Rearticulating Rewards in WoW - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 123

The second part of the raider response was that raiding was simply
harder than PvP, an argument that was generally articulated in reference to
the organizational components of PvE. Flipping Imadris's notion of what
made the game dii cult; this argument claimed it was harder to defeat com-
puterized opponents with the help of other people than it was to beat other
people alone or in the small groups found in arenas. For one raider it is “the
challenge to work with real people, not only master your skills” that makes
raiding an ef ort worthy of the best rewards. 44 Shortly after a guild dis-
banded a member posted a message from their leader, Anik, who stated, “I
have allways [sic] said, the content (instances) of WoW is not the challenge.
The challenge is fi nding ppl [people] 'addictive' and 'dedicated' enough to
endure 5 raids a week, raiding the same bullcrap over and over again . . .
wasting their time on epics that will lose value as soon as the expansion hits
the streets.” 45 It is interesting that raiders did not fall back on an argument
about spending more time working for their epics or on having higher skill,
but instead on the fact that it was working and coordinating with other
people that warranted the best rewards in the game. This argument skirts
around the claim that PvPers spend vast amounts of time to earn their gear,
instead resting on the assumption that the most challenging activity in an
MMOG is learning how to work with that second M, the other players.
This part of the raider response is a key component of one of the two
structural pieces of what this debate indicates about how WoW is designed
as a game. Building from a discussion of player reaction and play style,
two critiques of game design were also readily apparent in the rhetoric of
welfare epics.
WELFARE EPICS: PAYING PLAYERS TO PLAY ALONE
In addition to the notable rhetorical positioning of players, Tigole's quote
marks a potential tension among the game's design team and a key moment
at which Blizzard's desire to keep subscribers can be seen. Research has
established a relationship between game design and the social architectures
that are built within WoW , 46 but the issue of welfare epics of ers the con-
verse, that the player base of a game can leverage words and play to alter
game design. Further, given the use of the term welfare epics and the con-
sistent use of language like work and earn to describe the ef ort and reward
structure in WoW , it can be argued that WoW players consider themselves
paid in epics. From this standpoint, the addition of PvP epics to the WoW
environment preserves the reward system within WoW while keeping sub-
scriptions fl owing.
The fi rst game design implication of welfare epics is representative of
a dif erence between the player base of WoW and previous online games.
Unlike experiences in EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI , in which groups