Raph Koster has a pointer to a rant on Gamasutra about how World of Warcraft sucks.
Nothing new there… (checks watch) Yep, it’s been a little over a year, time for the backlash to hit the mainstream. Still, this article is pretty interesting, especially from the point of view of its author. He happens to be a competitive Street Fighter player, so you can probably guess where he comes down on the player skill vs time investment discussion. And again:
…playing a fair game is what it’s all about. It would never occur to us to play a game where one player gets to do 50% more damage because he has a level 60 Chun Li.
The problem, of course, is that not everyone is going to be a wizard at playing Chun Li. The barrier of entry to knowing exactly how to blow away people with arcane 8-step combo moves is far higher than a “level 60 Chun Li”… and learning how to do them – how to be a competitive, truly skilled player, I would argue, would take more time than grinding your Chun Li to 60. It would feel fairer to some to be able to leverage their hand-eye coordination or whatever to “pwn” people more effectively – but would people resent being “pwned” any less because someone was able to game the system instead of grinding out levels? This is, of course, an old discussion, and Raph’s hit on it more than once.
There’s some other surprising takes in the article as well, that challenge a bit our preconcieved notions of “WoW as the casual MMO”. To wit:
Group > Solo. You can forget self-reliance, because you won’t get far in World of Warcraft without a big guild. By design, playing alone (even if you are the best player in the world) will get you worse loot than if you always play in 5-man dungeons. If you always play in 5-man dungeons, you’ll always get worse loot than if you play in 40-man raids. The player base has been hit over the head for so long with this notion of 40-man raids, that players are taking that as given. I see so many people who have been fooled into thinking this is justified, that it actually scares me. They think that you shouldn’t be allowed to get good loot unless you do something with 39 other people, because that’s harder. Coordinating 40 people is hard, but so is winning a Street Fighte tournament, which you have to do by yourself.
This is interesting to me on a couple of different levels.
World of Warcraft actually discourages grouping, at least during the 1-60 character building stage, for the majority of gameplay. To be precise, the experience doled out in groups makes for a far less efficient character growth rate than if the players were solving quests solo. Not only that, with the exception of elite quests and instances, the entire game can actually be played solo; in that it’s one of the most forgiving MMOs in that regard.
That this player took away “World of Warcraft enforces grouping” from this tells me that the groups he felt he had to be in were SO jarring, and SO resented, that they shaded the rest of the experience. (The references to “40 man groups”, which only occur in the vastly different post-60 elder game, tend to bear this out.) To quote again:
Unfortunately, the game offers no difficult solo content leading to good loot. (Note to picky readers: there is some, but it’s soooo far out of whack with raid rewards that we can safely ignore it, the same way Blizzard does.) The designers must be so extraverted, that they can’t fathom the introvert point of view.
Again, within the same paragraph: “There’s no content for my playstyle. Well, there is, but the other stuff is better. You know it, I know it, Blizzard knows it, so it just doesn’t exist for me.” This is a far more important lesson to learn than what he is actually saying. As long as there is content percieved as “better”, players won’t settle for what they can easily achieve through their own devices. They will resent not being able to get The Best.
And again:
Warcraft\’e2\’80\rdblquote maybe accidentally\’e2\’80\rdblquote hit upon this concept, and now seems spit on it and all those who appreciate it. If a Blizzard developer read this, his PR department would say they are not spitting on this play-style, but unfortunately the game design speaks louder than words. “Spit on” is exactly how I feel. But far worse is the idea that millions of children are learning that doing things on your own is bad. Albert Einstein accomplished far more in the field of physics by himself during off-time as a patent clerk than a 40-man raid of so-so physicists ever would. I want little Johnny in Idaho to learn that lesson, but he sure won’t find it in World of Warcraft. 40 mundane people with a lot of time would put Albert Einstein to shame any day of the week in this game.
