Zero Punctuation: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

[Lazier Than Thou]

Are a collection of gamers seriously here to complain about a single type of game that "has no purpose?" Seriously?

Let me see if I can make this as abundantly clear as possible. Games are pointless. All of them. Some you might feel a more emotional attachment to above others because of superior gameplay, story telling, atmosphere or any other trivial thing that DOES NOT MATTER. Has any game cured hunger? Has any game saved a human life? Has any game cured a disease, ended a famine, or created a new species? Has any game done ANYTHING OF SIGNIFICANCE? No. They're all(ALL) about wasting time. About enjoyment, having fun. They're about making your boring, unfulfilled life feel a little less boring, a little less unfulfilled. If a game has done that, it has served its purpose.

Simply put, if you're going to say that FPS games are in any way less "about numbers" than an MMO, you're doing nothing but kidding yourself about your pathetic life.

Now, I have to go back to ignoring my pathetic life by killing some imaginary monsters in an imaginary universe that will do no more good for the real world than if I had done the EXACT SAME THING in a different imaginary universe.

I think they mean purpose within the game. Maybe i'm completely wrong by using this example but I will anyways. I knew a guy who liked to play games. He's really good at it too. He shows off this one game he likes to play which was a standard jrpg. Well the whole time he was playing it he basically skipped through all the cutscenes and plot developments and everything. You might say because he knows it all and doesn't want to watch the scenes again but upon asking him what the plot is he says he doesn't remember. So why does he play it? Because he likes all the combos he gets to pull off and the high damage he does to the enemy AI.
Now you may see nothing wrong with that but for me I thought it was completely empty to play a game that's supposed to have a story for everything but that. The problem that's percieved in WoW is that instead of having interesting situations talking to colorful people and experiencing a well woven and immersive story line your just on fetch quest and item gathering missions so you can afford more fetch quest and be able to go on more item gathering missions.
You can get much more from that such as friends and of course there has to be the occasional story line and cutscene and after hours and hours of searching and wandering around the world you could get absorbed in it all but from a laymans point of view it just seems like a game without a real purpose.

My point is not that World of Warcraft has more or less purpose behind it than any other. I'm saying that ALL games are equally without purpose. If you're unwilling to allow another person receiving enjoyment from doing what they're doing to mean purpose, then that disqualifies all means of receiving enjoyment. It doesn't matter if that enjoyment comes from working together with real people to meet a goal or using information to become the best at what you do.

Your friend sounds like a person that enjoys puzzles, but puzzles in specific ways. Taking the operating rules before him, he does his best to optimize his output. Is that wrong? Is that enjoyment wrong? Is that beneath your enjoyment of friends and storyline? Is his desire to perfect a craft(all be it an utterly worthless one) somehow inferior to your desire to accomplish a goal with friends? Moreover, who are you to judge?

In the final analysis, games are utterly without purpose beyond the enjoyment they grant. If people find enjoyment from maximizing their abilities in a game, how is that different from enjoying a storyline excepting that the storyline is given to you with no requirements on your part while maximization requires intellectual/dexterous effort?

 

[Ghengis John]

Now, I have to go back to ignoring my pathetic life by killing some imaginary monsters in an imaginary universe that will do no more good for the real world than if I had done the EXACT SAME THING in a different imaginary universe.

Wall of text incoming.

Don't hate me but, as a former wow player myself I can tell you WoW is a lot more destructive. Simply because if you want to excel in wow you have to commit time and maintain the social aspect. There is no "quick match" you have guilds who can or pugs who fail and the great thing about pugs is wasting another hour waiting for them to fill. You can pick up a first person shooter, kill people for ten minutes and then put it down. You could play it all day every day but you don't have to. WOW requires five hour raids, multiple nights a week, appointments, guild meetings, human drama and all the other turgid shit that comes with having a second job. You don't just have to worry about your own numbers you have other people worrying about your numbers, their numbers, vying for your spot and all this other political crap nobody needs.

At worst it is the official spokes game for dead babies and broken marriages and in the very least cold dinners. I personally knew a girl who got a divorce over this game. And the sad thing was she still couldn't stop playing. I would be like "don't you think you should get out of the house, maybe remarry?" She would say "I know I should, but I have my friends here." When I told my guild mates they simply replied "that's why you marry somebody who plays." Or some variant there of respectively and they were all deadly serious. Honestly, what is this heroin? Is it really better to have two addicts in the house? Has it gotten so bad people are altering their life-plans to accommodate this game?

