Singular Thoughts - World Firsts

A friend had brought up the idea of writing about World Firsts, and while I don't think I ever had any, and if I did I don't know about them, I generally think they are worthy of recognition and I guess to an extent, respect, but at the same time I don't think they should be something that people should go seek out. People generally do very unethical things when it comes to popularity, world firsts in games aren't really an exception either. For example, I know certain people in World of Warcraft have done things that exploits the game play mechanics to get things such as a abnormal amount of experience, or boosted arena ratings. I've also seen people win trading to get more honor when the honor system was the main source of endgame PvP rewards, while that doesn't exactly directly aim for a world first it still attempts to get things quicker than other people usually a abnormal means.

While some can argue that the same thing has been done on a smaller scale for things like achievements, doing things like finding out where the highest concentration of a single mob type to grind out to speed up the progress on the achievement, or even organizing ways for multiple people to get an achievement still stays within the boundries of the game by using game mechanics. Doing things such as killing bosses and having 1 person get all of the xp is not exactly normal because one person is getting credit for the work of a lot of people, while that's probably what they have in mind and that's what they're trying to aim for for one reason or another, the game was not designed with that kind of play intended, and so acts such as those fall into the category of unethical, or more commonly, cheating.

So while I don't mind world firsts in the grand scheme of things, I do mind that people would essentially “do anything” to get them, this usually puts the whole term on a bad reputation, and it isn't seen too positively by others for a number of reasons from not liking the way they possibly got it, to wishing they got it before them to begin with.