Little Johnny in Idaho may be learning bad lessons, but the lesson Little Scott in Virginia is learning is that as long as 40 man raids exist, there will be people who wish they didn’t have to do them – but still want the rewards that were crafted to reward the combined efforts of 40 people. This is important: rewards for the effort of 1 person isn’t good enough. As long as better exists, that will be the baseline. “Why can’t I get the same stuff as the 40 people working together. I’m smart! I should be able to get the same stuff! Or stuff just as good. It had better be just as good, too, or else it may as well not exist.”
The author also dislikes one of the primary pillars of community in an MMO:
You’re either with a guild, or you’re nobody to them. I can’t imagine being in only one IRC (chat) channel at a time, or choosing only one gaming community, yet I can only join one guild at a time. It’s a very weird social environment with the same dangers as nationalism and flag-waving.
I wonder if the author has settled on one family yet.
Seriously, this part kind of strikes at the core of community building. Like attracts like. We join guilds that have people that we get along with. If we don’t, we don’t last particularly long. If we do, we form bonds of friendship that persist beyond the game itself. This is a pretty key part of what makes the community behind MMOs tick, and the author’s rejection of these out of hand makes me wonder what sort of enforced guild grouping he felt he had to endure to get Those Shiny Things Only 40 Man Raids Give You. If you’re detecting a theme, congratulations!
And finally, the author decides that rules are bad.
The very idea of using the terms of service as the de facto way to enforce a certain player-behavior goes against everything I’ve learned. A game should be a system of rules that allow the player to explore. If the player finds loopholes, then the game developer should fix them. It’s never, ever the player’s fault: it’s the game developer’s fault. People who currently make deals with enemy faction (Horde or Alliance ) to trade wins in battleground games are not really at fault. They are playing in a system that forces anyone who wants to be rank 14 to do exactly that. A line in the Terms of Service saying that you shouldn’t behave this way changes nothing, and teaches nothing.
Cheating is fine, because the players learned how to cheat. The game developers should wave a magic wand and fix it! Failing that, they should just let players evolve new forms of gameplay. I believe the terminology used for this in Ultima Online was “creative uses of magic”. Needless to say, most people that found this term used during an interaction with customer service found it an insulting, patronizing copout.
Players expect an even field of play. Developers absolutely have to fix bugs as they are discovered, but that does not give players carte blanche to discover and exploit interesting ways to break the game. The author seems to resent the fact that terms of service exist, but I suspect if he played a game where they were honored only in the breach his opinion would change dramatically.
These examples go on and on, but the basic idea here is that Blizzard treats the players like little children who need a babysitter. There are mountains of rules in the terms of service that tell you that you shouldn’t do things that you totally can do in the game if you want. Why they don’t just alter their design and code so you can’t do these things is beyond me. But this mentality is drilled into the players to the point that they start believing that it’s ok. They start believing that it’s not ok to experiment, to try out anything the game allows in a non-threatening environment. Well\’e2\’80\rdblquote that’s a dangerous thing. That’s the point at which the game stops being “fun” by Raph Koster’s definition, and it’s also the point at which the game can no longer teach. The power of games is that they empower a player to try all the possibilities that he can think of that the game rules allow, not that they have pages of “rules of conduct” that prevent you from creative thinking.
Which is all well and good. I want to explore new frontiers in cyberspace and new ways that men pretend to be women to get other men to give them shinies too. But in most worlds, including the one we happen to live in, running afoul of the community standards (our world calls them “laws”) isn’t excused by the complaint that the offender was “exploring the boundaries of society”. Amazingly, there are folks who aren’t joyous explorers of the human psyche, but just want to be irritating weasels. Thus why rules exist. Thus why “babysitters” exist (in our world, we call them police officers). I totally can rob money from stores and punch random passers by in the face. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to do this? Those damn terms of service, getting in the way of my fun!
Back to seriousland, what this tells me is that there isn’t enough education about why rules enforcement exist. Grizzled veterans of gameplay ‘experiences’ past know that people online are, nine times out of ten, raving assholes. I’ll grant the author a blissful ignorance on this one, and give Blizzard bonus points for making a world with such a well-enforced rule set that the author can’t understand why it exists in the first place.
Sometimes, you learn things you didn’t expect in places that didn’t expect you to learn them.
