In the previous posts I wrote how the accessible gear, the non-tiered content and the gear resets are hostile to casuals, annoying to the elite and irrelevant to the newbies. Who is catered by this system? The morons and slackers who refers themselves as "casuals" despite huge gaming time. The comments that yelled "inaccessible content locks out casuals" or "casuals can't progress their gear without resets" are all referring to the M&S, and not the casuals.
Before I continue, I give a very simple "yes or no" definition to elite, M&S and casuals (playing time is not a good definition as 8 hours/week is casual, 8:01 is hardcore?):
That's it. If you care about gaming rewards but you can't get them the hard way, you are a moron or a slacker. If you don't care or don't even know it exist, you are a casual. I'm a casual spider solitaire player. After every match the computer shows me a score. I have no idea what it is or is there a toplist. I'm happy that I cleared the table. I'm probably not in the elite in terms of success % or amount of steps needed. I don't care. I'm happy to play.
In this perspective let's see the features once again. Gear:
No, catering to the M&S is bad because the M&S doesn't form a community. The raider needs another raiders to raid with. The PvP player needs another PvP-er to play with and against. The casual raider needs fellow casuals casual raiders to "Karazhan". The RP-er needs an RP-er bunch. The achievement maxers also gather to each other to farm some obscure rep together. They all form their own communities, providing entertainment to each other.
The "10 g plox" idiot doesn't need another beggar, he needs someone who gives him 10G. The 6K DPS in the random HC doesn't need two more 6K DPS and an equally skilled tank and healer, he needs players who provide him a fast run. The AB Bridge fighter doesn't need full conquest geared enemy AB bridge fighters, he needs green geared newbies to grind and skilled allies who carry him to wins.
The fundamental problem with the M&S is not that the raiders, the PvP-ers, the achievement-hunters, the RP-ers don't like them. The fundamental problem is that the M&S don't like M&S. Only Atramedes likes them and unfortunately he is outdated content. If we would create a server for raiders and move every character that killed at least 3 FL bosses there, after the initial shock a thriving raiding community would form and the players would be happy. If we would move all the M&S to a (cluster of) servers, everyone would quit soon as "teh ppl here suxx".
A successful game can and should tolerate some M&S. After all they are paying customers too. But supporting them is suicidal as they are annoying all the other customers including fellow M&S. A successful game must cater some group that forms a positive community (where players are mutually happy to have each other) and then this game can house some leeching M&S.
The M&S friendly moves of Blizzard: the welfare gear, the non-exclusive content and the gear resets drove away many casuals but the main problem was that it created a situation where playing with people who you don't know beforehand in LFD or random BG became a curse.
Before I continue, I give a very simple "yes or no" definition to elite, M&S and casuals (playing time is not a good definition as 8 hours/week is casual, 8:01 is hardcore?):
| Question | Elite | M&S | Casual | Left for EVE |
| Is he good in the game (in terms of kills or rating)? | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Considers gear, achievements, toplist position as "reward" and something that brings respect (or should)? | Yes | Yes | No | No |
That's it. If you care about gaming rewards but you can't get them the hard way, you are a moron or a slacker. If you don't care or don't even know it exist, you are a casual. I'm a casual spider solitaire player. After every match the computer shows me a score. I have no idea what it is or is there a toplist. I'm happy that I cleared the table. I'm probably not in the elite in terms of success % or amount of steps needed. I don't care. I'm happy to play.
In this perspective let's see the features once again. Gear:
- Elite: will get it in the hard way.
- Casual: can't care less as long as his current gear doesn't stop him from playing (like he doesn't get an inv to some roflstomp pug because of it)
- M&S: whines if can't get it for mindless grinding.
- Elite: will get in the hard way.
- Casual: can't care less as long as there is meaningful content for him (for example can raid Karazhan while others raid BT)
- M&S: whines if can't get into the "coolest".
No, catering to the M&S is bad because the M&S doesn't form a community. The raider needs another raiders to raid with. The PvP player needs another PvP-er to play with and against. The casual raider needs fellow casuals casual raiders to "Karazhan". The RP-er needs an RP-er bunch. The achievement maxers also gather to each other to farm some obscure rep together. They all form their own communities, providing entertainment to each other.
