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Subdue-the-World Gameplay
For a while now, I felt uncomfortable with my state of gaming. I noticed
that it became harder to group up to play with my friends, with whom I
regularly played for a long time now. I noticed that when I was hyped
about some kind of game - or aspect of a game - they are not. Or if they
were, their hype died off much faster than mine.
This went on for over a year now, but I couldn't really find and fix
that problem.
It took a while to unterstand what it actually is, that I like about my
games. There was a time when I thought it was speed leveling. I had that
idea, because I intensely prepared myself for the classic wow release.
If you'd ask my friends they would tell you that I overdid it. Most
people think leveling a character to level 60 in wow classic is a pain
in the ass. So people had little to no understanding why the fuck I
leveled a druid to 60 on a private server, just to do a couple of
dungeon runs and a handfull of raids, and never touch it after that
anymore. I played Classic WoW and found the early phases (mainly 1 and
2) really enjoyable. Then shortly before Phase 3 (of 6) I needed a
break. Shadowlands came out. I tryharded it on one character. I did all
the world quests, pushed the reputations. Even did a optional reputation
farm for some alchemy recipe. M+ became boring, so I played some Arena.
It became boring aswell. At this point I was thinking it was the
speedleveling that has fueled my motivation.
I checked out path of exile again (for the second time). I tried to get
a better understanding. The seasonal concept seemed somewhat appealing
to me. Couldn't really excplain what it was. I watched the 4hour videos
of a top PoE-speedrunner. And I was still thinking that is speedleveling
my thing.
Then Classic TBC was announced. Shortly after that, I heard about a
fresh private server. And did the same thing I ded for Classic TBC
again. Rushed a character on a fresh private server to max level and
started gearing to my best potential.
For a long time I felt lost. Undefined. A bit of a (gaming-)crisis.
The reason of this was the simple fact, that I could not explain people
what I like. Other people had established terms of what they like about
a game: "Hey, I like M+", "Hey, I like Arena" or "Hey, I like "MOBAs".
At this point I had no term that described, what I learned to love about
a game. That's simply because there is no term for what I like. The
absence pushed me into other existing terms like "speedleveling". Which
turned out to not entirely be my thing.
Now comes the most interesting part of this article. The reason why I
wrote this article. I do now know what fuels my motivation for a game.
It is a fresh world, filled with other players that start with nothing
and rush to build their characters, professions and skills. They rush to
conquer the limited ressources that this world has to offer. An economy
establishes. You have to make decissions on what to buy and what to farm
yourself. You utilize the unique features of your class to make a
specific farm possible. World pvp comes into being. Players fight for
specific valuable ressources.
I don't really know how to call this. But I wanna call it conquer or
subdue-the-world kind of gameplay.
Now that it has a name, I really hope I have an easier time to explain
this stuff to my friends and hope they can appreciate this aspect more.