Post: #1

For all the nerds out there.... I have unlocked the key.

Game is very similar to top tier raiding in World of Warcraft in multiple ways and fashions. While not totally similar, it's has many key connections which could be brought together. Participating in both, I can say that I've had a relatively successful time doing both. Little background: up until 17 I played a ton of WoW, raided on weeknights, top 10 guild on the server, experienced content before everyone else. Then, lost my virginity late senior year, and haven't looked back (banged 14 girls since in college)

Let's start with the basics:

Sometimes, teamwork is needed in order to slay the boss (while WoW raids are usually 10 or 25, this'll be 2 or even just yourself when it comes to game). Let's just say the rest of your raiders are your surroundings. Some fights (places), you can use your logistics for you, or they'll work against you. The way you utilize them is critical. Until you have good gear (game skills), going it with less logistics in your favor could be a recipe for failure. Out of all things I've learned from WoW, the most powerful weapon at your possession is this:

Situational awareness. Like noticing a flaw in the woman's outfit, a funny comment on her nose ring, or an interesting aspect of her personality (I pull the accent line a bunch), raiding is very similar, in the fact that you have to be aware of your surroundings at all times and be attentive to detail. By noticing the small things, you've already became better than everyone else.

High DPS is also important from you (your offensive aka teasing, commentary and just being cool in general), but sometimes you need a tank to distract something (wingman for a cockblock). Healers are also necessary sometimes, such as when a girl shit tests you (harder bosses deal more damage, hotter girls shit test you more).

Having all aspects of this together are important, and when you finally kill a boss (whatever your goal is: kiss close, fuck close, number, whatever) you move on to the next one. And continue from then on. Much like raiding, game is addicting.

The one most important thing is to be determined and persistent. (learned this from wiping on Heroic Lich King 40 times and still trying, also from getting blown out multiple times when I first learned to game). If you wipe on the boss, keep at it, or just try another one. Much like girls, except less second chances. If you're having a rough night (too many wipes, loss of morale, some bullshit goes down), it's alright to call it a night, go do some other things the next day to make yourself better, and get back into it.

Once you get all your gear in order (game skills), you'll have the confidence to go out there and slay bosses or pussy, whichever you prefer




And no, this isn't a , but I thoroughly enjoyed plunging through the depths of my WoW and gaming memories to compare them. I hope you guys enjoyed this, and I hope all you former (I hope former) WoW players out there understand game better.

I'm sure there are more comparisons, I hope they come to me.

Post: #2

Well, grouping up for a dungeon does remind me of the usual dynamic going out to bars with other guys. You work together until treasure drops and then everyone starts fighting over it.

Post: #3

All the world's a game,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their wins and their losses;
And one man in his time plays by many rules...

Post: #4

This reminds me of the TED speech : Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world.

Its about how in countries like the US, average people people spend, on average, 10,000 hours playing online games by the age of 21, but that many of the skills people acquire in gaming are beneficial to society and transferable to real life.

I thought it was a great speech and it fits nicely with the tone of your post, but I cannot say that I really agree.

Its like the case of chess masters / enthusiasts - a lot of people believe that learning to play and excel at the game of chess leads to increased intellect and logical reasoning skills which can be utilized outside of the game of chess. However, after a century of investigation, not a single study with adult chess players has managed to establish a link between chess skill and intelligence - Intellect had little predictive power among strong chess players. What was found, however, was that renowned chess players had an increased ability to see patterns on the chess board - chess masters were not able to conduct a deeper analysis of the pieces on the board, but they were able to recognize patterns exponentially faster than intermediate chess players - they had trained their minds to recognize patterns over years and years of practice.

This understanding of excelling at a skill applies to anything else – if you want to get good at something specific, then practice mastering that specific task. If you want to be a better runner, run, if you want to be a better programmer, program, if you want to fuck more girls, focus on picking up girls. Over time your brain will develop a complex/specific pattern recognition system and you will achieve your goals effortlessly. Of course, it is important to unwind and recharge, but prioritizing your goals and focusing specifically on the skills necessary to reach them will have the greatest impact on your ability to do so.


