I got an interesting comment to the "don't help M&S" post, stating that education is the way to elevate them and that help should be given. For long I believed so. Actually it's WoW that changed my mind. Before playing WoW I was a hardcore for-education believer.
What changed? The leftist claim is that the "poor have no access to education and if they had they'd learn". In WoW everyone has access to education. The whole education process from elementary school (wowwiki), secondary school (tutorial posts of class blogs) to university (EJ) takes less than 4 hours. Leveling a char to 80 takes 40+, so anyone who has a lvl 80 spent plenty of time in the game, way more than enough to know everything about his class.
Have you noticed that everyone in WoW are informed players, knowing their class inside out and all they need is a little practice to teach their "muscles" to apply this knowledge? No? Then how do you expect the same people to spend 10+ years in educational facilities learning much more complicated things, even if the school is free. They refuse to spend 4 hours to learn something they actually like.
They go through school with the very same attitude as they have in WoW: "lol i haz life i don care 'bout this shit". Building them schools is completely pointless. It's nothing more than a glorified homeless shelter for them. The only thing they do there is making the life miserable for the "nerds" who actually want to learn.
One exception is elementary schools since the little kids can be motivated by the teacher as they want her love (pathetic, but true). So building elementary schools from my tax is OK. The other exception is scholarship program: giving aid to top learners to pay for college. They prove their worth by being in top 20%.
Education won't save the M&S because they don't want to be saved. They don't want to learn, they don't want to work. They want to have "fun lol", or more scientifically they want social recognition, so they are ready to learn only socially relevant information like what Paris Hilton was wearing on her last party or what is the new cool slang. They see no value in socially irrelevant information like mathematics, tradeskills (both WoW and IRL) or any kind of technology stuff. They have absolutely no motivation to learn so they won't. You can't fix them. No one can. At least not until they get everything for free as working people find it "moral" to support them.
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Nick found this ... thing. I can't really tell anything besides the obvious: his stupidity has nothing to do with WoW.
What changed? The leftist claim is that the "poor have no access to education and if they had they'd learn". In WoW everyone has access to education. The whole education process from elementary school (wowwiki), secondary school (tutorial posts of class blogs) to university (EJ) takes less than 4 hours. Leveling a char to 80 takes 40+, so anyone who has a lvl 80 spent plenty of time in the game, way more than enough to know everything about his class.
Have you noticed that everyone in WoW are informed players, knowing their class inside out and all they need is a little practice to teach their "muscles" to apply this knowledge? No? Then how do you expect the same people to spend 10+ years in educational facilities learning much more complicated things, even if the school is free. They refuse to spend 4 hours to learn something they actually like.
They go through school with the very same attitude as they have in WoW: "lol i haz life i don care 'bout this shit". Building them schools is completely pointless. It's nothing more than a glorified homeless shelter for them. The only thing they do there is making the life miserable for the "nerds" who actually want to learn.
One exception is elementary schools since the little kids can be motivated by the teacher as they want her love (pathetic, but true). So building elementary schools from my tax is OK. The other exception is scholarship program: giving aid to top learners to pay for college. They prove their worth by being in top 20%.
Education won't save the M&S because they don't want to be saved. They don't want to learn, they don't want to work. They want to have "fun lol", or more scientifically they want social recognition, so they are ready to learn only socially relevant information like what Paris Hilton was wearing on her last party or what is the new cool slang. They see no value in socially irrelevant information like mathematics, tradeskills (both WoW and IRL) or any kind of technology stuff. They have absolutely no motivation to learn so they won't. You can't fix them. No one can. At least not until they get everything for free as working people find it "moral" to support them.
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Nick found this ... thing. I can't really tell anything besides the obvious: his stupidity has nothing to do with WoW.
42 comments:
As an educator, I agree about real-life education. As someone with a successful career in scientific research who just isn't good at WoW, no matter how much research I do, I think things are a little more complicated.
Sometimes people take up hobbies because they enjoy them despite not being the best at them. They work hard to learn and practice hard, but will never be the best. I was like that as a competitive swimmer. I am like that with WoW. In science, I had to be best. In WoW, I work to be OK and seem to have fun in the process.
Honestly, other than a dumb name, I see nothing stupid about what the person in the screenshot is doing. You advocate lying in order to get more people into your raid group. How is what this person is doing really any different? They are being asocial and getting the M&S socials who think they are about to make free profit to give their money to someone smarter than them. That sounds exactly like the kind of activity you would support.
@other anonymous: Gevlon may advocate lying, he also advocates not getting cought in such an obvious way. I've seen this scam before and it's usually called out in trade-chat, which is bad for both the scammer's toons.
@Gevlon: When using Google "Greedy Goblin" shows it's about making gold, how about getting back to that instead of having one rant after the other about Morons and Slackers. It should be obvious by now that they're not going away and that they're not about to improve.