My guild leader would constantly shoo his kids away in vent, his little girls that just wanted to spend some time with "daddy", I constantly urged him to put down the game and go spend some time with his wife and kids and he'd be like "oh... that WOULD be nice." Like he couldn't.

I knew another girl who was beautiful and had degrees in zoology and business but was unmarried, 26, living at home and working at a grocery store because she spent every other waking moment playing wow.

Another man, a pally healer, good friend of mine there was unemployed for four years but was always on wow. He was smart, clever, funny. Before I quit I asked him "Why don't you go get a job, why don't you just quit man?" he just told me "Good question. I honestly don't know. I guess... I don't know why I keep coming here. I guess I just can't stop." He's still playing. I come in every now and then just to try to get him to stop.

I myself was not immune. There was a reason I got along with the jobless pally healer I think. I had a human warrior, a tank and had no job for two years. I lost my job because I was always coming in late due to our late night raiding schedule. I always knew it was wrong to play this game when it was destructive, I always tried to get people having problems to quit, I myself couldn't heed my own advice. I honestly could see everything wrong, I hated the game for it's lop-sided development but I felt I owed something to my guild mates.

I was not alone. We had a gnome mage that flunked out of college, we had a paladin who lost his girlfriend and almost flunked out of college, a single-mom hunter who could not keep a man and who's baby was always crying, a copy-writer druid from hong kong who played at work, took his work from the office home to finish at night and thusly had a suffering marriage and poor job performance and another fit young couple that started playing wow together and both got horrendously, horrendously fat. Worth noting the wife got Diabetes. I could go on and on. I have never seen so much of a detriment to the quality of people's lives from another game. And not just their lives, but the lives of the people around them.

This game would be no more harmful than any other really if you didn't care about excelling in it. But 90% of the people who do play eventually want to be considered "accomplished" in some way, whether it's arenas or raids or battlegrounds or just reaching max level. It's DESIGNED to make you want that, like Yahtzee said it programs you and that is evil. And then the time sink kicks in and the demands on you do too. And unlike many other games, this is one that never ends. There was a time I would have defended my wasted time there the same way you did. When the truth is ugly it's a lot harder to admit to it.

You will not convince me otherwise, I am sorry. I have seen people struggle there and achieve fantastic things when they quit. I have seen people suffer there and keep going on a self-destructive course. You're not going to out argue my experiences man. I'm not saying everyone who plays the game will play it too much or successful people can't play wow. I have known some. But the risk doesn't match up to the rewards. I urge you to quit if you play.

 

[Jewrean]

Why were the first 5 posts put on probation? WTF? Whoever that mod was they have the brain of a biased chimp.

 

[Jewrean]

I was fairly adamant that I would never eventry 'World of Warcraft'. Now I'm absolutely sure I'll never play it, and that goes pretty much for all MMORPG's. If I'm ever going to invest my time/money/life into an MMO, I'm going to do it when I'm retired, and no sooner.

A few decent MMOs are free. If you ever want to give one a go then I might suggest Guild Wars 2 which will hopefully come out sometime this year. No monthly subscription. If you call yourself a respectable gamer then you shouldn't close your mind to it. Try it at least once (MMOs I mean).

Snip

Yes WoW is addictive. BUT it doesn't have to be. It DOESN'T REQUIRE 5 hour raids. Raids are an option. You don't need to be part of a guild or go raiding. There is plenty of pick-up and put-down gameplay on the Solo side of things. In-fact if you aren't obsessed with getting the best gear, you aren't constantly going into Raids and Guilds wasting your time, you aren't obsessed with the best stats, and if you just play it socially with a couple of others doing some basic quests then it isn't as destructive as you make it out to be.

 

[Lazier Than Thou]

Now, I have to go back to ignoring my pathetic life by killing some imaginary monsters in an imaginary universe that will do no more good for the real world than if I had done the EXACT SAME THING in a different imaginary universe.

Wall of text removed.

I never suggested that spending your time playing World of Warcraft was a positive. Indeed, look back on what I said. I said it was "pointless." Without value. Has no meaning.

You're not going to change my mind either, because I agree with you that video games can be destructive. I agree that World of Warcraft can suck you in, I've played it before.

My problem isn't that people are complaining that World of Warcraft is pointless. My problem is that people are suggesting explicitly and implicitly that their preferred means of gaming is somehow LESS pointless. As though shooting someone in the face with a gun in an FPS is somehow more noble or enjoying a good story is somehow better than an intellectual pursuit to devise the best strategy for X, Y, or Z. It's not better, it's different.

