Please Don’t Run Away From This Post Simply Because I’m About to Talk About WoW
Truth is, this is not a post about World of Warcraft as much as it is a post about the people who think it is the worst thing to happen to the universe since ever.
What I hope to address here is the problems people have with this game. Whether it be what people have against playing it, or what people have against their friends playing it. This will likely involve me discussing what I personally see in the game, and in online gaming as a whole. I may also digress onto the topic of gaming culture in general.
I am first going to address the issue of people who do not like their friends playing it. Such people generally claim the game has stolen their friend from them, or something. This is kind of like blaming alcohol for all of life’s problems. I am well aware I am not the first person to liken WoW to alcohol.
I would, however, like to draw your attention to a little thing sometimes called The Noble Experiment, more commonly known as Prohibition. Everyone painted alcohol as the bad guy and decided that removing it would solve everyone’s problems. It did not. This is obvious because if it did, it would never have been repealed. But it was, so we will assume for the sake of this argument that it did not solve much of anything.
Yes, there are some people who play World of Warcraft too much, and yes, they have a problem. But that problem could have just as easily been with alcohol or gambling (both perfectly legal to those who are of the proper age). The problem lies with the individual, and that individual should seek help. But do not blame the game for causing that person to become an addict. He or she already was an addict before he or she even picked it up.
Not everyone has that addictive of a personality. This brings me to quite possibly the biggest thing that bothers me. When I tell people I play World of Warcraft, and they roll their eyes or say something negative about the game, a little bit of bile sneaks its way into my esophagus. They have gone and invented a stereotype: “The WoW Player.” They are about to tell me how horrible the game is, how it ruins lives and then tell me their own personal sob story about their poor nephew Johnny who sits in front of WoW all day without a job, without a future, so on and so forth. And of course I must be one of them, because that is what this game magically does to people. Sometimes it makes me want to become the CEO of something just to prove to them they are such close-minded individuals.
Of course these people are close-minded. I know that, and now I hope you do too. They cannot lump everyone who has touched Blizzard’s multi-million-selling title into the same 9 million-strong category.
Okay, yes they could; they could call them all WoW Players. But they cannot define that past anything other than “This person has been known to play the online game World of Warcraft.” They cannot say that “they are people with no souls, with no lives, and no future.” It is simply not true. It is the same thing as making a racial stereotype. They say something that is true of a few of the members, maybe even a lot of the members, and suddenly it must be true of all the members.
It does not take much to figure out that a group of 9 million people has to be a diverse group of individuals. You can even look at a single political party and find that diversity. I know two people who are Libertarians, and to be honest, they could not be more different. One votes Republican, and I am pretty sure the other votes Democratic. They are both Libertarians, but they are also both completely different people. The Libertarian Party is much smaller1 than the number of people who play WoW, but I have just given an example of two very different types of members.
The exact same is true for World of Warcraft. I consider myself to be a casual player. I only raided for my very first time after three years with an on-and-off subscription. Prior to that, I never gave raiding much thought, and to be honest, I still do not. I am a casual player. What do I need the best gear for? I would elaborate on this more, but I will save that for what I do see in the game.
My sister has played the game in the past. She loves it. She logs on occasionally, usually in the summer. Her highest-level character is in the thirties, if that tells you just how rare it is for her to log on. But she loves it! Would anyone seriously lump her into the category of a hardcore raider? People cannot have just one category of WoW player. The casual players and the hardcore players are two completely different sets of individuals. Even there the distinction is not black-and-white2. Because of this there has been established a category in between known as the “dedicated players”.
So when you say “Oh, he’s a WoW Player,” I implore you to question what you think that means. Unless you do not think of it as being something negative in itself. In which case, you can skip this step, and good for you! I love you. Really I do.
And now, I move onto those people who are against playing it, but are otherwise fine with the fact that others play it. First off, if you are one of these people, let much just say that I love you too, because at least you are accepting of people who play it. You are doing your own thing and good for you! If you have tried WoW and found it not to your liking, I am fine with your decision.
