Man "Beats" World of Warcraft 655
Precision pointed out that a Taiwanese man has been named the first ever person to successfully beat World of Warcraft, getting all 986 achievements, completing 5906 quests and /hugging 11 players. Insert joke here. There are many.
Gratz (Score:4, Insightful)
Does he have all the best gearr (Score:3, Insightful)
Ancient proverb (Score:5, Insightful)
To Everyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
I beat it ages ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sense of purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:insert joke here (Score:3, Insightful)
What does homosexuality have to do with it?
Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure why your short attention span is any more admirable. I might agree that this particular persons priorities are difficult to understand, but no more than most MIT applicants, or football stars, or that girl who has given head to over a dozen different guys by the time she was 15. Reasonable people assume "all things in moderation" is the correct way to live life, however there's really no proof that this is correct.
Re:To Everyone... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want to sit around mocking this guy for this, but I do feel sorry for him. After all, after his own personal sense of accomplishment over this feat has faded, he's going to be left looking back at all the time he spent on it, and the fact that he ultimately has nothing of any value to show for it. That can be very depressing.
Re:Deaths (Score:2, Insightful)
And that's one of many reasons WoW has a huge audience compared to most MUDS and RPGs: they don't punish the player horribly for dying.
I think dying and losing a level would be enough of a setback to drive much of WoW's audience away. You'd end up with considerably more people who can actually play the game at the level cap, but for Blizzard it'd crimp revenues.
Re:To Everyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
Karma whoring at it's finest. Some of us run departments, play on Facebook, have successful marriages, fish on the weekends, visit with family regularly, and still have the time to hit slashdot, simply because it saves us time by consolidating tech news.
I know its fun for /.ers ourselves lonely losers, but in reality, most of the readers are likely quite successful in one way or another, or all the "your rights online" and quazi-political articles and such would be meaningless.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he should write a book. Here's the title: "How to win and still be a loser".
Re:I beat it ages ago (Score:4, Insightful)
I was one of the few ones lucky enough to turn away from that hell with my life still intact. I feel a bond with others I meet that were able to do the same. Stand strong my friend...relapse is easy.
Since it seems you're being serious, I'd like to respectfully disagree.
World of Warcraft is a social game played via the internet. The degree of 'hell' you endure is completely, totally, entirely a product of the choices YOU make. The degree of addiction you suffer attached to the game is likewise a product of YOUR OWN deficiencies. To lay all the blame of your unhappiness on this or any video game is completely irresponsible.
If you find dealing with random people on the internet to be unbearable, look into personality training. If you find internet games to be an addictive force that dominate your life, look into self-control/addiction support.
Meanwhile thank God you didn't accidentally wander into a casino or a crack house instead.
To be clear - I feel you've made the right choice, but I feel that placing the responsibility on the game itself undermines the millions of people who have not lost their lives to it.
Re:Deaths (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also the reason why WoW isn't really a proper game: you can't lose. Everything you do is okay and nothing can go wrong. Sure you can be killed, but you just get the chance to try again or try something else without being set back at all.
This makes WoW more of a social platform wrapped in a virtual world than an actual game.
I fear the day (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya know, MMOs have life cycles. They get born, they age, they eventually die. Eventually, the company running it will pull the plug. Be it because it's not profitable anymore to keep it running, or be it because they want to "convince" their players to come to their new MMO.
Yes, there's EQ and UO (and Meridian for you Great Old Ones), but face it, they're little more than hollow shadows of what they used to be.
Every MMO in its history met a terminal expansion. No, I don't mean the last one. I mean the one that kills the game. That convinces the players (at least those that still have a life) that it's just not worth it. DAoC managed it with Trials of Atlantis, SWG had its Jump to Lightspeed (aside of other troubles), eventually every maker of MMOs fucks something up and people leave.
I fear the day this happens in WoW. It will happen. Certainly not for the next year or two, and I'm quite sure that two or three expansions will still be in the fold for WoW. But eventually, the game mechanics will break apart (they're creaking already when you look at the wiring under the board).
