'Work for it'

Community Housing
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I’m seeing this statement thrown around a lot in the housing forum. And it’s sad to me that after 20 years, we’re not just pushing back against overstepping from game makers, we’re actively negotiating with other players who actually desire to ‘work’ in a video game to get rewards.

Games are about fun. Rewards are about gaining something for doing well while having fun. That’s called playing a game.

At what point in your life did you convince yourself that a video game should be ‘work’? That everyone needs to grind and log in constantly to be able to enjoy the broad features of a game they pay for on a monthly basis?

Decor is not just a showpiece. Some items will be that, and they should be very rare and very few, like 10% or less should be difficult to acquire. The rest are the resources needed just to build in the first place. Nobody wants to spend thousands of gold to buy basic stools and couches and crates-- and then what, build a home full of bland generic objects?

It’s seriously depressing to me to see human beings advocating for a video game to be like a job. I saw one dude actually promoting the idea that ‘envy’ should be a significant part of the building experience.

You folks are advocating for the worst aspects of modern gaming.

We are paying Blizzard money to interact with this game. And you want it to be as grindy as possible, to feel like work, to be a series of chores? So what, you can have some false sense of accomplishment because you did something that isn’t actually hard (like top tier raiding or pvp) but is actually just incredibly time-consuming? What’s going on that you need to validate yourself in a video game like this?

If Blizzard adjusts the way decor is accessed (by improving clarity, logistics, and tweaking costs), why does that hurt you so much? Are you that opposed to other people having fun in the current global context of terrible things happening on a daily basis? Housing irl is in a terrible state in many places, conflict is growing every day, technology threatens jobs, but sure, let’s turn our escapism into ‘work’ so we can ‘earn’ fun.

Bottom line: nobody should ‘work for it’ in a video game’s housing system. You should play, have fun, earn rewards, and use those rewards to have more fun. That’s the cycle gaming was built for. Not this depressing, dystopian, time-consuming pursuit of feeling good about yourself because you have enough free time to grind things out for hundreds of hours so you can build a thing and bask in the envy of other players. That’s a freakin’ Black Mirror episode.

What a sad state of affairs this forum is. xD

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It’s weird and sad enough that the toxic “grindcore” attitude has so much power over people IRL. Getting into the origins and whys and hows of that attitude probably violates the forum rules.

When they extend it into the space of a game that we pay for with real money, at least twice (expansion and sub), then it becomes even more ridiculous, and actively toxic. The whole “anyone who objects to the grind is a lazy entitled looser baby” thing, trying to depict any comment that the grind is excessive as “demanding everything for free”, is pretty much the sign to put someone on ignore and move on with my life.

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I get what you’re saying, but effort is part of gaming. If we logged on and all mounts/mogs/decor/achievements just showed up on our character then it would simply be a “log on, log off, wait for more stuff to be added” situation.

Blizzard definitely went out of their way to make sure pretty much every piece of decor would take at least some effort (some more than others). They are trying to make housing into something that you actually have to spend some time on instead of logging on, grabbing something out of a catalogue, decorating the house, and then sitting there saying “now what?”.

Now there is a lot of room to discuss the degree of effort each piece should require, and they’re supposed to listen to feedback on that. You should be able to say here on the forums “I don’t think x piece of decor should cost so much gold” or whatever, but like with that example you need to be specific and hopefully Blizzard will see it and maybe adjust the cost.

As for other players… Well, they’re allowed to disagree and provide that disagreement as their own feedback. That doesn’t just cancel out your feedback, but I know it can be frustrating. The best advice I can provide is drop your feedback and move on, or discuss it with the other players who respond if you deem it worthwhile, but try not to feel like you HAVE to argue back and forth over things like “work for it”.

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The main problem with this attitude is that it requires others have a crap time so the grind advocates can feel good about themselves. If decor were tinkered to be more accessible and acquired by the average gamer in a reasonable timeframe, these people can continue to grind just as much and earn even more; more decor, more gold from selling decor, whatever. It’s not like they’d suddenly have nothing to do, their rewards would just increase. Grind doesn’t just disappear, there’s always something to kill and something to earn.

Everyone wins, basically.

The only benefit the grind advocates would get from things remaining grindy and boring and confusing is that it ensures they’re part of a smaller club of players willing (and able, in terms of free time) to grind so much. It’s an ego trip, basically. It has nothing to do with ‘earning’ rewards because there’s so little skill involved, only mindless time consumption.

So while I can appreciate that unearthing the cause of some people’s need for validation in a game is out of bounds for the forum, and I’m not genuinely interested in finding out, I think it’s worth noting exactly what this attitude represents and what its impacts will be for the playerbase as a whole.

