The commenters on the "priorities"
post and recently
Tobold shown me the very reason why MMOs are considered worthless waste of time by most people. There are certain widespread beliefs among MMO players that are completely unknown and weird to non-players. The MMOs are not rejected because they are new and unknown, they are rejected exactly because of what they are.
No, it's not "being a game". Chess and basketball
are games. Still, they are highly respected by non-players. No parent would run to a child-psychologist when his kid starts to practice basketball and tells that he wants to join the school's team or if they find him playing chess over the internet at the evenings. They would actually be supportive and happy. Why?
At first the games,
all games, are places to hone skills without real-life risks. Everyone agree that sports are healthy. The sport games like basketball are obviously not as healthy than doing personalized physical training, but they are still strongly associated to health and for a good reason: you must be healthy to be good in them. A fat, weak guy whose lungs are compromised by smoking can't perform on the basketball field. By playing basketball one proves against competition that he is healthy, strong and skilled in controlling his body. Chess is the same with the brain. Therefore when a kid says "I want to get to the basketball team", he implicitly says "I will do training that improves my health", which is therefore supported by parents, teachers, politicians, journalists, practically by the whole society.
OK, so far no problem. The computer games also demand real life skills and could be a good place to prove and practice them. WoW raiding for example demands grind to gear up, reading up EJ and other sites, doing the boss dance and doing so in a group, handling all the problems it means. So a good WoW raider proves that he has the most important skills needed for non-top employees: hard working even when the task is boring, learning from literature, working accurately and working in a team. Why parents are worried when they see their kid doing something that will help him become a good employee? They should be happy!
Imagine the guy who wants to throw the basketball exactly to the bottom right corner of the backboard (where the basket is mounted). Or tries to bounce the ball between the ground and his hand 1000 times. Or tries to collect every flags and mascots of the top league basketball teams. Or pays on a chessboard without moving anything but pawns.
Would you call this guy a basketball/chess player at all?The answer is no. These games have a very rigid rules. Violating them is considered fault or even outright cheating. If you would declare to play with different rules, it would simply make you
not a player of this game. You are playing basketball if you are within the rules of basketball and play for winning the game by scoring more than the opposing team. You are playing chess if you play by the rules for winning the game by checkmating the opposing king. These rules are exactly there to guarantee that the valued skills are present.
While you are free to spend your time collecting basketball cards, plush mascots, game-suits of famous players, watch games on TV or in the stadium, you are
not a player, just a fan. No one would say that being a basketball fan makes you healthy. Being a player does. Similarly someone who does pawn-zergs on a chessboard is not considered a chess player, but someone who fools around with a chessboard, and no one would say that such activity would need the mental abilities of a chess player. These activities are surely fun but lack the values that playing has.
The reason why MMOs have such a bad name is that everyone who logs in the game is considered a player. Not just by uninformed outsiders, not just by other people who just log in, but by the real players too! Imagine the reputation of basketball if the TV would zoom on some fat guy sitting in the stadium wearing the colors of the team, plush mascot and beer in his hands the commentator would say: "he is the typical basketball player" and then one of the real players would say: "yes, he is one of us, just with a bit different priorities within the game". Basketball retains its reputation by excluding this guy from the players, calling him "fan" instead.
The guy who logs in WoW but doesn't play WoW for winning the game is not a WoW player! He is a WoW-fan, a WoW-newbie who might be a player one day, or a clown who fools around in the WoW-playground.
Trying to score from the middle while 2 opposing players are on you instead of passing it to the teammate standing close to the basket free of opponents is not "playing differently", it's
doing it wrong. If you open chess by moving the A2 pawn to A4, you are not experimenting in chess, you are
doing it wrong. If you kick the ball or move the bishop horizontally, you are a so bad that you don't even qualify as player. You must learn to play first! Only by doing the proper way and doing it good enough can you win, proving that you really own the skills: physical or mental strength and agility. These are the characteristics that makes a player respected and a top player idolized by non-players.
WoW is not inherently worse than chess or basketball. It needs different but equally respected skills: hard working, learning, accuracy and teamplay. WoW is worse because every moron and slacker who has WoW-equipment (a living subscription) is considered a player. The average WoW-player is just as skilled (in different skillset) as the average basketball-player. The average WoW-fan is just as unskilled as an average basketball fan. But no one calls the basketball fan a player, while they do call the WoW-fan one.
To give the MMOs reputation, the player vs fan&clown distinction must be made and maintained. Among the players, unskilled play must be corrected and the unskilled player excluded from higher teams. I have no more connection to the minipet-collecting, ungemmed, bridge-fighting guy than the basketball player has to the plush mascot collecting guy watching the game while feasting on junk food, who couldn't run 100 yards in 20 secs.
He pays the $15 like me? So what? The fat guy also paid for the plush mascot and the ticket. He is therefore entitled to own the mascot and watch the game, but not to be on the team. I have nothing against WoW-fanship. They support the game financially the same way as the merchandizing-buying fans supports basketball. They should be able to enter the WoW "stadium" and find pets, mounts, gear and such. But they should never be mistaken for players, and allowed to the playfield of HC dungeons and raids until they become a player by learning to play. Currently they are not good enough for that!
They don't want boring learning but want to have fun? Well, I don't want to sweat practicing for hours and still want to play in the stadium with good basketball players. But if I would walk even to the local amateur-league basketball team and tell them my wish, they'd think I'm high. The idea to play the game without practicing, without keeping its rules, without having the skills is just too bizarre, no one can ask for it seriously. Right? The "i just wanna hav fun" guys have only one place at any game: in a spectator seat, watching it, collecting merchandising.
PS: PvP is a different game, despite played in the same field, and several skills overlap. They are like basketball and volleyball: same stadium, same shoes, similar ball, similar skills, but different game. So spare me from the "I don't raid but have 2500 rating" comments, it wasn't about that.
