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The Gear Score Craze: Where WoW Meets Reality (Again!)
My score is 2286. What's yours? Go to blahblahsuperleet.com and find out your score today!
When I log onto WoW I tend to do it to escape real life. Whether it's to do some mindless daily quests while I listen to a podcast or to heal or dps instances as a priest, I log onto WoW to unwind, clear my head, or just plain relax. Once upon a time I used to sneak into raids I wasn't quite geared for and made up for it with skill. I'd always do my job and I'd always do it well while usually outperforming people much more geared than me.
But now?
Must be this tall to ride.
Must have this credit score to be approved for a loan.
Must have this GPA to maintain your scholarship.
Must spend this amount on the first date.
Must have a gear score of 2400 to do X raid.
Suddenly, my skill doesn't matter as much because now I have another arbitrary number thrown at me that tells me what I can and can't do. This isn't just from pugs either, but from my guild. It's a shame in a way. I understand where people are coming from: people don't like to wipe and they want you to get x amount of lower level purples before moving up to the big boy raids. But it seems like people I've ran into ignore my abilities and define me by one number that's supposed to give the whole picture.
I'm not a hardcore raider, and the gear score thing isn't going to kill my enjoyment of WoW in the least. But I do find it interesting, if a little sad, that players will value the ilvl of your gear/enchants/etc before your ability to stay out of the freaking fire.
Or is Gear Score just another number for players to buff up to feed the addiction? What do you think?
Last edited by waytofailself; 28-10-2009 at 02:32 AM..
My score is 2286. What's yours? Go to blahblahsuperleet.com and find out your score today!
When I log onto WoW I tend to do it to escape real life. Whether it's to do some mindless daily quests while I listen to a podcast or to heal or dps instances as a priest, I log onto WoW to unwind, clear my head, or just plain relax. Once upon a time I used to sneak into raids I wasn't quite geared for and made up for it with skill. I'd always do my job and I'd always do it well while usually outperforming people much more geared than me.
But now?
Must be this tall to ride.
Must have this credit score to be approved for a loan.
Must have this GPA to maintain your scholarship.
Must spend this amount on the first date.
Must have a gear score of 2400 to do X raid.
Suddenly, my skill doesn't matter as much because now I have another arbitrary number thrown at me that tells me what I can and can't do. This isn't just from pugs either, but from my guild. It's a shame in a way. I understand where people are coming from: people don't like to wipe and they want you to get x amount of lower level purples before moving up to the big boy raids. But it seems like people I've ran into ignore my abilities and define me by one number that's supposed to give the whole picture.
I'm not a hardcore raider, and the gear score thing isn't going to kill my enjoyment of WoW in the least. But I do find it interesting, if a little sad, that players will value the ilvl of your gear/enchants/etc before your ability to stay out of the freaking fire.
Or is Gear Score just another number for players to buff up to feed the addiction? What do you think?
As I said before, like you, I play for fun and a bit of an escape from real life. And, repeating myself again, I play for enjoyment, not employment. I refuse to go to a website where I must apply to join others or be considered for a guild or anything else that means my qualifications will be assessed and probably found wanting. No way I'd group with someone who is then going to inspect every bit of my gear and tell me I'm not good enough. This is not a profession, it's a game!!!!
Honestly, I understand a LITTLE bit, considering if you don't have the mana (Which can be semi-seen through Gear-Score) then you probably can't do X fight because it's an endurance fight. When they say no "You must have 2400 to do X." but you have 2386 or something, then yeah, that's crap.
Honestly, I understand a LITTLE bit, considering if you don't have the mana (Which can be semi-seen through Gear-Score) then you probably can't do X fight because it's an endurance fight. When they say no "You must have 2400 to do X." but you have 2386 or something, then yeah, that's crap.
I always think that it eliminates a lot of potential friends or group people that you could join and function with usefully and in a fun way. People, though, that may just need some developing or friendly teaching to take advantage of what they've got and can do. You can't just skim off the cream of players.
We've now found a guild of players who are quite experienced and high levels but haven't done much raiding. So we're learning together. Best of all is that it's a pleasant learning experience for the bunch of us. If you screw up nobody shouts 'Noob' or kicks you from a group. The aim is to educate us all and it makes the whole thing good fun and is developing all our abilities and skills.