@anonymous
You appear to be commenting to the wrong post. The one about lying to the raid was two days ago.
He is not commenting on the wrong post. He believes that they guy is lying and wants to trick people to buy his alt's titansteels. However he states himself (an no one would lie THAT), that he wants to buy a stack of 4 and there is no such thing in the AH
the MOTD was searching titan steel instead of titansteel, and thus buying them through trade for 500% market value
As usual, Gevlon, you present your opinions without the slightest shred of numerical evidence to back them up.
In WoW, many people don't feel the need to study for a task that they can enjoy without studying for it, and more importantly, that earns them no money. In real life, things are a little different.
I did not completely agree your point of view because for me some people like me who get a carefull attention
At playing wow really seriously by reading strategy taking good equipment listening to intelligent advice optimizing (?) my character and the spec ... but on the other side i really don't care about math on the trade ans so on because for me wow is just a game , a moment of entertainment and that's it
for me taking some Time to calculate the good price, statement is really boring
So am i a moron brainless ???
Decent food, a place to live, access to information (libraries, books, internet), a strong desire or the will to learn and improve - this is all it takes for oneself to educate. I tend to believe that M&S indirectly chose to be M&S. I'm saying "tend" because there are circumstances which make the job harder, for example: bad social influences, alcoholic parents, etc... though, only harder and not impossible.
@Gevlon :
If I understand correctly, you're only in favor of financing elementary schools and financial help for the top 20% students through tax ?
I have to say... I have been through the French educational system which has 2 parallel systems : public (free) and private (not free). Both range from kindergarten until PHD and at any time you can go for the other system.
When entering "superior" studies, my major did not exist in any public classes so I had to go for private. Being from the Middle-Class, I still could not apply to all the universities I wanted because their cost was simply off the roof... even the application itself costs 15%-20% of the minimum legal monthly wage. And I worked every summer since my 17 years old for financing part of my studies.
Then during the studies, money makes a difference between the efforts you can dedicate to your studies and the time you have to waste on shopping (going by bike, not car, with limited weight and volume capacity), laundry (not at home), travelling back and forth to school and to the student restaurant. Net difference : 1 hour per day, easily.
And if you look at REAL information... facts... 40,000 students in France had to prostitute themselves for handling the cost of life back in 2006 or 2007... before the crisis hit.
If you want to help more the top students when every other student has an "ok" situation, that's one thing and I would agree. But when many students have to prostitute themselves, delay the health and dental care (even though we're a somewhat socialist country)... that's not good. A person's possibility of social progress would not just be conditioned by his family's culture (working class, middle-class, upper-class) but could simply be blocked (or drastically more difficult) by the lack of money. And that's where the tax-paid education systems try to even out the chances of success for everybody. So that the criterion of success is skill, not money.
..by the teacher as they want her love (pathetic, but true)
It isn't pathetic, you obviously know little about small children - but that's an aside.
I agree broadly with your analysis that there are those that will never learn, however, your article is biased towards the responsibility being on the student rather than the educator.
Wow doesn't have any formal education process and whilst the resources are available they are not obvious. Your approach is to simply dismiss those that don't learn quickly enough and berate them endlessly on your blog.
Don't get me wrong, they irritate me as well and neither do I want to spend my time educating them, but I do think that Blizzard could do a much better job of teaching how their game works.
@Townes
Yes, not every one can be in World firsts guild or get 2.8k+ arena rating even if they have 100% perfect spec/glyphs/gems/rotation/PvP understanding, just because of slower reaction time. Some people can excel very well at TBS games, but be mediocre at RTS.
However, it is not the issue. It is ok to perform @ ~80-90% of your theoretical performance, because you don't have the reflexes and reaction. The issue is lol-tards that fill up the LFD and pugs, and think it's ok to stand in AOE, not to gem or enchant, faceroll their keyboard for 20-30% of their theoretical dps output. And the funniest fact on top of it all is that they think it is their birthright to blame others for not carrying them enough.
There is enough information in game plus 80 levels during which you can gather enough empirical data on how your class works. However, no game developer can teach the game mechanics of their game for the "rofl i aint no nolife tard to read tooltips lol" crowd.
P.S.
Blizzard is already reducing the insane complexity of their tooltips.
For example, "80% more threat" on Righteous Fury gets reduced to "helps you to be a better tank" so that M&S crowd is not forced to try to comprehend the "no life" notions of numbers and %.
We have 9 years of obligatory comprehensive school in my country, starting at age of 7. If you want to get into upper secondary school after that you need decent grades.
In my experience, the first 2 years the kids tried to please the teacher but after that the "school sucks" attitude problems started to creep in. Caring about learning stuff for it's own sake was uncool and could easily get you labeled as a teacher's pets or a nerd.
