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World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things?
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."
Good thing it is a video game, otherwise I would be upset at the useless life lessons being promoted here.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
... but I've never transferred any skill I've learned in video games to real life.
At an early age, my demon hunting skills were top notch in Doom but I never took the extra step to transfer those to the playground.
Probably because video games are a virtual reality meaning that different laws apply there. I have learned never to use the same strategy when different rules are in effect. That's been pretty useful.
My work here is dung.
World of Warcraft wasn't designed to teach you anything. It was designed to entertain you.
If they were to say that, as a whole, MMORPGs teach that time > skill, I'd be willing to agree with them 100%. Trying to say that WoW teaches it is sort of unfair. I learned that time > skill back in EQ, and nothing's happened to change that lesson.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
The very idea that time > skill is alien.
;)
Ah, but time = money, therefore, in what is quickly becoming the "Formulae of WoW," money > skill, which I think everyone will agree is a lesson modern America teaches pretty much every day.
This is also substantiated by the original axiom, WoW = Golf.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I've worked at a few places where seniority trumped skill. Thankfully, I've also worked at several where it didn't. The sad truth is that the "lesson" that WoW teaches is in fact real in many places.
This guy's the limit!
Here are some other life lessons games teach us:
- Killing cops and prostitues is funny
- In war, once you die, you come right back to life (or maybe there is a slight delay)
- etc
A lot of the enjoyment I get out of a game is in progressing - in feeling like I'm becoming a more capable player. In some games (eg. Tetris), this is a big part of why I play: I enjoy getting better and breaking that old high score.
Levelling over time is a way of introducing this element of "getting better" artificially. It's not perfect, but it's very controllable. Developers who mete progress out in time-based levels can control how long it takes to reach the "flat", unsatisfying portion of the curve (where many will quit playing). When you get paid by the month, it's in your interest to have the most control possible of the progression curve (and thus how long you get paid) - and that's why pretty much all MMOs end up with time-locked progression.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Why not look at it as the flip side of a coin? Up until recently, the only really popular multiplayer games were fighters and first person shooters. Now you can choose to build up skill over time (or have it innately), or plod the way of monotony in an RPG. More options is always gooder.
Since when was the purpose of WoW to teach the fundamentals of life and fairness?
Look, it's a video game. It's not a job interview, a checkout line in a grocery store, a pay-scale within a company. It's a video game. Act accordingly.
And if you still insist on trying to learn lessons from it, at least consider all of the lessons. For example, getting used to and interacting with a variety of classes and races without discriminating based on each characters appearance. And that a womans appearance does effect how you treat her. And that age doesn't matter, maturity of mind does.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
The author's main complaint seems to be that everyone doesn't enjoyed playing games the same way he does.
He is an introvert, so he disapproves of needing to play with groups. He doesn't want to play too many hours a day, so he disapproves of any rewards that encourage excess time.
So? Some people want to get a reward for time. Some people want to play with their friends without getting lower quality loot.
The amazing power of Wow is that you _can_ play any way you want. Solo, group, 24/7, infrequently. Do whatever you want, and the game will remain fun. Just don't be annoyed if not everyone wants to play the same way you do.
-Cassia
Vericon is coming!
World of Warcraft(and by extension ALL MMORPGs). He compares them to games such as chess and street fighter(because we all know that Chun Li is a modern day Confucius, only hotter!) and saying that in those games you don't have any material advantages over your opponent so they make better games. What he neglects to take into consideration is that chess and Street Fighter have very clearly defined goals: checkmate in the former, and beating the crap out of your opponent in the latter. However, a lot of games such as MMORPGs don't have such clearly defined goals. Yeah, you can build your character up to level 60 and be the mightiest warrior of all time if you want, but you don't have to do that in order to enjoy the game. There are many other goals you can take on which don't require that you "beat" your nemesi so to speak.
Me thinks this guy doth protest too much...
Monstar L
The article misses the point in a big way by comparing WoW with Street Fighter. The latter is indeed supposed to be all about a contest of skill. But in fact the huge popularity of RPG-style games with many gamers lies precisely with the fact that they can gain a feeling of progress from simply playing the game.
It's not about hardcore vs casual either - some very serious gamers play only RPGs and absolutely do not want their "skill" tested too much.
How much time did your star programmer spend learning his skills? I'd assume quite a bit. In WoW you spend massive amounts of time getting gear so you can kill off mobs quickly and effectively. In the real world you spend massive amounts of time learning a skill so you can tackle your job quickly and effectively. In my opinion the OP is looking at it from the wrong way.
