponent does.
In an MMO, the entire community is affected. Everyone suffers for the exploitation. You cannot put the onus on the developers because all you're doing is saying "Fuck you" to the rest of the community who plays the game.
Everyone is always looking for an advantage. I'm more against exploits in PvE than I am in PvP. It wasn't until they introduced the honor system that terrain exploits in PvP became an issue. I mean, before the honor system, you could stand on rooftops and snipe people all day long and that's just how it was. After the honor system was around for awhile, they decided that since everyone was competing for honor points, they needed to make certain things against the rules.
The fact is, WoW has many good points and many flaws, and so does that author's article. :)
One more thing. His entire article is based on the notion that fun = learning in a safe environment. That statement is not a fact, it's an opinion, and his entire article is based on that opinion being fact.
What do I learn by playing God of War? I learn that I like fantasizing that I'm a bad ass motherfucker. Not exactly a life lesson applicable to the real world. ;)
Ha, thanks for replying to my blog. Yeah, that article kicked up a lot of dust in the office and in the gaming community in general.
I really disagree with much of what he was saying. Saying "time>skill" is not a life lesson is silly, just work for a corporation :)
If I had to guess at a catalyst for that article, it would be I think he got beat up in PvP.
Being a competitive SF player, I am sure Sirlin can walk into most competitive games and beat people purely on skill and knowlegde (and exploitation) of game mechanics. This simply is not true in WoW. Time=Equipment=Power. You just can't get past that.
Some competive players adapt to this and put in the time. Some people buy high level characters on eBay. Some write articles about how WoW sucks.
Good point about the brokeness of mechanics affecting many people vs. just one. SF vs. WoW is a silly comparison but I have some of the best gaming conversations thanks to this article :)
MMOs are glorified chat rooms. The game is totally based on social interaction. WoW just makes it easier to play alone throughout the leveling process so you don't HAVE to group to progress prior to the end game.
The fun factor in MMOs is the social aspect. It's why they're so successful among people who don't usually play games, which for the most part are not social.
Street Fighter 2 ushered in a new era of games because it was a social game where you had to outperform your opponent, and people would play together instead of just by themselves. Prior, most two player games were usually of the take-turn types where you played against the machine. The social grouping resulting from playing SF is what made the game so popular, and is why MMOs are as popular as they are.
People are social creatures. MMOs feed that, for better or for worse. The reason they're fun is not necessarily the gameplay, but the social aspect. The most fun I had when I played WoW was playing with one guy I met in game. We used to go out and PvP all night long. We made no real progress to our PvP rank but we had tons of fun even when we lost.
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