6 Ways World of Warcraft is Worse Than Real Life
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#6.
WoW is a Lot Like Work
In World of Warcraft, like real life, you need money. WoW uses in-game gold as currency and to do the fun stuff ("raiding" and killing huge monsters) you'll need a lot of gold. And getting it isn't a whole lot more fun than working at Burger King.
You earn gold by "farming," which is the slang term for the monotonous quests players slog through each day, that generally involve killing X monsters, or collecting X items and getting gold in return. Over and over and over again. For hours.
Active players will need to do this tedious farming about two days a week, to fund the actual fun part of their game. So basically not only do you have to work a day job to pay for the game, but your character also has to have a day job to pay for his raiding.
Even stranger, enterprising gamers can make gold in a sort of commodities market that has formed in the WoW world. There is an in-game auction house where items are bought and sold between players. So you can sit there among the elves and monsters and act like you're on the floor of the stock exchange. Buy low, sell high, get rich.
There are even complex software plugins people use to track price histories and trends. There is speculation, price fluctuations, and selling panics. If you're asking why this is superior to, say, getting a similar job in real life, we suspect the answer is that in WoW you get to dress like this the whole time:
#5.
WoW is Also a Lot Like Job Hunting
You know how during your first month in prison you want to find a gang to join, so somebody's got your back in case you get shanked in the yard? Well in World of Warcraft those gangs are called guilds.
Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, guilds have plenty of people lining up ready to sacrifice their social lives to the group. Aspiring members are so eager that they are willing to go through a ridiculously involved guild application process. So you...
1. Register on the guild forum and fill out an application like this one.
2. Guild officers then go over your application, check out your equipment and contact you if you meet their standards.
3. If you measure up, you'll be allowed to go on some raids (missions) with them as an "app", where you're allowed only limited participation. This could go on for weeks.
"And you say if I do this, you'll let me in your guild?"
4. You will go on some more raids with them as a "trial", now with limited access to forums and guild chat. Again this could last for weeks or months.
5. Finally you will be made a full "member", assuming you've not been rejected at any of the previous steps.
You might have noticed that most political offices don't have that kind of vetting process. There are even websites featuring guild application tips and applicants often spend insane amounts of time putting together biographies or even animated presentations touting their skills.
And when applicants get turned down, it gets ugly.
At this point, guild shopping might sound suspiciously like job hunting to you, but it isn't. When you apply for a job, employers not only don't mind you applying for other jobs at the same time, they expect it. In WoW, you are expected to only apply with one guild at a time. So if the months-long trail period ends in failure, you start over.
And you do it all for the privilege of wearing the guild's proud name over your head everywhere you go.
#4.
Prejudice is Alive and Well in the Game World
Like in any social environment, WoW has stereotypes. Of course the players can't see your actual race, but that's okay. You choose a race and class when you start the game, and you'll be stereotyped based on that instead.
For instance, you can choose to play as a Hunter. People will promptly refer to you as a "huntard" and start speaking to you loudly and slowly. Are hunters dumber on average than any other class? It's impossible to prove that kind of thing with hard facts or statistics, but yes.
It turns out a lot of new players and/or kiddies choose hunters when they first start playing (it's an easy class for the novice) so the "Hunter=Dumbass" stereotype was born and deeply entrenched in the culture.
Another class, Rogues, have a reputation for being assholes. Again, there's a reason for this. When playing against other humans, their most effective means of attack is to sneak up on people before they're ready, kill them very quickly, and use their abilities to run away before their victim's friends can get revenge.
Thus, players have figured out that many people select Rogues specifically because they enjoy this kind of hit-and-run behavior. Again we're not saying that all rogue players are bad people, but they are.
I used to know a guy who would do #1. He'd brag about the women he'd take into low level instances with him, then they'd strip in-game, then they'd cyber. Dude was creepy as f**k, lol.
ReplyEverything I ever read about WoW makes me never want to play it. Thanks, internet!
ReplyI played WoW once and the reason rouges suck is because even when you know they are there you cant hit them reveal them or outrun them so its just auto-kill.
Replyreading the comments.....i started to wonder "why is it that people think WoW players are irrational assholes?"...then it hit me "dur I'm READING THE COMMENTS, i can plainly see why that stereotype exists"
Replyat the end of this articel..there is a second life add that says "watch what happens"
Replywin?