Ask any talented musician and they will tell you that talent/skill comes with a lot of work.
I think it is. It's called being paid by the hour (or by the year, if you are salary, but it's the same thing). It's vastly more popular than paying by measuring the quality or quantity of the actual work done which would be more fair but much more difficult to implement; skill is very hard to measure objectively.
I can write a program in 2 hours. Joe in the next cubical would take 10 hours to write the same program while Frank might only take 1 hour. Guess what, we all get paid nearly the same amount. Maybe the more skilled people get 10% or 20% more per year but there's no way Frank gets paid 10x what Joe makes. Only in some very specialized jobs (pro sports, lawyers, doctors) subject to direct control of the free market does skill frequently have any reasonable correlation to pay and then usually only for the top few percent.
The Street Fighter lessons might be all warm and fuzzy and represent the world you'd like to have but the WoW lessons reflect reality, sad as that may be.
I've learned that pretending to be a girl gets me free money, and can pay for my mount.
/ignore them, and never have to deal with them again.
I've learned that sometimes killing your friends can be hilarious.
I've learned that Alliance are whiny bitches, and are Kill On Sight, and don't pull thier weight to open those damn gates.
I've learned that living in a more colorful world then reality is very comforting. A world where my physical limitations don't apply. Where I'm a giant on the field, instead of an ant under the magnifying glass of real life.
I've learned that it someone does something you don't like or hurts your feelings, you can
I've learned that people like me more in this fictional world, and people like me less in reality.
I've learned that I am a WoW Addict, and that maybe I should get some help. I've spent all my money buying gold in this fictional world, and that maybe it's time I....
Hang on, my MC raid is starting...
There are no gods but ourselves.
It's a long list, here's a snippet:
....
1. It's always ok to Kill The Bad Guys (*almost* every game ever made)
2. I'll get the girl in the end, by just being myself, regardless of my deficiencies [most every JRPG]
3. I can't kill certain bears, they will give me bad druid faction [Everquest]
4. Stealing cars & beating hookers is OK, because the government is out to get us [GTA]
5. It's better to be part of a gang, because they can protect me from urban violence [UO]
6. The only important factor in building a great plane, is being a great pilot and having a dream [Grandia 3]. Oh yeah, also something nebulous about being able to cut out portions of wing "if it weighs too much"
7. Befriend your enemies, so that you can subjugte them militarily or culturally when you are resource starved, but not have to defend yourself in the mean time. Other people are my pawns, move them with skill. [Civilization 4]
8. Working Harder >> Working Smarter. I will eventually obtain all my goals if I spend a long time at it, while using my brain is always cheating. [Every MMOG ever made]
9. High twitch skills designate me a superior person who Gets Laid Often [FPSs, and a few MMOGers who don't get it yet]
10. Ancient relics are always of higher quality and provide better AC/DMG/Mana than new goods bought from modern vendors [Most RPGs]
Lesson Infinity +1 - Perhaps video games are not exactly a good place to learn life skills after all
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.
If there's anything more important than my ego around, i want it caught and shot now.
Cry more, noob.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
I think there is a lot of missing the point in this thread.
The objection is not that someone who works hard gets rewards. The objection is that there IS NO WORK involved in advancing in MMO games beyond the timesink.
And that's why it isn't fun.
If I want to get good at Street Fighter, I can practice because the rules do not change. If the person playing against me has been practicing more, he does not get Super Chun Li. He has to use his skill. There is a chance that I can advance due to effort and luck.
Now imagine if every time you wanted to play Street Fighter, someone playing Super Chun Li and another person playing Super Guile could come in at any time and not only kick your ass, but steal your special moves so you couldn't use them any more AND they could block off access to Bosses like Bison. In fact, only huge 'guilds' would even have a chance at getting good moves or winning the game.
Fun, right?
Oh, and all they would have to do to get the Super Status would be to drop out of school and press "Fierce" 6000 times a day. Just playing so much would be enough to get the 'gold' and 'experience' they needed to get upgrades to Super status. They wouldn't really have to use any skill- 40 hours a week of crappy play would be enough to do it. Even better, they could go on eBay and BUY Super status from someone in Malaysia hired to get 'gold' for them.
Wow! Sign me up!
Anyone want to sign up for a Counterstrike game where I get Nuclear Weapons, Phasers, and Invisibility Cloaks because I am a Level 60, and you have to play in teams of 40 or you can't advance beyond Private First Class otherwise?