Making things broadly accessible = more for all of us. Making things grindy and difficult = less for most of us, more for the small number of players who need to grind to feel good about themselves.

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One example that really stands out…

Those who are against having a neighborhood vendor or in-catalogue way to buy more copies of things we’ve already unlocked, because they “like traveling to the remote vendors”.

Nothing would stop them from traveling to the remote vendors anyway, right?

And yet… they oppose anyone else having the option to buy repeats without traveling.

So I have to ask… do they think it’s important that everyone else be forced to do things the same way? Or are they internally worried that if the game didn’t “make” them travel over and over, then they themselves would not travel?

More broadly, this applies to anyone who says they like things being locked behind grinding away for weeks at old content, because they like that old content. But if they actually liked that old content, why wouldn’t they do it regardless of the “rewards”?

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Strawman, nobody proposed that. Why can’t people just actually engage with the things that are written?

Making decor less confusing, reducing logistical requirements, and easing costs (especially for old currencies and repeat purchases) is in no way asking anyone to just plop stuff into our bags upon log in. Currently you could spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours trying to farm all decor, and very little (maybe 5% or less) is actually available in from the basic vendors. That’s a terrible outcome, people want it to be less taxing so we can have more fun getting decor and spend more time building. That’s not asking for a hand-out like so many of you want to pretend it is.

And as I already mentioned, if you want something to do, find it and do it. There’s no shortage of options. The game has existed for decades, with far less to do for most of that time than has existed for the last 5 years.

If you genuinely enjoy building, you can continue to farm decor until max storage cap (and then you can join us in asking Blizzard to do better). If you don’t enjoy building and just want to occupy your free time in life, then you should do so without undermining the happiness of others. There are a lot of things a human being can do with their free time, in-game or out.

This is easily solved: Blizzard adds new houses / blueprint system. They have to do this eventually or builders will just leave. They obviously can’t count on people blowing up their own properties every time they want to build.

And in terms of ‘now what’… if you actually enjoy building and housing, you can still farm more, you can still build more. If you don’t enjoy those things, then why do you need to specifically farm decor in the first place?

And who is anywhere near close to having farmed everything on offer? Decor acquisition should in no way be oriented around a person who has 40+ hours of their life to give away to WoW every week, and it would take a heck of a lot more than that to be anywhere near having earned all decor at this point.

All that aside, I’m calling out the ‘work for it’ attitude because it’s absurd. It needs to be called out. It’s dystopian and indicative of what businesses are doing to people’s brains. It’s rot.

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There are generally two ways to engage with video games and earn rewards:

  • Skill checks to overcome challenges, e.g., Mage Tower, M+, Visions, higher tiers of raiding…
  • Grinds where anyone can plug away at something and earn it over time, the only challenge coming from finding more efficient ways to progress, e.g., rep grinds, profession stuff, most achievements…

What many of us push back against (and I’m guessing I’m one of the ones you targeted with OP) is having rewards handed to us because we pouted until we got it. That involves no engagement with game, just complaining in forums. To many of us, it comes across as lazy and entitled. More importantly, it ignores the fact that earning your rewards is the game part of the game. Receiving the reward is a pat on the back with a shot of dopamine, but the reward means little if you did nothing to get it. Otherwise they could send it all to us in the mail, and our only game play would be logging in to check mail.

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100%, they absolutely need to have the grind and painpoints and limitations inflicted on others to make it satisfying for themselves. That’s the only way they get the ego burst.

As you pointed out, improvements to the housing system that benefit the majority are not actually undermining the ability of grinders to do what they want to do.

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Not my experience. Have you tried the various guides and websites? I’ve found more decor from in-game vendors than anywhere else, over half, and it’s taken me less than 100 hours to get my house to level 5.

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If you just want to play a game where you log in and build, why not play something like The Sims to scratch that itch? The act of collecting decor in WoW is clearly meant to be a core aspect of the housing system as a whole.

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It’s not like you have to drive for hours lol. There is no place in WoW that you can’t reach from anywhere else in WoW within 5m or less. And yes, shopping different places for items that come from those places does enrich the game world, provides more immersion.

No one is forced to do anything. It’s a game. And housing decor is a 100% optional aspect of the game. The gameplay experience of housing is similar to people who collect such things in real life: the poking around and finding stuff is half the fun!

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It’s not. But if you want the decos, do the content.

You’re misinterpreting what’s being said.

No one is doing this. And if they are, they’re about to run out of deco storage.