Do yourself a favor -- go to iTunes, find the podcast Analog Hole Gaming, and listen to episode 144 (they are somewhat profane so if you're offended by bad words, don't listen; they have an Explicit rating and it's well earned). This podcast is put on by friends of mine, and one of them who guested on here is a top level software consultant. Most of the episode is devoted to talking about mods under the hood, and they talk about Gearscore in particular. Among other things, Barry did a code review of Gearscore and talked about what a badly-written mod it is -- how many ways it gets the "score" are arbitrary and not well thought out. The podcast said it best: there are people who want to have the simplicity of being able to judge others by whittling their lives down to a single, easy number -- a number which can't judge their playstyle, experience, or character, but only their equipment, and not very well at that.
An example Barry gave from looking at the code: Gearscore severely downrates you if you don't have an item which has maximum armor class. How many times, for example, have you seen a holy paladin wearing a cloth item or two, for example, because it made that toon a better healer? It might be better suited for that character and his role, but because there's a hit on armor class, Gearscore would massively downrank that character's score on that item. So a very good holy paladin who wasn't wearing all plate would show up as having LESS score as another holy paladin wearing a tanking set that wasn't suited for his role.
Having the best gear doesn't necessarily mean you're the "cream of the players" or that you need developing or friendly teaching. It means they were present at a raid where the gear was available and that they raid enough that they had the appropriate DKP to get a piece. It doesn't mean they are tons more skilled than other people, that they're any more fun to spend time with, or that they really know how to play their class, or they really know how to gear their character for his role and spec, because Gearscore can't really count any of those things.
Gearscore wasn't the only mod they talked about, but since this was the mod that got my friend Christy to think about presenting this information in their podcast, and because it was relevant to this post, they decided to devote most of a show to mods and how they work under the hood. The event that precipitated her interest was a member of our guild who works off hours was kicked out of an Onyxia 10-man pug because he didn't have the ridiculously high Gearscore of 5000 (it's only in the high 4000s because he hasn't gotten all of his gear out of 25-man ToC).
The episode also talks about some other interesting things related to mods; for example, I had no idea how much system resources were being taken up by "back channel chatter" of my mods talking to other mods. I've ended up getting rid of some of the worst offenders.
...Ren
PS. Mods, I hope you don't mind me mentioning my friends' podcast; it IS totally free.
Ok, so playing most of the time in PUGs for almost 5 years I feel I can chime in here. The gear score addon from curse is essentially double the score of the wow-hereos website - just to make that clear. I run a smooth sailing ship as Tanking the group which now - since the addon "Gearscore" I can now recruit the "best" GS in LFG. This is only for roic 5 mans. Pre roic instance I don't care and raids are a different story.
I want to make a few things clear. World of Warcraft has been driving along a logical road as of lately - meaning, instances/raids with their lovely boss encounters have a set tactic. You need a tank @ xxx cap etc... you need dps at 2K (ex) min. and healers need to have xxx #'s in their healing capabilities. Skill really isn't a factor anymore - more like patience.
Gear is easy to obtain. It's cheap in the AH @ 200lvl gear epics. Factions give out free epics so to speak just by hitting exulted which again is so easy to hit now (exulted).
I wrote a thread where my preist turned 80 and within that day I ended up in full epics @ a GS of 2100.
Since the implementation of Gearscores, I've ran a lot more successful PUGs/groups and seriously owning 5 man roics (except the !@#$ing Oculus) - it's just a pain on the last boss.
My point? Within a week of playing wow @ 80 (15 hours) you can obtain a lot of purple gear, gear up well enough to join LFG's roics and doing the daily stuff. If you want more from the game, join a raiding guild. I have done just that and ran a full VoA 10 without wipe.
I'll take any "purple" gearscore in LFG to fill in whatever we're missing for PUG'n, however, I'll take the highest GS firstly. Not just because they have this uber high GS, it's because they have shown me personally they play the game a lot and have patience/expeirence.
Clearly, more people need to learn to use Namescore. It swear it has better accuracy at predicting a good player than Gearscore does.
All Gearscore really does is work based on the ilvl of your gear. I played with the mod a bit just to see how it worked in practice. I was able to improve my gearscore by swapping my badge T9 gloves for PvP ones that I got in vault.
