A question of ambition

The longer I play my level 60 character, the better I understand the powergamer uber-guilds. Not that I wanted to be in such an uber-guild, but at least I start understanding what they are talking about. It's a question of ambition. They simply follow the game system to a logical conclusion to reach specific goals.

At many points in a MMORPG you are given the choice between specialization and generalization. That starts at the choice of character class, and then goes over choice of talents, up to choice of equipment. For example you can choose to play a warrior, choose defensive talents, and choose the most defensive gear to get the ultimate specialist in defence (which is where Raslebol is heading). A warrior with arms/fury talents and a two-handed weapon or dual-wielding is less good in defence, but obviously better in other situations, like PvP or farming. A shaman is even less good in defence, but still not a bad tank, and having an even wider range of other options.

Jack-of-all-trades are often more fun to play, and easier to solo. But if your over-arching ambition is to raid the toughest dungeons in the game, you need the specialists. You simply wouldn't want a shaman or aggressive-specced warrior as your main tank in a high-end raid, healed by a druid or shadow-specced priest. You would want the specialists. You also wouldn't want just any mix of character classes in your 40-man Molten Core raid, you would want a certain number of this class, a certain number of that class, all of them specialized in what they do best. That would still leave you with a number of "joker" slots, where you could put jacks-of-all-trades.

That means that an uber-guild will need to tell their members what classes to play, what talents to chose, and in extremis even what kind of equipment to wear. That takes a lot of fun choices away from the members, which is bad. But on the other hand it enables the guild as a whole to succeed more reliably in overcoming the toughest challenge.

Now if you make a concious choice between "everybody can do what he wants" and "we want to kill Onyxia every night", that is okay. And I'm fine with the "everybody does what he wants" choice. I just have the impression that many guilds, including mine, are trying to have both. And that is certainly going to end in tears, shouting matches, and general unpleasantness. Lots of frustrating evenings where a rag-tag band of 40 random characters with random talents and equipment repeatedly fails to reach Ragnaros or slay Onyxia. It is easy to get blinded by the light of success of the uber-guilds, and not noticing the hard choices they had to make to get there. You can't have both the ambition *and* the easy life.
- posted by Tobold @ 7:57 AM Permanent Link