Originally posted by Neanderthal For me it was it was like a nightmarish, cautionary tale that George Orwell might have come up with. Gaming as presented by the Ministry of Entertainment.
Hehe, I thought the same thing when I read your OP. Had visions of some Orwellian prophetic warning too.
Originally posted by gestalt11 Look its a cult. Seriously its that simple. Look at all the circular reasoning and indoctrination and hazing. Its a frigging cult. Its just that simple.
Still waiting till I get to be brainwashed in the first Scientology MMO. Maybe they could knock up some ghostbusters theme where you pwn 'bad' thetans all day long with your E-meters. "Zomg I only have to pwn 1.6 million more thetans before I've reached Operating Thetan lvl 9". Then in the end game maybe they could have some huge zerg raid in a volcano where you get to find out that it's all one big scam when j00 keel ze ev0l l0rd Xenu before being brainwashed again by his ninja clone and have to start back at the beginning with no recollection of ever playing.
I remember playing UO for the first time and how magical the whole expierence was. You could do anything, go anywhere, and be anything. You could enter a tournament, open a store, delve deep into the dungeons killing monsters, explore the world, or just hang out with good friends. All of my online time was spent having a lot of fun with great friends doing whatever we felt like doing.
I played WoW, and I quit the game for the very same reasons that you have mentioned. I got really sick of going on the same raids to get some crap that would just be replaced in a few levels anyway. I also got tired of a bunch idiot kids bossing me around. So, you go on these raids to get some piece of gear, so you can go on more raids and get more gear. For the love god, WHY? When does that become fun? You're right. This is not what games should be.
Unfortunately, with the success of WoW, we'll probably see a lot more games like it. Maybe we should start a petition? :P Gamers against Raiding.
Originally posted by Neanderthal The whole thing seemed truly horrible to me. This might sound silly and extreme but I have actually lost some of my faith in humanity just knowing that there are a significant numbers of people in the world who will tolerate this when playing GAMES. And that they will even PAY for it. Whatever happened to heroic fantasy? That's what I want to know. That crap isn't heroic fantasy; it's more like a herd of thralls toiling away in the salt mines while the overseer prods them and they mentally run the song Where There's a Whip There's a Way.
I agree, in fact you'll often hear the raiders describe their gameplay that way; if you bring up the very idea that you don't feel heroic in a raid, it's quite common to hear responses insulting you for expecting to feel like a hero in a fantasy game. They seem to willingly embrace the idea that your character should only be a peon, a tiny cog in a big loot-farming machine, and sneer at the very core of heroic fantasy. Even Age of Conan, based on a set of books that pretty much started the sword and sorcery genre, seems to be going that way.
My theory is that since raiding give better rewards than other playstyles, if you raid, you automatically get to have a better character than anyone who doesn't raid. Because of the huge amounts of time, and especially uninterrupted time, that it takes, a lot of the people who raid are people who really don't have much else going on in their life, so the minor boost of having a tough character in a video game seems a major accomplishment. This isn't everyone who raids, but it is a significant chunk of raiders, and especially of the kind of people who start raid guilds.
Since raiding requires huge blocks of time on a set schedule, you can't just pick it up, you have to join or form a guild to organize it (note that raiders here call raiding a 'lifestyle'). If you're one of the people running a guild, you get the benift of petty power - you have the ability to cut off other people's access to the good loot, or to penalize their DKP, and similar things, which is another ego booster. But more importantly, you get to enforce rules about what people say; probably not explicit rules, but no one who thinks raiding is just a game will last long in a serious raid guild. This creates a feedback loop, where people spend huge blocks of tiime surrounded only by people who embrace the idea that raiding is the greatest thing ever (well, some might not, but they're not going to be the squeky-voiced order barkers).
This feedback, of spending large blocks of time interacting only with people who think that raiding is a huge accomplishment in a group where you can be penalized for arguing with that postion (or worse, mocking it), is what results in the cult-like stuff around raiding, like the comments we've seen here. Since raiding is a key accomplisment in their life, and they believe it to be a great thing, they earnestly believe that no one could really dislike it, so when they see someone say they don't like raiding they really think that the person tried and failed to get into a raid guild. Or that raiding takes extreme amounts of skill in the game, or that people would really like it if they just tried the right raid, or any of the other stuff.