 

[Tony2077]

i like the alliance since the horde let in those undead thing that want to damn the whole world by using there plague stuff. if you want too check out the video for the one quest chain in dragon blight damn bastards screw everyone even there own so called allies the orcs and if its not clear i love wow and I'm in a great guild so that helps

 

[Ghengis John]

It's not better, it's different.

Often times the differences between things do decide that yes, one is better. I can tell you with all honesty that since I stopped playing wow I've had a lot less tension at home, fewer arguments and a lot more free time. Consequentially I'm also a lot more satisfied with life.

I understand what you're saying but if anything I think we can agree the more time you spend gaming the more pointless it becomes. Wow really only asks one thing of you, your precious, precious time.

 

[Skeleon]

Goblins? Wow, I loved those crazy pyromaniac buggers in WC2 and WC3/TFT.
Almost makes me want to try this game out. Not quite, though.

 

[Turbo_ski]

The only problem I have with WoW is that in order for a new player to experience the Cataclysm content (IE new races), they have to spend $120 (Vanilla/BC bundle + Wotlk + Cata). They really need bundle vanilla/bc/wotlk all into one $40 bundle and not have WotLK at he same price as Cata.

 

[Nomanslander]

Are a collection of gamers seriously here to complain about a single type of game that "has no purpose?" Seriously?

Let me see if I can make this as abundantly clear as possible. Games are pointless.

I don't think Ben's arguing over the point of playing WoW. Pointless isn't the word he was using, what he was calling WoW was a waste of time.

Now you might argue that all games could be considered a waste of time, but then again that's not what you call time spent in leisure. In leisure time, as long as you're enjoying yourself, it's ok no matter the hobby. But once that hobby takes over and you end up spending more time than what you should be putting off for leisure, then it's a waste of time.

And since WoW has a bad habit of making people do that.

WoW = waste of time.

(of course if you can manage your time then it's ok...=))

 

[Lazier Than Thou]

It's not better, it's different.

Often times the differences between things do decide that yes, one is better. I can tell you with all honesty that since I stopped playing wow I've had a lot less tension at home, fewer arguments and a lot more free time. Consequentially I'm also a lot more satisfied with life.

I understand what you're saying but if anything I think we can agree the more time you spend gaming the more pointless it becomes. Wow really only asks one thing of you, your precious, precious time.

All games do. The only difference is that people are spending their time divided amongst multiple games rather than one game.

I'm glad you're happier without World of Warcraft. Kudos.

 

[Ghengis John]

Well, thanks. I'll just let it be at that.

 

[Lazier Than Thou]

Are a collection of gamers seriously here to complain about a single type of game that "has no purpose?" Seriously?

Let me see if I can make this as abundantly clear as possible. Games are pointless.

I don't think Ben's arguing over the point of playing WoW. Pointless isn't the word he was using, what he was calling WoW was a waste of time.

Now you might argue that all games could be considered a waste of time, but then again that's not what you call time spent in leisure. In leisure time, as long as your enjoying yourself, it's ok no matter the hobby. But once that hobby takes over and you end up spending more time than what you should be putting off for leisure, then it's a waste of time.

And since WoW has a bad habit of making people do that.

WoW = waste of time.

(of course if you can manage your time then it's ok...=))

Pointless is the same thing as a waste of time. Moreover, by your own definition of "leisure" if you enjoy throwing your life away to World of Warcraft it's not a waste of time, now is it?

 

[Ghengis John]

I find it very amusing that for all this sites bitching about how video games are blamed for every social ill that any of you would actually believe in MMO addiction.
Addiction is usually an indication of more complicated life problems. It isn?t the games fault and the majority of wow players don?t spend every hour playing it.

What did I say at the bottom of my post?

I'm not saying everyone who plays the game will play it too much or successful people can't play wow. I have known some. But the risk doesn't match up to the rewards. I urge you to quit if you play.

Any addiction is usually the result of more complicated life issues, that doesn't make the addiction itself any less real. Even our resident psychiatrist, Dr Mark: ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/ask-dr-mark/8482-Ask-Dr-Mark-14-Addicted-to-Gaming ) believes that yes it is real. I find it amusing that you're so defensive. For my part I shared some personal details of my experiences because in the very least, if you don't agree with me, you know where I'm coming from so try to contain your amusement.

I find it very amusing that for all this sites bitching about how video games are blamed for every social ill that any of you would actually believe in MMO addiction.

Furthermore what's that supposed to mean? Are you with the thought police? Aren't we allowed our own opinions?

 

[Ghengis John]

You mean the part where you urge people to quit if they play. Frankly your whole wall of text could of come from Jack Thomson.
What?s the difference between you Blaming WoW for whatever problems your friends are going through and him blaming games for violent acts?

