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WoW the Next "Golf"?
TheGrapeApe writes "1up has an article about the possibility of World of Warcraft becoming the next "Golf": A place where friends, acquaintances, and perhaps even business partners will meet up to "talk shop" and swap stories. Personally, I can't wait until I have my next job interview in the Deadmines. " I demand extra healing and mana pots from all my employees.
Sorry.
golf is good because it's long walk long walk. It's not like people can make business contacts when people are screaming "OMFG! HEALZ!"
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Hellsing (60 Disc/Holy Priest) on Icecrown
it would be the perfect way to determine if a prospective hire is a team player or a lone wolf
Pepsi stock has taken a harsh beating today, after allegations of "Corpse Camping" by the Coke Guild. When approached for comments, Pepsi replied "AFK bio"
Gregarious people are surely going to trade face to face time for a game. "Hey, let's go get a beer after we play." "Ok, I'm headed up to my fridge, tell me when you got your beer and we'll have an online toast."
Bleh.
One guildie relates this story:
"My coworkers and I were in a particularly heated meeting recently. Our management team had thrown a ridiculous project our way, and later yelled at us for not completing it to their non-existant specifications. When we met to discuss possible ways to satisfy this lose-lose situation, no one had any plausible ideas. During a break in conversation, I said, 'What we need to do is five-man the Baron'.
At least four people present laughed, including my boss."
I know I saw the TeamSpeak icon on a coworker's laptop the other day, and came very close to asking him what game it was for. Boy, it would be disturbing finding out he was on the same server; especially if he were a member of the other faction...
WoW is as much a substitute for a sport as it is for a social life.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Very interesting. Signs indicate, then, that MMORPG's are becoming Role Playing Games for our REAL lives? People play MMORPG's and RPG's to escape, not to role play their own lives... Perhaps we will see two types of MMORPG's: one where you remain 'anonymous' (like the ones nowdays) and ones where its a virtual reprentation of the REAL YOU. In that sense, the latter is basically a VERY fancy virtual chatroom. No different from nowadays. Except maybe instead of *just* chatting you can chat over a friendly game of, virtual golf, virtual fishing, etc. The latter idea has already been explored, and I don't think it has caught on. I doubt it will until the graphics become SO good and there are so many "virtual" socializing activities that people cannot resist it. Also, chatting via typing SIMPLY will not do... how about integrated N-way Skype-type chat (like those headset thingies for Counterstrike).
I'd suggest sticking with golf if you plan to go into management.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
...this has to be one of the dumbest and most inane posts I've seen in a long, long time.
via WoW. Until he met a girl and she kept him from hitting 60. What a loser.
Let me start by saying "yeah right". The next golf? The reason businesspeople play golf is not for the game, but to chat and talk politics (office or government) while having some sort of distraction outdoors. WoW is hardly a decent place to have an office meeting. Face it, most people (will) grow out of video games.
Is $this the next $that? $publication is running an article that suggests that $this could become the next $that. $this mirrors that because $weak_correlation[0] and $weak_correlation[1]. Futhermore, $fluff_item[0] and $fluff_item[1]. In conclusion, $conclusion[int rand(10)].
World of Warcraft is far too involved, compared to the game of golf. In golf, you can sit back, take the game at your pace, your parties pace. You all are doing roughly the same thing, and can find common ground. A warrior and a mage have no common ground, save for, well... literal space sharing. WoW is far too fast-paced in comparison.
It's also an effing cartoon, for those nubs who haven't yet realised.
So... No. Not happening.
*silence...*
Next question, please.
Informatus Technologicus
WTS [Foreign Worker][Foreign Worker][Foreign Worker] 20g OK?
Golf is standard issue for the managerial class: folks who being extroverts is a job requirement. For peons/techs/engineers there's still the time honored Afterwork Beer. Getting excited to run off into isolation and talk to people through magical cat-5 ain't the same. It implies a discomfort with being in the proximity of other meat popcicles and people notice that. Most people live out there in the Big Blue Box.
What is music when you despise all sound?
The movers and shakers in the real world with real money and power don't have hours of spare time to spend on MMORPG games. Maybe peon deals can be cut in such a format, but to compare this with the kind of money that revolves around golf is ridiculous.
"The world is like a circle with as many centers as there are men"
The biggest difference is golf is actually a sport, and you communicate face to face. WoW is a niche so small it makes lawn bowling look like a national sport.
As to say its the next way people are going to get together and hang out and schmooze it up is ridiculous, because nobody that is a real businessman wants to be dealing with people in a virtual game. If you cant look someone in the eye, why would you discuss anything serious with them?
I doubt anyone over the age of 20 even thinks this is an intelligent assumption.
WoW is the next everquest, not the next golf.
I'm sure a Diablo MMORPG will drop in 07-08 and we will all be like "Diablo is the next Golf" lolzz
In golf, you can display your wealth and not be any good at golf, and thats fine. They can see your a man of power becasue of the car you arrived in, the dimond tiped golf shoes and the caddie with a mobile drinks bar.
But in WoW if your new to the sport, or suck at it, you'll probably find that others who have less wealth and power in the real world can and probably will, have more in the World of Warcraft... egos don't like that
WoW the next Google!
What will WoW/Google do next?
The WoW OS
Google to map WoW
etc.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
From TFA:
"Warcraft is like a really, really well-designed UI for real-time, ad-hoc group collaboration and management of tons of people."
What exactly is he referring to, here? The guild/party window? Guild chat? Are those "really, really well designed"?
Am I missing something?
The one that always has a new set of clubs and loves to talk about how great they are.
The one that's late for tee time and spends half the day on the phone, while everyone waits.
The one who pretty much sucks, but tells everyone how they should play the ball.
