Gearscore becomes Playerscore.

Gearscore, the World of Warcraft app which decides how good your equipment is and assigns you a score, is loved by some, and despised by many others. It has long been used as a way for raid-leaders to decide who is worthy to join them on their terribly important expeditions, without requiring them to waste any thought on treating the candidates as individual human beings who are more than the sum of their equipment slots.

Today, Gearscore has been taken over by Ten Ton Hammer, and it has become Playerscore.

So now it’s not just your stuff that’s being rated and dismissed. It’s YOU!!!!

So, what is Playerscore?

PlayerScore is a way to get information about WoW characters, and help figure out how competent they might be. Not only does it provide automatic scores and profiles, it allows players to rate each other. You can view PlayerScore info in-game or on the Web, whichever you prefer.

Some of it is gathered and uploaded via our AddOn and Updater. Much of the profile data is pulled from the WoW Armory.

Allowing player-rating will be gamed by the guilds, and place individuals at even more of a disadvantage in the ratings than they already were.

For me, the most ugly aspect of Playerscore is that you have no choice as to whether it will have power over you. We did not ask this unaccountable corporate entity (currently Master Games International Inc) to become the arbiter of who gets to do what in WoW. It does not ask you to opt-in to the system. You can’t even fully opt out. You can choose not to use it yourself, but that won’t stop it from being used against you. I consider this to be the greatest fault with the system. It should allow you to log on to its website, and tell it to stay the hell out of your business.

Only when that is possible will a sufficiently large number of people be able to make a stand against this mindless and dehumanising add-on. Of course, the way that it essentially forces people that want to raid to use it, through peer-pressure, is the key to its success, so I would not expect to see that change any time soon.

We are not the sum of our inventories. We are not numbers. We have context.

Prisoners Of Playerscore

Prisoners of Playerscore

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.”

—Number 6

9 comments to Gearscore becomes Playerscore.

  • […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Scopique, Neil Frankham. Neil Frankham said: Gearscore becomes Playerscore.: Ark's Ark http://t.co/z1po5DQ […]

  • Could not agree more. SO sad to see this. Like I said earlier, I DO use the program for personal use, but I’ve never even examined someone else, just my own character and yes, due to pressure to “keep up” with the big kids – not even in raids, but in instances.

    Really sad to see it go this rout. It even goes so far as to say the player will be unable to perform to their full potential due to missing enchantments.

    Last time I checked, it was my brain that made me a competent player, and not the +stats I added to my gear.

  • John Angel

    Stargrace, Are you really trying to say a player does better with out enchants? This is just stupid. No matter how damn good you are, you will perform better if you enchant your gear properly.

  • […] of Ark’s Ark notes that now that Ten Ton Hammer has bought up the rights to the popular and divisive add-on “GearScore” and renamed it […]

  • I think it’s this e-sport aspect typified by GearScore that is the main reason why I lost interest in the game.

  • Malkavelli

    Ive only just resubbed to WoW…how prevalent is this really? Do I have to worry about it before top level end game? My highest level char is 71, Im guessing itll be months before I even hear of this in game…?

    WoW can be an incredibly fun casual game, wont this really only effect people that want to raid the very end game content? And to be fair its not all that extreme a measure compaired to a lot of stuff I hear about in the ‘top’ 2% of MMOs.

    I agree its unpleasant, Ive never liked the idea that people can look up my chars on the armory and potentially laugh at my old out of date lowbie gear, but they can do that anyway regardless of a third parties artificial “score” being appended as well.

    • In the brief time I was resubbed to WoW I came across the earlier version of GearScore a lot. Mostly in the chat channels, where people would usually state a minimum gearscore when organising groups. It can get far more obnoxious than that though. I’ve heard some real horror stories from friends.

      If you’re a soloer like me it doesn’t affect you in the slightest. You’re better placed than me to find out how it is now. Maybe you can report back after you’ve played for a while.

  • Malkavelli

    That sounds extreme, havnt seen that at all, but then I play Horde side on a PvP server which might not care so much and Ally side on an RP server which means all the crap is toned down a bit anyway. But then I assume you would have been on an RP server too so…hmmn.

    One thing thats changed since the last time I played is an auto-group matching system for dungeons. Ive been using it a lot and its the reason I resubbed (I got sent a 7 day free-re-trial), you queue either for a random dungeon in your level range or a specific one stating if you are a healer/tank/DPSer and then just wait, usually no more than 10 minutes, to be placed in a group (and dreadfully conveniently teleported to the dungeon). Gear is only an issue if the matching system considers it, players never do, at least so far.