Since raiding requires huge blocks of time on a set schedule, you can't just pick it up, you have to join or form a guild to organize it (note that raiders here call raiding a 'lifestyle'). If you're one of the people running a guild, you get the benift of petty power - you have the ability to cut off other people's access to the good loot, or to penalize their DKP, and similar things, which is another ego booster. But more importantly, you get to enforce rules about what people say; probably not explicit rules, but no one who thinks raiding is just a game will last long in a serious raid guild. This creates a feedback loop, where people spend huge blocks of tiime surrounded only by people who embrace the idea that raiding is the greatest thing ever (well, some might not, but they're not going to be the squeky-voiced order barkers).
This feedback, of spending large blocks of time interacting only with people who think that raiding is a huge accomplishment in a group where you can be penalized for arguing with that postion (or worse, mocking it), is what results in the cult-like stuff around raiding, like the comments we've seen here. Since raiding is a key accomplisment in their life, and they believe it to be a great thing, they earnestly believe that no one could really dislike it, so when they see someone say they don't like raiding they really think that the person tried and failed to get into a raid guild. Or that raiding takes extreme amounts of skill in the game, or that people would really like it if they just tried the right raid, or any of the other stuff.
This is the same feedback that the game makers listen to. The feedback from those who will not commit to the time, organization, and scheduleing of raiding simply quit the game, or do not start the game in the first place. Once they quit, they cannot post on that company's game boards, and that company loses the non-raider feedback.
Since what game makers hear for the most part is how wonderful raids are, they drop their plans for more non raid content, then scramble to put more raids in, leaving non raiders out more and more. Company's making new games say, "OMG we have to have raids or no one will buy our game." Then the cycle starts again.
I'm not entirely against raiding. I found the 10 and 15 man raids in WoW were about right. They were possible to form easily with people you knew and could make an appointment with, or you could form them in the middle of the night with strangers. 20 or 25 man raids you push a difficulty level that is not easy to beat without a dedicated group, and that approaches the raider lifestyle. 40 man is just unrealistic for many people to participate in.
Oddly enough, while leveling up in WoW's wonderful level 1 to lvl 59 game, many people thought Blizzard might break the raid or quit mmorpg endgame mold. Many people thought if anyone could do it it would be Blizzard. How wrong we were.
Good discussion... just found it. Would like to jump on here and go back to the OPs post...
The whole 'system' is held together because this guy wants some item. I'm thinking about that, and I'm like, what else is there to want? what else is there to do? There really isn't anything.... well, maybe one could say make top pvp rank or something.... but that's near impossible. So the only thing to do is get the next tier item...
Contrast that with when you just start the game. You got choices... what race, what class, then what quest are you going to do... etc. It's the choices that make games interesting and fun. You start out with hundreds, and it narrows down one (pvp-top-rank or raid-for-next-higher-item). Then devs come out with "new content", that is really not new content at all... just another level of the same thing. Without new choices, it's not really new content.
Comments
I remember playing UO for the first time and how magical the whole expierence was. You could do anything, go anywhere, and be anything. You could enter a tournament, open a store, delve deep into the dungeons killing monsters, explore the world, or just hang out with good friends. All of my online time was spent having a lot of fun with great friends doing whatever we felt like doing.
I played WoW, and I quit the game for the very same reasons that you have mentioned. I got really sick of going on the same raids to get some crap that would just be replaced in a few levels anyway. I also got tired of a bunch idiot kids bossing me around. So, you go on these raids to get some piece of gear, so you can go on more raids and get more gear. For the love god, WHY? When does that become fun? You're right. This is not what games should be.
Unfortunately, with the success of WoW, we'll probably see a lot more games like it. Maybe we should start a petition? :P Gamers against Raiding.