Of course there are people out there who have not even bothered to pick up the game (there’s a ten-day free trial! seriously, check it out!). They probably have one of several reasons for not doing so. Perhaps they have addictive personalities and know their limits (in which case, that is fantastic, and I personally congratulate them for knowing themselves that well; it is a truly rare thing).
Perhaps they do not have the income to afford the monthly fee ($15 a month is not that bad, but I realize these are hard times). That is fine. If they know that ahead of time, then I guess it is okay that they do not check out the trial. Why bother trying something you know you cannot have?
If they have the money and simply think it is not worth the fee, this is where I begin to see a problem. They do not know what the game can offer, but they have already concluded it is not worth it, because it costs a monthly fee.
A while back I conceived an argument for handling this criticism by pointing out that every game involves a kind of monthly fee. You have to pay your electrical bill. Admittedly, it is kind of weak and is only sort of relevant, but the point I was weakly trying to make was that WoW is not a game. It is actually much more like a service, just like electricity or running water.
WoW offers you access to an ever-changing world that is always there. If WoW were a single-player game, I would not play it. I would find it incredibly dull. People are what make the game fun and exciting and overall an enjoyable experience. It allows people who have otherwise never met each other in person to interact in a (usually) amicable way. I would say it involves a developed set of social skills, the likes of which other online titles do not.
Non-massive online multiplayer games do not really require social skills. Such online games usually revolve around discrete matches, with random players pitted against each other. You can be a total jerk to someone in one of those, and it is okay, because in fifteen minutes you will likely not see that person again, ever. But in WoW, encounters with others need to be amicable, because you may have just met a future guildmate, who is going to play through countless instances with you with a common goal in mind. Put simply, you may have just met a new friend.
I will not say this difference is what makes the online fee worthwhile, but it is mostly responsible for that, at least for me. I feel it provides a much more wholesome experience. Come to think of it, WoW is a lot more like cable television than a video game. Every day there are new experiences, and sure, you’ll get some reruns, but you’ll likely sit through them anyway, because you enjoy them so much. Nobody would balk at the idea of paying a monthly fee for cable television. Unless, of course, you just go for that network television stuff (cough this is a weak parallel to free MMOs like Maple Story cough).
This is becoming a much longer post than I ever intended, so I am going to just attempt to briefly share what it is I find so compelling about the game. Mostly it all revolves around one core idea. That idea is that you are the person who decides the victory conditions. When you log in, maybe your idea of victory will be to kill the Lich King. Again. Maybe it will be to win a fishing contest. Maybe it will be to find a place few people have bothered to look for. You do not even have to level.
That is what I enjoy about the game. It suggests you do one thing or another, but ultimately, that decision falls to you. Sometimes I wonder if some people play the game without quite realizing this. I tend to have a hard time believing someone’s victory conditions are to raid every night, because to me that seems more like a job than something fun. But I concede that my own arguments above require me to accept the fact that others will have different ideas of fun apart from mine. I do not think they are wrong, either. Raiding is just not my thing.
For me, I would rather pursue some of the game’s lesser-known benefits. I like finding secret places the developers have tucked away in the game. There is this place called Shatterspear Village, a place in the valley between mountain ridges, some thought only reachable by some method of slow fall (to prevent themselves from going splat). I take credit for finding an alternate route, one that can safely get you there without any method of slow fall, and for posting a video on YouTube detailing how I did it. I think I am the first person to post a video. I am not necessarily the first person to find this route.
But I went and did something they do not even mention in the manual. You do not get any recognition for it. I only did it for the sake of discovery. That is what makes me happy. I love to explore open-ended games. I do not need to raid. That is not my victory condition. That is not to say I do not find raiding a little fun; I just do not find it to be the most fun.
I congratulate you if you went and read all this. Some of these things have been stewing in my mind for a while and I thought I’d share them, as a method of venting. I do that from time to time. Thank you for considering my opinions, you may now reject them outright.
1. The Libertarian Party of the United States has roughly 225 thousand registered members, according to Wikipedia. I will point out the obvious here that it is significantly smaller than the number of people who play WoW.
2. Let me take the time to point out that whenever someone makes a black-and-white distinction, it is usually wrong. There are a lot of shades of grey out there, people! Do not neglect them.