The "10 g plox" idiot doesn't need another beggar, he needs someone who gives him 10G. The 6K DPS in the random HC doesn't need two more 6K DPS and an equally skilled tank and healer, he needs players who provide him a fast run. The AB Bridge fighter doesn't need full conquest geared enemy AB bridge fighters, he needs green geared newbies to grind and skilled allies who carry him to wins.
The fundamental problem with the M&S is not that the raiders, the PvP-ers, the achievement-hunters, the RP-ers don't like them. The fundamental problem is that the M&S don't like M&S. Only Atramedes likes them and unfortunately he is outdated content. If we would create a server for raiders and move every character that killed at least 3 FL bosses there, after the initial shock a thriving raiding community would form and the players would be happy. If we would move all the M&S to a (cluster of) servers, everyone would quit soon as "teh ppl here suxx".
A successful game can and should tolerate some M&S. After all they are paying customers too. But supporting them is suicidal as they are annoying all the other customers including fellow M&S. A successful game must cater some group that forms a positive community (where players are mutually happy to have each other) and then this game can house some leeching M&S.
The M&S friendly moves of Blizzard: the welfare gear, the non-exclusive content and the gear resets drove away many casuals but the main problem was that it created a situation where playing with people who you don't know beforehand in LFD or random BG became a curse.
31 comments:
You're ignoring the comments where people claim that being a casual raiding guild (guildmaster especially) in TBC, they had no retention to clear Kharazan, because everyone they gear a little eventually leaves them to the next step, leaving them to redo and attune the new recruit.
While their complaints about attunements are now invalid (no more attunements, meaning no need to get people through each step) the current system still allows them to get people to their level much faster.
They might not want to get someone through each raid just to gear them up again to hit current content. They want to keep going.
Now, how do we go that with your system? Clearly, content gating prevents progression for the semi-hardcore. The hardcore guilds... not so much, as long as they have a fixed group.
It doesn't affect non-raiders. But it affects those who want to raid, those who are good, those who have to leave, want to come back and raid, but have no gear to start the content's everyone raiding.
I didn't play much BC, so I wouldn't know, but wouldn't gating be harder on people who returns?
How do guilds handle new recruits? How do people catch up?
As someone who would prefer to down rag, preferably without tier 13 gear; absolutely.
However, by hiving off competant players (as defined by 3/7 firelands), you are condeming newbies to live with M&S.
There is one thing an M&S hates more than another M&S; and thats the newbie.
I prefer plan (A): Tier X gear comes from tier X raids (in the form of drops, tokens, or points)
This means that I would no longer be able to get 1/2 my gear out of the AH. It's a price I would pay.
Your Definition is quite good, certainly good enough to be used in your argument.
Still there are quite a lot of players who don't fit in that definition. I for example, started out as a casual - horrible at the game and simply not interested in getting the best gear or having the biggest numbers.
But I really wanted to see the content; I am curious and wanted to see as much of the world as I could.
I got better at playing the game and when I got the chance to join an "elite"-guild I did it - in a way the inaccessibility of the content made me an "elite" player (referring to your definition). I retrospect if I had that content in an easier but similar form available to me I'd probably stayed casual.
So there actually is a portion of the playerbase who benefits of "catering to the casuals".
Although that might be a small percentage.
As an afterthought; I would discard the respect part in “Considers gear, achievements, toplist position as "reward" and something that brings respect (or should)?”.
Yes most elite do think (falsely in my opinion) that this should bring respect, but most M&S I have encountered are more impressed by attitude than by actual achievement. My 7/7hc and nearly complete BiS-gear shuts up some of the M&S but by far not most of them, actually it seems to make some of them even angrier (and stupider) and some of the worst bite marks in my desk are due to those people.
They want to be respected just for being there as their awesome selves. Tying that to some outside achievement would require them to respect others.
Most of the M&S have a really hard time doing that – think Cartman.
English is not my native language sorry for any errors.
You are correct that some M&S call themselves casual. You are also correct about catering to M&S specifically is counter-productive, that M&S could not exist on their own, and so on.