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Yes, because we all know that people who aren’t immediately in front of us aren’t real and we can thus be total raving psycho lunatics with no fear of consequence.
The disconnect you exhibit here is precisely why full-PvP games will never be acceptable to the mainstream of players and why designers of other games are forced to code restrictive countermeasures to counter such casual sociopathy.
“Sociopathy” implies that online games are societies. They’re not. Sometimes societies coalesce around them, as with your former message boards and blog, but in and of themselves the world of Norrath or Dereth or Azeroth, populated with a server full of people, does not create any sort of society. No society, no societal ‘laws’, no sociopathy.
The whole point of a MMO is to have an avatar separate from oneself – where actions done, and done by you, are not “you”, per se.
Otherwise, why camp for the loot? Why not just go to work and make some money or play a sport in real life?
Anything that could be done in a “virtual society” would have a parallel activity in the real world. Why not ‘advance’ or ‘socialize’ or ‘explore’ or ‘compete’ (to paraphrase Bartle) in the real world, then?
What’s the point of a virtual system, if not to free us from the bonds of being in a society?
Why distance ourselves from our own humanity via a computer interface, if we’re just going to keep on acting human?
The problem with ganking newbies in a MMOG is this:
First of all, it’s not the equivalent of beating someone in Monopoly. It’s the equivalent of beating someone in Monopoly when they start out with only $5 and they’re limited to moving one space per turn. Take the fellow who was sticking daggers in my WoW warrior’s kidneys this afternoon: he could walk up to a level 1, or a level 10, or a level 20 character and the first that character would know he was there was when said rogue one-shotted him. It’s a game the newbie can’t win. Ever.
Nor is it the equivalent of repeatedly fragging novices in a FPS. I suck at FPS games, my aging reflexes can’t handle it, but I enjoy playing them once in a while just the same. Every time I die, I learn something about how to play better: You can get ambushed if you go that way. Look up, he might be on that wall. Don’t get trapped in dead-end corridors. Strafe! Strafe! What I learn makes me a better player, harder to kill next time. The only difference between any two (non-cheating, of course) players is skill, and one way you get that skill is from finding out all the many ways to get fragged, and how to frag unto others as others have fragged unto you. That learning increases a player’s capabilities in the game. In a MMOG, however, you don’t get better by dying. You get better by levelling, which you can’t do while you’re dead.
What makes PvP fun isn\’e2\’80\’99t Counter-Strikey pitched battles. It\’e2\’80\’99s the idea that you, by dint of whatever, can set upon the other guy when he has no chance to fight back; and someday, he might be able to do the same to you, or to other newbies.
Griefing may be what makes the game fun to you — but other people’s mileage may vary. In general, people don’t find being killed when they have no chance to fight back to be a whole lot of fun. What you see as fun (kind of like pulling the legs off helpless insects) they see as you preventing them from playing the game they bought and paid for. And no, getting continuously ganked is not what they bought it for — go look at the box for any game, you’re not going to see “die over and over and over again and try futilely to get to level 2″ anywhere on it.
I\’e2\’80\’99m sorry, but if you feel that much negative emotion upon getting killed in a MMO, no matter the circumstances, there\’e2\’80\’99s just something *wrong* with you. Maybe not majorly wrong, but by the time it\’e2\’80\’99s gone that far, the MMO should be the *least* of your worries.
I beg to differ. Someone who is the victim of a griefer like you has every right to feel negative emotions. They bought a game to play it, and another player, one whose biggest advantage is that he started playing the game before they did, is preventing them from doing so. Getting pissed that someone won’t let you play the game you just bought is perfectly natural. On the other hand, getting your “fun” out of preventing other players from having a good time, and picking on those too weak to be able to fight back … now that’s a sign of some serious issues that you really ought to get some help for.
Would you swear at your kids if they beat you at Risk or Monopoly?
If her kids beat her at Risk or Monopoly, she’d no doubt congratulate them. It’s an accomplishment for a child to beat an adult, someone who has the advantages of more experience and more practice, at a game. That is, in fact, exactly the opposite situation from what you enjoy — you’d be the one beating the little kids at games and then laughing at them and making them cry.