Oh, wait...
Wait a second...
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Choose a race. Choose a class. Choose a profession. Choose a guild. Choose a fucking big sword, choose rings, cloaks, engineering trinkets and electrical hats. Choose good HP, low SPI, and soulstones. Choose auction house re-selling. Choose a starter inn. Choose your friends. Choose twill and matching vendor trash weapons. Choose a three-piece armor set in a range of colors. Choose gold farming and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that AH bridge watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing n00b talk, stuffing fucking junk mage food into your mouth. Choose leveling away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable inn, nothing more than an blink to the selfish, fucked up alts you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose WoW... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose WoW. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got noggenfogger?
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
I've played MMORPGs since MUDs, worked on some of the bigger MMORPGs in the market today, and I think that WoW is far and away the best MMO released yet. It just has a higher level of polish than anything else in terms of stability and gameplay.
If you really think other games are better, which ones are you referring to? I've probably played them and I'm curious what you think is better about them.
Joi Ito is a rare breed of Warcraft player. He's a very successful entrepreneur and it's doubtful he has many peers online. Just because he plays Warcraft, does that necessarily mean Warcraft is accepted as a good place to talk shop? I would like to be in the presence of this guy and would play the game (again) for a chance to shoot ideas off him, but more likely than not any chatter on Warcraft is going to be about someone's day doing tech support.
Ok,
:)
About 5million ppl worldwide play WoW. I'm sure many more people play golf. I suspect maybe MMORPG's can be used for team building, but not building new business contacts. How are you to know the guy on the other end isn't a 10 year old kid.
This posting did kinda make me laugh. I personally play WoW with a boss who is two levels above me, so it's definitley helped break the "oo your to high of a manager to talk to" gap. It also provides me with a way to discuss shop outside of the normal bounds, but that doesn't happen very often because we use WoW to escape the BS at work..
MrJynxx
"Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has"
... about the same time Linux rules the desktop.
It's not so hard to believe. Afterall, Illuminati high priests regularly meet with the Council on Foreign Relations members in Everquest 2.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
LeRoy, you are fired!!!!! but i didn't do anything.. ..
Anyone in a hiring position at the company should really have enough experience to be doing Molten Core instead.
im a suit. and a lvl 60 undead rogue. it was great when the ops guys found out i was into wow, i got some insta-credibility and im probably the last person in the office they expected to be a gamer.
I kind of agree with you in that aspect, but what I think is mor important is that in business talks (and all other high-stakes talks) non-verbal forms of communication play a huge role.
Tone of voice, posture, the way the eyes move and all sort of tiny little details about the way a person talks, that you unconsciously recognize are missing in WoW (and in most types of electronic communication).
It's already difficult to assess the state of mind of other people in meat-space, in an on-line game where your 'perceptions' are diminished or can be fooled by other means, it might as well become impossible.
I've discovered that various people I run into during the course of my day play WoW, but it's impossible for me to "hang out" with them in a virtual way because they are on different servers. Even if I start a new character on my friend's server, I can't run with him, because I'll be a rank noob while he's got 3 epics already.
So the analogy isn't perfect, as many other replies have already said. BUT, I could easily see groups of people who work at the same company gaming together on a regular basis. And if one of those folks happened to be your boss, that would be a major advantage you would have over your non-gamer coworkers. So everyone who is spitting up on themselves about how imperfect this analogy is should probably chill out, and go find out what server their boss is on.
Funny, I assumed you were going to tell me you have a level 60 undead rogue on a PVP server the instant you said you were a "suit".
No: WoW (or any other MMOG) will not be replacing all other forms of socialization. I don't think anyone claimed that. And, realistically, it will not be "completely replacing" golf, which some 25 million people play in America alone (although, I wouldn't mind if it did; I hate golf with a burning passion). It does, however, offer an interesting place where people can have discussions and work together on solving what is, essentially, a dynamic "sliding-scale" puzzle. And look at the numbers: 5,000,000 people play WoW. Do you really think that the preconception of gamers as "social trolls" and "kiddi3s" really applies to _all_ 5 million of those people? ... Well after having the general chat channel turned on for five minutes, I can see how you might reasonably draw that conclusion... but still.
My reason for playing the game is not that I don't have anything else to do, or that I don't have any friends. In fact, my best friend _is_ the reason I play the game. He had to move overseas for a job. Neither of us are really "gamers" (or maybe we are now?...in any case, we won't be wearing "i roll 20s" tshirts any time soon) and we are contantly dismayed by the seemingly endless supply of douchebag "kidd13s" that seem to populate every guild we try to join, but it's been really cool to have this "puzzle" thing that we can do together, even though he's on another continent.
That's all I'm saying: I think MMOGs offer a unique new (at least new to me, anyway) forum for people- even if it's just to a subset of people that are predisposed to enjoying that sort of thing.
If you are in a high-end raiding guild, you can find out a -lot- about someones leadership ability, I assure you.
How they handle adversity, boredom, burnout, etc. is very critical to the success of the guild, especially when you get to BWL-type raiding (or even putting MC on farm status).
We (as one of these guilds) have seen all these problems and more. Running a high-end raiding guild means coordinating 40-80 people's schedules (for MC/BWL/ZG/WorldBoss/etc), getting them to show up dependably and on-time, having a reasonable system for rewarding the members, convincing them to continue to work at an encounter after 6 hours and countless wipes, and managing what most "real" businesses call a supply chain. Except ours consists of Greater Fire Protection Pots, Flasks of Titans, and Dark Iron Ore.
Personally I can tell the difference between people who could be directors or managers that you would want to work for in an IT/Engineering context and those that would have people quitting in droves. Wouldn't that be a useful thing to know in your Engineering organization?