Jack Thompson never sat down and got to know those kids? The game's designed from the ground up to be addicting. It's not really a surprise that addiction is often the result.

Furthermore, I'm not suing anybody. Where's my cash-in?

You also didn't answer my question and I've answered all of yours.

I find it very amusing that for all this sites bitching about how video games are blamed for every social ill that any of you would actually believe in MMO addiction.

Furthermore what's that supposed to mean? Are you with the thought police? Aren't we allowed our own opinions?

 

[Nounverber]

Now, I have to go back to ignoring my pathetic life by killing some imaginary monsters in an imaginary universe that will do no more good for the real world than if I had done the EXACT SAME THING in a different imaginary universe.

Wall of text incoming.

Don't hate me but, as a former wow player myself I can tell you WoW is a lot more destructive. Simply because if you want to excel in wow you have to commit time and maintain the social aspect. There is no "quick match" you have guilds who can or pugs who fail and the great thing about pugs is wasting another hour waiting for them to fill. You can pick up a first person shooter, kill people for ten minutes and then put it down. You could play it all day every day but you don't have to. WOW requires five hour raids, multiple nights a week, appointments, guild meetings, human drama and all the other turgid shit that comes with having a second job. You don't just have to worry about your own numbers you have other people worrying about your numbers, their numbers, vying for your spot and all this other political crap nobody needs.

At worst it is the official spokes game for dead babies and broken marriages and in the very least cold dinners. I personally knew a girl who got a divorce over this game. And the sad thing was she still couldn't stop playing. I would be like "don't you think you should get out of the house, maybe remarry?" She would say "I know I should, but I have my friends here." When I told my guild mates they simply replied "that's why you marry somebody who plays." Or some variant there of respectively and they were all deadly serious. Honestly, what is this heroin? Is it really better to have two addicts in the house? Has it gotten so bad people are altering their life-plans to accommodate this game?

My guild leader would constantly shoo his kids away in vent, his little girls that just wanted to spend some time with "daddy", I constantly urged him to put down the game and go spend some time with his wife and kids and he'd be like "oh... that WOULD be nice." Like he couldn't.

I knew another girl who was beautiful and had degrees in zoology and business but was unmarried, 26, living at home and working at a grocery store because she spent every other waking moment playing wow.

Another man, a pally healer, good friend of mine there was unemployed for four years but was always on wow. He was smart, clever, funny. Before I quit I asked him "Why don't you go get a job, why don't you just quit man?" he just told me "Good question. I honestly don't know. I guess... I don't know why I keep coming here. I guess I just can't stop." He's still playing. I come in every now and then just to try to get him to stop.

I myself was not immune. There was a reason I got along with the jobless pally healer I think. I had a human warrior, a tank and had no job for two years. I lost my job because I was always coming in late due to our late night raiding schedule. I always knew it was wrong to play this game when it was destructive, I always tried to get people having problems to quit, I myself couldn't heed my own advice. I honestly could see everything wrong, I hated the game for it's lop-sided development but I felt I owed something to my guild mates.

I was not alone. We had a gnome mage that flunked out of college, we had a paladin who lost his girlfriend and almost flunked out of college, a single-mom hunter who could not keep a man and who's baby was always crying, a copy-writer druid from hong kong who played at work, took his work from the office home to finish at night and thusly had a suffering marriage and poor job performance and another fit young couple that started playing wow together and both got horrendously, horrendously fat. Worth noting the wife got Diabetes. I could go on and on. I have never seen so much of a detriment to the quality of people's lives from another game. And not just their lives, but the lives of the people around them.

This game would be no more harmful than any other really if you didn't care about excelling in it. But 90% of the people who do play eventually want to be considered "accomplished" in some way, whether it's arenas or raids or battlegrounds or just reaching max level. It's DESIGNED to make you want that, like Yahtzee said it programs you and that is evil. And then the time sink kicks in and the demands on you do too. And unlike many other games, this is one that never ends. There was a time I would have defended my wasted time there the same way you did. When the truth is ugly it's a lot harder to admit to it.

You will not convince me otherwise, I am sorry. I have seen people struggle there and achieve fantastic things when they quit. I have seen people suffer there and keep going on a self-destructive course. You're not going to out argue my experiences man. I'm not saying everyone who plays the game will play it too much or successful people can't play wow. I have known some. But the risk doesn't match up to the rewards. I urge you to quit if you play.

As someone who played WoW since "Vanilla" and just canceled his account last week, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to type that up. A lot of people won't want to hear it, for sure, but I think more than a few need to.