Culture Clash

It’s happening again. A “kind of a big deal” game is prepping for release and the forums are alive with excitement. And bickering. Lots of bickering. Take this 200+ page long thread, for example. The author doesn’t want any kind of threat or DPS meters in his game and lashes out at anyone who uses them. Some people are with him while others are starkly opposed. It’s really brought to light how the cultures created by different games can begin to clash when thrown in a melting pot environment.

I’m talking about Rift, by the way.

The way I see it, the players coming to the game usually hail from one of three camps. You have the WoW crowd, the pre-WoW crowd, and the EQ2 “anything not WoW” crowd. It’s not surprising when you consider who diverse the team is making the game. You have people from across the spectrum working behind the scenes on Telara, and that’s enough reason to make lots of different people excited.

But, as they’ve come together, the WoW and non-WoW audiences have really started to stand at odds. I used the thread above as an example because I think it highlights the different expectations we come to the game with. The poster is against DPS meters because he thinks they make the game to easy. The WoW players tend to disagree and see them as a way to determine how well their party is doing. It’s almost an argument of “new and easy” versus “classic and challenging.” Accessibility: most people want it, but only so far as they can keep the game in their perfect definition of what truly makes an MMO.

Then there are posts like this. There’s nothing bad or discriminatory in the original post, but you can quickly see the “WoW is the devil” theme come to the surface.

As someone who plays WoW – and LOTS of other games – I find the sniping a little disingenuous. Anytime someone comes out and rails against WoW, I have to wonder how many hundreds or thousands of hours they spent in the game before then. If a game can keep you occupied for so incredibly long – a normal RPG is, what, 30 hours nowadays? – how bad could the game possibly have been.

And to come into a game like Rift, like WoW in all the best ways, unlike WoW in the same, I have to wonder if these players even know what they’re getting into. This is a post-WoW MMO. It’s soloable. It has incorporated all the lessons of questing, character progression, storytelling, and more – many lessons I’m sure taken from Blizzard. Like every successful game before it, it will take what works and make it their own, then add to it with exciting systems like rifts.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Rift will be just like WoW or that player’s issues with the game aren’t valid. I’m just saying that no game exists in a vacuum and it’s a little silly nip at each other’s heels because of where they leveled their first character. It’s entirely possible to like both games. Hell, my current stock of active MMOs is three and I don’t begrudge one for being different, or similar, to any other.

So, this is my thought: disagreements are fine. Discussion is how the best features get worked over and ideas for new ones are born. But, leave the culture clash out of it. The community will be stronger when we recognize that we’re all – and I mean all of us – MMO fans. This is our community. A single community. Let’s talk and disagree and have heated debates. But, recognize that our differing experiences are part of what makes us as a whole great. We’re the many colored beast of a thousand feathers and every single one of us has something of value to add to the display.

On the point raised in the first forum thread: the OP is wrong. I can see his point, but he’s forgetting the two main purpose DPS meters serve for players: knowledge and satisfaction. Tanks know they did well when they hold the boss. Healers know they did well when everyone lives. These two roles are also unique in that there’s no need to compare to other group members; when you’re the only one doing the job in group, there’s no question of who’s the best: you are.

DPS don’t have that. They get big numbers. They’re fun to see, sure, but without some way to add it all up, they’re arbitrary; the DPS’s job becomes about feeling over fact. The competition with other damage dealers also adds another little mini-game to the encounter. It’s fun to be the best. Damage meters only quantify that and remove the need for “I’m the best” “No, I’M the best” arguments.

Happy Thursday, all.