Sunday, October 07, 2007

No Sense At All....

This is something I just don’t get.

In Second Life, the way the average person makes money is to actually buy it with real-life money. You get a lot of beggars because the new players have no idea how to go about making money.

You see, making money in Second Life is more of an actual real-life business arrangement. If you want to make money in SL you have to get a job.

Not a job in the ‘Go kill 10 goblins’ sense…but in the sense that you have to provide a real product or service that people will want. Work as a bouncer in someone’s club, open up photoshop and start designing clothes etc.

Call me naïve, but I honestly didn’t expect the same thing in WoW. Go into any major city or outpost and one thing you’re sure to run into is some low-level player begging the high level players for money for a new sword or piece of armor.

The response to this is always visceral.

If you think about it, it’s easy to make money in WoW. You go out and kill things and collect the money they drop. Sure, it’s not fast or easy, but isn’t that kinda the point? It’s not like SL where you can wonder around for months and never make a single penny…you make money in WoW by playing the game.

If you think about it, the beggars are basically saying they don’t want to have to go to the trouble of actually playing when they can spend hour after hour standing outside the auction house begging.

Go spend an hour or so questing, then, not only do you get your money, you get the experience points and can up your skills while you’re at it.

The point is, when you beg in WoW, you’re asking for something that someone else has worked for. They may be rich by your standards now, but they started out just like you did.

“Hey dude, I can’t be bothered putting the time in, so why don’t you go do all the hard stuff for me and give me all your hard-earned rewards?”

Then they wonder why they get chewed out.

The part I really don’t get is the people who sell WoW gold for real life money, or you pay them and they’ll level a character for you.

You see, the main reason I like WoW is for the feeling of achievement you get by playing. I know this may sound corny but you appreciate something a hell of a lot more when you actually have to work for it.

For example, let’s look at one item in particular.

I started playing and chose mining and blacksmithing as my professions. Through hours and hours of playing I leveled up significantly, took every opportunity to practice my skills until eventually I’d got good enough to where I made myself a complete set of copper armor. It was better than the stuff I could buy from the NPC vendors, significantly improved my character and gave me the skills and materials I’d need later to make better armor.

For me, that’s the point of the game. To see where you are, where you came from and where you’ve still got left to go.

Compare that to buying progress. You give someone running a WoW sweatshop in Korea a hundred dollars so in a week you can log in and have a level 70 character with a few thousand gold. What’s the point?

1 comment:

MC Etcher said...

The fun is definitely in the work. I don't get paying for a finished character, either. They won't even know how to play the game!

Although, I do enjoy my car, even if I didn't build it.