You are still wrong about casual content however, and nothing you have said across five days of posts has even remotely acknowledged what a lack of progressive content means for casuals.
Karazhan doesn't cut it for 2.5 years, Gevlon, nevermind how your suggestions would see to it that there isn't a big enough casual population at the endgame to allow casual raiding groups to coalesce in the first place.
@JacktheManiac: and I keep ignoring them because they are NOT casual raiding guild. They are just bad raiding guild. Otherwise with the geared people they could progress.
Been there, done that.
What made WoW a successful game?
It surely wasn't game mechanics or graphics or character development, as other MMORPGs closely resemble WoW in this or even excel at some.
What I truly believe is that WoW became very popular and gained a very large playerbase because it was the next logical step after the classic Warcraft series.
There is a strong uncompleted backstory behind the game. There were tons of fans who played the Warcraft series who were interested in seeing how the Warcraft universe will look like in an MMORPG. The series was so successful that tournaments were held everywhere, from local internet cafe to huge sponsored and media covered events.
There are many facts that support this idea:
For instance in Vanilla the game kept on growing even though there were numerous technical difficulties, from bugs to multiple server crashes to impossible long queue times on high population servers.
The numbers grew even larger in TBC when Illidan and Kaelthas got introduced in WoW. Even got bigger when KilJeadan was in. During that time many MMORPGs were launched with better graphics and enhanced gameplay and mechanics, while WoW still stand.
Despite the disasterous decisions of gear resets and nerfing the game to the dirt during WotLK WoW reached its peak. The Paladin turned Death Knight Arthas who wrecked havoc on the Warcraft universe is finally introduced and players can finally confront and defeat him.
Cataclysm saw the decline in subscription numbers, mainly due to recycling old Villains and reintroducing them with a silly storyline while simultaneously holding on their disastrous gear reset concept.
I couldn't agree more this time.
Constant gear reset is something that killed WoW for me. I understand gear reset with every expansion - that's ok with me, but with every major patch?
What's the point to raid or to try to do Arenas / Rated Bg's? We could also give away all of previous tier gear for free sent in emails by GM's.
I think Blizzard went to far in their concept of Daily-ing everything.
That's why I quit WoW, and unless MoP will change their attitude I'm not planning to come back.
Needless to say, I agree.
The issue of not being able to retain people after having geared them up is more a player problem than a game problem , and more an (understandable) issue for GM's of Guilds that want to be progression Guilds but not panning out to be so.
These issues all suppose however that the only 'meaningful' content is Raid content.
This isn't a necessity by default however, neither for game design (the lack of other content isn't helped by the Devs basically developping only content that they personally like ie Raids & Horde Lore) nor for players themselves.
Cutting away a lot of the non-Raid content with Cata didn't exactly help. Personally I stopped paying the game because while I may not have liked my submoney going to content I have little or no interest in on a personal level, as long as it didn't overly affect the part of the game I liked (which sadly increasingly wasn't the case) I didn't overly mind.
However, Cata not only drastically affected the levelling part, but downright removed/made unplayable/made irrelevant the content I liked and so I stopped giving Blizz incentives to continue on this road, and going by the sub numbers etc. I may not be alone.
Gevlon, previously you used to divide people into those who play for fun and those who play to win. How does the table reconcile with that division? If I remember right, those playing for fun were M&S, everyone else was supposedly playing to win, correct? If so, casuals in the table supposedly play to win, and this does not look right to me. Or are these two entirely different classifications which use the term "M&S" to mean different things?
@Anonymous: casuals don't play to win, but don't even want to. It's just not their focus. We do most of the things in our life casually, being hardcore in only a few fields.
It is theoretically impossible to win in every field (imagine president+film star+astronaut+Nobel prized molecular biologist combo). The M&S is playing for fun in fields where he expect serious rewards.
Example: you driving home from work: casual
Vettel driving in Formula 1: hardcore
idiot racing at the red light: M&S
following comments from your previous posts,
I'm afraid I have to agree with Andru:
Tiered raiding can only exist if there are selfless GMs and friends that don't mind doing the same raid for a full expansion.
