Alright so I think I will ask this in here but I'm thinking about making a thread on it.
When did gaming become about trolling people or somehow proving your better than someone else?
I thought about this when the UO thread was bumped yesterday and I read the OP. Essentially the dude says he liked playing UO but once there was the option to play on a server without the threat of being killed whenever you leave town it became uninteresting. This leads me to believe that either he didn't like playing on a server whose players liked fighting other players ie. no praying on the "weak" because only the people who wanted to pvp would play on the pvp servers or he felt that if he paid the price of getting better with that threat then no one else should be allowed to do it without it.
Now I'm seeing this same trend in people complaining about WoW. "Hardcore players" complaining that LFR released and suddenly someone who cannot dedicate to a raid schedule can complete content. PvP players complaining about how Blizzard should force people to do World PvP when if people did want to do World PvP they would do it. The people whining about this just want to kill people who do not want to PvP and ruin their day.
I could expand on this more I've been thinking about it for most of today and it seems like gamers are just assholes, or at least the assholes are really vocal about wanting to be assholes and not letting "average" people have fun without their griefing. Anyone else notice this? Am I just mad at all the wow hate threads with people who disagree with my opinions?
PS. I'm asking you guys first because you all seem like reasonably nice people and most of this thread is positive in nature.
I used to play WoW a fair bit but have quit for good. I started right when it came out and I have witnessed the game change from it's beginnings until the recent expansion (minus a few breaks here and there).
There has always been complaining between the elitists and the casual gamer and both sides usually have a point to some degree.
The elite gamers want there to be a reward for all their effort - and rightfully so, some of those guys would spend unbelievable amounts of time working toward a goal. They want recognition for that effort and an in-game status and/or reward reflecting it. That reward may be gear that makes them very strong, stand out in a crowd, or dramatically increase their usefulness to their guild.
In the past, these high-end rewards only came from endeavours that required
a large guild's help, an inordinate amount of free time spent gaming, and/or access to very prestigious areas of the game (again, usually required guild help).
Casual gamers generally don't have the time, inclination, or guild-backing to achieve these "great feats." This sets the two groups apart. Elite gamers have an edge in gear and status because they put in the time to get it. Casual gamers generally didn't have that option in WoW.
The issue came when casual gamers started to realize that, while it's OK not to be elite and have elite gear, it's not OK to miss out on content they're paying for. So they wanted to see the places and battles where the elite gamers got their gear - just for the sake of seeing it.
This poses a problem, though. To get to those places, and survive in those places, you need solid gear in the first place. So Blizzard started changing things around making it easier for casual gamers to get the high-end gear. This bothered the elite gamers because of (generally) two things:
1. All the time and effort they put into acquiring the gear was wasted. If they just waited a few months, they could have had it all much more easily.
2. The reward for the time and effort (the gear) was now commonplace. So what was the point of trying to get it anyhow? Their "status" was gone.
Pretty much everything concerning issues between casuals and elites in WoW comes back to this sort of scenario whether it be PvP, PvE, raiding, economy - and it's hard to fault either side, really. Casual gamers pay the same price and feed the WoW community via sheer numbers of subscriptions. They want to be able to experience what they pay for. On the other hand, the elite gamers drive the game design at the high end, give the game prestige, and are an important group in the community as well. They put out a lot of effort and deserve a reward for it.
I like to think that most gamers aren't assholes, and it's just the most vocal members of the WoW community who come across that way. The WoW forums are pretty bad in my opinion but you don't have to look far outside of them to see great examples of how hardcore players can be nice. There were periods of time where one of these groups were really getting shafted but I think Blizzard has done a "relatively" decent job of balancing things out now.
I guess ulitmately, you can just ignore the people you think are jerks and leave them to be miserable on their own. To be honest, the WoW community has changed significantly since I first started playing. It used to be full of 20+ year old adults who were excited to muck about in a world they grew up with from Warcraft, Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. It seemed like everyone was so freaking positive. Servers had personalities, individuals were known by both factions for their gear, successes, etc. It really seemed like you were part of a "community."
Unfortunately, in my opinion, as time went on the game lost that feel and started to become a bit more of a grind. Less personality, more gimmicks, less community and everything was just so homogenized. It started to draw an entirely different demographic of players - really super casuals (i.e. women at home all day with the kids bored out of their minds) and FPS-type fans looking for fantasy PvP action; this, obviously exacerbated the divide between casuals and hardcores. I think a lot of player frustration comes from that as well - which is again a symptom of the problem/scenario I mentioned above.
Good game in it's heyday, maybe it'll regain that. Until then, don't think all gamers are pricks. Just find the nice ones and stick with them, it makes everything far more enjoyable.
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