Or, let's play Mario Kart. I get a much better car and a 5 minute head start because I put a lot of time in, and you didn't. Wheeee! Fun!
It's been covered before but there are plenty of reasons to argue against this. One is that, if you allow the sale of in-game items the in-game items aquire value. If the items are of value, you open the possibility of getting sued every time you nerf an item or rollback a server.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
"2. Good raid-quality gear *should* be better than easily obtainable gear you can get while soloing"
why?
There is exactly no logical reason for this.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Or it could be worse. You would get paid for 2 hours work, while Joe would get paid for 10 hours work. So in the long run you and Frank get penilized for being better. (Don't laugh, I've seen it happen.)
when I say, "yeah, that's why I quit, too." It's one thing to be stuck in the slow lane because you "only" play 25 - 30 hours per week; it's another to know that many of the in-game rewards are completely out of reach, forever and ever, no matter how smart you play or how skilled you become. After about 10 months, I just gave it up.
Actually, one of the first things I learned in WoW was that the /ignore-list never has enough room... there is always another bastard.
Translates perfectly to real life.
How is this not like real life? One guy can learn some impressive martial arts skills. However, that person will always fall to to the one with superior time, technology, or numbers. It is for this reason that police forces are comprised of mostly normal individuals and yet are able to maintain order for the most part. It is also for this reason that warfare has become a matter of who can build the most planes and bombs. Certainly, WWI era fighting aces may have been more skilled, but that ace will always lose to a guided missle.
In fact, all of the key points in TFA seem to be rejections of the world we live in:
My conclusion is that the author of TFA has a problem with the way the world actually is. While I've never played WoW, from the description it sounds to me as if WoW teaches truths far more universal than Street Fighter and it's ilk. The world of Street Fighter is the world of the action movie where The Hero can overcome All Adversity and Live Happily Ever After. Games that teach that sentiment seems to me to be far more dangerous to their players than WoW.
From the author's bio:
So this guy has twitch skills, but no time. And he's written an article complaining that WoW rewards time more than skill. I can't help but feel that the complaint is really only a valid complaint for the author. So then the question is, is the author raising a valid flaw in WoW's game balance and to answer that we have to ask "How many of WoW's players feel the same way as a multiple-time national Street Fighter champion?" Pretty few I'd imagine.
I haven't played WoW, but I've played DAoC and Raph Koster's Star Wars Galaxies. I had a lot of "fun". I'm glad that my progression was not linked to my ability to compete in joystick twitching contests against Street Fighter Champions.
At some level the author seems to be suggesting that in the real world, skill is more valuable than time. If we ignore the fact that the author is ignoring the many skills of WoW players, e.g. social skills, marketing skills, leadership skills, and accept his premise, do we find agreement in the real world? Honda makes many more cars than TVR. Honda's are assembled by people with less skill than the TVR engineers. Is an individual Honda worth more than an individual TVR? No. Is Honda as an entity worth more than TVR? Oh boy yes.
To teach anyone that maximizing one's personal skill is the way forward in life would be to fail to acknowledge that humans achieve much more in groups.
As much to the dismay of gamers, Blizzard and every other major game developer out there exist to fulfill their primary goal: to MAKE MONEY.
While it would be nice to have more of skill based element in WoW, they are constrained by a few variables:
1: Technical limitations, for example: Latency. I've been playing WoW for quite some time now, and I remember when they released the pvp honor system patch. The first day I loaded up the game, it was a lag nightmare. I was at the fort in Stranglethorn Vale, along with roughly 80 fellow horde members. My chat log start spamming with ppl yelling "THEY ARE COMING!!", and I roughly 200 alliance started to steam roll us. It was beyond laggy. We crashed the server. Several times. The server was Mannoroth. Massive pvp raids are not that massive in WoW, which is a shame.
2: Appeal to a wide audience. This generally means the Lowest Common Denominator, as in your average run of the mill gamer. If you cater too much to the hardcore gamer, guess what: someone else will create a game that WON'T and will take your subscribing members away. You wanna tell that to their investors?
