Compare it to fishing for fun vs. fishing for survival. If you're out there for fun, you will probably enjoy trying lots of different lures, different spots, different casts, etc. Perhaps you are not catching many fish at all, but you're having lots of fun and fishing the way you want to. If, on the other hand, you must catch X number of fish in an hour or terrible things will happen to you, the experimentation ends and you switch to using the "tried and true" (if you have one) or, more likely, do exactly what a pro fisherman does. You can't afford at that point "to mess around," but most place efficiency above all else.
This reminds me of an article by Sirlin about Research and Design in gaming. He explains that in order to find new levels of play within a game, participants have to not play to win. This is contrary to his coined mantra "play to win." See his website for a more detailed explanation:
To tie this all back to WoW, I believe you need to look at the game from an alternate perspective. Raids and instances encourage players to utilize spreadsheets to maximize efficiency. Because the encounter is scripted (dissected into boss abilities, phases, enrage timer, etc.) there is a need to plan around the preset circumstances. We must do X damage before the boss does Y, otherwise the raid wipes. The players become mechanical (or must mirror mechanical play as much as possible) to overcome mechanical battles.
In the Player vs Player (PvP) portion of the game, however, everything changes. New and innovative specs, strategies, group compositions, etc. all dynamically impact the game landscape. There are, to an extent, "tried and true" strategies, compositions, specs in PvP (what a vet would call "flavor of the month"), but the action shifts because the opponent is no longer mechanical. Players no longer can allocate their talent points and character customization for scripted encounters; they don't know what type of encounter they're facing in PvP. In short, PvP is more akin to the strategies involved in competitive chess or sport fishing than PvE is.
Cody Reimer
Freshman Composition TA
St. Cloud State University
Compare it to fishing for fun vs. fishing for survival. If you're out there for fun, you will probably enjoy trying lots of different lures, different spots, different casts, etc. Perhaps you are not catching many fish at all, but you're having lots of fun and fishing the way you want to. If, on the other hand, you must catch X number of fish in an hour or terrible things will happen to you, the experimentation ends and you switch to using the "tried and true" (if you have one) or, more likely, do exactly what a pro fisherman does. You can't afford at that point "to mess around," but most place efficiency above all else.
This reminds me of an article by Sirlin about Research and Design in gaming. He explains that in order to find new levels of play within a game, participants have to not play to win. This is contrary to his coined mantra "play to win." See his website for a more detailed explanation:
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-3-not-playing-to-win....
To tie this all back to WoW, I believe you need to look at the game from an alternate perspective. Raids and instances encourage players to utilize spreadsheets to maximize efficiency. Because the encounter is scripted (dissected into boss abilities, phases, enrage timer, etc.) there is a need to plan around the preset circumstances. We must do X damage before the boss does Y, otherwise the raid wipes. The players become mechanical (or must mirror mechanical play as much as possible) to overcome mechanical battles.
In the Player vs Player (PvP) portion of the game, however, everything changes. New and innovative specs, strategies, group compositions, etc. all dynamically impact the game landscape. There are, to an extent, "tried and true" strategies, compositions, specs in PvP (what a vet would call "flavor of the month"), but the action shifts because the opponent is no longer mechanical. Players no longer can allocate their talent points and character customization for scripted encounters; they don't know what type of encounter they're facing in PvP. In short, PvP is more akin to the strategies involved in competitive chess or sport fishing than PvE is.
Cody Reimer
Freshman Composition TA
St. Cloud State University