And I quietly wonder what will happen to the WoW addicts that suddenly lose the last bits of meaning their life has...
Re:To Everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't even imagine the amount of time this sort of thing would take, and how many other things he could have been doing.
I don't want to sit around mocking this guy for this, but I do feel sorry for him. After all, after his own personal sense of accomplishment over this feat has faded, he's going to be left looking back at all the time he spent on it, and the fact that he ultimately has nothing of any value to show for it. That can be very depressing.
The same can be said about every Olympic or World Champion in just about any sport. It might also be applied to people who spend every hour of every night for years building their own hot rod or ships in bottles or whatever.
In fact it can be said about every living human being who choose to do something different from what you choose to do with your time. "They should get a life."
Nobody else ever has anything to show for how they have spent their time that has any value to me. I was born, I know that I will die, what's inbetween is mine.
Re:Does he have all the best gearr (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I beat it ages ago (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see where the parent was blaming the game. He said he beat the addiction and was glad to do so, and gave details on how strong the addiction could be.
How is that blaming the game?
If anything he owned up to it. It seems to me you're being very mean to person simply because he succumbed in the past to an addiction. There, but for the grace of God, go a lot of people. Having a predilection to weakness is called being human, and if you are going to bash someone who is willing to expose a weakness that he _overcame_ then perhaps you are the one who should seek personality training.
Re:Someday (Score:2, Insightful)
wow, that sounds oddly parallel to going to work every day. *sigh*
Re:insert joke here (Score:2, Insightful)
Before that, gay meant happy and care-free. And that hasn't changed in the last 20 years just because douchebags try to use it as a term for a homosexual.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed - the difference seems to be "did you become rich and/or famous". No one mocks the hockey stars who spent every waking hour at the rink.
Re:I beat it ages ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Correction: He did not complete the game (Score:3, Insightful)
"...why are we presuming this person is a he?"
Occam's razor?
seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
What value is gained for reading a book, watching a movie, listening to music or mounting a pretty painting on the wall? It's all entertainment. If he enjoyed doing it, that's all the gain *he* needs. Entertainment is an end unto itself. Fun and beauty ARE utility.
i'd rather do the other things i listed above than play WoW, but in the end, it's all fun and games.
Re:Of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does he have all the best gearr (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing really much.
Re:All those achivements ... (Score:2, Insightful)
since when there is a goal in real life? you think you won the real life game by having grand-children and a big family? Or by collecting girlfriends? wake up!
the cake is a lie. There is no goal to complete. There is just what the society want you to do.
Re:Time? (Score:3, Insightful)
"/played" time (that is, time spent actually logged in)? You would have to ask him; it's not a stat available to the general public, afaik.
Sidereal time?
1) While he has the "Swift Flight Form" Feat of Strength achievement, the datestamp on it is not that of when achievements were first noted. This feat was added April 14 2009, he got it April 23rd. This might not be an accurate measure, though, if the Taiwan servers were updated later than the US ones.
2) He has the "Stone Guard" Feat of Strength achievement, indicating that he was involved in PvP at least as far back as 2006.
Beyond that, hard to tell.
Re:To Everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
It might also be applied to people who spend every hour of every night for years building their own hot rod or ships in bottles or whatever.
You might even argue that it applies to people who work their whole lives to achieve fame and fortune. It's not uncommon for those people to neglect some of their personal relationships or have other parts of their lives suffer. Often enough, they end up losing their fortune to some degree or failing in other pursuits. Eventually, sooner or later, those people will die anyway, and it's not clear that they're better off in death than any of us. It's all pointless from a certain perspective.
So cheer up, all you WoW players. Your WoW-filled lives aren't any worse than a guy who has millions of dollars and bangs supermodels!