Gearscore doesn't tell you if they gem like a moron or if they are trying to PvE in a PvP spec. It doesn't tell you if the mage is stacking mp5. It doesn't tell you that that resto shaman is sporting 300 hit rating.
Gearscore is dumb. It's basically a lazy way for people to fill in pugs and be elitist pricks about it. If you really want to pug something serious enough to need to check gear, do it manually so you can actually get some accurate information. If you can't tell by simply inspecting someone whether or not they have the gear for what you want to do and whether or not they have a basic understanding of their class then you aren't in a position to be telling anyone they aren't good enough for your run.
anyone who takes gearscore seriously is an idiot. Any guild that does is run by idiots.
I do agree with Jan that gear is relatively easy to get. In my Ulduar raids I favor people who have some Conquest badge gear because it shows they're putting in effort on their own. How MUCH badge gear? Meh... that varies depending on how much they can play.
And I understand the reasoning with PUGs... I got a desparate tell from a guildie who was in a reg ToC pug. I came to heal.... one DPS DK was in all blue PvP gear. The one DK tank couldn't hold aggro... so another DK tanked. Now, I'd healed the tank on Ony 25 the night before with no issues. I regularly heal Ulduar. I had a hell of a time keeping this guy up. PWS, PoM, Fheal, Penance.... his gear was crap and he wasn't using cooldowns to help. Sigh... this is REGULAR ToC-5. Not heroic, not the raid. Of course it didn't help that the DPS was doing about 1k per toon...
Bottom line, there's a threshold you need to get over and if you haven't you either don't know your class or you don't care. ONce you're over that though, the gearscore is irrelevant really.
Jan, I had the same thing happen when it came to dinging 80 on my Warlock... I already had done ToC 5 (Reg) to get every piece of gear from there that I could equip, then I had guildy's make me a Titansteel Spellblade, I bought a couple items off the AH, and then that same night I did Naxx. I think I was at around 2400 Gearscore.
If I were just some random person, who didn't have an alt who has already done the content, I would just be a well geared noob and that's that.
Ok, so playing most of the time in PUGs for almost 5 years I feel I can chime in here. The gear score addon from curse is essentially double the score of the wow-hereos website - just to make that clear. I run a smooth sailing ship as Tanking the group which now - since the addon "Gearscore" I can now recruit the "best" GS in LFG. This is only for roic 5 mans. Pre roic instance I don't care and raids are a different story.
I want to make a few things clear. World of Warcraft has been driving along a logical road as of lately - meaning, instances/raids with their lovely boss encounters have a set tactic. You need a tank @ xxx cap etc... you need dps at 2K (ex) min. and healers need to have xxx #'s in their healing capabilities. Skill really isn't a factor anymore - more like patience.
Gear is easy to obtain. It's cheap in the AH @ 200lvl gear epics. Factions give out free epics so to speak just by hitting exulted which again is so easy to hit now (exulted).
I wrote a thread where my preist turned 80 and within that day I ended up in full epics @ a GS of 2100.
Since the implementation of Gearscores, I've ran a lot more successful PUGs/groups and seriously owning 5 man roics (except the !@#$ing Oculus) - it's just a pain on the last boss.
My point? Within a week of playing wow @ 80 (15 hours) you can obtain a lot of purple gear, gear up well enough to join LFG's roics and doing the daily stuff. If you want more from the game, join a raiding guild. I have done just that and ran a full VoA 10 without wipe.
I'll take any "purple" gearscore in LFG to fill in whatever we're missing for PUG'n, however, I'll take the highest GS firstly. Not just because they have this uber high GS, it's because they have shown me personally they play the game a lot and have patience/expeirence.
You are what I think of as a 'professional' player. I don't mean that disparagingly. I mean someone who, unlike myself, is far more serious about the game, who develops it like a skill or an education and aims for the greatest proficiency. I'd have to say that I don't care about that (and again, I don't mean to disparage your play or beliefs). So I'm not the best geared or the highest DPS or likely to meet some intensive group's standards. That's fine. I play purely for fun and relaxation. If I'm reasonably competent and have some good 'stuff', that's perfectly OK with me.
Renata
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