Yea leet-speak has been around for years. Wow's extensive online content just added to the phraseology. Consider that typing in the realtime chat window requires you to remove focus from the combat window. Therefore, players will want to communicate intentions as fast as possible. Example: "inc tp big" is a shorthand statement used in the Alterac Valley battleground to inform the team that enemies players are approaching Tower Point and that there is a lot of them. The message further implies that nearby players should come help. That kind of communication is key when you've got 5 guys backcapping you.
ReplyDon't bother explaining. If they claim to be so unique as to not play any video games or understand the culmination of 40 years of gamer vocabulary, it's a lost cause to try to explain on a 4 year old article that they're idiots and these things are entirely rational and arose for a very simple reason - typing detracts from the game.
Just a small point of order, the "new language" you posted has existed for well over a decade before WoW even existed. Those terms have been used in pretty much every mmorpg every released. Ive seen it used in everquest, dark age of camelot, lotr online, age of conan, and thats just from the games ive personally played. And yeah, some guilds have applications like that, but those are the rare ones, the guilds that are the most insanely dedicated to the game, there might be a couple per sever the rest range anywhere from, "Link us your gear. Ok, you are in" to "Show Us Yer Crits has just invited you to join their guild." "Wait, what? Why did you just randomly invite me?"
ReplyGetting into my guild wasn't difficult at all. I made my guild. Still going strong after 6 years, too!
ReplyI didn't have to apply to join my guild. The just posted a message in Trade, I liked what I saw, and asked for an invite. Been there for a very long time, and I have no plans to leave them. There ARE decent, cool, nice people in-game; just as in real life, finding them takes a bit of luck and timing.
ReplyHowever, even that part of this article made me lol. It's all true, all SO true, And you know what? That's why I love the game.
i lol'd when the ad at the end of the article was for creating an epic wow guild website...
ReplyI tried to click on the infamous tale...it brought me to turbotax. That wasn't a very good tale at all.
ReplyAnyhow, once upon a time I used to play wow. I enjoyed it and the whole play style of it, the primary issue for me though was the fact that you basically had to deal with other people to get freaking anything done. Doing things like battlegrounds, where you were working with other people but in a mostly simple fashion and weren't necessarily relying on them, and were automatically grouped, wasn't so bad, especially because you could basically do them whenever the hell you damn well felt like.
On the other hand, once you get all the normal old gear you can get from battlegrounds, or the sort of s****y gear you could get from doing heroic 'instances' with 5 other people in which you just kind of hoped you would get the gear you wanted, that was basically it for casual things you could do. If you were a casual player, didn't know a shitload of people IRL who played, and/or didn't have a f*****g schedule for your game playing time, it was difficult to get any further.
I could go into it all, but many people have already played wow at one point or another and know everything about the dichotomy of Raiding and Arena and the various issues involved with both. And how both require you to be anything but casual if you wish to gain any measurable success.
My point is that if I wanted to work on a schedule, and wanted to rely on other people, I wouldn't be f*****g playing a game in the first place. To me, if wow would have been somewhat less centered around dealing with others it would have been the perfect game, since again, I would simply be hanging around with other people rather than playing a game if I wanted to do that. I like a game like skyrim because I can decide how I want to play it. Why would people want to have to be told how they have to play by a group of other people? Why would they want to have to f*****g jump through hoops for some 'guild' in order to advance in a game? Why would people not want to have the option to take a break of a two weeks to a month without losing every in game connection they have?
Don't get me wrong, I also wouldn't be playing an online game if I didn't want some level of interaction with others. I'm not saying everything involving others was bad. I enjoyed things like battlegrounds, just a random group of people, sometimes good, sometimes not so much, that had to rely on each other somewhat, but if they didn't work well together by the next round they were with a whole different group, and you could still shine personally. Hell, battlegrounds and world PvP were the main reasons I kept with the game so long. It's just that if anything the game kept getting less and less casual, and not all of us want to dedicate our god damn lives to playing a game.
Well, I also quit because 'vanilla' wow, just wow without all the expansions, was around for years. Now, in about the same span of time that the original version went on without any expansions, they've released 3 and have announced a fourth. And every single expansion all the progress you've made in the last one becomes more or less worthless. Screw that.
I was hoping to get some good laughs from this. Disappointingly, the whole article sounds like the author heard about the game from someone who once had a roommate who played instead of playing it for themselves. Satire only works if it has some degree of accuracy. Some points are true, sure, such as online communities using their own slang, but these aren't specific to WoW.
