I’ve recently had the pleasure of playing the new Diablo IV season (Lord of Hatred) and something rather curious happened to me. (Stay tuned for that full article, coming soon, maybe.) I started playing a new class, the Warlock, and I wasn’t having the greatest time.
To fix that, I decided to switch classes, and just to spice things up a little, I landed on Barbarian, a class I’d never played before. If I’m being perfectly honest, everyone was talking about how OP it was this season. It was fun playing something new and I tried all sorts of builds, but it still felt lacking compared to my usual Necromancer and his minion army. So I hopped on my phone and started googling things like “diablo 4 barbarian builds”, just to see what I was doing “wrong”.
Little did I know, that was the moment all of my fun ceased to exist. In just a week since the expansion launched, the internet was already flooded with guides covering every build imaginable. These “guides” are thorough and detailed, far better than anything I’ll ever make. In my defence, it’s not that I can’t, it’s that I won’t, and you’ll understand why by the end of this article.
Anyway, I found one build particularly intriguing: the summoner/minion Barb build. I read through it a couple of times and knew exactly what I needed to do to put it together. For the next few days I was grinding for it like my life depended on it. I was getting the pieces I needed, but in the process I was losing something far more important: my interest in the game. It started feeling like a chore, and I don’t know about you, but that’s not why I play games. I play them to escape the inevitable doom of daily life.
Jokes aside, games should be fun, and following someone else’s blueprint step by step takes all the fun out of it.
When and Why Is Meta Gaming Bad ?
I’m not saying that metas and guides are inherently bad, but they can be a limiting source of fun in certain games. Take League of Legends: every season there’s some kind of meta. One type of champion gets favored over others, climbing to the top of pick and ban rates.
What most players don’t realise is that those metas are created by and for pro players, and most of the time they have little relevance to us mere mortals. Yet people still follow them anyway, ending up playing champions they know nothing about and absolutely hate. You have the freedom to pick whatever you enjoy — don’t forget that.
But Lego sets come with instructions and they are still fun to assemble, you would say.
And while that’s true, I always have the most fun with Legos when I just let my imagination run wild. The same goes for gaming. Most modern games aren’t linear, they’re meant to be explored and played creatively. There’s always some gem hidden in some dark corner. You can always find the location of it with a quick google search but you won’t get the same level of excitement you get when you find it on your own.
The answer to when metas and guides become a problem is: almost always. There are exceptions — if you’re genuinely stuck somewhere, or your time is limited and you want to be as efficient as possible, then by all means. But in most cases, the issue is that they shorten the time you spend actually discovering things yourself, and that instant gratification is precisely what drains the fun out of it.
Back in my glorious MMO days, if you wanted to find information you had to actually talk to people, and sometimes you even had to hop on TeamSpeak just so someone could walk you through the mechanics of a particular boss.
That’s why, whenever I write a guide or a review, I try to avoid spoiling the experience for you. That said, I’m still a work in prog-mess.
Conclusion
Times have changed but it’s up to us to decide on what content we consume. If you really enjoy gaming and there’s a game that you play or intend to play, the best thing would be to steer clear of content that can ruin your playthrough, at least until you are done with it. If you can’t do that, at least try to take it more as a helping hand rather than a blueprint on what exactly to do.
Did something similar happen to you? What game was ruined because you followed meta?
Pavle is the founder of PlayForge and its lead writer and reviewer, covering PC, PS5, and mobile games, a with a focus on RPGs, MMOs, FPS games, and more. He’s been gaming since the PS2 days and now writes in-depth reviews and guides to help players find their next obsession and get gaming insights from real players, not just critics. His reviews are honest and transparent, but he always tries to stay positive, because in his opinion, almost any game can be fun if you look at it the right way.
In his free time, he likes to (obviously) play more games, spend time with his family, theorycraft about various media with his wife, and watch anime. So yes, he’s a complete nerd, even if he’ll never admit it.
