Oh the great debates we could have! I hear people complaining in World of Warcraft battlegrounds all the time when a twink kills them. They complain because he is uber powerful with all that extra gear! Being that I’m usually playing a twink myself the complaints go in one ear and out the other without so much as bouncing off a brain wave. Then the last night one of my own teammates begins berating me! Why? Because I’m a twink on his team and the enemy twink can’t understand what’s he complaining, so I became the target of his frustration. Needless to say before long I was the guys hero after feeling sorry for him and protecting him from enemy twinks the rest of the game. But he made a comment before all the heroics that struck a chord with me. “WoW PVP should be based on skill not gear!”.
I’ve been thinking about that all night and I still don’t see his logic. WoW is all about the gear, that’s the whole purpose of the game from twinks to high level characters, better gear! That’s also one thing that’s turned me off from leveling and making twinks instead is because I want to PVP and be a GOD at it! Hence the twinks, anyway…
Here’s my thoughts on this, if you think WoW should be more about skill then by all means chime in, but this is an MMORPG game like so many others. In a role playing game the character (and his gear!) is what determines how good a player is. MMORPG’s aren’t supposed to be based on the gamers skill but the characters abilities (yep, and gear!). I’ll admit there is a bit of skill involved inevitably, after all a player needs to know the abilities of his character inside and out to control them. But a vastly skilled player with a relatively weak character isn’t supposed to win against a character who has the best stuff – regardless of that players skill level.
There are plenty of games out there that are wholly or heavily skill based, Call of Duty or Battlefield for example. Or for skill based MMO’s you could go with Planetside or WWIIOL. But that isn’t what an MMORPG is all about! That would be like saying table top D&D is based on skill – like one player can role the dice better than another because of his personal experience?! No, of course not! Even the newest twist on an MMORPG combat style, Age of Conan added a little bit of skill to the mix with their combat combo system, but in reality that’s so simple that it is still going to boil down to the individual characters abilities and equipment! They’ve just added a little twist to an otherwise common system of combat.
Coming from a mostly FPS background before I delved into MMORPG’s I would love to see a game come out that has more skill involved that still has some aspects of leveling and character abilities, I know SWG touched on this with Jump to Lightspeed, but a whole game that has twitch style player enhanced by the character themselves would be a whole new genre but I still think even in a game like that, being character and ability enhanced gear would still play a major role in the outcome of any fight. But at least then skill would stand a chance against gear, right now it’s just an after thought.
Users That Liked This Page Also Liked:
Leave a Comment