Is gearscore ruining the World of Warcraft?

Posted By: Hyorinmaru

I’m a pretty avid reader of the World of Warcraft dungeons and raid forum, and over the past couple weeks I’ve been seeing topics such as this one cause quite a stir, in some cases even provoking heated multi-page debates. So I figured I’d take some of the burden off of the forums and discuss this issue, as well as my take on it, in this blog.

To begin assessing the pros and cons of virtually anything a person must thoroughly understand what they will be analyzing. In this case, we will be investigating the recently popular add-on “gear-score”, and I’d like to take few lines to explain exactly how it works. Feel free to skip over the next paragraph if you’re already well versed on the functionality of the add-on.

Basically, in World of Warcraft every item possesses an “ilvl”, this “ilvl” correlates directly to how many stat points a given item can contain. Gear-score works by assigning a value to an item based upon the items “ilvl”, and then summing the value on each item a character possesses to achieve a net value, known as a characters “gear-score”. The idea behind the system is that since higher “ilvl” items have more stat points than lower “ilvl” items, the system will easily be able to gauge a given characters effectiveness by simply rating their gear. At first glance the idea appears flawless doesn’t it? Well, unfortunately a couple faults exist within the add-on that threatens to downgrade it from the status of an “indispensable tool” to merely a waste of memory.

So what exactly are the pitfalls to using gear-score? Well, as with most things that exist in the world, gear-score is not perfect, and to be completely honest it’s rather far from perfection. The add-on has many problems, but perhaps its most fatal flaw is that the output it provides, a character’s “gear-score”, is incapable of displaying enough meaningful information about a player’s character. In order to truly evaluate the effectiveness of a character many factors must be considered. Talents, glyphs, gems, enchants, and of course gear, are all responsible for determining a characters potential , and the gear-score add-on only has the capability to measure one of those factors, gear, which can arguably be considered the least important, as it provides the most subjective information. This is because gear-score can only identify how many stat points a given item has allocated to it, and has no way of identifying if those stat points are relevant for a given class and specialization. A death knight running around in “ilvl” 264 healing plate using spell power gems and enchants would have an impressive gear-score. Would he be very effective in a raid? Definitely not, but he could probably find his way into a pickup group thanks to gear-score. This example may seem a little extreme, but problems like this do occur on a regular basis, even if to a lesser extent. As a result many players have to equip their characters with less effective gear that has a high “ilvl” to ensure they get a spot in pickup groups. Even still, if the problem is with the add-on itself then how can it really spell disaster for entire game? In order to answer this question we will have to look at how players interpret and use the data the add-on provides.

This leads us to the misuse of the gear-score add-on, which is quite prevalent in the World of Warcraft, and is the reason that it’s despised by many players. The add-on provides an “easy way out” for many people when assembling pick up groups because it allows them to quickly mouse-over a player and see a single number, which allows them to make quick decisions as to whether they want a player in their group or not. The problem with this system is that it passes up many players with lower gear-scores that have the ability to play well, while taking players with higher gear-scores that are unable to meet the expectations set by their gear. While this problem can never be solved completely, the introduction of gear-score has seemed to make grouping with random players even more of a nightmare than ever before. Instead of players being forced to analyze a potential group member thoroughly using tools such as the World of Warcraft armory, which provides access to gems, enchants, talents, glyphs, and achievements in addition to gear. People now believe it to be possible to accurately assess the effectiveness of a character by simply glancing at their “gear-score”.

Personally, I don’t feel there is any need for the gear-score add-on at all. Why lower yourself to using an inferior tool? The primary demerit of using the add-on is the lack of information it provides, which can be easily remedied by using different resources. Sure it may take a few extra clicks instead of a simple mouse-over, but isn’t ensuring success of your group worth those extra clicks?

At the end of the day is gear-score “ruining” the game? Probably not, ruining is a strong word and I’ve yet to see a mass exodus occur. However, is gear-score something the player base could do without? Certainly, while it was a great idea in theory, attempting to maximize the efficiency of evaluating characters, it simply doesn’t provide enough critical information, and is far too easy to manipulate for it to be considered a legitimate method of character analysis. Do yourself and your group a favor and don’t squander the plethora of resources available by leaving the fate of your group up to a four digit number.