Or does the anonymity of the internet provide you a cloak for such antisocial behavior?
Look in a mirror, troll. You’re bragging about preventing other people from playing games. You’re mocking someone for being angry that she was prevented from playing a game by people like you. You’re trying to attack her in an out-of-game sense, suggesting that she is mentally ill because she’s angry about being deprived of the game she’s paying for. You are a griefer, and in my humble opinion you need professional help. Most of the people I disagree with here I think are misguided, misinformed, or wrong. Not you — you’re evil. And I do not mean that in any good way.
P.S.
\’e2\’80\’9cSociopathy\’e2\’80\’9d implies that online games are societies.
Playing games is an action that is undertaken by members of existing societies. That’s where the greifer’s argument of “it’s just a game” falls apart. It’s just a game, yes, and chess is just a game, but that doesn’t justify you walking into a tournament and dumping chessboards on the floor. The society in question isn’t inside the game, it’s outside — it’s the one you live in every day of your life. And that society has certain expectations of behavior of its members, like “you don’t wreck other people’s games just to get your jollies” whether those games are chess tournaments or MMOGs.
Sociopathy (now wrapped into ‘antisocial personality disorder’) is defined as lacking understanding of the feelings of others, especially empathy for others’ suffering. Even with what little I know of you from your comments on this blog, you certainly exhibit the aggressiveness and especially the lack of remorse that the DSM-IV lists as characteristic of the disorder. You are indifferent to the effects of your behavior, you rationalize the wrong you do as someone else’s fault, or something the victim deserved, and I suspect you might show a few more of the diagnostic characteristics as well. The biggie, though, is being unable to understand or empathize with other people’s feelings, and you have demonstrated that repeatedly in this discussion.
Sociopathy is not violation of laws, although sociopaths do violate laws because of who and what they are. Sociopathy is being an insensitive griefer, someone whose personal pleasure trumps someone else’s pain, someone with no sense that the rest of the world is anything other than bad special effects — and that, my friend, is you. Or at least the person you have presented yourself as.
The whole point of a MMO is to have an avatar separate from oneself – where actions done, and done by you, are not \’e2\’80\’9cyou\’e2\’80\’9d, per se.>/i>
But the actions you do are done by you, per se. If you crash the game server, that’s you. If you hack the game, that’s you. And if you make it impossible for another person to play the game, or enjoy the game, by other means — such as griefing — that, too, is you.
What\’e2\’80\’99s the point of a virtual system, if not to free us from the bonds of being in a society?
Why distance ourselves from our own humanity via a computer interface, if we\’e2\’80\’99re just going to keep on acting human?
I don’t think I can even begin to answer this. It would be easier to explain color to a blind man than civilization to a sociopath.
>What\’e2\’80\’99s wrong with killing newbies?
Lack of challenge, lack of risk. If you wanted to play such a game, you might just as well toss a ball in the air and bet whether gravity will affect it – it will. Such a game might be fun for someone with with a serious mental disability but anyone with a reading age of above 5 would pass it by.
If there were not some other consequence, that is. In this case, there is. That consequence is to upset other people. If you get off on that, i suspect the Law or possibly the Prison Service is for you.
>Why is a fight more fun when both players have a semi-equal shot, and >either one can fight back hard?
If you really don’t understand that, i won’t even begin to try to explain it. Keep on licking the windows of the short bus, Joe.
The days of unrestricted murder and mayhem are over. Games such as DAOC and WoW have demonstrated that pvp can be done with some basic safeguards and rules and its actually fun. I play MMOs to pvp – its the endgame reward for me. PvP in MMOS has evolved from the days of UO and darktide. There are more important challenges to address – like some of the things the original poster points out (item balance, time spent vs. skill). Another is what impact it has on the game world (DAOC Relics – prime example).