It’s not a job. Housing is a design philosophy to get people back out into the entire world, in all content and all expansions.

And it worked.

If you want stuff handed to you, find a mobile game.

If you don’t like a particular type of content, don’t play it. It’s really that simple.

I hate SL, so I won’t even go there for decos.

You have a choice.

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Because they think they have more of a “case” against the made-up position, against the hyperbolic caricature, than against what others are actually saying.

“You want everything for free and immediately” is an easier argument for them to make than actually trying to defend weeks or months of grinding away on a corner of the game that a player may not even enjoy.

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Correct. Because the system is to get you out into the world continually. Not once.

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Almost nothing in this game requires ‘nothing’ to get it. There are so few freebies in WoW (and most MMOs), that you’re basically pitching yourself against a non-existent problem.

Asking Blizzard to make a lot more decor more broadly accessible (by reducing logistics, confusion, and costs) is not asking for a freebie. You’re doing the same lazy strawman argumentation most of those who agree with you utilize.

It’s like you’re so afraid that we’re going to convert into a communist utopia. It makes no sense because at no point in time has Blizzard just suddenly started dumping rewards on players in this way. They may have tweaked formulas so things are easier than they were; that’s not the same thing, and if you have an issue with that, you should be clear about it, be honest.

Simply put, there will, short of the very few gift type stuff, always be a task to carry out, or a purchase cost. Blizzard is not going to change that. You know it, I know it, we all know it.

Also, you completely ignore-- like so many others-- that building is an actual gameplay feature in itself. Decor are rewards, but they’re also resources required just to engage with this feature.

Would you enjoy it if you had to grind for a month to be able to run a dungeon? Or a pvp match? Or a raid? That’s what people have to do to build right now, unless they have tons of gold to sink or tons of free time to grind.

Also, I notice you used words like ‘lazy’ and ‘entitled’, as many others keep repeating. Did it ever occur to you that Blizzard could have essentially not done a good job finding the balance between effort and reward? That this isn’t about entitlement, but a negotiation to find what can provide the most good to the most people?

You’re exactly the type of person I mean. You just can’t make a counterargument without leaning on ad hominems and mischaracterizations. We ask for Blizzard to open things up more so costs are lower and time spent doing mindless things is lessened as a requirement (you can still choose to grind if you want); yet you act like we’re welfare queens crying on their doorstep.

We’re paying players and adults. It’s time to start acknowledging that.

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Housing has not even been out for weeks and months, and you are seriously exaggerating how long it takes to collect. Maybe because you’re here complaining instead of engaging with the game and collecting? Which, if you don’t enjoy it, you shouldn’t! Find things you do enjoy and enjoy them until Midnight. Happy Holidays!

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When asked what are we paying for in a game – we are paying to spend time in the game doing something. If we can be engaged, we all win. And, to double down on it, if you are a WoW player then you have time to burn, even to the point of posting in forums.

I think the other part of this post is simply language. When I say that I worked hard for something, I mean that I played hard – but no one really says that they played hard even though that is what it is. Tripping over the word “work”, well I can get that – but the meaning is played.

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Maybe because it’s been out for just a week or two and I’ve found it all fairly quick and easy? I mean, sure there are a few pieces I don’t qualify for, a few that I looked at and thought “I’ll have to come back for that when I have more time”, but there’s been plenty of low-hanging fruit to build my home.

I can agree that it’s all about finding the right balance. I have not found the current balance to be onerous, just fun and engaging. I’m sure they’ll tweak things as they go.

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Strawman again; nobody asked for free handouts. But thanks for your reductionist views, Sendryn-- I definitely didn’t expect any better from you at this point. xD

This could be said about anything ever done in the history of humanity to ensure that nothing will ever change. It’s not an actual rebuttal, it’s just a cheap cop-out way to avoid having to actually interface with the specifics of a proposal.

We’re here to provide feedback, and feedback with particulars has been given. Your desire to constantly quote (what you think) Blizzard’s intentions are, as if it ‘is what it is’ and can’t be changed, is frankly stupid. It’s like you’ve never seen a developer make a change before based on player comments… but I’m sure you have, and what’s actually going on is that you simply disagree, and rather than owning your desires, you appeal to the authority of the devs (through your own lens) and act like there’s no way to change things.

The nature of feedback is to observe and nuance and create proposals for change though. Meanwhile, the nature of your response here is to suggest that change can’t and shouldn’t happen.

So here, try this out Sendryn: If you don’t like my post, don’t read it. It’s really that simple.

You have a choice.

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hey yeah so like it’s random old cosmetic stuff

having to do some mop profession to get a mop piece of decor is fine

good even

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