Everyone wants to progress and especially you can't believe in such altruism.
On the other hand the LFR bot can be such a GM, I think if LFR proves viable, gear resets can be removed.
Lost of subscription should be seen as just people getting older and at some point you have to outgrow the addiction for MMOs.
Thank you for adding 'moron and slacker' to your definitions (perhaps proper introduction of the abbreviation would prevent time lost in trying to figure out 'M&S' at cursory glance?)
It completely rings true. It is the parasitic that have been catered to and the fallout that has ensued.
I wonder how much of this is to blame with the endgame situation, however. I'd accredit much blame to the leveling game, and how little (if at all) it prepares people to coexist at endgame. I'm not talking about 'learning your class'. I'm talking about teaching gamers of all walks (RPers, casuals, raiders, PvPers etc) how to form a stable guild, appreciation for loot, incurring player involvement within social circles etc.
It's hard to teach the lessons that will bode well for the playerbase when the infection of 'here's a guild for you', 'here are people to PvP with', 'here is loot', 'here is PvE content'... and other such features are waiting at the fingertips of every gamer. Not only has the game slid more and more into catering to the M&S, but it actually breeds those who might have otherwise remained casual or become elitist.
Gevlon I run a guild which I consider to be a casual one. We raid 2 times / week for 2.5 hour. Other than that people do not even log into the game. That's 5 hour's / week. For me that's as casual as it gets if you still want to raid.
Our ranks are short we have about 11 people in the guild. With exactly 2 tanks and 2 healers in BC if one stops playing it would take us back like 1-2 months worth of progression to get new player and gear him up in old raid instance and get a key for him. With WOTLK / Cata principle we are ready to invite new players to the guild, ask them to run few of the new HC's in the raid time (so no additional time needed) and they would catch up.
Also in BC even if you would perform very good you had to crawl your way by guild jumping to get your keys. I was looking for the guild at that time and every MH guild required you to have the key already, the same for BT guilds, so after learning how to play my class properly and clearing the Karazan I had only 1 option: I had to find a Gruul's Lair / SSC guild. In the end they weren't able to kill Lady Vash because they had few M&S there. SO I left the guild = another 2 months "wasted". There wasn't an option for me to see other content.
My last comment didnt publish I think for some bizarre internet reason so I repeat it:
I recognise what the gladiator title says and what it means when I see it. I think the ruthless gladiator drake is an awesum looking mount and I would love to have it and fly it. I also recognise my own limitations and know that I will never be a gladiator, I am not good enough at pvp to ever earn that rank and I will never have that drake.
By your criteria that makes me an M&S. I think your oversimplifying things to make a point maybe, but if I can drive trucks through the holes in your argument so can anyone else who thinks about it for more then 30sec.
@Nightgerbil: You are rather a "fan". You recognize it as "great" but don't even attempt to get it. Fans in a game are rare so I ignored them.
If we would move all the M&S to a (cluster of) servers, everyone would quit soon as "teh ppl here suxx".
Don't your own words show why Blizzard caters to them? I mean if they quit and as you also said they make up the majority then that means Blizzard loses much more money.
It's all about the bottom line profits. And not future profits but profits for today.
Blogger Gevlon said...
@Nightgerbil: You are rather a "fan". You recognize it as "great" but don't even attempt to get it. Fans in a game are rare so I ignored them.
I'm going to assume you ignored players like me and a few others who are "pseudo-perfectionists" in terms of playing videogames (wow, in this case), while not giving importance to:
a) Achievements and subsequent points acquired from them (virtual bragging rights?)
b) Gear (as I've mentioned before: just a tool)
We play for the following reasons:
a) Challenging ourselves (individually)
b) Watching content (as, say... a movie, or a comic book)
c) Overall (includes a) and b)) pure entertainment.
Make a post differentiating Fun from Entertainment, please.
People who play for fun either lack vocabulary or are plain retarded. I ninja pull on M&S before vanishing and leaving the party -> "for fun".
I play a videogame for entertainment. Except I'm being entertained in the challenge presented.
