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WoW and Guilds Part 2

Aaron wrote a blog yesterday about WoW and guilds and I wanted to continue the discussion.

Aaron wrote: “A true guild is built in an environment where it is a necessity that each player contributes his/her talents and skills for the good of the whole and where it is of the utmost importance that each person has integrity, loyalty, good communication skills, and resilience”

This is very true when it comes to what a guild should be. World of Warcraft has taken the structure of a guild and preyed off of the need for purple. This has brought out the worst in people at times because of their own insatiable want for loot. I don’t question why WoW did it, the answer to that should be obvious; addiction. Guilds that form in WoW are typically confined to the structure of that game and that game only. There are many guilds out there that have been together for years and understand the way a guild has to function to be a multi gaming guild. A guild in World of Warcraft will have a much harder time trying to branch out into other games because the structure of other games will typically change as opposed to WoW which is not a dynamic environment.

I can tell from personal experience that going from a PvP game to an overwhelmingly PvE game is like trying to fit a square into a circle. If one wants to be a successful multi-gaming guild you have to understand the game you’re playing and truly understand your goals.

World of Warcraft and Guilds

Guilds are nothing more than symbiotic relationships in WoW. "I need you, you need me, lets hook up". If that necessity is removed the guild itself collapses. The examples of this are all around you if you have been playing the game over the last 3 years. So while many argue that BC was a "guild killer", I say WoW doesn't even create true guilds to kill in the first place. I know a lot of first time MMOG'ers like to believe their WoW guilds were innovative, "strong", or meaningful but the majority of the time they are just plain wrong. In order to create a lasting guild it has to be built on solid principles, as it will be those principles that carry you through the "lean" times. The lean times WILL come....there will be a time when there is no game to play, or when activity is low, and these type of things will see a WoW guild dissolve in seconds.

A true guild is built in an environment where it is a necessity that each player contributes his/her talents and skills for the good of the whole and where it is of the utmost importance that each person has integrity, loyalty, good communication skills, and resilience. A dynamic world featuring open player versus player content necessitates these concepts and therefore creates long lasting guilds.

No WoW player that has been victim of this kind of thing should feel as if they have failed at all, for even the strongest guilds are being torn asunder all over in World of Warcraft. Guilds with 8 year running streaks going back to Ultima Online, Shadowbane, DaoC, Meridian 59, and EQ have been torn apart by the greed driven game mechanics of WoW. The game is quite simply solely based upon the acquisition of materials for one's own character. The entire game is one long episode of "pimp my character", except here you dont even get to shake hands with Ludacris. WoW is like a virus that just poisons people's motivation....it is really sickening to see how people and organizations change under the influence of the greed and self satisfying nature of the game.

Open Dialogue

I think it is about time that people start put aside the ass kissing and the name calling and open up a clean and honest dialogue between players and devs. There are so many companies that will post blogs and articles kissing the preverbal asses of devs that they need chap-stick just to eat breakfast.

It is high time that the developers start looking in their own industry and see what their consumers want. We want dynamic worlds that the player can change; after all without players there is no game. We are the reason games exist. Lets throw aside the reigns of stale out dated PvE content and lets pick up the new innovations that will allow us to interact in the MMO world on new levels. This means that the old formulas of grind, level, grind, level will no longer be applicable. Let’s start on the path of new ideas and embrace out of the box thinking.

The dialogue starts with you, the gamer. What do you want to see in an MMO?

The Next Great Hype

The million dollar question is this. Can Warhammer Online get on the radar in a world that WoW has dominated? For years now WoW has pretty much been a lone ranger in the MMO industry as company after company has stepped up and failed to chip away at the monster in the industry. The question is, can Warhammer do it?

Josh Drescher, Senior Designer of Warhammer Online has a podcast that explains the Realm vs Realm system of W.O. I have told people time and time again that to make a game that will bust through WoW's success you must first understand what the game is lacking and the community wants. That want is PvP. They crave the type of risk and reward that cannot be obtained through battle-grounds. They crave something more then hours of endless grinding to get a piece of armor. In the following video Josh addresses the RvR system of W.O.

... ARE YOU JOKING! ARE YOU FREAKING SERIOUS? Ok so after you go through this tier system to capture a city; (note gamers this is called RISK AND REWARD you risk your city and the winner is rewarded by penalizing the loser) it starts all over again, can you say waste of !#$%# time? This is the problem with companies that try to go out on a limb with PvP, it is a waste of resources because they don't have the testicular fortitude to give players PvP that matters, that shapes the world indefinitely. Sure they let you PvP if you want but the game remains just like WoW. THEY control the action and consequences and you are just a player who shapes nothing.

Warhammer will most likely be a success because they have the money to dump into making a product that will lure casuals. However their concepts are stale and used. You are the gamer, you pay their funds, its about time you raise your voice and tell them that you have control of games not them.

The Scrubs Have Won

David Sirlin is right ; WoW does teach our kids poor lessons about life and about competition. In 1991 the fall of the Soviet Union showed the world that communism quite simply doesn’t work. Yet here we are continually subscribing to this sort of social communism every day when we try to pull the potentially “harmful” aspects of competition from our games. At what point we diverted from viewing competition as a healthy motivation for self improvement to something that is damaging to the egos of our children is beyond me. This mentality affects our gaming experience. We have created a world full of scrubs that want some pleasantly compassionate experience manufactured for them in which the worst case scenario is losing to a preprogrammed digital monster that doesn’t contain the capacity to ridicule you.

