Gamasutra carried a feature today that discussed whether World of Warcraft is good or bad for us. The most successful MMORPG (which is really massively popular with over 5 million subscribers worldwide).
It says that WOW teaches you wrong things and since it is so popular it shouldn’t be that way really.
It lists the following:
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.
2. Again Time is greater than skill is so fundamentally bad, that I’m still going to go on about it even though I started a new number. The “honor system” in World of Warcraft is a disaster that needs to be exposed for health and safety reasons, if nothing else.
3. Group is greater than Solo. You can forget self-reliance, because you won’t get far in World of Warcraft without a big guild. By design, playing alone (even if you are the best player in the world) will get you worse loot than if you always play in 5-man dungeons. If you always play in 5-man dungeons, you’ll always get worse loot than if you play in 40-man raids.
4. Again Group is greater Solo. I’m not done with this yet. As an introvert, I’m pretty outraged that this game is marginalizing my entire personality type. The developers repeatedly confirm that 40-man raids deserve the most powerful items. Many of the players are brainwashed by this poor assumption, often saying “It’s an MMO, of course you have to group with 40 other people do accomplish anything.” Ironically, World of Warcraft was originally founded on exactly the opposite idea. The game started off by saying that EverQuest had that philosophy, and that Warcraft will not. So much for that.
5) Guilds. The tools for creating and maintaining a guild in World of Wacraft seem benevolent enough. After all, they encourage cooperation. Unfortunately, they create a social situation totally alien to me in the real world: a constant “us vs them” mentality. It’s a very weird social environment with the same dangers as nationalism and flag-waving.
6) The Terms of Service. The very idea of using the terms of service as the de facto way to enforce a certain player-behavior goes against everything I’ve learned. A game should be a system of rules that allow the player to explore. If the player finds loopholes, then the game developer should fix them. It’s never, ever the player’s fault: it’s the game developer’s fault. People who currently make deals with enemy faction (Horde or Alliance ) to trade wins in battleground games are not really at fault. They are playing in a system that forces anyone who wants to be rank 14 to do exactly that. A line in the Terms of Service saying that you shouldn’t behave this way changes nothing, and teaches nothing.
Absolutely fantastic argument. I am in complete agreement with you. I am sure there would be many around there who would be thinking along the same lines.
Thanks Gamasutra
