Crazed Looters and You; A World of Warcraft Commentary

Crazed-Looters and You

By now we've all leveled through the Borean Tundra, and experienced the DHETA quest chain that asks players to mass murder the loot-crazed hunters that are threatening the land's native species. Specifically, they ask you to bring them their ears as proof of your righteous deeds. An entertaining and whimsical line of quests, to be sure, but it also reflects the evolution of the World of Warcraft player through the various patches and expansions.

For those of us who have played WoW since it's initial release in 2004, we can vaguely recall the nature of the game in those early stages. Specifically, the leveling dynamic was remarkably different from leveling today. Back in the day, it was nay required that a player group up with at least one other person to complete most of the quests. I would argue that no class, even hunters, could easily solo level their way to level cap. In true MMO fashion, getting to level cap required that you play with other people to achieve the common goal. Which brings us to another important distinction between the so-called “old content” and modern day...the idea of achieving level cap. When I began playing WoW, I wasn't specifically concerned with getting to sixty, deciding to focus more on the actual questing and seeing the content the developers designed. Sure, that level cap was there, and it was a distant goal on the level of “sure, I'll retire some time down the road,” but the questing content was not simply a vehicle or method to reach level cap and start “playing the game” in earnest.

Currently, the supreme goal of every “reroll” is to achieve level cap, not for the joy of leveling, but for the experience of playing a new class at level cap. This is evidenced in part by the nature of PvP battlegrounds. As a player who has attempted to PvP as a mid-level toon, I've realized the limited support for participating in battlegrounds as anything but level cap, evidenced by the consistently long waits between matches. Conversely, as a level cap toon, one rarely suffers waits of longer that two minutes. Outside the realm of PvP, one only needs to survey the landscape of instancing to realize the lack of support among the player base for lower to mid level dungeons. When a reroll decides they want to run a lower to mid-level instance, like Uldaman or Maraudon, it is a significant challenge to consistently find quality toons at level who will run with you (at level, while the idea of “running a toon” is another concept all together). This is painfully obvious with the lack of groups who regularly run the “old” raid content like Molten Core and Upper Blackrock Spire, whose limited loot rewards and time requirements make it illogical to even run. Which brings us back to the title of this article, “crazed-looters and you”.

Once a toon reaches level cap, they are no where near competitive with the other level cap characters. In order to not suffer one-shot deaths in battlegrounds, the player must acquire “epic loot” for their character. This generally requires stock purple gear, or else you're toast. By having a system whereby a player's gear plays such a significant role in their ability to remain competitive, the developers have inherently supported a system like Nesingwary's loot-crazed hunters. Each player, instead of wanting to see the content or experience what the developers made, (which, I will concede, is still significant, but nowhere near the central role of older WoW versions) desires acquiring loot for their character. Of course, people are still excited about seeing the latest dungeon, but after the initial run, the focus shifts from seeing the new content, to farming for loot. “Just one more attempt at this boss, I need to get those shoulders,” sounds no more reasonable than “just three more pelts and I'll get that epic-level gun”.