I'm entertained when I grab a sheet of paper and make a few calculations to know precisely the best rotation for my Warlock and predict how many times I'll have to use each dot in a 60 second period. That sort of shit is ENTERTAINING. Keeps the mind BUSY.
Like yours is when you plan your gold-making processes.
When you mention that sort of shit to M&S/Casuals/a large portion of the Humankind, they'll say "that's not fun, that's boring".
Because they're fucking clueless as to what Entertainment means.
Also, using your brains translates into "work" in their minds.
And playing a game is supposed to be easy and relaxing (to be honest, planning stuff is relaxing).
I think you're being very, very narrow when you talk about "good" as in "is he good at the game." What is the game? You've mentioned "kills" and "rating". Can you clarify this? And once you've clarified it, are you sure that your definition of "the game" is the same as everyone else's?
I don't have any rating at all, set foot in arena about 3 times in my entire WoW career. Never set foot in a rated BG either. On the other hand, I think I play my characters really well and have over 75,000 player kills since 2007. I've played mage, druid, paladin, hunter and rogue extensively at top levels in PvP and can beat almost every person I come across 1 on 1. I can also survive and sometimes even take out groups of players.
So am I terribad because I have no rating? What was your definition of "kills"? Boss kills? Am I terribad because I haven't found any bosses (and raiding in general) interesting since Karazhan?
Who decides how "good" you have to be to move from casual to elite?
Can it be fluid, in that I work hard and get good for a period of time then I relax for a bit?
Can someone be good and also a slacker, a la the player with natural ability that wont prepare?
@Cyrell: you are "pwning noobs". Standard AB mid fighter M&S.
@ Tazar:
I said pretty much the same thing in the first comment.
Gevlon answered.
@JacktheManiac: and I keep ignoring them because they are NOT casual raiding guild. They are just bad raiding guild. Otherwise with the geared people they could progress.
Been there, done that.
So you're a bad raiding guild in his eyes.
Supposedly you need to keep on raiding Kara until you're ready to move up.
Getting a fixed group is still difficult.
Hello Gevlon,
I have a suggestion:
Why not make "The PUG" a guild that raids all tiers at once, hire an alt of a hardcore raider to lead the raids in lower tiers.
Let's see if you can find people that just want to raid and don't care about iLevel.
Good luck
People have strange definitions of casual. Casuals do not care about the raid schedule. They play when they want and while in-game they do what they enjoy.
In the current model new content is the only one that matters. Current content is still gated, but now by time to grind appropriate gear rather than accomplishment.
In this system the gear inflation is more the problem than "welfare epics". If there were only 9 ilvl difference between tiers rather than 19, it would be a more inclusive for everyone. Casuals could feel like their 359 was still powerful, while the hardcore will still do whatever necessary for BiS. M&S become more apparent as it gets harder to outgear content, but they still get their shinies.
@ Tazar
You did not have to "guild jump" in BC. Good guild management replaces people who stand in the poison on Vashj with those who don't, you down the boss and become a BT guild. I was in on guild first kills for for Vashj, KT, Archimonde and Illidan where nobody in the raid had completed it prior. This was with multiple guilds on the server having these on farm for months.
Many raiders do not just seek the highest content, but rather to be an important and needed member of a group. A lot could have left and been boosted through farm raids for higher guilds (and a couple did), but that is not the goal for many.
This is all beside the point as no casual goes past a Mag pug.
i think a worthwile point to mention the casual knows he isn´t glad material.
The M&s are convinced its because his class is poor or because his companion sucks.
they are all in the delusion that they in fact, while not at ensidia levels at least are in the top 10% or so often in direct contradiction to actual proof.
"You did not have to "guild jump" in BC. Good guild management replaces people who stand in the poison on Vashj with those who don't, you down the boss and become a BT guild."
Replace then with whom? With people you poached from Karazhan guilds, amirite? Or maybe T5-ready people just grew on trees on your server, while 5-man-geared people who never ever saw a raid boss before, when brought to Vasjh performed flawlessly.
Yeah bloody right. Don't give me this crap.
Gevlon is just blind because of his confirmational bias, judging that all guilds who didn't progress as bad.
