How is it going guys? This is Steem-rolling. This article is one of the two articles I am planing to write about World of Warcraft.
This one is about lessons I learned from chasing in-game monetary value and the next one will be about chasing glory of battle in Player vs Player environment. These two values are fundamentally different, and I was on top of my game on each area. So I thought it would be insteresting.
My World of Warcraft history began in about 2006 when the expansion, Burning Crusade was about to be released. My personal life then was made me stay at home more than going out and I had always enjoyed video game even before I knew the most popular MMORPG in history. It was a perfect storm for me. Soon I would play World of Warcraft on my Macbook Pro 24/7, eating Hawaiian from Domino's Pizza delivered right to my apartment door everyday. It was good.
My first max level World of Warcraft character was a Dwarf Paladin.
In World of Warcraft, gear is everything because the better gear you have, the more powerful you become, and the more respect you get from people. So its game play is centered around getting a better gear. The ultimate goal was to have the best gear possible and become a "bad ass" and dominate enemies whether that is npc or enemy players. And that's why we played World of Warcraft.
To acquire better gear, you must form a group with your friends and then go into "instance dungeon" to slay whoever bad guys live there. When your team successfully murders them, certain items will drop and your team get to roll a dice on each item to determine who gets it.
At the time, there were tier 4gear, tier 5 gear, tier 6 gear you could get. Tier 6 was the most powerful gear, while tier 5 was entry level gear. Although I was one of the most competitive tank, I was mostly tier 4 geared. I just never had opportunity to progress further into the game to get those awesome tier 6 gear. I was stuck.
One day, I found out that I could get into the hardest "raid instance" called "Sunwell Plateau" and farm those bad guys near the netrance over and over by resetting without going deeper into the instance. Those bad guys in there dropped some of the most lucrative stuff in game.
Usually it took for normal players to go from tier 4 to tier 6 several months. Only if I could farm those guys, I could skip all of that process and get equipped with the best gear possible in game. This idea was the seed of all that's happened in this article(raid instance is much bigger and lucrative version of dungeon and you need at least 20 people to do it)
I did this everyday
To help you understand more clearly, if tier 4 was a BMW in 2010, those gear in Sunwell Plateau was Lamborgini 2017 Centennario. So I decided to go for it, and started advertising on trade chat to put together a viable group. I needed like 25 people who were at least tier 4 geared players. Sunwell Plateau was the hardest raid, and can never be cleared with tier 4 geared people, but with good strategy, it was possible to farm just the beginning part of the instance.
I started inviting people who were interested. When there were about 15 people in the group, a couple of people yelled "You can't do it as tier 4 tank, it's way harder than you think" and left the group. More and more people start leaving the group, and I was alone in 5 minutes.
I didn't give up. I kept on advertising on trade chat and refilled the whole group with another 25 people. And we got to Sunwell Plateau and farmed shit load of gold.
From that day, I did this everyday all day for a couple of months. The group needed at least 20 people to be viable. So it was very hard to another group to form because there isn't enough people. And I was always the first one to put together a group before anyone else. Also I was the only person who knew the right strategy to do the job. For all these reason, I got to monopollize the raid instance.
World of Warcraft may be just a video game, but what happens inside it a simplified version of real life. You can apply these principle in your life as well. So let me talk about what I learned from this.
First, you must believe in yourself. This is very important. People would constantly make you feel like you couldn't do it or sometimes they would outright tell you that. They will do this no matter what until you actually succeed. When you do succeed, people will start worshipping you.
Second, you have to be persistent. One reason I became the richest player on that server is that I was obsessed with the thing I did. I literally did it all day everyday until I got tired and eventually went to bed.
Third, take the road less traveled. Until I came up with the idea, no one has ever done it. I was the first one to do it kinda like Columbus or the early Bitcoin investors in Bitcoins. People said to me all kinda negative things like it was a bannable offense, so Blizzard will ban your account, like people told Columbus that he would eventually fall off the end of the ocean.
Fourth, you will have power if you can monopolize. After some time, I had obtained exclusive control of that Sunwell Plateau farming. This exclusive control over the most lucrative economy gave me so much power. In fact I was the single most powerful player on that server. Once a couple of players in my group did something seriously wrong, so I banned them and the rest of their guild from ever joining my group. After that no one dare tried to mess with me. In addition to that, there was even a female player who wanted to offer herself for some of the lucrative stuff you could get in my raid. At the time, I had no idea what she was saying but I realized what she meant later... I know Kate Beckinsale played World of Warcraft. There is no proof that she was not Kate Beckinsale. So Kate Beckinsale might have been saying that to me... That was a joke.
Yes, you can
Fifth, be fair to people. Although I had power over whatever happened in the raid. I did not bend the rules to my liking. I set the rule and stuck to it. The rule had never changed. This gave the people who joined my group trust thus they constantly joined my group everyday. It's kinda like Blockchain technology today in which the rules are set and never change so people trust the whole system. If you are a strong leader, then people will follow you.
Thank you guys for reading my post.
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