I posted this elsewhere, of course, but I'm hoping for more interesting feedback from you people =)Well, in all fairness, the individual in question wasn't a noob. At least that's how it seemed to me, though...
This individual in question is a young and inexperienced but very intelligent, eager and skilled raider. He played somewhat in vanilla/TBC, but at the time his young age and the greater complexity and open-ended nature of the gameworld prevented him from being able to play the game effectively, and began to do so to a meaningful extent in WotLK. Despite this, he's fully proficient as an effective raider.
We were chatting on vent after a reasonably successful raid, and conversation turned to other games. I mentioned Super Mario Bros., and was shocked to learn he'd never played any of the early games. Really I should not have been so surprised, given his relatively young age - he is about nine years younger than me - but still, it surprised me, because he referred to himself as a "hardcore gamer", and I suppose I considered experience with these games as fundamental to that definition.
It was an interesting dialogue because it opened up a whole new understanding for me of what really is a generational gap that affects World of Warcraft itself. Of course, he struggled to understand how that really long jump in World 8-1 could possibly be difficult. Or how games with 256-color graphics like Alpha Centauri or Final Fantasy IV could possibly be considered classics.
I stopped on my way home from a meeting on campus at a Goodwill. I was perusing the bookshelves and came across something rather interesting: a Sim City 2000 User's Manual.
Now, many who read this thread are too young to remember the state of gaming in those days. Sim City 2000, like many games of its time, came with actual paper documentation, and it was not considered strange or undesirable that this documentation was voluminous. Nor was this merely the case with video games - Magic: The Gathering was popular in elementary schools fifteen years ago, and it came with a 60-page booklet densely written in 6pt Times New Roman.
So, Sim City 2000 user manual - not the strategy guide is...guess how long?
Go ahead, guess.
...
Answer is: One hundred thirty-eight pages. Longer than I remembered.
I flipped through it. One particularly interesting blurb stuck out:
Quote:
When you start your own city, there are no time limits to beat and no conditions to meet. There is no winning or losing. You are the sole judge, passing judgement upon yourself. The only two criteria in this judgement are your own enjoyment and the quality of life of your Sims.
As anyone who has played SC2K knows, this isn't entirely true. It is, in fact, possible to "lose" the game if your city falls too deep into debt (in which case a "delegation of concerned citizens escorts you from your office"), and it is possible to "win" the game by building several dozen Launch Arcologies, which will eventually "take off". In practice, however, these specific conditions do not influence the general play of the game any more than the completion of cutting-edge encounters such as heroic Lich King and Sinestra influence the general play of WoW.
Quote:
Strategies
You can turn off disasters in the Disasters game menu - if you're a wimp.
Do you want to be a wimp? DO YOU?
As in WoW, the game allows for a "casual" level of play. And as in WoW, the game manual, despite being highly detailed, is not fully comprehensive, and to reach the elite level of play it is necessary either to spend enough time playing the game to recognize patterns and understand the underlying mechanics, or to read external resources. However, in stark contrast to WoW, the game developers are brutally unapologetic towards those who would refuse its open-ended challenge.
Now compare that to the firestorm evoked by Ghostcrawler's rather diplomatic blog post.
Very few people who bought Super Mario Bros. 3 actually beat it, and fewer still ever looted the amazingly powerful and fun Hammer Suit, which was not obtainable for the majority of players who beat the game and did so by skipping to the final World with the Warp Whistles. The low completion rate was not considered a design flaw. Nor did SC2K's forbidding demands on the player (by the standards of games in general) prevent it from being universally recognized as a classic.
Is it so strange a video game can be recognized as a "classic"? In Aestu, I see Cecil, just as in Cecil, I saw Aeneas.
Now, my post is, in fact about WoW. Here in WoW, the game has gone from being fully open-ended and exploration based in Vanilla - as SC2K was - allowing play at many different levels and to the preference of diverse temperaments and intellects, to being focused on completion and obtaining the internal rewards of the game as the desired outcome.
WoW, these days, is structured around things like VP rewards for completing the daily, and "welfare" tier put on the vendor for the benefit of those who can't or won't kill raid bosses. That is to say, the focus is on achieving specific, definable goals in the game, and that those goals should be achieved by a decent portion of the playerbase.
This much was known to me. But with this conversation in vent and re-reading this manual after over a decade, what really struck me was the generational gap, something that wouldn't be expected considering nine years is not so long and I myself accept being referred to in professional settings as a "kid". And of course not all people my age subscribe to all my opinions.
Still, I feel I have a lot in common with this younger individual, and it's very interesting to see how differences in the culture we grew up in affect our take on, and style of playing, WoW - those accustomed to playing for exploration and have a strictly internal value system ("because it is there") versus those accustomed to playing according to definable criteria and have a strictly external value system ("because that is the point").
I think many players have had similar experiences - of course, immature players are what they are, but just as significant, I think, and lost on many, is how changes in the culture of gaming over quite a short period have influenced World of Warcraft's continued development.