I agree, in fact you'll often hear the raiders describe their gameplay that way; if you bring up the very idea that you don't feel heroic in a raid, it's quite common to hear responses insulting you for expecting to feel like a hero in a fantasy game. They seem to willingly embrace the idea that your character should only be a peon, a tiny cog in a big loot-farming machine, and sneer at the very core of heroic fantasy. Even Age of Conan, based on a set of books that pretty much started the sword and sorcery genre, seems to be going that way.
My theory is that since raiding give better rewards than other playstyles, if you raid, you automatically get to have a better character than anyone who doesn't raid. Because of the huge amounts of time, and especially uninterrupted time, that it takes, a lot of the people who raid are people who really don't have much else going on in their life, so the minor boost of having a tough character in a video game seems a major accomplishment. This isn't everyone who raids, but it is a significant chunk of raiders, and especially of the kind of people who start raid guilds.
Since raiding requires huge blocks of time on a set schedule, you can't just pick it up, you have to join or form a guild to organize it (note that raiders here call raiding a 'lifestyle'). If you're one of the people running a guild, you get the benift of petty power - you have the ability to cut off other people's access to the good loot, or to penalize their DKP, and similar things, which is another ego booster. But more importantly, you get to enforce rules about what people say; probably not explicit rules, but no one who thinks raiding is just a game will last long in a serious raid guild. This creates a feedback loop, where people spend huge blocks of tiime surrounded only by people who embrace the idea that raiding is the greatest thing ever (well, some might not, but they're not going to be the squeky-voiced order barkers).
This feedback, of spending large blocks of time interacting only with people who think that raiding is a huge accomplishment in a group where you can be penalized for arguing with that postion (or worse, mocking it), is what results in the cult-like stuff around raiding, like the comments we've seen here. Since raiding is a key accomplisment in their life, and they believe it to be a great thing, they earnestly believe that no one could really dislike it, so when they see someone say they don't like raiding they really think that the person tried and failed to get into a raid guild. Or that raiding takes extreme amounts of skill in the game, or that people would really like it if they just tried the right raid, or any of the other stuff.
This feedback, of spending large blocks of time interacting only with people who think that raiding is a huge accomplishment in a group where you can be penalized for arguing with that postion (or worse, mocking it), is what results in the cult-like stuff around raiding, like the comments we've seen here. Since raiding is a key accomplisment in their life, and they believe it to be a great thing, they earnestly believe that no one could really dislike it, so when they see someone say they don't like raiding they really think that the person tried and failed to get into a raid guild. Or that raiding takes extreme amounts of skill in the game, or that people would really like it if they just tried the right raid, or any of the other stuff.
This is the same feedback that the game makers listen to. The feedback from those who will not commit to the time, organization, and scheduleing of raiding simply quit the game, or do not start the game in the first place. Once they quit, they cannot post on that company's game boards, and that company loses the non-raider feedback.
Since what game makers hear for the most part is how wonderful raids are, they drop their plans for more non raid content, then scramble to put more raids in, leaving non raiders out more and more. Company's making new games say, "OMG we have to have raids or no one will buy our game." Then the cycle starts again.
I'm not entirely against raiding. I found the 10 and 15 man raids in WoW were about right. They were possible to form easily with people you knew and could make an appointment with, or you could form them in the middle of the night with strangers. 20 or 25 man raids you push a difficulty level that is not easy to beat without a dedicated group, and that approaches the raider lifestyle. 40 man is just unrealistic for many people to participate in.
Oddly enough, while leveling up in WoW's wonderful level 1 to lvl 59 game, many people thought Blizzard might break the raid or quit mmorpg endgame mold. Many people thought if anyone could do it it would be Blizzard. How wrong we were.
The whole 'system' is held together because this guy wants some item. I'm thinking about that, and I'm like, what else is there to want? what else is there to do? There really isn't anything.... well, maybe one could say make top pvp rank or something.... but that's near impossible. So the only thing to do is get the next tier item...
Contrast that with when you just start the game. You got choices... what race, what class, then what quest are you going to do... etc. It's the choices that make games interesting and fun. You start out with hundreds, and it narrows down one (pvp-top-rank or raid-for-next-higher-item). Then devs come out with "new content", that is really not new content at all... just another level of the same thing. Without new choices, it's not really new content.