On the Subject of Purists

Lucy Pinder

I've previously mentioned Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Sigil SOE's seemingly ill-fated MMO originally conceived (and subsequently fucked up) by Everquest designer Brad McQuaid. Quite apart from any gameplay or technical issues, Vanguard suffers from an insidious population of purists and self-styled "hard-core" players looking to turn back the clock and relive their MMO golden ages.
To go off on a brief tangent, anyone who thinks you can reclaim the sense of wonder and excitement you encountered in your first MMO is a deluded idiot. And you certainly won't find it by turning your current MMO-du-jour into a carbon copy of your first love.
But what bothers me about these people is how closed-minded they are when it comes to game mechanics. Any suggestion that a current game might deviate from the official gameplay guidelines laid down by UO, or EQ, EQ2 or similar is met with predictable, tedious derision. What's most irritating is that these people constantly mistake grind for difficulty, and have absolutely no idea what they even mean when they say a game should be more difficult (which is often, because they're typically fond of trying to prove how elite and hardcore they are by claiming they find everything too easy, especially in response to a normal player who might dare to suggest something's too hard).
I am reminded of this subject because of a recent Vanguard producer's post on the official forums where he reveals that they're planning to remove XP debt as a component of death penalty.
Unsurprisingly this had a lot of the elitist fools up in arms, claiming the death penalty is already too soft and the xp debt takes them little time to work off (in other words "I'm so good at this game I hardly notice the death penalty, look at me, look at me, aren't I special?").
I had previously had the unbridled nerve to suggest in another thread that xp debt was a pointless and stupid death penalty. Of course the fucknuts (I really need to come up with a good collective noun for them) missed the point of the post entirely and came back with the same old tired "no, it should stay, it takes no time to work off for me because I'm so good at this game, look at me, look at me". If it's so easy to work off, what's the point having it at all? Their point, really, is that they're scared of any change that might be viewed as making the game "carebear" (*yawn*). These are typically people who have nothing better to do than grind, grind, grind to the level cap and once there, they're terrified of anyone being able to achieve the same goal without having to put in the same hours of mindless drudgery and thereby diminish their achievement.
And that's my point. Grind is not the same as difficulty. Killing a thousand of the same type of creature for some ill-designed quest or simply to gain experience and level isn't something that should be applauded or recognised as a worthwhile achievement. Killing one creature that demonstrates sophisticated tactics (and not just sky-high stats) and provides a stimulating, unpredictable challenge would be far preferable to killing a thousand mindless zombies that simply stagger straight towards you. Improved enemy tactics are supposedly on the Vanguard to-do list, so that's something.
But the same old ignorance persists. "OMG don't reduce the grind! I spent X thousand hours grinding to the level cap and if other people can get there by playing through sophisticated, engaging content rather than mind-numbing tedium then I won't feel special!". Fuck off.