I agree with everything joe had to say except asking for alternative rule servers. If you put all the game systems of an MMO together and were serving a meal – pvpers are not the dog under the table getting handed scraps such as alternative rules servers. Should we have alternative servers where you can form guilds, or collect items, or do quests? absolutely not. PvP should be a complete system within the context of the entire game, it has its place to happen (zones), it has its effect on the game (rewards, penalties), it interacts with the other playstyles (examples such as unlocking pve content through pvp(not individually but as a team) and most importantly encourages participation not discourages.
Like Joe I too am wishing more dev houses would take this approach. I am pleased with the success of wow with almost half their servers being pvp rules and no wow server is truly -pvp in that you cannot do it at all. I think that should light up the eyes of some execs.
- A
The critical difference between PvP and other game elements such as collecting items or doing quests is that PvP, specifically the unrestricted newbie-ganking that you and Joe get off on, has the potential to deny other paying customers the ability to play the game at all. The whole idea of one group (often a minority) of players being able to control the gameplay experience of other players naturally makes game developers nervous, to say the least.
Shadowbane is an excellent example. I had it easy — I was in the first wave of players, I had a good guild and we were allied with our server’s uber-guild, so I levelled up in relative safety and got driven out of the game by the broken software, broken economy, broken CS, and generally broken game instead. But it was unplayable for the people who came later. I talked to people who never made another level, in two weeks of trying, after they left Newbie Island. People like you and Joe camped the safeholds and slaughtered any new players trying to seek somewhere to level. They were naked because all of their gear broke and their money was looted, they were frustrated because the game, to them, was an endless sequence of death, death, and death, and they had no alternatives. The guilds didn’t recruit anyone below about 40 at least. No handful of level 20 newbies stood a chance against geared-up 60′s. A friend of mine (healer/channeler) took out a full group, or close to it, farming at ants. Solo. If every newbie on the server had gathered together, a single group of rank-5′s could have taken them out. So, of course, after weeks of getting ganked and nothing but frustration to show for their money, those players quit paying. The result? Shadowbane has 4 servers now, down from 12 at launch. The game is on life support.
It comes back to the difference between a MMORPG and a FPS: In an FPS, it’s not necessary to win fights to get better. You keep on losing, you learn from every fight, and eventually you start to win. In Shadowbane, though, or any game of its kind (including early WoW) it is necessary to win in order to get better. I don’t care how l33t you think you are, if you take a level 20 character, any class, any gear, and you duel my 60 warrior, it doesn’t matter that neither my skills nor my gear are anything outstanding. You are going to die. And you are going to die every single time. If your ability to improve — that is, to level — was dependant on you being able to beat me, you would stay level 20 until you quit the game in frustration, and took your subscription fees with you.
I am a PvPer, not a griefer like you and Joe. I don’t gank newbies. Why? Partly ethical reasons — I’m from another generation, one where being mean and a bully was considered detestable, not admirable. But, also, it goes against the whole reason I PvP in the first place. I want to prove I’m better. I want to beat someone who should be able to win, but they lose because I’m better than they are, not someone who never had a chance to begin with. Ganking newbies doesn’t do my e-peen any more good than what I’m doing right now — farming low-level mobs for some tradeskill mats I need.
I notice you two don’t talk about your great adventures mowing down scads of level 20 spiders. You’d laugh at someone who posted here and talked about the wonders of farming crap mobs. What’s the difference between killing these spiders and killing the newbies that I wave at and go about my business? A human being on the other side of the computer who is upset that they can’t play the game because of you.
I have never felt marginalized because I play on a PvP server. The fact that you want to deny other players the option of playing on a carebear server if they choose shows me that you’re not a PvPer looking for opponents, you’re a griefer looking for victims. Your fun comes from ruining other people’s fun.
The fact that people like you exist, devoting your efforts to wrecking the product (called ‘fun’) that the game companies are selling, is what makes them so leery of releasing PvP games. So it’s thanks to little Internet sociopaths like you that the rest of us, the real PvPers, people who understand the concepts of ‘game’, ‘sportsmanship’, etc., can’t get a decent open PvP game.
“The critical difference between PvP and other game elements such as collecting items or doing quests is that PvP, specifically the unrestricted newbie-ganking that you and Joe get off on, has the potential to deny other paying customers the ability to play the game at all.”
