flickering colours

Lazy Sunday MMO Play

Sunday afternoons are for relaxing.

Recently I wrote a post where I defined ‘MMO Syndrome’ as a kind of threat to the pleasure of single-player games. The syndrome comes into effect when the reward schedule and grind start to creep into the gameplay experience at the expense of other kinds of fun. I felt like the way World of Warcraft was structured made it difficult sometimes to enjoy single-player games, like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. I have been thinking about the article I wrote, and reading the comments it generated, which have shown just how many views there are on the subject. I thought I’d share another one here.

Today is a lazy Sunday afternoon and I’m a little tired from yardwork, and I find that I just can’t be bothered to play any of the games I’ve got at my fingertips. This is the perfect time for an MMO.

I recently picked up a copy of Sins of a Solar Empire. By all accounts its exactly the kind of PC strategy game I really enjoy, so I am really looking forward to playing it. I don’t know how to play it, though. So sitting down this afternoon, I fired it up and went through the first tutorial and got about halfway through the second when I decided I just couldn’t bring myself to learn another game system. Looking at the other games on hand, I am in a little bit of a lull—between games you might say. I’ve finished the majority of Assassin’s Creed, and I’ve simply had my fill of Skyrim. I had the itch to play something, but just can’t find the right thing to scratch with.

Used to be, on a day like today, I’d jump on WoW—I might have already been playing to be honest. MMOs (or at least WoW, in my case) are a great way to while away some time. I remember days spent essentially just hanging out in the game, either working through a few daily quests or a handful of dungeon runs with some friends. Maybe I’d just jump on a lowbie and do some levelling. I’d be chatting as much as I was fighting, though, with the guild and other friends. I’d be enjoying the familiarity of WoW, with the novelty of fresh conversation, and maybe a new item or handful of badges.

World of Warcraft benefits greatly from a phenomenon of ‘same-but-different.’ No, I’m not making that up, check out Salen and Zimmerman Rules of Play. Essentially, the comfort of WoW’s familiar ruleset is coupled with the variety that it generates, even the minute level of difference, to keep my attention. There’s a pleasure to be found in the manipulation of a relatively complex system of rules with which the player is deeply familiar. There is a sense of mastery, and therefore comfort. I can’t exactly ignore the game, but I don’t need to concentrate nearly as hard as is required for learning a new set of game rules, like the focus Sins of a Solar Empire would require today.

I already know the patterns the game will throw at me, and I know all my character’s abilities like second nature. I just have to pay attention enough to decide where to go, then keep an eye out for familiar dangers. When I see one of the attacks I’m already expecting, I’m well-prepared to deal with the issue. It’s also fair to say that, for the most part, most end-game players will be over-powered enough for everything other than raiding that even if a mistake is made, it isn’t really that big a problem. I even used to watch TV while playing—can’t do that very well when learning a new game.

Despite the many reasons that playing WoW at the end-game stage (when not doing a high end raid) is fairly predictable, almost rote (but not quite) there is still a progressive element to it that makes it “worth your time.” So maybe I’m not acquiring that next piece of my tier set, but I’m grinding up some faction reputation to get a new mount. Or I’m acquiring badges (or Justice/Valor type points) that I can use to buy a piece for my other spec. WoW has an amazingly thorough capacity to translate gameplay time into some kind of palpable residue. Even the most abstract become numbers like experience points and faction reputation, and are all on your record. So, by the end of the play session, there is something you can point at and say “This is what I just did,” and feel some sense of accomplishment.

So that sense of virtually infinite progression coupled with the minute variety of a familiar rule set creates a very pleasurable experience indeed. I can have the best of both worlds. On the one hand, I can be playing a game I am so deeply familiar with that I don’t have to marshal all my learning faculties. Yet on the other, I can enjoy the feeling that I am making (new) progress which somehow validates the time spent in a way that replaying a different game would not. Even replaying the same dungeon in WoW is same-but-different because you’ll never know for sure exactly how the boss fights will go, or what will drop. The social angle is hard to quantify, but is just as important. Sometimes sitting around in Ironforge chit-chatting is enough for an hour or two. Other times, a party will smash through half a dozen heroics and feel a badass camaraderie that really can’t be compared to many other game experiences.

If one reads between the lines in the paragraph above, a fairly deep criticism of World of Warcraft can be found. The pleasure is rote, requiring fairly little cognitive focus. The progress is illusionary and arbitrary, constantly being generated by Blizzard for us to grind through. It’s a little like watching a sitcom on TV: there’s no real meat to it, no real reason for it. But that’s ok. It feels good on a lazy Sunday afternoon, when you’ve already done the yardwork.

P.S. This blog isn't dead, I've juts been having a run of good luck with freelancing gigs, so the writing energy that would go into posts here has been going to paid work instead. I'm sure you all understand!