My Corner of the Interweb

Power!

Mood: Sniffly.
Music: Lapdance, N.E.R.D.
Game: World of Warcraft (60 Rogue, 13 Priest.)
Book: On The Road, Jack Kerouac.
Muffin: Blueberry-Sweet Plum.
Punchline: "and realized why i was doing it in the dark."

Jeho is slowly coming to the realization that he might be a powergamer.

A "powergamer" is someone who focuses almost entirely on gaining status in a game, be that levels, experience, gold, or "ph4t l3wts" usually at the expense of not really experiencing the game.

They are more likely to focus on hunting single areas that are supposedly "best" for drops or experience. They solo a lot, unless they're being helped by someone (or someones) more powerful than them to help them gain experience faster by helping them kill things they couldn't normally kill, or by decreasing downtime to nothing. They view killing things that they gain no experience or gold from as "wasting time." They scour websites for optimal paths, weapons, or hunting areas/maps to allow for better planning, and thus, faster gain.

I have my general opinions about powergamers, although I will not pass judgement on people playing games the way they want to play them. Frankly, my Libertarian leanings extend to gameplay, as well. You wanna chew your way through 60 levels in 3 days, go for it. Provided it doesn't impact MY game experience.

Now, powergamers, although they make up a fairly small percentage of the userbase of any game, are usually the most vocal on the boards, most likely to get pissed off about "nerfs" or changes, and are most likely to be the cause of the death of an economy on a server.

Additionally, powergamers (previously known as min-maxers in standard RPG parlance) are the usual cause of devs creating content that is too difficult for the casual gamer. Because they often get "twinked" (have higher level characters give them gear and stuff that they shouldn't have at such a low level) they are disproportionately powerful at their level, often focussing solely on a single combat tactic. As a result, devs create encounters that are more difficult to provide a challenge for these players, causing casual players to have extreme difficulty with those encounters. As a side note, since they focus on a single combat tactic, when that tactic gets changed (or is discovered to have a bug) for whatever reason, the player gets extremely pissed.

The problem is that because powergamers are vocal, often early adopters of games, and interested in being the first to do whatever, they are invaluable in getting the word out on a game, and they're extremely good at finding bugs and exploits quickly. In short, they serve a role for the developers. I KNOW I've heard "We'll throw it out there and someone will break it for us" more than once. Powergamers are very, very good at finding loopholes and bugs. They're little mini recursive stress tests all on their own.

The downside is that they are extremely destructive to a game's economy, and every player wants to be "the first" to do something...or at least not be the last...and by doing something first, posting pictures, videos, and explaining exactly how it's done ruins the enjoyment of exploration for everyone else. By chewing through all the content in short order, powergamers start complaining about lack of things to do, and publishers don't like to hear those kinds of complaints...and lean on devs to get more stuff done, before they're ready to do so, or before they fix all the problems that the powergamers have already found.

During the beta, Blizzard decided that they were going to "speedbump" (or slow down) powergamers by limiting the amount of experience that any one character could learn in any one day.

You would have thought that the Soviets were invading "Red Dawn" style. Their complaint? "If I want to play 24 hours a day, you can't stop me!" Effectively, they were complaining that if they didn't want a life, Blizzard couldn't force them to have one. Pretty sad, really...but whatever.

Powergamers complained so loudly and often, everywhere, that eventually, the devs said "Fine, we'll just reward people who don't play 22 hours a day, rather than prevent people from gaining experience 24 hours a day."

Powergamers have some juice.

Anyway, back to Jeho, who thinks he may be a powergamer...because while Zul'jin was down, a few of us went over to another server and started a couple of alts. We created a group, whereupon Jeho took off in a direction away from us because he didn't want to share experience with us...he wanted it all to himself.

The only comment that I can make in response to all of that is: Yes, he's a powergamer with insufficient time to actually be one. I tend to think that he's all about his game, his character, on his time schedule...and if it makes him happy, more power to him. Makes him tough to game with sometimes, but if he's having fun, whatever. He likes to do things his way, and there's nothing wrong with that. Has to be tough on him when he needs help with stuff, but he seems to work it out for the most part.

I think that I couldn't really be a powergamer like that. The gameplay's the thing for me...not the goal. I made 60, sure...but it was the result of wanting to complete quests...hell, I'm still doing grey quests (which I wouldn't be gaining experience from, even if I were still gaining experience) because they're fun. I haven't spent time looking on websites for Black Rock Depths maps and such...because I like exploring, and I'm having a good time doing it.

Besides, right now, my goal is to get a group of folks to level 60 with me, so we can hit some of the tougher instances together...which would really be what I'd like to do right now.

I won't be the first one in, and I won't be the guy who's best at doing whatever...but I'll be doing it with my friends, and that's what's important to me.

Posted by Glenn at March 3, 2005 10:09 AM