Maybe It’s just because I’m a really high Socializer/Explorer, but I don’t see how getting killed repeatedly prevents you from playing the game.
Playing games is about the fun from the means, not “ends”. Nobody (at least, nobody smart) is just playing to get the next Uberfoozle Sword of Whack’em +1. They’re playing for the fun of the getting there.
As a result, the two most important things in being able to play the game are your ability to run around and your ability to talk.
Does getting killed keep you from running around? No. It may move you back to wherever your bindstone is, but once you hit the bindstone you can just keep on running. It sure doesn’t keep you from talking.
If anything, I’d say that a PvE mez keeps you from playing the game far more than getting ganked repeatedly would.
If you’d reply with “Well, what’s the point of running if you can’t get where you’re running *to*?”, then congratulations – you just missed the entire point of MMOs. If you’re playing for where you’re running too, and not playing for the run itself, then you’re not playing a game at all – you’re just hitting the button on the skinner box to get your pellet.
It’s the same thing with loot. Let’s say someone kills me and loots my stuff. Does that prevent me from running? No. Does that prevent me from talking? No. So how is it preventing me from playing the game? Sure, I might need my sword to whack some monster, but is whacking the monster really the point?
The chat system in any well-designed MMO (and by well-designed, I mean “doesn’t have raids that give uber loot”) is the greatest measure of your power and ability to impact the world, not your level or your loot. So long as you can keep on talking (to act upon the world), and keep on running (to experience the world – otherwise, why not just connect to the world’s chat server in IRC) I don’t see how you’ve been held back in any meaningful way.
“I notice you two don\’e2\’80\’99t talk about your great adventures mowing down scads of level 20 spiders. You\’e2\’80\’99d laugh at someone who posted here and talked about the wonders of farming crap mobs. What\’e2\’80\’99s the difference between killing these spiders and killing the newbies that I wave at and go about my business?”
If the spiders had the same AI as human newbies, and could interact with me via the chat system in the same way human newbies do, it’d be equivalent.
The point isn’t “we like killing newbies because there’s a human being behind them”. I like killing newbies (or anyone else ingame for that matter) because they approximate a far better AI, not just in combat terms but also in political and social terms, than a computer can yet do.
When we get level 20 spider mobs that can pass the turing test and can ‘write their own stories’ in a way as compelling as what current PvP servers can put out, PvP would be quite obsolete. Especially if you could flip a variable on the server and have the spider mobs stop using l33tspeak.
The point of playing with other humans isn’t to treat them as humans – it’s to replicate a much more sophisticated AI than any game in the near future will be able to produce.
I’m Killer/Explorer or Killer/Achiever, depending on how long I’ve been playing my current game of choice. (I shift from Explorer to Achiever over time)
You don’t see how getting killed repeatedly prevents someone from playing the game? Maybe not playing your game — which, from your mention of voice chat, I suspect involves you getting off on them begging you not to keep killing them — but it prevents a lot of other people, those whose goal in the game is something other than being the punching bag of someone with a very small weiner — from playing their game. This is what I meant in my points about sociopaths lacking understanding of and empathy for others’ feelings or points of view.
I love PvP for exactly the reason you claim to: the intelligence. Once you learn how to kill a mob, you can kill it every time. It’s just a matter of bringing the right group and using the standard tactics. Humans are more fun because humans think, they react, they’re trying to beat me just as hard as I’m trying to beat them. They’re unpredictable. They’re smart. They’re all the things an AI isn’t. I know I’m gonna win against an AI, but I don’t know I’m gonna win against a human, and that’s where the fun is. My fun comes from knowing that I beat someone who could have beaten me, except that I was better than he was: smarter, faster, cleverer, whatever.
That’s exactly what you don’t get ganking newbies. What’s the point of killing someone who has no chance to win? There’s no challenge to it. There’s no uncertainty. There’s no need to be good, to push yourself to be better than you were, to think and react and win. There’s no feeling of accomplishment. It’s no different than slaughtering those spiders.
Except for one thing: The spiders don’t cry.
