In a way, it's also about what constitutes victory -- Players who view honor as a real concept find no satisfaction in a win gained with such dirty tactics, seeing their win as hollow and "cheap" whereas those who don't just want to see their opponent beaten at all costs.

I've much more sympathy for the 'honor' players.

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Being a one-time huge SFII fan, I remember reading that some odd years ago - great game theory there, and he's absolutely right. First reading that back then, as well as some other things he has written about gaming and winning really taught me a lot about being successful in games. The best point is that too often we have our own misconceptions about what is "honorable" and we apply them to our style of battle in the games we play. These misconceptions usually end up actually hurting us in the end and costing us a victory.

The point is that if something is allowable by the rules of the game, then it doesn't matter if we deem it "fair" or not in our own minds. If it is a valid move or use of an ability and you can win by using it to its utmost against your opponent, then NOT using it because of some self-righteous sense of "honor" is preventing you from reaching full potential.

Once I realized that and applied it to my game style, it helped me immensely. And it does apply to WoW as well, although a "code of honor" does have more weight to it since your persona is ongoing. I think there is room for adopting a winning playstyle in WoW as outlined in Sirlin's various game theory articles.

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I wish this view point was more accepted by the community as a whole. It sometimes seems that the people who are worried about "winning" far outweigh those of us who just need a break from the heavy paced competiton and stress of RL. As WoW is a game when all is said and done, it's really what you take out of it that matters more then why you play it.

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I don't know about other people, but I get alot of fun out of playing to win. I like the challenge of a well executed instance. Its almost like playing a piece of music. You do it well, and with passion, and then when its done exactly like you wanted it to be done, you feel so proud at the end. When something is wrong is screeches. I enjoy going as far as I can, finding new ways, faster ways, more efficient ways of doing the things i do already. I like thinking outside the box, making "creative use of game mechanics".

"Some rules can bent, some broken. Free your mind."

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Regardless of whether or not he has a point, that article is one giant strawman argument. They don't even bother hiding it, it's kind of insulting.

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Well, now you can link to that article by Sirlin talking about all the wrong things that World of Warcraft teaches us and then the necro cycle of old, well known articles will be complete.

Ah. I'm guessing the author of this entry found that because of the coverage of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix wich is being tuned by Sirlin?

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only really applies in games not building upon community mechanics. otherwise clearing out a guildbank and jumping ship should be a fully acceltable game strategy which enables you to win.

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I don't know about WoW, but in Neverwinter Nights, we had plenty of people who would stop at nothing to win. Generally, 'win' here meant slaughtering people PvP. There were ways to hack kit such that the damage could not be resisted, or you got an outright kill on the first hit. These low grade muppets would be happy killing people (because they killed 'people', not pixels) until I would come along and, being the server owner and scripter, I could "out cheat" them.

Or they would log in, discover their hacked kit had been deleted by the warden scripts and log right back out again in a huff.

If 'winning' means so much that ou are prepeared to do things which are basically cheating rather than play the game, why bother playing? Is their self-esteem so low?

(Answer: yes, it is, sadly.)

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Actually, it's perfectly okay to call them scrubs. I have a feeling this entire post is just a big troll, but I'll bite because I'm suspecting you're really serious.

Any time you rely on an imbalance in game mechanics to score a "victory" over anyone, are you really winning anything? yes, some numbers may go up somewhere or you may get some shiny gear, but if it's a result of something less than %100 of your skill and ability, you're not really winning. If/when the loophole gets fixed, you're going to quickly be on the short end of losing on a regular basis until you actually figure out how to accomplish whatever it was before without your crutch.

I think Blizzard is making a statement on this by saying "no mods" on the Arena tournament. Yes, there are some fantastic Arena players with 2100 ratings and full sets of S3, but can they do the exact same thing without their crutches? Most can't! They rely on these things, and in the end the victory goes to their crutches rather than their actual skill and ability. You can call it whatever you like, but it's a scrub in disguise and we're going to see that played out on the tournament realms.

Same goes for any "PvP" er who relies on an opponent being under attack by mobs and at half health to kill anyone. Yes, you kill the person who wasn't able to fight back, good for you here's a cookie. Can you beat anyone at full strength in an even fight? Probably not! Does that mean you really are a "winner" in the end? Not really. Hollow victories may be good for some people, but ultimately they're meaningless for both sides once you realize how you can only beat the things where you cheat or exploit in order to win.

If you can pull a boss without clearing trash, yes you may get a bear mount and that's fantastic and all, but are you really proud of it? I bet the guy who had his guild refine their play and made a flawless run for a bear mount is.

I mean it's basically all up to you. If you really feel like you're "winning" with half accomplishments based on exploits and crutches, that's fine. To the rest of the game that rises above that sort of thing, you're not really on the same level of success as the people who don't. Is my 2200, completely legit Arena rating more of an accomplishment than someone's 2200 win-traded rating? Absolutely. At the end of the day, I know that and I'm fairly proud of what I can accomplish. It's a bit unfair to jump straight to the opposite end of the spectrum and compare unrealistic situations like naked trolls or pacifists or whatever. Those cases are few and far between.

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The definition of "win" is different for others. Take my guild situation for example. I'm a tank who knows what to do. I can hold multiple mobs as well as I can generate fast and high aggro on a single mob. I know how to gear/gem/enchant my gear. I study instances and boss fight strategies.

But I "fail" because I choose to remain in my guild that has difficulty keeping together a regular 10-man group for Kara, and those who do show up are specced, geared and gemmed in a way that reduces their effectiveness.

But I "win" because for me, honor, trust and loyalty are more important than getting the next best piece of gear.

(I'm not getting into PvP, cos that whole thing seems like a big hamster wheel to me.)

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I believe in playing with a sense of honor, because where is the challenge in killing someone gray to you or engaged with mobs. There is no glory without the possibility of defeat. Besides its a game, Im playing for fun, so doing things with the sole intention of ruining other people's fun is just a dick move.

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You're a pro or you're a noob, thats life!

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David Sirlin himself has said that "playing to win" doesn't apply to World of Warcraft as it does to Street Fighter 2, the reason being that there is a PvP side and a PvE side, and is therefore not strictly a competitive game. That said, within PvP, he believes it is not a game of skill, because two players can have vastly different gear, and thus one player already has an advantage before the match starts.

Of course, this viewpoint was made BEFORE the advent of the tournament realm. I wonder how he'd feel about that.

As an aside, I was actually in Sirlin's guild on Kilrogg some years ago, and he seemed to enjoy the game (though you could actually watch him grow less interested every week). I remember the day he promoted me and my friend from Initiate's to Members in the guild with the line, paraphrased, "In the future, please stop drawing aggro." (I was a mage and he was a dps warrior)

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As WoW is a non-zero-sum game, this is a good example of the Prisoner's dilemma problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

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