ReplyPoint #3 is particularly baffling. So what if people enjoy getting together for bear parades or coordinating in-game events? These things are purely for fun. The author makes it sound as if type of thing was was forced upon people. Part of the fun IS that they have nothing to do with the rest of the game. If you don't want to join in the dance party then don't, but standing around outside complaining about how dumb it is is an even bigger waste of time.
Likewise, if you don't want to buy the expensive vanity items in the game, don't want to join one of the minority of guilds that require an application, or don't want to take your night elf's clothes off for the one weird guy you somehow found by naming her stripkittyxo then don't.
/shrug
You do understand this was supposed to be funny? A sort of tongue-in-cheek thing? I LOVE WoW, play it almost every day for a few hours, and I found it all hilarious, BECAUSE it's true. You can make fun of something, or someone, without being mean about it. This article does that nicely.
None of you have ever experienced real assholes in an mmorpg until you've played tibia, in that game anyone can and will kill you at anytime and unless you have powerful in-game friends you wont be getting revenge, there is no level limits so there is constant war going on between guilds (old vs new) for control of the server, then there is an in-game spell that allows you to find anyone at anytime which is the reason that the term "u r hunted" exist (which means that player and his friends will try and kill u as many times per day as possible) and in wow this wouldnt be a problem but in tiba you lose a level, skills, and the items your holding which is basically like erasing any progress you've made within the previous 2 weeks (with every death)
ReplyThen the only question would be why the f**k anyone would play that game. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I've never, ever heard of it before now, maybe for that very reason.
There's a reason wow is so successful, and part of that is the fact that death is inconvenient, but doesn't significantly impact you. I'm assuming that's also the reason why any game that tries to make the penalty for dying extreme quickly realizes what a moronic error that is. RPGs require work put into them in order to reap the benefits and get a sense of accomplishment, that sense of accomplishment and progression being the main reason why they're enjoyable and why these days RPG elements have seeped into almost every genre. The ability to lose that, ESPECIALLY at the whim of other players, would be inexcusable.
Hell, in something like WoW where dying simply results in having to corpse run and the person who killed you getting a small amount of honor (or at least it was fairly small back when I played) bored high leveled individuals killing low levels simply for the hell of it was already fairly common (I liked to run around the low leveled areas and murder the higher leveled chars there, especially since they usually tended to be bad. Most of the time better players were killing people their own level, or doing something more worthwhile.) I couldn't imagine how fucked up the game would be if the higher leveled players knew low levels were actually losing something significant every time they died...I'm guessing whatever game you're talking about won't last all too long. Who the hell would want to start out new in a game like that?
Why would anyone choose to throw themselves into this gaming hell? I play games to relax; this one sounds more stressful than my job!
I'm trying to learn Darnassian- is this bad?
ReplyNo, and the general public won't recognize it as geeky unlike Elven and Klingon.
#3 is pretty much the only reason I've ever liked any MMO! People being social! That's the thing that makes MMORPGs more interesting than other RPGs or online games. Stuff happening that no one programmed. The game becoming participatory interactive because of the other people.
ReplyI have two favorite MMO moments. The first was playing Star Wars Galaxies (before it was a WoW clone). I was playing a farmer/restaurant owner named Mama Josephine. Little old lady type. I was trying to harvest my crops, but bandits had staked out in my fields and kept running me off. So what did I do? I went to the local city, went in the bar and hired other players to kill the bandits. I GOT TO BE A QUEST GIVER! Those players said it was the best thing that had ever happened to them in game.
Second was playing City of Heroes. I was hanging out in the entrance area of some dangerous city zone when a guy ran by yelling "Look out!" I'm not sure how, but he'd managed to get about 80 minions following him, which then fell upon the 10 or so unprepared and under leveled heroes there. And more just kept coming in; lowbie heroes and minions swarms alike. I was too high a level to gain XP for the fight, but all of a sudden my tank was protecting REAL PEOPLE who needed to be defended until they could figure out what was going on and get away. After a couple minutes other high level heroes showed up to help. That fight when on for at least 10 minutes and was the most epic and significant feeling thing I did the whole time I was playing.
That IS epic! Creative, too; I like that.
