The TTR Is A Party Game

Pwiffle… Pwifty… Pwiften… Pwififif… Ppffifty… Poofy over here has some rather interesting thoughts about the TTR, and his (her? Oh Sh!t I don’t know!) utter refusal to transfer over and create a character there.

Essentially, the argument follows thusly:

” This is WoW.

The fact is, an enormous part of WoW is dedicated to the ideology of the MMO. Why? Because it’s a god damned MMO. “

And as such…

“ If I were to transfer to these Tournament realms, then I have effectively lost what I most love about the MMO. [I] would have transferred to a massive server so that I can experience the thrill of MMO PVP, but without any form of progression”

Think about that. Go read the entire post in it’s original format. Then come back here.

While I don’t disagree with his summary of the WoW community, I do disagree, a little, with where he went with the progression conclusion.

Let’s face it folks. WoW is all about getting to the next level. Thats what keeps us playing, thats what keeps us trying. Whether that progression is the honor of going head to head with Kael’thas, getting some spiffy Tier 6 gear, or to find new ways to make jokes about druid tanks, it’s all about getting to the next level. Seeing what’s next. Improving ourselves so we can participate in more difficult challenges.

The TTR, by starting everyone off with top of the line gear, has zero progression. Nothing. Nada. There is no where to go. You’re done. It flies in the face of a standard MMO, because there is nothing to keep you there.

Piffle has a warning. Once you’ve transferred, once you’ve got a min/max character, once there is no progression, there is no going back. You’re done. This is what would happen to poor Pwyff. Lose interest in WoW, and that’d be that. There is no going back to Vanilla WoW.

This may be true for Pwyff. I don’t the know guy/girl/dude/chick/shemale. Presumably it’s a guy? Women don’t talk about penises very often. And yes, the plural of penis is penises (or penes). Great, look what you did, Pwyff. Here I am trying to talk about serious WoW stuff, and here I am ranting about cocks.

Anywang, where was I? Oh, yes. Progression.

As I said, without progression, there is nothing to keep you attached to a TTR. There is nothing to keep you there for extended periods of time, nothing to unlock, nothing to achieve. Just a time spender you can safely waste a couple hours before going back to whatever it is you were doing before. It’s like playing Burnout 3 with everything unlocked. You drive around and smash things for a couple of hours, then you move on to something that has a point.

Rather than getting bored with WoW, your average gamer would simply get bored with the lack of any sense of accomplishment or reward, and go back to something that provides that. Namely, good ol’ Regular WoW.

Playing on a progression choked Test Realm will not make you sick of the game itself, merely this one small aspect of it. You would get tired of a landscape utterly devoid of goals, and actually come to appreciate vanilla WoW that much more. After a couple days playing on the TTR, returning to a live server is refreshing. Looking at your quest log, seeing stuff in there, seeing raid nights posted, seeing STUFF TO DO, is appreciated far, far more after playing on something as stagnant as the TTR.

It’s like playing Halo 2 on the PC. It makes you look back on your Bioshock and Halflife memories with a greater level of fondness.

Stuff like the TTR is just that. Stuff. Fluff. Pwyff (hee hee, I’m so funny!). Essentially something to goof off with when you need a break. That’s all.