Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Why fight? I'll tell you why

The forums are always an interesting place, usually not in a good way. One of the most common gripes is there is "no reason to fight." This is perhaps the one that bugs me the most. It is inevitably followed by "gimmie, gimmie, gimmie." So why does it bug me so much?

It is a sign of what the online game community has become. Everything is about incentives and rewards for the individual player. Also known as, selfishness. You don't hear these complaints about a single player game, where selfishness would be fine. It only really comes up in MMO's, when other people are involved.

Warhammer is a Realm vs Realm game, Order versus Destruction. We are at war, the other side wants to kill us and take everything. That would be your reason to fight right there. If you are playing for rewards, you are not playing the game. Instead, you are playing the game systems.

Gear, Renown and Gold? You can keep it, as it is secondary. Have some pride, defend that keep, kick your rivals out. Once Mythic fixes the zone issues in T4 (which they better do soon), conquer their city and kick them out of there too. Win.

To me, Warhammer is about the fight. I generally don't rant, but this constant complaining about needing more incentives is getting old. If you are not enjoying the activity don't do it.

You know what I call doing an un-fun activity for a reward? WORK.

7 comments:

This won't hold water anymore. People want their colorized loot and candy machine hand outs. In the old days, raiding was about beating the content and getting server firsts. Now it is about linking purples and all that jazz.

My only question is, why didn't Mythic see this BEFORE they launched?

It holds water just fine, but no one wants to drink it ;)

Maybe Mythic was naive, and thought players still actually played the game?

I wonder... if a boss offered purples in WoW for doing really boring work... would people do the work.

If it meant more to hold a keep, if it wasn't so transient, I think it might motivate those who care about the war to care more about the individual segments in the war. I'm not talking about candy loot, I'm talking about the ability to really build up your keep to the point of it being nearly untakeable if defended and a powerful asset instead of an asset drain on your guild like they currently are. That said, you do have a point Werit. Fun should be the goal, not lewt.

"I wonder... if a boss offered purples in WoW for doing really boring work... would people do the work."

Of course they would and they do. After the first 2-3 times, a boss gets really easy and it'a all about loot.

WaR for the first 2 months offered RvR with no consistent outcome. Neither for your realm or for yourself (loot). I stopped, after 2-3 consecutive nights of completely taking T4 zones (with out actually locking them after 3-4 hours) and no loot for my efforts, solo healing a warband and ending up 13th in contribution (epic fail here).

That completely ruined the game for me. If WAR was the only MMO out there, maybe I would have kept playing, but with the options we have now, no way.

@dimitris: I mean a real world work boss, the one in an office. Now that I re-read what I said, it really isn't clear.

I see what your saying. I remember getting up at 3am for a Relic Raid in DAOC, for what...a relic for the side I was playing, but sadly those were different times. WoW has changed the MMO landscape for the general masses. We use to have a slogan in DAOC. Guild, Realm, Self. Todays MMORPGs don't support that kind of teamwork anymore. It's all me, me, me.

Well Werit, now I see what you mean.
But if you thing about how the gold selling industry is blooming in WoW, that indicates that many people are willing to exchange real world (sometimes boring) work for epics.

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