Ok, It'd be fine if the writer had any idea what he was talking about. I don't mind people bashing wow, but at least play it before you act like you have.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesFlaw with point #6: There really is no need to farm, unless you can't perform basic math. I will admit that the easiest way to make gold is on the auction house, but all it takes is either A) buying low and selling high, or B) selling all the junk you find in game and don't need. There is no need for an add-on to monitor "trends in the market" unless you are really out to line your pockets... because honestly, there isn't really anything to spend gold on. I really don't know why it says you have to "pay for raiding" because you don't. I guess if you count paying for repair bills from possible deaths, or buying things like potions to help you out in a tight spot- but the price of those things aren't even a fraction of the gold you get from just... killing stuff. As long as you loot whatever you kill, you won't even notice... and that is the SLOWEST way of making gold. The most expensive things in that game are either items you can't wait to get on your own, or things for alternate characters you've made... because you can't wait to get your own.
Flaw with point #5: Guilds until this new expansion were pretty much pointless unless you were trying to do "endgame" content. By that I mean, killing the biggest, baddest bosses in the game. If you were anywhere under the level cap, guilds were exclusively a social experience. Aside from having a group of people to ask for help from, or talk to, they really served no purpose. Nowadays there are "perks" for being in a guild, but they are very small little boosts to your character, like a 10% increase to your speed while riding, or an extra item that might drop while "farming" (say 3 minerals as opposed to 2... not a significant difference). There's 25 of them, and they are meant to encourage people to find guilds, but they are specifically designed to give no significant advantages over players that are guild-less. Really- guilds are just for e-buddies. It's like having an IM list. Applications for guilds are so rare, they are only for "elite" guilds that want experienced players, that are focused only on the newly released "endgame" content. Does that mean if you want to do endgame you have to apply? Heck no, there's hundreds of guilds that will invite you without even saying a word to you, and do just fine in endgame content. In fact, a lot of guilds get their tremendous amounts of members this way, by random invitations to guildless players. Stuff like the trial and whatever almost never happen, aside from in these "elitist" guilds I was telling you about. And by the way, there's perhaps maybe 10+ elitist guilds on a server at any one time, compared with maybe 300 other guilds, and I'm being very generous with my numbers. It's normally like 3 elite guilds to 500 normal guilds. The only advancement you might aspire to would be as an officer of the guild, which means you're basically helping to do, well nothing. You just get a few more privileges that newer members aren't usually trusted with (access to free items and gold, etc). Character biographies are made by Role-Players, and they do these kinds of things of their own volition because it's the type of gaming experience they want. I never have, because I like the game aspect primarily. RPers like the story aspect primarily. They are separate parts of the game, and neither requires the other.
Flaw with point #4: Whomever says that prejudice is a consequence of WoW, doesn't realize that there is prejudice in every online social format, be it games, chat rooms, forums, whatever. If people can freely express their thoughts through text, into a public domain, there will be prejudice. I'm not saying I condone it, but realistically I understand that there are just types of people out there who can't help but see other people they view as different in a separate light. This isn't a problem with the game, it's a problem with the players- but I'll be back to this in a little while. At least there are people who work for the company that try to prevent these types of comments from getting too far out of hand. The same cannot be said for any aspect of real life.
Flaw with point #3: This one has some good points, but neglects to realize what is classified as "fun" for one person may not fit your own definition. I've never spent time trying to conjure up the perfect screenshot, nor do I care about collecting non-combat vanity pets. The former is probably similar to why people get into the field of photography though (something else I don't do) and I don't think they'd appreciate you condemning their work because they put time into it that you're not willing to commit. The latter are seen as "status symbols". For example, one might be given from a certain boss you've defeated, or from attending BlizzCon that year (Like E3 or Comic Con). The point is that players can see your pets and instantly recognize that you've performed some feat related to the game. The same could be said for all these wonderful brand's we've got selling garbage to the masses over a label. Nike, Hollister, Abercrombie, you're really buying a word, and not a piece of clothing. Essentially, it's a ruler for your e-peen. Do I run out to collect these status symbols? No. Do I care if someone else wants to? Not really, so why should you?
Flaw with point #2: Don't get me started on the hypocrisy here. Any of you reading this know what LOL, LMAO, BRB, TTYL or any of these pointless bits of slang mean? Did somebody twist your arm so that you'd learn them? No. You realized that there was a faster and simpler way to convey a thought, and you jumped on the bandwagon. There's nothing wrong with slimming down your communication over the interwebz. The problems arise when people forget how to spell the words they are simplifying, or decide to use these terms in their professional work, or (god-forbid) say them out-loud in normal conversation. No one told a WoW player that they had to learn a dictionary full of terms, they did it by themselves without provocation.