Some excerpts from the speech : (http://soulsatisfyingtech.blogspot.com/2...etter.html)

"So, consider this really interesting statistic; it was recently published by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University: The average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent 10,000 hours playing online games by the age of 21. Now 10,000 hours is a really interesting number for two reasons. First of all, for children in the United States 10,080 hours is the exact amount of time you will spend in school from fifth grade to high school graduation if you have perfect attendance.

So, we have an entire parallel track of education going on where young people are learning as much about what it takes to be a good gamer as they are learning about everything else in school. And some of you have probably read Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Outliers." So, you would have heard of his theory of success, the 10,000 hour theory of success. It's based on this great cognitive science research that if we can master 10,000 hours of effortful study at anything by the age of 21, we will be virtuosos at it. We will be as good at whatever we do as the greatest people in the world. And so, now what we're looking at is an entire generation of young people who are virtuoso gamers."

"So, I've started to think about what these games are making us virtuosos at. Here are the four things I came up with. The first is urgent optimism. OK, think of this as extreme self-motivation. Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success. Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible, and that it is always worth trying, and trying now. Gamers don't sit around. Gamers are virtuosos at weaving a tight social fabric. There's a lot of interesting research that shows that we like people better after we play a game with them, even if they've beaten us badly. And the reason is, it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone. We trust that they will spend their time with us, that they will play by the same rules, value the same goal, they'll stay with the game until it's over."




chess article ; http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/...ing-and-iq

Post: #5

(12-17-2012 11:18 PM)se7en Wrote:  This reminds me of the TED speech : Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world.

Its about how in countries like the US, average people people spend, on average, 10,000 hours playing online games by the age of 21, but that many of the skills people acquire in gaming are beneficial to society and transferable to real life.

I thought it was a great speech and it fits nicely with the tone of your post, but I cannot say that I really agree.

Its like the case of chess masters / enthusiasts - a lot of people believe that learning to play and excel at the game of chess leads to increased intellect and logical reasoning skills which can be utilized outside of the game of chess. However, after a century of investigation, not a single study with adult chess players has managed to establish a link between chess skill and intelligence - Intellect had little predictive power among strong chess players. What was found, however, was that renowned chess players had an increased ability to see patterns on the chess board - chess masters were not able to conduct a deeper analysis of the pieces on the board, but they were able to recognize patterns exponentially faster than intermediate chess players - they had trained their minds to recognize patterns over years and years of practice.

This understanding of excelling at a skill applies to anything else – if you want to get good at something specific, then practice mastering that specific task. If you want to be a better runner, run, if you want to be a better programmer, program, if you want to fuck more girls, focus on picking up girls. Over time your brain will develop patterns and you will achieve your goals effortlessly. Of course, it is important to unwind and recharge, but prioritizing your goals and focusing specifically on the skills necessary to reach them will have the greatest impact on your ability to do so.


Some excerpts from the speech : (http://soulsatisfyingtech.blogspot.com/2...etter.html)

"So, consider this really interesting statistic; it was recently published by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University: The average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent 10,000 hours playing online games by the age of 21. Now 10,000 hours is a really interesting number for two reasons. First of all, for children in the United States 10,080 hours is the exact amount of time you will spend in school from fifth grade to high school graduation if you have perfect attendance.

So, we have an entire parallel track of education going on where young people are learning as much about what it takes to be a good gamer as they are learning about everything else in school. And some of you have probably read Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Outliers." So, you would have heard of his theory of success, the 10,000 hour theory of success. It's based on this great cognitive science research that if we can master 10,000 hours of effortful study at anything by the age of 21, we will be virtuosos at it. We will be as good at whatever we do as the greatest people in the world. And so, now what we're looking at is an entire generation of young people who are virtuoso gamers."

