Wednesday, March 29, 2006
To fun or not to fun
... treading a fine line between being too serious and too relaxed.
World of Warcraft is a game. We all play it more or less for the same reason - to have fun, however, different people have fun doing different things, making it very delicate to bring down to the common denominator.
The game is also about group effort in achieving certain goals and overcoming certain obstacles in the way, and the "fun" factor comes out of the feeling of success and accomplishment afterwards. Making it through with a group of people that you can rely on is something that only deepens that feeling because basicaly we get a quick "accomplishment burst", meaning that we never get anything done in real life as fast as we do it here. For example, maybe you have to work on conquering certain high end instance for a few months before you manage to do it, but in real life, almost no accomplishment can be acchieved with merely a few months of sweat invested into it. You can work on getting rich in WoW, and do it for a few months and achieve it, but in real life, getting wealthy in a few months is very, very rare.
Every individual has to figure out what fun is for him, but at some point, if he joins a group effort in doing something, then that goal becomes his own. Having fun, depends on the situation. For example, at this moment, we can get a group of 7-8 level 60's and go and have fun in Stratholme, and finish it, and achieve something, and not care too much about discipline and bad pulls. You can joke and fool arround and still succeed.
Organising a raid to ZulGurub for example takes time to get 20 people online at the same time, needs reading up, testing different tactics and approaches. Everyone takes their piece of responcibility to do their part of the race. Fun factor here is at this point not in "fooling arround", but winning the game - people depend on you. It is like playing football. Sometimes you play with your friends in the back yard, you are barefeet and half - drunk and nobody cares about the score, other times you play a match with your club and you want to win-you can't be half drunk and barefeet there, and you have to care about the result at least to some extent. In both cases you are having FUN, but you are having different kinds of fun. Determining what "kind of fun" we are having at the moment is crucial that you don't find yourself barefeet in a football match that gets your team to quarter-finals. The coach and the rest of the football team won't be too happy about it.
That said, nobody will force any of you to do anything that you hate doing. You just have to keep in mind that its not only about you, its about all the people that are involved in doing something. If for example, you are in a totaly silly mood one day, and you know you can't be concentrated, just say so - and if we are doing something that requires total determination and focus, just don't do it, or be open with it and say "guys, I can't keep my self together today - I will tag along, but don't count on me with anything too heavy" Everything works, and by talking we can work everything out most of the times.
Perun
World of Warcraft is a game. We all play it more or less for the same reason - to have fun, however, different people have fun doing different things, making it very delicate to bring down to the common denominator.
The game is also about group effort in achieving certain goals and overcoming certain obstacles in the way, and the "fun" factor comes out of the feeling of success and accomplishment afterwards. Making it through with a group of people that you can rely on is something that only deepens that feeling because basicaly we get a quick "accomplishment burst", meaning that we never get anything done in real life as fast as we do it here. For example, maybe you have to work on conquering certain high end instance for a few months before you manage to do it, but in real life, almost no accomplishment can be acchieved with merely a few months of sweat invested into it. You can work on getting rich in WoW, and do it for a few months and achieve it, but in real life, getting wealthy in a few months is very, very rare.
Every individual has to figure out what fun is for him, but at some point, if he joins a group effort in doing something, then that goal becomes his own. Having fun, depends on the situation. For example, at this moment, we can get a group of 7-8 level 60's and go and have fun in Stratholme, and finish it, and achieve something, and not care too much about discipline and bad pulls. You can joke and fool arround and still succeed.
Organising a raid to ZulGurub for example takes time to get 20 people online at the same time, needs reading up, testing different tactics and approaches. Everyone takes their piece of responcibility to do their part of the race. Fun factor here is at this point not in "fooling arround", but winning the game - people depend on you. It is like playing football. Sometimes you play with your friends in the back yard, you are barefeet and half - drunk and nobody cares about the score, other times you play a match with your club and you want to win-you can't be half drunk and barefeet there, and you have to care about the result at least to some extent. In both cases you are having FUN, but you are having different kinds of fun. Determining what "kind of fun" we are having at the moment is crucial that you don't find yourself barefeet in a football match that gets your team to quarter-finals. The coach and the rest of the football team won't be too happy about it.
That said, nobody will force any of you to do anything that you hate doing. You just have to keep in mind that its not only about you, its about all the people that are involved in doing something. If for example, you are in a totaly silly mood one day, and you know you can't be concentrated, just say so - and if we are doing something that requires total determination and focus, just don't do it, or be open with it and say "guys, I can't keep my self together today - I will tag along, but don't count on me with anything too heavy" Everything works, and by talking we can work everything out most of the times.
Perun
# posted by Officer @ 8:48 AM 