Flaw with point #1: Really? Sexual deviants? I can tell you that nobody would pay gold, that apparently number 1 said was so difficult to obtain, on watching an elf that CANNOT remove their underwear (they are designed into the character models derp a derp), when they COULD just do it themselves. This has never happened once, I assure you all. The writer is just trying to reach out for whatever he can grab. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure any game will have these weirdo's that find it funny to put their characters into seemingly provocative poses, and then post their results to the internet. Plus the Deeprun Tram connects the two of the largest cities in the game, where the highest concentration of players would be found. If this kind of thing was really happening, and the people involved were looking for privacy, they would just go.... ANYWHERE ELSE outside the city. The world in WoW is huge... really huge.... I mean it's WORLD of Warcraft. There's about 1 billion more secretive places to run off to than inside a city. And, when trying to say that sexual deviancy is worse than the real world by using real world examples (the chinese fiasco), you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. The problems these people have were there before WoW, and will continue to be there when they move onto their next game. It's not a problem with the game, it's a problem with the PLAYER.
Let it be said that I love reading articles on cracked. But this time I actually knew the subject matter, and how wrong the examples were. It makes me wonder just how skewed the "facts" were in other articles I've read here. Don't get me wrong, there are PLENTY of reasons to not play WoW, but these 6 simply aren't any of them.
I think the extent to which you go into detail with that comment is proof enough that this game has gone way too far
Seconded
So let me get this straight... posting information to the contrary of a biased writer that is based on facts and experience, in a way that non-WoW gamers can understand is taking it too far?? I could have just said "NO U R WRONG!!" if you'd prefer. No? Somewhere in the middle then- so I have to clear up any confusion that my half-stated points might cause? Since when is presenting logical argument's "taking it too far"? Seems to me that you just like to be a pessimist. Don't get me wrong, I could elaborate FAR more reasons as to why you should NOT play WoW. However, what gets my goat is when a writer publishes a distorted article based on uninformed and misconstrued information - as all 6 of these points are - thereby provoking responses by a part of the community which clearly has no idea what they're talking about (I read it on cracked, therefore I am an authority). He obviously didn't do any research other than to attempt a rebuttal of the world's most popular MMO (yeah you're cool, be a non-conformist!).
If you'd prefer to continue basing your opinions on skewed "facts" - Wikipedia is easier to find.
So let me get this straight... posting information to the contrary of a biased writer that is based on facts and experience, in a way that non-WoW gamers can understand is taking it too far?? I could have just said "NO U R WRONG!!" if you'd prefer. No? Somewhere in the middle then- so I have to clear up any confusion that my half-stated points might cause? Since when is presenting logical argument's "taking it too far"? Seems to me that you just like to be a pessimist. Don't get me wrong, I could elaborate FAR more reasons as to why you should NOT play WoW. However, what gets my goat is when a writer publishes a distorted article based on uninformed and misconstrued information - as all 6 of these points are - thereby provoking responses by a part of the community which clearly has no idea what they're talking about (I read it on cracked, therefore I am an authority). He obviously didn't do any research other than to attempt a rebuttal of the world's most popular MMO (yeah you're cool, be a non-conformist!).
If you'd prefer to continue basing your opinions on skewed "facts" - Wikipedia is easier to find.
can i just say, i played a female night elf on my dad's game when he first go tit and... yes i had people ask me to take my clothes off and dance for in game silver hahaha. Anything that exists in the real world.... eventually appears online too.
Even on innocent games, like neopets, but especially on older person's games like WoW
Getting into my guild wasn't that hard. They approached me after seeing me floor two enemies that were twice my level :D
ReplyWell you may be a PVP badarse. However, if something is 5 levels or higher than you, then you pretty much can't even hit it. So it really doesn't matter how much damage you do, or how good you are. A naked, weaponless, level 10 character will beat a lvl 5 twink (best gear for appropriate level) every day of the week. And that's just the low lvls! 20's will always be 10's, 40's to 20's, 60's to 30's... etc. Basically, what you imply here is physically impossible... it's just game physics.
You Phail
Yeeeaahhh. Not possible. Unless you somehow cheated, the mechanics of the game just don't allow that to happen. That's a flat-out lie.
This article made me sad because my character is a female night elf and she's never been propositioned for anything. What, are her pixels not pretty enough for you all?
ReplyWe just understand that you have more important things to do. Also, we moved on to Blood Elves.
See, my plan is when I get the game, im gonna be the girl elf s**t and act like a whore on the game for money
ReplyKEK...
Reply