He's just ignoring a thing he ALREADY RECOGNIZED in the past. That the biggest improvement to one's character is playing with better people.
If you were above average in your guild and could jump up, the rational choice would be to jump up. If everyone above the average jumped up, the guild average skill level dropped by having to get lower tiered people. If the average skill level dropped, it would take more effort to progress for the guild.
Why guilds progressed? Well, of course it was the presence of irrational above-averagers, usually GMs and officers who refused to jump up even when offers presented.
This is a thing forgotten. Very few TBC GMs still play, making the TBC days a rosy past for everyone who didn't know what was what.
There's no winning this argument with Gevlon. If everyone in the guild was rational and acted in their best self-interest, the guild was bad because it couldn't progress. If the guild progressed, it would be due to the 'social ape sub-routines' that Gevlon is so vehement against.
Then again, I don't expect anyone on the internet to admit their mistakes, neither will I lose sleep over it. Newsflash: Someone's wrong on the internet.
To me, gear resets are a bad simple solution to a complex problem.
There has to be some guiding princples to inspire people to play. This is outside the constructs of the mechanisms created (e.g. quests, 5-mans, pvp, raids, professions, etc.).
Principles of WoW:
1. People like to feel like they are progressing forward (like leveling, getting skill points, honor points).
2. People like to be rewarded for their "play" effort (complete task get item / point / gold). It is the incentive.
3. The amount of "fun" one feels is a ratio to the amount of effort and skill required for the desired reward value (if I do X, I get Y).
4. For the maximum enjoyment of customers, content should be tuned such that majority of players (the bell curve) can complete normal versions of content (including raids) given a reasonable amount of effort. That is, given X hours of trying, they succeed.
Gear Resets Are Bad Because:
1. Deflating the reward, removes the incentive. I can just wait and they'll give it to me for no effort.
2. Since it will just be given to me, I'm not really making progress, it's just being given to me.
3. I'm not having fun because the amount of effort required for the value is also deflated. Deflating fun.
4. No pride in the accomplishment because I will have it given to me regardless of my skill.
Where Blizzard Fails
1. They use Gear Resets to push players forward artificially by having them outgear content and by nerfing content so that more players can succeed. However, the "fun" has been removed because there is no longer any value other than to see "sort of" how the fight used to look. The gear is obsolete.
2. They use gear resets to help players "catch up" that are "new" but it punishes existing players by devaluing their effort -- it becomes wasted.
2. They believe that just "seeing" content is all players want... yawn. Just show me a youtube video.
The problem in the system is that players are interdependent to play this game. One must not only play it, but find people at similar skill / effort / gear levels to achieve the goals. The gear reset is Blizzards effort to help us find those people by creating more of them ... giving content... at the same time, reducing the value of exiting player's rewards.
You have to deal with the noted issues of player "poaching" and having to "gear up" players to catch up. Playing with friends at different skill levels and thus inhibits ones ability to progress because many of the fights are single-mistake-wipe designs. "Your not making an effort" slows "my ability to make progress".
I agree that gear resets are bad because they punish existing players, but I don't think Blizzard has made enough effort in really fixing the problem which lies in the interdependency of multiple levels of skill and maintaining the individuals ability to progress and be rewarded for it in a game that requires collective work.
The problem with all of this is not the catering to the noob/casual/M&S, it is the fact that progression has been taken completely out of the game. Nobody has to actually complete anything of difficulty in order to advance The way things are is akin to playing Super Mario Brothers and skipping the first 12 levels and going straight to the end boss. All the non raider has to do is cap his valor points for the week and he will get the gear good enough to enter the final tiers raiding. This causes a couple things to happen.
a. The people who actually did something, like clearing the previous tiers content, will be pissed (this is probably everyone reading this)
b. The M&S get more ammo in their retardation cannon. “U r bad cuz I is 391 and you is 370. noob).
c. The casual gets no, none, zero raiding experience which will make him absolutely useless
My proposal to fix this is as follows.
1. All content has a minimum gear level. This includes raids and heroic dungeons. With this you are forced to complete the previous tiers to gain the gear needed. So no more being carried by better players. You now have to work.
