БУ-принтер гораздо хуже БУ-бабы. БУ-бабе износу нет, опыт плюсом и картриджи сама меняет.
репост
WoW’s success is in its apparent fairness. Essentially, WoW is communism – not the political system of the Soviet Union, but actual communism. Work, and you shall receive. Play, and you shall receive, too (but somewhat later than if you worked).
Blizzard doesn’t sell gold and has put restrictions in place to prevent item sales; items that come with special editions are not gameplay-changing in any way. They have got rid of titles for Realm First! achievements because players complained. The only commodity that the game demands from the player, beyond a reasonable subscription price, is time.
The success of WoW is deeply rooted in very basic ideas such as the action-consequence link (“why we do things we do”). Generally, people want to know their actions matter, and it’s no less true for videogames – the primary complaint leveled at them is “a waste of time”. Not that other types of entertainment – movies, books, music – aren’t a waste of time, but those are blatantly passive, while videogames demand real-life effort, which causes certain people to demand real-life results, the retrogrades!
MMORPGs suffer doubly from this expectation: even in-world, the player’s actions effect no changes on any meaningful scale. Not only I lack the option to, say, support Illidan, I can’t really kick his ass out of the Black Temple permanently, unless the devs redesign the area (without any input from me).
So the devs do their utmost to compensate in other ways. A rise from “pants and a sharp stick” to the opulence of purplz. Reputation (do quests, and I will like you). Mounts for everyone. Phasing. No XP rollbacks. XP bonuses for the time you spend logged off – it’s impossible to overestimate the effect of this tiny bonus on a player’s peace of mind.
And acceleration, of course. WoW wouldn’t be popular if it constituted purely “escapism for losers”. While it’s no secret that some people use WoW as a means to escape their dreary daily life, there’s no reason for them to lord over those with more diverse interests. Put simply, the more interesting is the life you lead in general, the less attractive MMORPGs are – not just relatively to other types of entertainment available to you but in the absolute sense. Less time to grind means you character is less awesome. Being the all-powerful leader of the Alliance (/me waves her hand) is *absolutely* better than being the butt-monkey, regardless of whether one’s day job is flipping burgers or screwing supermodels.
So awesomeness is made to not be directly proportional to time spent. On the other hand, we still want for our actions to matter, and this is why we have acceleration and easy mounts and shiny purplz and thousands of achievements. The players are free to have an unofficial hierarchy based on the latter, but the elementary needs – gear and transportation – are available to everyone. Loremaster’s Colors is the WoW equivalent of Lenin’s Red Banner of Labour. I’m dead serious here, WoW is the closest model of communism that has ever existed. (And for a good look at capitalism, try Lineage II or ZT Online. Or, better yet, don’t.)
WoW’s success is in its apparent fairness. Essentially, WoW is communism – not the political system of the Soviet Union, but actual communism. Work, and you shall receive. Play, and you shall receive, too (but somewhat later than if you worked).
Blizzard doesn’t sell gold and has put restrictions in place to prevent item sales; items that come with special editions are not gameplay-changing in any way. They have got rid of titles for Realm First! achievements because players complained. The only commodity that the game demands from the player, beyond a reasonable subscription price, is time.
The success of WoW is deeply rooted in very basic ideas such as the action-consequence link (“why we do things we do”). Generally, people want to know their actions matter, and it’s no less true for videogames – the primary complaint leveled at them is “a waste of time”. Not that other types of entertainment – movies, books, music – aren’t a waste of time, but those are blatantly passive, while videogames demand real-life effort, which causes certain people to demand real-life results, the retrogrades!
MMORPGs suffer doubly from this expectation: even in-world, the player’s actions effect no changes on any meaningful scale. Not only I lack the option to, say, support Illidan, I can’t really kick his ass out of the Black Temple permanently, unless the devs redesign the area (without any input from me).
So the devs do their utmost to compensate in other ways. A rise from “pants and a sharp stick” to the opulence of purplz. Reputation (do quests, and I will like you). Mounts for everyone. Phasing. No XP rollbacks. XP bonuses for the time you spend logged off – it’s impossible to overestimate the effect of this tiny bonus on a player’s peace of mind.
And acceleration, of course. WoW wouldn’t be popular if it constituted purely “escapism for losers”. While it’s no secret that some people use WoW as a means to escape their dreary daily life, there’s no reason for them to lord over those with more diverse interests. Put simply, the more interesting is the life you lead in general, the less attractive MMORPGs are – not just relatively to other types of entertainment available to you but in the absolute sense. Less time to grind means you character is less awesome. Being the all-powerful leader of the Alliance (/me waves her hand) is *absolutely* better than being the butt-monkey, regardless of whether one’s day job is flipping burgers or screwing supermodels.
So awesomeness is made to not be directly proportional to time spent. On the other hand, we still want for our actions to matter, and this is why we have acceleration and easy mounts and shiny purplz and thousands of achievements. The players are free to have an unofficial hierarchy based on the latter, but the elementary needs – gear and transportation – are available to everyone. Loremaster’s Colors is the WoW equivalent of Lenin’s Red Banner of Labour. I’m dead serious here, WoW is the closest model of communism that has ever existed. (And for a good look at capitalism, try Lineage II or ZT Online. Or, better yet, don’t.)