"So, I've started to think about what these games are making us virtuosos at. Here are the four things I came up with. The first is urgent optimism. OK, think of this as extreme self-motivation. Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success. Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible, and that it is always worth trying, and trying now. Gamers don't sit around. Gamers are virtuosos at weaving a tight social fabric. There's a lot of interesting research that shows that we like people better after we play a game with them, even if they've beaten us badly. And the reason is, it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone. We trust that they will spend their time with us, that they will play by the same rules, value the same goal, they'll stay with the game until it's over."




chess article ; http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/...ing-and-iq

I see where you're coming from and I do agree that most kids need to wean themselves off of video games to become members of society. I successfully did it, and I believe that it can be done by anyone, no matter how far into the gaming abyss you've descended.

This was not a post to draw any conclusions whatsoever or base any solid evidence, just a funny correlation which I've found over the years. (I'm 20, 3 years off WoW.)

Post: #6

I never played WoW, but I played other RPGs like Witcher, Deus Ex & Dragon Age. The only thing about RPGs is " You make your own rules, and they either have a good or bad consequence". In the real world, you set boundaries with women, lead them, penetrate them and never let them talk back to you.

Post: #7

There's no serious comparison, other than perhaps a bland observation that peak performance at both might be loosely correlated with intelligence.

WoW, MMORPGs, and other games are accessible to guys who, like most of us most of the time, are risk-adverse.

If you suck at an RPG, do you get a painful feeling in the pit of your stomach? Do you go home with your pockets emptied of your hard-earned cash and feeling like a failure as a man?

Of course not, which is why they're popular. They offer modest rewards and even more modest losses.

Post: #8

Don't gem for haste and be hit-capped.

Post: #9

I always thought about how in wow, when you /duel someone, you're putting yourself out there: the other player can decline your request. But if he accepts, then it's you vs them, your skills, abilities, game experience, natural strengths and weaknesses vs theirs...just like when you approach. Yet, ingame, you never get AA, even if the general logic and mechanic of things is the same as in an approach.

If you can detach yourself from your ego so that you can approach as easily as /dueling someone in a game, and not care about rejection or losing, then you're golden.

Post: #10

Video games do teach people to learn new systems faster. A video game's nothing but a structured system where you adapt to progress. That's why Game is called Game--you learn what strategies work, adapt, and progress. Banging an already-approached-ten-times-girl is like attacking the death star; you gotta get into the trench (her filter), dodge those shit-test and rejection lasers, shake the cock-blocking TIE fighters, until it's just you and the port. Then stay steady until you can sink some torpedoes into her.

Never played WoW.

Post: #11

Time is man's most valuable resource, don't waste it playing WoW or 99% of the other shitty games made today. Playing WoW will not help you become better at game, or any other life skill.

When I was younger I spent countless hours playing WoW, Halo, and other games. Then I read an article by the game designer Jonathan Blow that changed my perspective on video games; it was a red pill of sorts.

Quote:"The meaning of life in WoW is you’re some schmo that doesn’t have anything better to do than sit around pressing a button and killing imaginary monsters," he explained. "It doesn’t matter if you’re smart or how adept you are, it’s just how much time you sink in. You don’t need to do anything exceptional, you just need to run the treadmill like everyone else."

Quote:"As long as players are hooked, it doesn’t matter how good the core gameplay is. As long as they want to get the nicer sword, they’ll still play the game, and as long as they play it’s all the same to us as designers – I’m sure at this point, people think I’m needlessly babbling on about this point. But I want to put forth this question – would they still play a game if it took out all the scheduled rewards?"

A few games with well written stories, creative game mechanics, etc. I appreciate the same way I would a great novel or film. But for the most part there is no originality to be found in this medium.

Video games are good for an occasional escape. But since game and self-improvement go hand in hand, it's better to forget about them and invest your time into something that will make you happy but also provide other benefits.

Post: #12

Used to play WoW too, 15-18. Perhaps the biggest regret of my life so far, all the hours I could have spent otherwise.