2. Change the Valor and Justice points back to the way it was back in WoTK. Each tier had its own set of gear point (ie, emblems of frost, emblems of valor, etc). so in order to get the next level of gear you have to farm the points in the appropriate raid/dungeon.
With those two changes I believe the progression will be brought back into the game and it would be a benefit for all involved. This will also KILL the M&S. In order for them to insult you they need to out gear you. In order for them to out gear you they will have to work for it. And since they are an M&S they won’t. The casual, on the other hand, will not be affected. The casual doesn’t care one way or another, so will happily do the gear runs he/she needs to progress if that is what he/she wants to do
You're spot on. But I would go a bit farther, and say that the fundamental problem with M&S is that they exist.
They will never amount to anything. They are mere cannon fodder in every aspect in the game. And more often than not a source of headache.
No M&S will ever acknowledge what they are. They refer to themselves as hardcore, elite, or casuals. It takes a better player/person to recognize the M&S.
What separates M&S from casuals, is that a casual can always spend more time, learn more, and improve. A M&S will never be anything but M&S, because they are either too dumb or too lazy. All they are truly good at is whining. Crying out to the heavens how unfair the world is, to not reward them with the best obtainable items even though they are too dumb or lazy to ever actually beat the encounters themselves. They feel they are entitled to it based solely on them being paying customers.
Which is of course yet another proof of how retarded these people really are. If I join a race with my car, I don't believe I'm entitled to win simply because I paid a fee to join. I don't expect to win the lottery simply because I paid for the ticket.
M&S who calls themselves "casuals", want the best gear and rewards. And they blame their not having it on external factors, like class imbalance, not good enough gear yet, or not enough time. They are unable to acknowledge responsiblity.
A casual wouldn't mind having the best gear, but sees no point or need for pursuing it. The casual is happy as long as they can perform well in whatever content they have chosen to spend their time on. This also applies to hardcore players, but unlike casuals, hardcores are willing to invest the time and effort needed for the top level content. But the basic approach is the same. They have both chosen their own level of involvement, and are both happy with it.
But only M&S are dumb enough to whine over not getting rewards only needed to progress in content inaccessible to them or beyond their mental capacity of understanding.
Which of course boils down to that the reset system caters to the M&S. It doesn't really do anything for them, but in their minds, it does.
Because the only thing which separates a gear reset from a new raid tier, is the illusion that "everybody is equal" for a while. "A fresh start". When we all have the same gear, we can all join in the same content, right? Because all that was holding them back was the lack of gear...? Wrong. There is no substitute for skill, and never has been. Only the unskilled will blame their lack of progress on anything but their skill. The dumb are too dumb to recognize stupidity.
A reset means absolutely nothing to a casual or hardcore raider. It simply means more time have to be spend. But it doesn't change their role or status in the game. It doesn't give them access to new content. It doesn't do anything for them that they wouldn't have done for themselves anyway. Only the M&S think that a gear reset actually does something else than make you spend more time.
For me gear resets are a complete non-issue. I really can't see how they affect me at all. I'm a casual, by the way. I don't compete in any top level content of any kind whatsoever, nor do I have any desire to. I do some random heroics or battlegrounds now and then, with no progress in mind. Mostly I just play the gold game. And the addon development game.
Works for me. I suppose I've always been a casual, even when I was raiding hardcore. It was never about the actual gear/achievements for me, and more about the social enjoyment of being in a tight knit team with solid goals to work on.
"This is a thing forgotten. Very few TBC GMs still play, making the TBC days a rosy past for everyone who didn't know what was what."
Andru, I may assure you are 100% right! People don't understand it because they were never really raiding in TBC. I remeber those social dramas very well.
This just shows players who make a lot of comments about how raiding is wrong today never tried to actually raid or organize anything.
I kinda chucky at all the M&S bashing. Do you realize that WOW probably would be just a token of what it is without them? They are the ones paying the majority of the cost.
Lars wants them to disappear or 'not exist'. If that was the case where would Blizz get their billion dollars a year from? Sounds like most of you want to cut off your nose to spite your face.
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