Friday 17 June 2011

Too much metagaming

It occurred to me today that one of the reasons that WoW has lost its shine for me is my approach to the game - I'm metagaming, not roleplaying.

Shank is a third of the way through level 84, and fairly decently geared in mostly blues from instance drops. I'm aiming, not surprisingly, to get as geared as possible as quickly as possible, to speed my entry into heroics. So resources like Kadomi's shopping list and Vexryn's gear list are being consulted to fill the gaps. With the odd exception, such as avoiding the Schnottz quests (just too Nazi / pop-culture, sorry) and hence missing out on a shoulder upgrade, my next actions are governed by a researched optimal path rather than roleplaying considerations or just exploring the world. And so I've done a complete about-face from when I first set off into this game over 6 years ago. It also serves to highlight to me just how far behind current progression I am.

However, I think it's an inevitable part of playing a MMOG (and yes, I've deliberately dropped the 'RP' part). Ever since I first stepped in to Zul'Gurub at level 60, and found myself woefully ill equipped to tank my first raid, and later learned what raid preparation was really all about with Grulnak, the metagaming part of WoW has been on the ascendant for me. And in a MMOG I think this is correct - unless you're in a role playing guild on a roleplaying server you're otherwise letting your group down.

So my conclusion is to (1) accept how things are and not let it bother me so much and (2) find another outlet for my inner RPG nerd.