3: Appeal to the narrow audience. I.E. the hardcore gamer. Or in this case, the hardcore group of gamers. You know who they are: the ones that got to Onyxia the first 2 weeks of release. The ones that killed Nefarious the day Blizzard released the 'cockblock.' These are the ones that generate the most noise in the gaming community, the ones that make the game alive. These are the players that average players look at in awe at the type of gear they are wearing (2nd tier epics), the title they hold (High Warlord Someandsuch) and the mounts they ride ("What the hell is that? That doesn't look like a wolf at all!"). They are what the average player looks up to and goes "Wow, I wanna be just like that someday.." and drives them keep playing (and keep paying). What do you think will happen when the hardcore group 'beats' WoW the first two weeks of playing? What's their incentive to continue paying the monthly fee? It's not called the Treadmill (or the Grind) for nothing.
The World of Warcraft did not create the beast, it was created by it.
Hmmm. You haven't discovered anything new... I think it is. It's called being paid by the hour (or by the year, if you are salary, but it's the same thing). It's vastly more popular than paying by measuring the quality or quantity of the actual work done which would be more fair but much more difficult to implement; skill is very hard to measure objectively.
I know Slashdot hates MBAs, but let you share with you something called piece work. Many people are paid by the job (or "piece") Think of flat rate vs. hourly mechanics. Piece tes used to be fairly common. It is just that with a service economy it is tough. With fungible goods, if you make 10 and I make 1, it is fairly simple to say that you should be paid 10 times as much. But with a service economy it is different For example, if I write ten buggy programs, and you write 5 flawless ones, how would you pay?
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
No, Frank just gets to read /. for 9 hours and the GP poster gets to for 8. However, no /. for Joe!!
;-)
Why don't blizzard and others create servers for players who prefere to play less than 1h a day ? Since they don't make money on the actual number of hours you play, they shouldn't care.
Knowing that I'd have to compete against hard-core players is definitely one reason I do not even try MMPORPG ...
"2. Good raid-quality gear *should* be better than easily obtainable gear you can get while soloing"
why?
There is exactly no logical reason for this.
My emphasis added, which answers your question. Really the OP is just dodging the point though. There is some sort of implicit acceptance of the idea that anything that can be done soloing must necessarily be easy in comparison to the difficulty of doing something in a group. Certainly there is no reason that "gear you can get while soloing" need be "easily obtainable". As it happens in WoW that is the case, but Blizzard could quite conceivably create tasks that must be done alone but are exceptionally difficult.
I think the real issue here is that for a difficult soloing task to be fair it needs to be restricted to a soloing task - otherwise a group will simply come and, with their combined might, pick up easy loot. Certainly that can be done, but it means tasks that only one player at a time can engage in. To manage to get the sort of throughput required to keep large numbers of players happy you either need to be creative in designing soloing tasks so they can suitably parallelised, or you simply make tasks group based to up throughput. Apparently Blizzard chose the latter.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
For everyone who argues that WoW, or any other MMORPG, is a game only for hardcore gamers, and that they alienate the casual fanbase, which has been argued over and over, I can only say that while I feel their pain, the people at Blizzard are not stupid. This is just standard marketing strategy.
I can tell you that the core base of WoW, from a marketing perspective, will always be for the hardcore segment of the population. This is because they are the ones who will always pay, month after month, for the service, and who will continue to remain loyal to the game for years. This is their core profit center, like it or not. If you look at customers of any industry there are four types of customers:
1. short term, high paying customers - These are casual gamers. They play maybe several months but don't stay on. They lose interest or are alienated by the hardcore players. This is me, btw.
2. short term, low paying customers (they try the trials but never pay for the service)
3. long term, low paying customers Also casual gamers who might start and stop, or decide to play some time later when a trial comes along.
4. long term, high paying customers (hardcore gamers). These guys generate the most profit for the company. They will be around for years after the casual players have decided they don't want to play.
Marketing strategy dictates you make the game most enjoyable for the hardcore gamers, because they will stay on long after the casual gamers have left, and they pay the most. They make the most money for the company, so they will be the ones that are cared for the most. Once the hardcore segment has left, you might as well put a dagger in the project. This is one of the reasons MMORPGs, which unlike most games, require a monthly subscription, will remain the boring levelling treadmill many people detest. Subscription models state that hardcore clients are the best center of profit. Hence the continuance of levelling treadmills. End of story.
Starting in the ancient Atari times...
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.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Funny, I've seen that attitude (time invested > skill/talent) from people most of my life -- long before WoW existed.
Consider two people, let's call them Alice and Bob. Alice picks things up quickly, and is able to get an A in a certain class with a minimum of studying. Bob has to go to more effort, and while he can pull off an A in the same class, he has to do several hours of studying each night to get there.
Which is more valuable? Alice's facility with the subject, or Bob's ability to invest time? Both got to the same place -- mastering the subject to the extent needed for the exam. As far as the school is concerned, both are commendable.