Someone said to me today “Shadowbane (A popular MMORPG with a player versus player focus in which players could kill each other freely with no “safe zones”) saw the dominance of the most sociopathic among us”. First off I disagree with this statement entirely, but let us assume for a moment it is true. My response would be a resounding “So what?” Just as there will be bleeding hearts who wish to shelter the world from the competitive aspects of gaming there will also be the social predator whose sole goal in winning is to defamate his opponent. On both sides of the MMORPG “PvP” and “PvE” spectrum there are losers. What a true gamer seeks isn’t the freedom to mock or degrade but the freedom to improve in an environment of constantly evolving competition. Instead what we do is make the competitive gamer suffer the most by out casting him and labeling him as a “griefer” or a “bloodsucker”.

Comically we reduce the freedom in our games in order to coddle the scrubs who can’t handle being outdone by other players. Mainstream games like Street fighter, 007 Goldeneye, Half-life, and Starcraft all center around player vs player conflict. Notice the the list of MMORPG’s is absent. The RPGers have done well in keeping their tiny pocket of scrubdom isolated from the rest of the gaming world. They’ve managed to add their own spin to gaming and shun anyone with a different view of what a game entails. Most traditional anti PvP RPGers will argue violently against the use of PvP in MMO’s saying that it goes against being immersed in a world. They’ll also argue that PvP goes against the very core of how RPG’s have been played since back in the D&D days. Never mind this pen and paper RPGers interjection that the dungeon master himself is a player and creates all of the conflict for the “adventurers”.

This is a load of crock designed so that what has been a quiet niche can now fight the ever evolving status quo of gaming that has impeded on their “sacred grounds”. The problem is amplified now because gaming companies like Blizzard Entertainment are changing the way we view games in an awful way. Now games are about how much time you can invest, how many powerful items you have, or how sexy your character looks in his/her new Eternal Chainmail of the Gods. The competition has been removed completely. In WoW even the battlegrounds which present a diabolic façade of competition have no true competitive nature. They are simply another time sink masked as PvP to deceive players into believing that their personal skill or talent factors into the game in any way shape or form.

It is disgusting to me that I see an entire generation of gamers coming up to embrace scrubdom. The part I really love is when PvE types argue that PvP takes away from the casual nature of the game and adds an unnecessary level of frustration to it. Here is where your author lays some truth on you. It isn’t about casual gaming or fun for these people. It is about a pattern. It is about a grind. It is about accomplishing things in game that require no skill or talent, only repetition. Otherwise how can anyone argue that fighting against preprogrammed monsters is any different than playing against players? In many games if you die to a monster you can lose experience, cash, loot, or item durability. Why aren’t players complaining about this? If time and loss is really the issue here for a gamer that wants to “play casually” or “just have fun” then why are they playing these games without complaint? The truth is because that monster will do the same thing every single time you fight him. He will move the same way, cast the same spells, and attack the same player. This is a no talent way that these scrubs can progress in their ideal game; by doing the SAME THING OVER AND OVER.

What's the difference between losing experience to a monster upon death or losing your gear to another player upon death? Well for starters that monster is never going to change. He’s going to sit there and do the same damn thing he’s done every other time he’s been engaged. A player changes, grows, and improves. This creates more of a CHALLENGE. A challenge is precisely the thing these so called “traditional RPG’ers” are trying to avoid. The second thing is a personal deflation of ego. The monster will never tell anyone he beat you. He wont laugh at you or mock you or make you “feel bad” about your loss. Like I said earlier, he’s just going to sit there. What a perfect scenario! An opponent that never changes or improves and has no capacity to make you take accountability for your loss! This is mainstream online gaming today folks. We have fed the appetite of thousands of scrubs and now initiate millions more per year through campaigns of marketing “appeasement” by companies like Blizzard who want nothing more than to pick our pockets. Good Game.

Revolution-G

So, here it is. This is the content that you've been hopefully waiting for and that which the authors wish to respectfully deliver to you. Revolution G is intended to be just that; a revolution for gamers. The writers here hold fast to a core philosophy and belief about gaming, about customer service, and about the mentality behind concepts such as competition. There is an apparent lack of content that touches on these ideals in a no BS manner with no punches pulled. We are here to express our opinions on game design, gaming philosophy, and the direction of the industry and art of gaming in general. It is our goal to remedy what we feel is a situation in which gamers are spoon fed games one after the other that cater to a business plan before they cater to us. We think it's time we remind the "execs" who pays their paychecks. But it isn't just about a guy in a suit. This is also about us. Aided by the influence of gaming companies that wish to pacify us long enough to get our next monthly subscription, the online gaming world is losing its sense of sportsmanship and competition.

As our games become more immersive we as players have become more gripped by greed and monotonous progression. We pay people somewhere behind a desk for the "privilege" to toil for long hours in order to achieve some deceptive and fleeting reward, effectively letting them walk away without accountability for the content of the game or lack thereof. What about the improvement? What about the education? What about the lessons learned and the competition.

We live in a world where competition is hush hush because we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. What happened to us? Are we going to let ourselves or an industry sully our idea of what a true game should be, or are we going to stand up and change this industry and our own flawed mentality in the process?

We are here to battle the scrub, we are here to battle item-based games, we are here to battle a grind that attempts to replace real content, and we are here to fight for the true concept of a game. We are the Bill O'Reilly of the gaming world. We are not here to make friends. We are here to aid the discouraged gamer that desperately seeks to feel as if the 50 dollar set of CD's he purchased for the next "hot game" wasn't pissed away.