Then suddenly at the 9nth year most people started to mature up a little and caring about grades. I guess it was because the issue of further education was finally becoming very actual.
Now, in light of this observation, think of the player age demographic in WoW.
It is only through the socialist ideal of education for all that the majority of your goblins can even read your posts!
I doubt very much you readers understand what socialism means perhaps the state education system has failed them after all! After all they are Thatcher's children.
@Dàchéng
"In WoW, many people don't feel the need to study for a task that they can enjoy without studying for it, and more importantly, that earns them no money. In real life, things are a little different."
Unfortunatelly, in real life things are exactly the same. People don't feel need to learn. People don't feel need to learn even if that's something they must know to do they job. I've heard people complaining about how hard is it to read and how impossible it is to compose an e-mail. And that wasn't some low-grade workers too.
@Derrek
"I'm saying "tend" because there are circumstances which make the job harder, for example: bad social influences, alcoholic parents, etc... though, only harder and not impossible."
One of the greatest Russian scientists, Mikhail Lomonosov, who was one of the most educated people of his time and created basis for many of the modern sciences, was born in a small fisherman village, in a fisherman family, with no any kind of public education anywhere near, and was lucky there was some relative, bored enough to teach him to read. When he was 19, he went to Moscow to learn, with no money, no relatives and basically noone to help him to get trough.
It's much easier to tell, in which areas of science he didn't made some astonishing discovery (and most of such areas didn't even existed then). He had every negative influence there is, yet it wasn't nowhere near enough to stop him - because he didn't wanted to stop. That's all the possible circumstances there is - either you want to, or you don't. If later, you may think of excuses, but the reason is only that you don't want to.
@chewy
"article is biased towards the responsibility being on the student rather than the educator. "
That's the only real responsibility there is. No matter how bad is the teacher, if you want to learn, you will (it make take a little longer, though). If you don't want to learn (as it is the case with WoW and "you need to have no life if you want to learn" statement), no matter, how good your teacher is, you won't learn anything.
"Blizzard could do a much better job of teaching how their game works."
They already provide the basics, all advanced information is easily found via google or on the class forums, anyone, who really want to know, learn it pretty fast, so why bother?
Firstly, I once again disagree with your tendency to use observations in WoW to draw conclusions about other parts of life. People play games (like World of Warcraft) differently than they approach other parts of life. People even approach various aspects of "real life" in different ways.
Secondly, your point about education is at least partly right. You cannot force someone to learn something they don't want to. Access to formal education won't help someone with no interest in learning what the schools have to teach.
However, tax payer funded schools are still a good thing in that they eliminate the money factor in obtaining an education. It becomes much like WoW in that anyone who wants to learn can learn regardless of their current income. I will admit that it would be nice if their was a decent way to eliminate the people who don't want to be there from the classroom so they aren't a detriment to the ones who do want to learn.
I had opportunity to reveal some of my experience to two sort of players lately. One is old Vanilla player that knows his 5-6 classes but had no clue about efficient making of WoW wealth, another is completely noob rogue that claims that he mastered his rogue but his 2v2 team says otherwise (0-19). First one adapted in a matter of days, abandoned farming completely and started with making gold through AH. Other one is hopeless case. He had no addons that are helpful for his level of knowledge nor he was willing to accept them. First one is in social guild with unenchanted/half gemmed girlfriend of guild officer as steady raider in their attempts to do 7+ bosses in icc10. So he is average 28 year old social that is not able to leave his friendly guild despite the fact that he is able to get into one of above average progressing guild. Other one is 14 year old social moron in social loller guild. First one is willing to listen,use and get benefit from advices. Other one "don't really like deadly boss mods". What I0m trying to say that older players are wiser and ready to improve no matter how much they suck, important thing is to present them improvements in right way. Younger ones are there to have fun.
One thing I really like about WoW is that it plays like a tutorial.
Before buying the game I used to play it in one of those "private" (IE, pirate) servers. A fun (and absolutely senseless) thing they had there was that you could pay to get to the max level for about 10US$, or get Full T6 (It was late TBC) for 25US$. One moron even went as far as buying the Warglaives for about 500US$ (Illidan was bugged and hitted tanks for 40k there).
The thing was, the noob population was astonishing there. You think 0/0/71 DKs are bad? What about a 70 mage who, when asked what his spec was, would reply "what is that?", because he was 0/0/0? Or Feral-druid staff equipped warlocks raiding with their voidwalkers since they "would hit harder this way"?
I think that provides an interesting counter for your thesis. M&S won't learn in their own, no matter how great the incentive is for doing so (pwning in Wow, A lot more salary per year of instruction, etc.). However, if the tutoring is the only way to get to something they see as great (Getting to Lvl 80), they will follow it, but will try to get the easy way out, even if it will leave them as self-crippled morons.