But I've never heard someone like Alice disparage Bob's achievement as being worthless because all he did was study, while I certainly remember hearing people like Bob disparage Alice as being lazy, because "I worked for that A, and what did she do?"
The attitude is out there, and it's hardly new.
A friend was working on a crossword puzzle and asked me what the name of the fleshy thing that hangs in the back of the throat was called.
In my minds eye I was instantly transported back to the interior of a giant, hercules colored whale wherein, armed only with a giant feather, I was trying to tickle said fleshy thing to get out.
So: I did learn something useful from a video game. The uvula.
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.
It's almost impossible to come up with legitimate puzzle-solving missions that won't be listed on websites with full, step-by-step solutions 20 minutes after they go live.
Yes, you can decide to forego the web sites, but you're back to the original article's thesis: You'll still be standing there with less quality items than those with the time and magical ability to avoid bed sores on their @$$.
And he's right. There was that study last year where top programmers are 4x as productive as the average ones, and there were problems they could solve that average ones could not no matter how much time they were given.
Yes, an RPG is the exact opposite of reality in that respect. Yet you cannot put in intellectual challenges because people will just go to Allakazham and get the answers.
The only intellectual challenge that was never solved in an RPG of which I'm aware was the original way for a paladin in EQ to gain the Fiery Avenger supersword. After six months in which the company swore it was in the game and that the quest was tested to work, but nobody on any server had gotten it, they changed the quest to make it easier.
Of course, whether the quest was due to intellectual difficulty or only partly that, and partly that someone, somewhere on some server would stumble across something at some stage (or multiple stages) remains to be seen.
There used to be rumours of a giant clockwork dragon in or under the gnome city, and a gnome-donated tower in one of the human cities. Nothing. And what's up with those various strange alters and whatnot all over the EQ planet (one, for example, is where the two named beetles in Mountains of whatver hang out, others in NRO.) Nothing.
And people are cleverer than the game designers could possibly imagine. The "clockwork dragon" theory was shot down when someone figured out how to load up all the zones in the tutorial application and you could go exploring. Nothing, not even in any of the normally unvisitable god zones.
Still, one can get a good feeling of accomplishment, say, beating all 125 levels of the original Lemmings without looking up solutions. Yeah, that guy with a giant L on his forehead finished first because he looked up the answers. Woo. Hoo.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"My emphasis added, which answers your question."
no, it does not.
The premise is based that the game is competitive, which is does not have to be.
You want special gear thats just for PVP cmobat, swell; But there is no reason someone who only plays a few hours a week can't have an orange item, since we will not be in competition with the people that raid.
If you are raiding for the sole purpose of getting rare stuff, then you are Blizzard's bitch.
Persoanlly, when I raid I get the same thrill finding a rare item that I do when I solo,but the number one reason I raid is to have a good time with other people online. I don't raid much, but I have had some great times in a raid and not getting any item of significant value.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In real life, I am alice or was like alice.
Being like alice is great, until you hit the wall. The wall being the subject, or as in my case several, you can't quite grasp at once. Up until this point I had never studied a subject at home for more than an hour.
Hitting the wall happened to me a couple of years into college, pretty much the worst time possible. Suddenly I didn't get it and then there I was without a tool to get past the wall.
Now years later, I have got that tool. The ability to sit down and study something.
When things get hard enough we all become Bob...
I just wish school would have given me the tool of a Bob sooner...
People like Alice don't know what to do when they actually ARE challenged. I certainly didn't. Thank god I glided through college with minimal turbulance. But there were times when I thought, "this is hopeless," rather than, "well, if I study, I can do this."
I can't set my own goals. I let others set goals for me, and then I achieve them or fail them, but I never struggle as hard as anyone else. If I set my own goals, I let them slide.
All in school, I would (unconsciously, almost naturally) detect how much work a course needed within a couple weeks. Then, I would set cruise control to that altitude which satisfied my academic success.
People who aren't naturally intelligent learn to set goals, to complete tasks through hard, annoying work... you'd have to restructure the school system so that each student gave their maximum potential.
The question is - do we want a society where everyone is constantly working harder and harder, until everyone has either burned out or given up?
I think over-achievers are a necessary evil, otherwise nothing would get done in a timely fashion. And under-achievers are necessary as well, for they keep everyone chill and don't end up setting the bar too high.
Or something like that. Just thinking out loud and nobody will read this post.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.