A Hardcore Embarkation: Knowledge
I started a post series about “hardcore” almost 3 months ago called “A Hardcore Embarkation.” There have been a whopping 2 articles so far. First, the introduction. Then, I discussed one way in which players can be hardcore: dedicating a significant amount of Time to a game. Other than time, what are players willing to do to reach the goals they set for themselves? One method is the acquisition of Knowledge.
While not quite as obvious a “hardcore” behavior as spending many hours playing a game, knowledge is a more sophisticated method of reaching a goal than simply dedicating a lot of time to playing a game.
As I’ve mentioned before, this is goal-ambiguous. A player’s goal might be to gain levels quickly, corner a market on the auction house, discover the optimal path for embarking on quests, or explore and learn all about the lore of a world. It doesn’t matter what the player wants to do (for purposes of this discussion), it’s what they are willing to do to get there.
What is knowledge? Let’s see what the dictionary has to say.
1. acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition
2. familiarity or conversance, as with a particular subject or branch of learning
Basically, the amount of effort and brainpower a player is willing to dedicate to learning how to reach their goal determines how Knowledge-Hardcore they are.
Some people spend many hours inside and outside the game acquiring knowledge. I know people who will research different character builds for many hours before even trying a particular build in the game. There are people who search for all of the books and lore within a game, and some even catalog this information on websites. Others will learn how to decorate homes or build fireplaces out of various house objects.
In all these cases, it’s players seeking existing knowledge. Experimenting and figuring out new ways to do things is something I would categorize as Skill rather than Knowledge (e.g. the person who figured out how to build a second floor out of tables in a house is using Skill, while the person who read the instructions on how to do this from a website is acquiring Knowledge). I’ll talk more about my classification of Skill vs. Knowledge in my next “Hardcore Embarkation.”
Is there an objective way to measure how Knowledge-Hardcore someone is? If we can discover the average amount of time/effort a player dedicates to the acquisition of knowledge, sure. But I don’t know what that average actually is.
To summarize:
Knowledge-Hardcore
A player who dedicates a significant amount of effort to learning about a game is Knowledge-Hardcore, regardless of the motivation or result.
I associate knowledge-hardcore as being more of the “old school” hardcore. When I think I of hardcore players I often think about those people with a firm grasp of the game they are playing and tons of working knowledge. Even to this day, I rarely think of time as being a factor. I know lots of people who sink a lot of time into a particular game but aren’t great players. I also know great players who wrap their heads around a game and do well while investing much less time in game. But they spend a great amount of time researching and learning the game while not playing.
Well- another thing to ponder are beta tests. Lot of hardcore guilds want to get into those simply for accruing knowledge of various things so they can plow through content and get “world/server firsts”.
I think you have a category problem; this form of hardcore looks like a subcategory of the first. One of the things you said is a good illustration…
“Some people spend many hours inside and outside the game acquiring knowledge.”
It might be useful to subdivide time by purpose. You’ve just described the ‘explorer-hardcore’ and could do the same for achievers, killers, and socializers. But it strikes me as a subcategory of time, not a separate category.
Roughly everything comes down to Time. Time spent acquiring Knowledge, Time spent to gain Skill, Time… etc. What I might do after exploring this fully is define Time-Hardcore as a very basic willingness to spend time on a game, which would indeed encapsulate pretty much everything we can come up with. Or maybe I’ll omit Time and go with something like Monkey-Hardcore, where the player is willing to spend a bunch of time playing a game mindlessly with no real plan. Shrug.
Yes, knowledge is most certainly power in MMOs. That is why I, like Nybling there, think it is important to pick your beta testers carefully. You’ll have a good group that will actually test and improve the game. You’ll have another group, however, that is just there to learn as much as possible and have an advantage at release.
I’m Monkey-Casual
I struggled at first with trying to get past Knowledge-Hardcore seeming so broadly defined (since it included lore and class mechanics and raid-encounter mechanics lumped together) — but the division between Knowledge being someone who looks up information and Skill being someone who experiments helped to clarify it for me. To measure Knowledge-Hardcore, I’d look at things like:
> Number of sites visited for [interest] websites (interest = lore, PVP strats, raid encounters, class mechanics, etc.)
> Frequency AND time spent reading & posting questions on the sites above
> Frequency of watching video streams/ feeds/ (Blizz)casts (Watching how others do an encounter/ PVP/ designer’s plans)
> Number of add-ons utilized relating to Knowledge — e.g. “RatingsBuster” for gear upgrade comparisons, Auctioneer for AH prices, Gatherer/ Cartographer for node spawns of herbs/ mines/ fish/ etc.
> Does the person use a number-crunching spreadsheet to optimize their talent build/ rotations/ gear
> Using guides (like Prima’s), having an account with Azeroth Advisor, etc (Curt can PM me to set up the terms for the plug!)
For each of the above, Skill-Hardcore could be mapped onto them to describe people who provide the information for each bullet (e.g. Answering questions, making the video and discussing where to stand/ not stand, writing an Azeroth Advisor snippet, doing the target-dummy testing to get coefficients for the spreadsheet, etc.)
As for actual numbers, that’s tough. Probably a survey to ask about the above (and others.) I think it’d be very hard to get traffic numbers from sites (much less unique visitors, time spent there, etc.) And Knowledge-Hardcore people are lurkers – for example, I’ve never posted on Elitist Jerks but I easily spend 10-15 hours/ month reading posts on their site, I download Leulier’s warlock spreadsheet and spend hours playing with it. Video views are easily seen, but that can be misleading if a given video goes viral…
Vald
I used to be Knowledge hardcore. I loved knowing stuff, and I loved being the guy people went to to get answers. It was awesome to be a social hub in the game, chatting people up about the latest gear they got and the zones they went to and sharing that with others when they needed it. Then came spoiler sites. Now no one needs the guy who knows stuff, because there is a website that knows EVERYTHING, but it killed the social aspect of it…
I hate spoiler sites. They are one of the main reasons that no game keeps me interested for long. They completely destroy what I enjoy most in games.
I’m not sure if I fall into the category of Knowledge-Hardcore, I mean sure I like to know things about the game but it’s more from an exploration point of view. I like to see as much of a game as I can, I think not knowing everything is a good thing when playing an MMO as there’s always something new to discover.