The Rat Race

U MAD, BRO?

When I’m not tearing through various speculative fiction bricks, screaming at millionaires in funny clothes running in a circle, or (occasionally) attempting to be a productive member of society, my digital poison of choice is World of Warcraft. It has been, on & off, since release; at this point, it mostly has to do with the fact that my friends and I can’t agree on a singular other thing we can all do together. But Pandas & Pokemons has been pretty fun so far, much as Charles discussed.

Compared to previous years & expansions, I’m playing a great deal less of the actual game. It’s kind of an interesting experience, and one I think is worth talking about.

The odd thing about playing an MMO, any MMO, is the meta-pacing system that other genres don’t share. You can pick up Mass Effect 3 today and, apart from spoilers, have basically the same game experience as your friend who started it on release day, except that some bugs will be fixed. You can grab the latest Modern Warfare and more less jump right into a fun evening of getting teabagged by frat boys. But when your experience is partially determined by the gaming choices of your friends & server-mates, there’s another story.

WoW makes for a pretty straightforward example; while there’s multiple gameplay paths, all of them are based around more or less linear advancement, and depending on the size of your online social circle it’s easy to become unmoored from the pack. Other games have been experimenting with ways to manage this; my favorite thus far is Guild Wars 2, which levels down more advanced characters entering low-level zones while offering rewards that will scale up when they return to normal. Even still, asking your friends to redo old content to catch your scrub ass up will probably get on their nerves after enough times.

Logging in a couple times a week, it makes an interesting contrast to how I played the three previous WoW expansions. I was pretty much rushing to level cap, based on the philosophy that “the game starts at 60/70/etc,” eager to get going on heroic instances, raid content, etc. It was sort of a deadline to hit level cap; had to get the raid started before any of the other 9 or 24 people found more active and eager groups to go with. The thing is – and I think this is a significant point – it didn’t feellike a deadline. I was power-leveling and spending entire weekends logged in because A) I didn’t have a lot else to do B) I wanted to.

On the plus side, I don’t have to watch people stand in Defile anymore.

A good number of my friends are doing the same, including a few having the opposite of my experience; people who previously approached game content very casually now pushing into heroics and current raid content.  Luckily, due to guild & crafting mechanics the half-assers like me are getting a leg up following in their wake, but it’s definitely an odd feeling, as guildmaster and previous raid organizer, watching people speed ahead through content.

To get to the overall point – I promise that I have one – let me invoke one of the long-standing rules of World of Warcraft: anyone who’s behind me in content is a scrub and a baddie; anyone who’s ahead of me in content is a nerd with no life. I’ve observed variations on the theme for years, participated in it myself from one side or another, and over time come to realize that holy sweet fuck, is this some poisonous bullshit.

Multiplayer games will always bring out the competitive side of people, and that’s a good and a necessary thing. Lord knows I’ve spent enough time cursing at my monitor when I die in PVP. The thing about MMOs is that they have a secondary level of competition, a race between players & guilds to defeat content along parallel but non-intersecting tracks. The combative attitude engendered by this isn’t inherently wrong, but it can lead to an awful atmosphere, rife with jealousy, snobbery, and people having all kinds of significant opinions about how others spend their all-important VIDYAGABE time.

What am I saying? I’m saying don’t buy into the rat race. If you want to power yourself up to the level-cap and get to work on heroic content or this season of arenas (or your game of choice’s local equivalent), more power to you; be patient with your friends who aren’t progressing so quickly. If you want to stop and smell the roses or just don’t have a lot of game time, that’s cool too; don’t fault the people who are already raiding, and contain your jealousy when they link their sweet-looking gear. There’s enough of a player-base in any successful game that you should be able to find people to play with at any level.

I really enjoy MMOs; I’ve found that making gaming into a social endeavor just pushes all the right buttons for me. But that comes with a set of baggage, and having really strong opinions about other peoples’ silly little hobbies, and dealing with the converse, is probably the heaviest. (Well, besides the days and days you can spend on gaming when it’s going well.) Distancing yourself from that feeling, whether it’s jealousy of the haves or scorn of the have-nots, is a great way to be a happier, healthier nerd.