Rearticulating Rewards in WoW - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 121

the WoW community, which is further illustrated in how raiders responded
to the change in how epics are distributed.
A second category of response to Tigole's comments was to document
the amount of ef ort required to achieve PvP epics. Instead of continuing
the feud, these arguments tended to agree with Tigole's underlying assump-
tion that epics should be earned; they just rearticulated their ef orts to make
it clear that they were working just as hard as raiders to earn their loot.
Cytheria engaged in a lengthy analysis of so-called welfare epics, arguing
that none of “the whiners and cryers [sic] seem to notice is the actual time
and ef ort it does take to get these epics. In some cases just as long or even
LONGER then it does to get the raiding epics.” 34 In her post, she breaks
down the amount of time played that is required to acquire enough honor
points and tokens to purchase PvP epics, stating that “ 1 Peice [sic] of 'wel-
fare epics' Costs 5hrs of work. Thats [sic] about one Kara run is it not?” 35
This appeal to the amount of time it takes to get rewarded is echoed in
several other responses to the change in the PvP system; one player ran the
math on his desired PvP gear and reached the conclusion that he will need
to PvP for approximately 158 hours to get all of the epics he wants. 36
Far from handouts that come twice a month, the amount of time put in
to acquiring this loot is potentially immense. However, this also harkens to
the restrictions being placed on welfare that Hartman identifi es as typical of
contemporary welfare systems. These epics are not just handed to players, a
substantive time investment is required for a reward to be attained. Similar
to contemporary welfare programs that require people to fi le job applica-
tions and document their attempts to join the workforce, these arguments
refute the notion that PvP epics are handouts by demonstrating just how
much ef ort is required to attain them. This appeal to the quantity of their
labor is an appeal to the normative structures of WoW and a clear indication
that the changes in rewards integrated more players into a structure where
their work is paid for in epics. Just like raiders work hard to get their loot,
so do PvPers. These arguments imply that PvPers are productive, properly
socialized members of WoW society, not bludgers collecting welfare.
The last direct response from PvPers to Tigole's was to rearticulate how
loot worked in PvP and PvE. Best represented by a series of three blog posts
by Rohan, 37 this argument was based on the dif erences between the two
activities in the game and how they used loot. PvP is a competition among
players and Rohan argues that ensuring a wide distribution of quality gear
throughout the WoW population will lead to more exciting PvP combat. 38
Further, Rohan argues that this is a quality/quantity debate revisited. Raid-
ers expect to fi nd high quality loot as a reward for dii cult challenges and
the rewards for a task should match the challenge. Welfare epics of end them
as high quality loot is potentially available for low quality ef ort. PvPers, on
the other hand, see rewards in terms of quantity, as the quality of reward is
fi xed and “higher skill or rating, which translates into overcoming harder
challenges, is rewarded with more loot, not better loot.” 39 This position