That’s what griefers (and you have put yourself firmly in that class by now) enjoy: the crying, as they call it. The feeling of power they get when they know they’ve ruined a game for someone else. The knowledge that JoeNewblet was trying to level, or to mine, or just to run to the next town, and they, in their mighty max-level ultra-gear power, wasted that player’s time, frustrated him, made the game less fun for him. Griefers get off on sitting there behind their keyboards imagining the disappointment, the rage, the unahppiness of someone who is trying to have fun and is being repeatedly frustrated.
It’s not the challenge; if you wanted a challenge, you would be a PvPer, not a griefer. It’s not the social aspect; normal adults do not get off on making little kids (or other adults, for that matter) cry.
Playing games is about the fun from the means, not ends. Nobody (at least, nobody smart) is just playing to get the next Uberfoozle Sword of Whack\’e2\’80\’99em +1. They\’e2\’80\’99re playing for the fun of the getting there.
Actually, a lot of people play to get the next Uberfoozle Sword of Whack’em +1. That’s why there are so many games that dispense an endless supply of UFSoW +1, UFSoW +2, etc. Smart people play golf, too. I don’t pretend to understand why; to me, it’s just a good walk ruined. But people have fun with it, even if it’s not my kind of fun. Different people find their entertainment in different ways. To you the world is inside your head; you are unable to comprehend that other people might have different but equally valid beliefs, values, and goals than you do, including the desire to have fun in their own ways instead of facilitating your fun. To you there are only two ways: your way and the wrong way. Some people who think like that blow up buildings, but most just spend their lives in ever-increasing frustration and impotent rage against a world that stubbornly refuses to conform to the way they believe it should work.
But even that isn’t the point. There is no “fun of getting there” if you can’t ever get there. People like you — like the ones in Shadowbane — kept other players from having the opportunity to get there, wherever their chosen “there” was, or in fact to get anywhere.
It\’e2\’80\’99s the same thing with loot. Let\’e2\’80\’99s say someone kills me and loots my stuff. Does that prevent me from running? No. Does that prevent me from talking? No. So how is it preventing me from playing the game? Sure, I might need my sword to whack some monster, but is whacking the monster really the point?
Maybe whacking the monster — or getting out of Khar Th’Sekht alive — is not your goal in the game, but it’s the goal of a lot of other people. So is levelling, acquiring better gear, becoming wealthy, and a whole lot of other things. Maybe you don’t think that being stuck at level 1 (or 20, or whatever) and stark naked is holding you back in any meaningful way, but I’d bet you dollars to donuts that you level up your characters and buy them good gear. Why? Shouldn’t you just stay level 1 and sit there in town and talk to people?
As a result, the two most important things in being able to play the game are your ability to run around and your ability to talk.
Does getting killed keep you from running around? No. It may move you back to wherever your bindstone is, but once you hit the bindstone you can just keep on running. It sure doesn\’e2\’80\’99t keep you from talking.
Getting killed does prevent you from moving around. Well, at least other than the Tree in Khar and a ponit a hundred yards outside of it where the gank squads waited. (no, I wasn’t one of them, though I did go kill them on occasion) It prevents you from exploring. It prevents you from achieving. It prevents you from killing. About the only thing it doesn’t prevent you from doing is socializing, and as a KEAS/KAES player, I don’t really give a flying whistle about socializing, at least not unless I’m in a position of power/respect/influence of some sort, which is rarely the case for a naked newbie who can’t even walk out of town without dying.
If you\’e2\’80\’99d reply with “Well, what\’e2\’80\’99s the point of running if you can\’e2\’80\’99t get where you\’e2\’80\’99re running *to*?”, then congratulations – you just missed the entire point of MMOs. If you\’e2\’80\’99re playing for where you\’e2\’80\’99re running too, and not playing for the run itself, then you\’e2\’80\’99re not playing a game at all – you\’e2\’80\’99re just hitting the button on the skinner box to get your pellet.
