Lane over on WoW LJ pointed us to this article about "Playing to Win" -- the article itself is actually about Street Fighter II, but as Lane points out, the concept could very easily be connected to World of Warcraft. I remember Turpster talking about this on our podcast as well a few weeks ago: playing for fun and playing to win are two completely different things, and the difference between them can put a lot of players at odds.
Players who "play to win" wonder why some folks in game try to play by "fictitious rules" -- why not do some arena matching, or why not jump on an opponent on a PvP server when they're almost dead from fighting a mob? If there's a mod that will let you "cheat" on a boss, or a macro that will let you target opponents in the arena, why not use it? But just as the person writing this article about scrubs sees those as "fake rules" (because the game doesn't actually keep you from doing those things seen as "cheap"), many players do see things like honor and discipline in the game.
In the end, it's each to his own -- we all play this game for different reasons, and not everyone does play to win: some play for fun, some play to relax, some play just because they want to follow those "fake rules" (and any others they come up with -- pacifist players, Arena masters, or naked trolls). Players play by their own rules all the time, but that's no reason at all to call them "scrubs."
V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed has been bound with copious amounts of duct tapeand is currently suspended by his toenails in the basement of the WoW Insider headquarters where he is currently serving as a practice piñata for the rest of the crew.Amanda Dean has temporarily hijacked his column to bring you this important announcement.
The servers are live and Blizzard's $120,000 arena tournament has begun.This is your chance to prove that your team is the best in the world, or at least among eligible participants.The first two qualifying rounds are divided into Asian, European and North American Regions.* You have to place among the top four teams in one of these rounds to qualify for the big bucks.Before you sign up, be sure to check out the official tournament rules.
Players must have their accounts upgraded to tournament status in order to view the tournament realms.Entrance into each of the qualifying rounds will run individual participants $20 USD.Qualifiers run from March 31-May 20, 2008 to June 3-July 15, 2008.Players may use user interface modifications in the qualifying rounds, but will be limited to the default UI and custom macros in the live stages of the tournament.
There is a mechanic in game that we are all aware of, and one that exists for a good reason: when we attack a mob, we get the mob's loot. That's the mechanic. If you're solo grinding mobs out in Shadowmoon Valley for some Primal Fire, you want to be sure you're the only one that can get the loot. The same goes for groups – if you're grouping and killing Murmur in Shadow Labs, you want to be sure that everyone is going to get his pretty blues.
But what if the mechanics of the boss fight dictate that you won't hit the boss? In fact, what if successfully killing the boss means that you have to stand on the opposite end of the playing field the whole time? You don't hit the boss, you don't get the loot – but you've done everything right. In this, the game mechanic does not represent fair play, nor does it encourage success. In fact, the mechanics are a complete contradiction of each other.
I've recently encountered this problem, and it's a real pain. Read on after the break for what happened, and what can be done to solve it. It's rather long, but this is a serious problem that Blizzard needs to fix, and all the facts need to be laid out completely and in a way that is full of thruthiness.
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
We often talk about our guilds as if they are families. A family would do anything for each other, wouldn't they? The writer of this week's e-mail asks, When it comes to helping your guildmates with real-life problems, where do you draw the line?
I've been reading your Officers' Quarters column, and I would like your input. I am a longtime (2 years plus) member of an Alliance guild and also a senior officer in a similar-sized Horde guild. In the Alliance guild, one of the members is a teenager who has also been in the guild for a long time. This guildie, along with his father, are well-known in the guild, but the teen is more known for his offensive and insulting behavior in guild chat and in raids. Several members of the guild have left specifically because of this kid. It's also known that he is on medication for behavioral problems. Despite his unpleasant behaviour, he has not been removed from the guild, which has caused a lot of friction.
I really like this post over at Mystic Chicanery. Every guild, when raiding, has its own unwritten rules of play. You just know that by the end of your raid, the MT will be drunk, the priest will have died about five times, and if you insult the healers, you might or might not get healed. It's these little quirks that make raiding so much fun-- sure, the game is a good time, and downing bosses is definitely an achievement. But it's having fun with the people you're raiding with that make the game worth playing.
So what are your guild's unwritten rules? I find that they usually revolve around people-- someone does something that gets them remembered, and then everyone knows the joke after that. Guildleaders tend to set a lot of the unwritten rules as well, since they're there at most of the raids anyway. And some of the rules just plain have to do with etiquette-- who belongs in group 1, who explains which fights, who runs the tasks of main looter and calls boss phases.
None of this stuff is programmed into the game, obviously, but of all the hundreds (and thousands) of guilds out there, each one, I'd bet, does things their own way.
I've heard about this multiple times since Ritual of Refreshment was first introduced in 2.3: Mages are a little combusted over casting this food creation spell in the battlegrounds. Their first complaint was the reagent cost-- even though casting buffs is free in BGs, the reagent cost is still there for mages, and so lots of them haven't bothered casting it at all (I ran an AB to research this story-- tough work, but someone's got to do it-- and though we had two mages, I didn't see a table at all).
But now, the other problem arising is actually ninja looters-- people are joining the battlegrounds, grabbing all the food from the table, and then afk-ing out. It seems crazy to me, but it's happening, and Neth says (as per Blizzard's rules) that stealing items from other players in this way isn't actually a violation of game policies. But it is dumb. Never mind why you would need all that food, but it seems like the issue would be easy enough to fix-- either make food conjured in BGs stay in BGs, or just make the food unique to 100 (apparently people are sometimes stealing all 50 stacks right off the table).
Of course, that doesn't fix the other RoR problems-- a few mages are also wondering why they get to lay a great spread, while only getting crumbs and water themselves, but that's a problem for another day. Have you had your Manna biscuits ganked in the BGs?
A guild on Lightbringer decided to start holding different raffles to help
increase the War Effort to get the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj open. They were offering great prizes and gold from their guild
vault for people who were contributing materials to the Effort and it appeared to be working, as their server began to
rise in the rankings. Then a Blizzard Game Master
(GM) sent the raffle organizer an in-game mail saying that what they were doing was against Blizzard game policy since
it was a form of gambling.
In the end, the GM actually ended up placing a warning on the guild leader's
account for performing illegal gambling.
My take on this? Blizzard is making a mistake. As much as I
despised the casinos that were available early in the game and was extremely pleased to see them go, I think Blizzard
is significantly over-reacting to this guild's attempts to make the new game content more interesting. While their
raffle may be able to be defined as gambling by its literal definition, I really don't see a problem with how they're
running the raffle. It's helping their server achieve a goal, providing a better incentive to participate in the War
Effort, and increasing teamwork on the server--something that'll be sorely needed once the Gates are opened.
There's still no official word from Blizzard (a blue post), but I'll be eagerly watching this thread for an
explanation (or apology?).
Lane over on WoW LJ pointed us to this article about "Playing to Win" -- the article itself is actually about Street Fighter II, but as Lane points out, the concept could very easily be connected to World of Warcraft. I remember Turpster talking about this on our podcast as well a few weeks ago: playing for fun and playing to win are two completely different things, and the difference between them can put a lot of players at odds.
There is a mechanic in game that we are all aware of, and one that exists for a good reason: when we attack a mob, we get the mob's loot. That's the mechanic. If you're solo grinding mobs out in 
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