Re:To Everyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, but I think far more people would find value in a handcrafted ship-in-a-bottle, or a hot rod built by hunting down the parts needed, taking the time to learn the engineering, and applying that into a working restoration of a vehicle. On top of that, these things also tend to carry value both socially and monetarily, as well as a sense of accomplishment that actually carries on past the "fading" point likely to be felt with the WoW accomplishment. Doing things like building a car or a house or spending months perfecting a masterpiece of oil and canvas open people up to more social exposure than, say, having some friends over to check out your paladin. You can drive your hot rod, take it to shows, hell even be a guest speaker in an auto-mechanics class. A composition of music could be enjoyed for hundreds of years by audiences you never imagined. Your WoW account, however, will likely not be heralded as a feat of great accomplishment outside of a small community of others seeking to achieve in even the modest task which is their charge: level up.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To Everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, what do you mean he won't be heralded as a great achiever? There's a front page story about him on Slashdot, which is more fame than your hypothetical ship-in-a-bottle builder will ever see.
Even IF all the posts on here are mocking him. William Hung is famous too, right?
Re:To Everyone... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:To Everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
ahh but ther point you make assume I place the same value on those things as everyone else. If I choose to place value on other things, then your opinion is not valid in MY eyes.
Ships in a bottle are a waste of time, get a life
Sports are a waste of time, get a life.
Making money is a waste of time, get a life.
Going to bars to meet girls is a waste of time, get a life
Sex is a waste of time, get a life.
All of these are transient, as are all things. You can argue some have more value than others but that value is relative to the people involved. It is primarily a cultural and societal construct.
We can argue that pursuits which return goods or money may have more value for basic every day needs (food, water, shelter, etc) but that is not really what we are talking about here. You can also argue that even those have no real value in the long run. Same with sciene or art. In 20,000 years the Beatles wont matter.
How is an olympian served by the dogged pursuit of a gold mdeal in cross country skiing. Longer life...MAYBE. But in reality moderate excersise along with using the extra time to make $$ for your health care and housing in the future is probably better in that regard.
Simply put, do what YOU love, fuck the rest of the world. Most people are idiots anyways.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
The trick is to use it as a social tool. I have a lot of friends in WoW. Lately I've taken a bit of a break (okay I haven't touched it in 4 months), but I still hangout on the guild's forums and facebook to keep in touch ATM. When I'm ready and work clams down again I'll be running instances and such with them again.
Repetitive? Kinda. But honestly life is repetitive. Friday nights I typically go out to some bars with friends. We talk, maybe play some pool, and drink. Same thing almost every Friday. Saturdays we typically just hang out at someone's house. Talk, joke, drink. Sometimes watch a football game - as if that isn't repetitive. Line up in formation, throw or run ball until you run out of downs or score. Rinse and repeat for a few hours. This happens several times a week during the in-season and has done the same dance for decades now.
Thing is, the people who enjoy these activities generally don't go cross-eyed looking for some deeper meaning becuase they're fine acccepting that there is none - and there doesn't need to be. Just hanging out with people can be fun in and of itself. Whether you're kicked back watching a game with your buds or kicked back killing kobolds, you can still have fun.
Re:Online-gaming attention timespan (Score:3, Insightful)
This I can agree with - not so much for disappearing from your team (which is a legitimate problem in and of itself), but also from an investment standpoint. My WoW characters have a TON of time and energy invested. I know the classes, I know the spells, I have good gear, and I've invested a lot of time in leveling them. Just going to another MMORPG feels like I'm ditching all that effort to start over somewhere else. I haven't even played WoW lately but the only other games I've been able to bring myself to play have been single player games where progression over a long term doesn't matter. Starting another MMORPG would feel like I'm splitting my resources.
Re:To Everyone... (Score:3, Insightful)
"at least you have a ship in a bottle."
Which is useful in what way? If the goal is to acquire a ship in a bottle you can save your time and buy one already assembled.
Clearly the point of making a ship in a bottle is the challenge of the task and enjoyment one derives through the process.
The only real value of the resulting ship in a bottle is as a memento to remind you of the process you went through to make it.