Sorry, there is no fun whatsoever in repeatedly running from the gates of Khar to that point a hundred yards outside the gates where the killing zone begins. Nor is there any fun in trying over and over to get past the point where you were ganked only to be killed an equal number of times by some griefer camping your corpse. Even if we were to accept your premise that the only valid goal in a MMOG is to travel around and look at the scenery, your playstyle (which, interestingly enough, involves whacking many monsters, achieving high levels, and acquiring uber gear) prevents other players from doing even that much.
Incidentally, you’re contradicting your own statements. You say that levelling, acquiring gear, etc., is unimportant, but you do so yourself, most likely to maximum levels. You say that you like fighting other players for the challenge, yet you prefer to kill those who present no challenge. You say that others should enjoy simply running, without actually getting anywhere, yet you don’t go running around; you prevent other people from running around. You, sir, are a hypocrite of the first water.
You’re more than a hypocrite. Aggressive, yep, got that. Lack of empathy for others, uh-huh, bigtime. Lack of conscience or remorse, yup yah. Rationalizes actions and/or blames others, presenting front and center. Either you are a very immature individual who doesn’t comprehend that the people you interact with in a game are, in fact, people, or you are as
“ctually, a lot of people play to get the next Uberfoozle Sword of Whack\’e2\’80\’99em +1. That\’e2\’80\’99s why there are so many games that dispense an endless supply of UFSoW +1, UFSoW +2, etc. Smart people play golf, too. I don\’e2\’80\’99t pretend to understand why; to me, it\’e2\’80\’99s just a good walk ruined. But people have fun with it, even if it\’e2\’80\’99s not my kind of fun.”
This is precisely the problem with what you wrote – you’re an ultimate relativist, one who says “Well, if it’s what you like, go ahead.” Down that road lies Myst and Deer Hunter.
That’s the nice part about a PvP server; you don’t have to abide by any ultimate relativism. You can inform someone what you think of their playstyle by killing them.
If someone’s whole reason for being ingame is to get their next Uber Sword, that’s silly. By all rights, my killing them ingame, even if they have no chance of fighting back, *shouldn’t* make them unhappy if they were playing *properly*. If they were playing improperly – whose trouble is that, theirs or mine? Fortunately, the PvP switch gives me the tools to guide them in the proper direction.
Maybe the fact that you’re a Bartle Achiever explains part of it; I’m 0% achiever according to bartle, with 1/3rd split evenly between the other three categories. I focus on achieving things in real life; why, for the love of all that is holy, would I then want to log into a game and be expected to start achieving things again? If the desire to achieve ingame is siphoning off one’s drive and willpower from the real world, that can’t be healthy.
Why is playing for the “achievements” improper, you might ask? Because it’s not really a game. It’s a pellet machine, pushing for greater status and rank in a world that Does. Not. Actually. Exist.
The desire to use a skinner box is a pathology. PvP gives me an option to wean people from that pathology.
I don’t PvP for the challenge.
I don’t PvP to make some kid cry.
I PvP to educate people, and shape them through the better – to make them see that if dying in a videogame makes them cry, it’s due to an imperfection on their part. Self-knowledge is essential for self-improvement, after all, and by ganking them repeatedly in their futile quest to go hunt or whatever, I provide them the opportunity to for that reflection on one’s motives.
I don’t indulge their flawed pathologies, whereas a PvE system does.
‘Skinner box’ players are often addicts, in the very literal sense of the word. It’s every bit as possible to become addicted to computers as it is to drugs (such as sugar), and a desire to achieve in a DikuMUD-esque system is a prime indicator of addiction.
You don’t appease an addict. You force them to accept that they have a problem.
And hey, while you’re doing that philanthropy, you can take their stuff, too.
Your views on other players and their motivations are all well and good (if extremely sophomoric in the worst Ayn Rand way).
Your seeking to have tools to interfere with the way they play the game they paid for is not, and actually actively harms those who seek an actual PvP game experience, as opposed to a rape simulator.
“It’s not a rape simulator! It’s not real, so it doesn’t count, and I disagree with her choosing to be a virgin, so I fixed it.”
And with that I think this topic has been trolled enough (by someone who has bragged about being a professional troll on other boards) so I will take the last word.
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