The Gaming Iconoclast: The Road Less Taken

by Rafe Brox Apr 2nd 2008 at 11:00AM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Culture, Opinion, Roleplaying, Humor, The Gaming Iconoclast

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-- Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"

Unless you've studiously avoided the forums and fan sites for a particular game (wait, hold on a second... you're here already), you've probably heard endless variations on "the best" build or style for a class of character. "So-and-so should be race X, and spec Y, and wield Z." There are veritable ruts hewn in the terrain from people flocking to established builds and gear sets for most any class you care to name.

But what if you don't want to follow the herd? What if the "you" in the game eschews conventional wisdom, strikes out on their own, and, with apologies to both Frank Sinatra and Johnny Rotten, does it their way? Are you thus destined to spend your gaming life shunned, a scarlet letter, or never-stylish [Noob Hat], branding you as an undesirable companion? Do you, in short, have cooties?

I think not. The real world works because everybody is a little bit (or a lot) different. There's no reason to think that the games we play function otherwise. Sure, your typical party has a tank, a healer, and some damage-dealing types. However, within those roles is a world of flexibility, and space for folks who don't march in lock-step with the established norm is there for the inhabiting, if you can only open a few minds. Admittedly, it takes a crowbar sometimes.

Let's start this off by emphasizing the "RP" in MMORPG - having a strong and coherent concept that defines and delineates what your character is apt to do allows you to make a compelling argument for how you've chosen to build and play them. For instance, my priests invariably come from the same school that Jules Winnifield did in Pulp Fiction -- that bit about "great vengeance and furious anger" and being your brother's keeper? Yeah, it's like that; not just a bunch of that of that goody-goody finger-wiggling. Slinging heals with a healthy dose of wrath, and a side of attitude. "Say 'LOLSmite' again. Say 'LOLSmite' one more time, Murloc-plucker..."

Ahem. My innate composure, allow me to display it for your perusal.

Does this attitude and skill deployment line up with what the chatter on the forums says a Priest's role is? Absolutely not. Does it do well in group play or guild activities? You bet. And, here's the kicker, and what trumps absolutely everything else: Is it fun? Oh, yeah.

It seems like a lot of players are inured to change, and expect Class X to be Role Y with Spec Z that they're caught completely off guard by folks who take an alternate route. Change some minds by doing your own thing, and doing it well. It, literally, takes all kinds. The games we play allow for a huge degree of flexibility, and while some choices may be better at one certain aspect than another, it's hard to be completely, utterly, irredeemably Wrong (believe me, I've tried, as a 23/3/35).

Individualism is a fine and wonderful thing, and well worth standing up for. With ten million folks in World of Warcraft alone, and millions more in all the other MMOs we share a love of; I'd wager that I'm not the only one who feels that gaming is about playing how you want as opposed to how theorycrafting, max/min, and that sort of mindset dictates as "the right way."

Rafe Brox spends an inordinate amount of time annoying people who think they know more than he does. When not causing friends and enemies alike to /facepalm electronically, he can be found extolling the virtues of the weird peripherals in his life, from kettlebells to the Trackman Marble. If you, too, would like to tell Rafe exactly how wrong he is doing it, the target coordinates are rafe.brox AT weblogsinc DOT com.

Tags: blizzard, character, character-spec, doing-it-wrong, featured, lolsmite, roleplay, roleplaying, spec, talent-selection, talents, the-gaming-iconoclast, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Scopique said on 1:12PM 4-02-2008

Quite frankly, the notion of an "ultimate build" (and the notion of "knowing how to play one's class") strikes me as an absolutely stupid concept in the first place. Why, in game with the scope of the MMO, would a person pay their monthly fee to be put into a small box in which they're expected to perform an often singular function to the satisfaction of those around them? Wait...that's called a "job". Except in a job, people pay YOU, which makes the monotony just a little more tolerable.

Gaelric said on 12:20PM 4-03-2008

I should think it's quite obvious why people want to be the "Perfect Spec." They want to be useful. I ask you what good is a 20/20/21 hunter. Well maybe you can have fun by your self being unique and slowly soloing your way to fame and fortune. Or you could rock a decent 41/20/0 cookie cutter Beast Master spec and be useful. You can do serious sustainable damage. You can cc things routinely and have your pet off-tank. You can in short be fun to play with. This makes all the difference.
You aren't, or at least I venture that most people aren't, playing a MMORPG for the fun of soloing or to find out what happens in the great storyline. You play because it is fun to play with other people and work towards a common goal.
Not to say that its entirely wrong to be a 0/0/0 level seventy rogue, but it defeats half the point of playing the game at all. No one will want to invite you to their group. When you do get into a group everyone will wonder why you can't dps. People will form a bad opinion of you as being useless or worthless.
Again if you want to play the game by yourself and miss half the fun, go for it. You can be any spec you like, or no spec at all. But you have to realize that by doing this you are limiting your usefulness.

rafe.brox said on 12:28PM 4-03-2008

Gael, it's the cookie-cutter mindset that makes people assume that anyone who does it differently is /de facto/ going about it the wrong way. While it may or may not be true that there is/are a handful of "top endgame content" builds for each class, that is an incredibly small minority of the gaming population for a given title - in much the same way as the skillsets of elite athletes are honed to their particular sport, making them singularly ill-equipped (though not necessarily useless) in another endeavor... but how well do those skills translate into another milieu, such as their post-athletic career? (Witness Bill Bradley, Jack Kemp and Steve Largent, who went from the NBA and NFL, respectively, into careers in the US Congress & Senate - I have the idea they needed to do a re-spec to make that transition successfully.)

If there was only one way to play the class, why even provide us with the option to choose? One of my most surprising realizations upon starting with WoW was that, upon reaching level 2 on my very first character, I *didn't* get to allocate stats into Int/Agi/Str/Stam/etc by hand, because they're automatically handled by the game engine.

The choices exist in the game; not all builds are necessarily created equal in all things... but that's the whole point, isn't it?

Lemmo said on 12:31PM 4-03-2008

I agree with Gaelric. I'm all for being unique in a game, going off the beaten path, or even playing by my own rules. But what I can't stand is when what I want to do isn't in line with what the game developer's vision of what I should be doing, and I invariably get punished for trying to be unique by being horribly ineffective or stunted.

Seriously. Try building an off-spec, and then go to PvP for a couple hours. Do it, and come back and report on how fun that was.

It all comes down to game design. If modern games had the versatility to let their players do whatever they wanted to do without having to break the mold or (Cazic Thule forbid) cheat, then this wouldn't be a topic of concern to begin with.

Again, another reason why I lean towards City of Heroes. There are a lot of 'perfect' builds, but the imperfect ones still tend to have hidden strengths. Like using blowback powers to pin large groups into corners, or getting a team of Kineticists to stack speed boost on eachother. I've built a few "proof of concept" characters in that game, and they've all been rather fun and unique.

rafe.brox said on 12:46PM 4-03-2008

Lemmo-

I agree with a lot of the points you make, and, rest assured, will be touching on them in future editions. Don't make me tip my hand and reveal my nefarious plans too soon!

Bringing up PvP is germane - the stats and skills that are better-suited for PvP (and, to further differentiate, Arena vs Battleground combat) are not always the same as the ones that are most applicable to a solo, PvE, or Raid application (resilience comes most readily to mind, as well as the large number of on-inbound-crit talent procs that the Priests' talent trees are infested with, for instance).