Why tolerate elitist jerks in WoW?

Tobold wrote in a comment "There are no morons in WoW. There are only jerks who think that because they spent too much time with the game and now wear purple pixels and get high numbers on gearscore and damage meters, they now have the right to call other players morons. For Blizzard it is infinitely wiser and more profitable to kick out the jerks than to kick out the players with lower gearscore and damage meter position." Considering that a cloth geared, ungemmed warrior "tank" pays just as much as a Paragon or Method member, generates less server load, finds (and abuses) less bugs and usually acts less offensively towards other players ("1 g plox" is annoying, but not offensive) Tobold seems to be right.

Then comes the question: why do Blizzard keep these people? I mean they generate all that hard raid content that most customers don't use, only jerks. With the "last tier" design, the "fun ppl" don't go to raids even after it's outdated, as they farm their gear from badges. Also, Blizzard is tolerating damage meters (they could decrease communication load too if combat log would only show your actions and actions against you), they are tolerating kicking fellow players from 5-mans, they are tolerating (strike that, openly supporting) creating guilds that are exclusive by their very nature (no one invites everyone).

I also haven't heard of any player being even temporarily banned for insulting a fellow player for bad performance or calling him "idiot", "moron", "useless noob". They jump instantly for an n-word, a "faggot" or a "jew-boy", they would have to just ban a few people for being a jerk, and soon the internet would be all over it, communicating the new social norms in WoW. The "jerks" would leave soon leaving the "fun ppl" to play happily.

The question is not why Blizzard caters the morons. It's obvious: $15 x 1-2M. The question is why do they cater those who pay very little compared to the server load and grief they cause? Wouldn't the goblinish move would be to get rid of every means of belittling "players with less time" and banning all those players who would still try to do it?

To understand why Blizzard needs good players, we first have to answer the fundamental question: what is WoW's unique selling point? I mean there are similar games with similar graphics and less than 1/10th playerbase. There are not similar MMOs with different ideas, gameplay, ruleset and less than 1/50th playerbase. It's obvious that the color of the dragons or the name of the spells can't be responsible for these huge differences. Blizzard is selling something qualitatively different from competitors.

To find this "magic quality", all we have to do is listening to players. They very rarely roleplay, openly rejecting immersion to the gaming world. They never say "I go save the Ram'kahen from the evil Neferset and Al'akir", they say "I go grind some XP on my mage". The important word here is "on" as opposed to "as" or even "for". The characters are not avatars in a game world. The player don't think "when I play WoW, I am a mage in Azeroth". The player thinks "I own a mage in WoW". That's why they pointlessly gear alts: to have more "property". Since you can't really sell this property, the only option left is "social status symbol". But how?!

To understand it, you must also notice Blizzard's latest developments: via Armory you can see and show others your status property. You can RSS feed the latest status increases. Please note what RSS shows: achievements completed and items gained. Via real ID it's easier to link your property to your real self. Among the upcoming features there are facebook integration and other social media connections.

Blizzard recognized that being a gamer became a socially positive and relevant self-aspect. Ten years ago, one called himself a student and him playing wasn't relevant in social interactions. He may even be ashamed of it. Now being a gamer is a community-(and therefore self) defining trait. One calls himself a "gamer" the same way as he called himself a "basketball team member". He seeks other gamers to socialize with and openly talks about his gaming. Gaming became a source of pride, connection, self-determination.

However you can be "gamer" in every games, it's still not enough to explain WoW's stunning success. The final clue in the puzzle is: Blizzard is selling the illusion of you being a good gamer. Every single WoW player, even the most terrible failure who ever walked on Azeroth logs out with the stone-solid belief that he is a good gamer, he is an accepted and respected member of the gamer community, other gamers like him, respect and envy his achievements. Playing WoW makes the customers feel good about themselves, feel their ego and status elevated.

Obviously it can only be a false illusion as by definition half of the players are below average. Also, we often see not only "bit weak", but abysmally terrible players. How can Blizzard make them believe that they are not total failures in the game? That is the part where Blizzard can't live without good players. We serve two purposes:

1. Open boosting. When a 5-man group completes, the flashing animation, the boss being dead, the loot, the points are for everyone. While we know that Arthasdklol was just a dead weight in the run, he won't know it. He will honestly believe that we won. If any of the boosters criticize him, he dismiss it with "no-life loser nerdraging". He will log out with the solid belief that he can complete a HC and just did it.
2. Making the illusion that content is hard. If content is socially perceived trivial, it is no source of pride. There is no gamer community around easy flash games. No one would wear a T-shirt with Solitaire on it. The easy WotLK was a total disaster. In early WotLK Blizzard was boasting subscriber numbers over 10 million. Now they are proud to sell 4-5M Cataclysm. The problem with WotLK wasn't "easy", but "socially perceived easy". If someone completed a HC, he did not feel good about himself as he knew that his "friends" will just say "meh you grinded another HC so what". To create the social consensus that it's hard, the content must be hard for a time being. It is impossible without people who actually do that content. If no one does it, it's not "hard" but "socially irrelevant" (or bugged). The purpose of the good player is to complete the content uphill in the snow, to let the bad one believe that he is equally good when he completes it after 5 nerfs. Just check how many people wear kingslayer title who got it after 4.0.1! They make themselves believe that they did the same like those who got it without ICC buff.
   

WoW must have good players to continue to grow. That's why Blizzard keeps making hard content for us and tolerates us abusing the morons and slackers. They know that in the second they banned someone who called a moron moron, they would lose more than 100-200K customers ($1.5-3M/month). They are selling the lie that the M&S are equal to us. The M&S pay for the self-deception of "you are just as good as the Paragon members, just play less because you have real life". No one would pay for the illusion of "you are just as good as Arthasdklól".


PS: of course there are not just good players and M&S, there are casuals too, who just play for the content. But they are a minority and I doubt if Blizzard would be happy if they would only get the $15 of good players and casuals.

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Aljabra in the guild found this perfect specimen:
This forum post arrived in comment by Zydell. Both the name of the poster and the post itself is "great".