If you are willing to waste countless hours getting your character to 80 how much trouble is it to waste 30 minutes reading the basic FAQs that will include, gems, enchants, stats, and rotation. Basically everything you need not to look like a moron.
I believe that everyone is capable of learning, even the M&S, they just do not want to and that is what makes them who they are.
Just for fun, wish I had a screen shot.
/2 How much spell power do I need to make my thunderclap generate more threat?
Level 80 warrior. Just be careful, this winner can be tanking your next random, but don't worry much. He has lots of spell power to help his threat.
Education serves to enfranchise those indoctrinated into social norms and attitudes and gives the indoctrinated the false beliefs that hold the M+S together.
It is much easier to exploit and make use of those who are enfranchised in a society than those who are not. Those who are not enfranchised pose a danger to society and can be economically expensive to deal with. (IE; Serial Killers)
@Aljabra
I agree that the ultimate responsibility lies with the pupil but this is one end of the scale. If we believe that education is a good thing for everyone then we must strive to educate everyone, not only those that show the most tenacity or promise. To best achieve this I would submit that an environment conducive with learning for the majority is preferable.
This also addresses your last comment "why bother ?" so that the rest of us get some peace ;-)
@Bobbins
...After all they are Thatcher's children.
You made me chuckle but you can't really believe Mrs Thatcher is responsible for all the morons in WoW ?
Grumpy Elf said
"If you are willing to waste countless hours getting your character to 80" ...
If that is time wasted, perhaps you should have chosen a different game.
Greg said:
"Those who are not enfranchised pose a danger to society and can be economically expensive to deal with."
Agreed, Greg, andsociopaths pose a danger to our WoW society.
The thing is WoW is an equal ground. Everyone can get the same thing if they put in the effort or time. We all look the same and act the same.
Anything analogous we have to armory in real life to judge someone's 'worth' as an individual (like standardized testing) usually fails to take into account social disadvantages (poverty, racial concerns, illness).
In those cases where someone who has plenty of advantage does poorly, I still find it difficult to justify taking away the opportunity of education for everyone because some people will squander it.
But I'm a bleeding heart liberal.
@ Gevlon - I disagree with your in-game comparisons to the real life education system.
Levelling to 80 is the equivalent of elementary school / high school - the bare minimum you need to graduate / reach end-game. Reading up on Wowwiki, Wowhead, EJ etc is the game equivalent of attending tutoring colleges, doing extra homework / research on the side. Thus, those who complete the extra research will get better results than those who do not.
How successful you are post-graduation / during end-game is entirely based on how much work you put into your levelling process.
It's worth noting that not everybody knows the extent of WoW resources available like EJ. I didn't know about Wowhead until I hit level 70 or so on my first character, just as WotLK was coming out, about a year after I started playing. From there, I learned about EJ, Maintankadin and other useful theorycrafting sources. And as we've discussed in reference to a previous post of yours, not all information is available in game without using hours and hours of testing and trial-and-error, even if we only look at class mechanics.
4 hours is enough to find and imitate a decent spec / gearset. It's nowhere near enough to learn your class inside out, to practice rotations, to min/max until you're able to do 25m HMs.
Anyway, I advocated education-based welfare targets in a comment reply to a previous blog. I still stand by that as the ideal means of providing education to the uneducated masses. In game, it's the equivalent of helping those who improve with help, and ignoring those who ignore it. And again, I still stand by that.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455
apparently the strategy is to /promote/ the M&S, and let them collapse under their own incompetence! Id love to hear your thoughts on that paper as it applies to warcraft. (from the igNobel awards announced today)
Aljabra wrote:
"I've heard people complaining about how hard is it to read and how impossible it is to compose an e-mail. And that wasn't some low-grade workers too."
That's just whining. The world is full of it. It doesn't mean they can't do it. Thanks to state education (i.e. education organized and paid for by us as a society), they can do both.
"Education serves to enfranchise those indoctrinated into social norms and attitudes and gives the indoctrinated the false beliefs that hold the M+S together.
It is much easier to exploit and make use of those who are enfranchised in a society than those who are not. Those who are not enfranchised pose a danger to society and can be economically expensive to deal with. (IE; Serial Killers)"
You're wrong to encourage into following the norms of society. Those who are "not enfranchised" also happen to be great leaders or scientists, they're known as persons who radically changed the environments in which they lived in. Sometimes, societies head in wrong directions, which must be corrected by worthy people! By your logic, Napoleon, for instance, was a serial killer. I guess you're from the kind of people who compare him with Hitler. However, Napoleon positively shaped the history of Europe, his contribution was large and undeniable. Einstein's research (unfortunately?) led into the development of the A-bomb which also killed millions of people.
What saddens me is that some view education as a way to, in your own words, "exploit or make use" of others. In their frenzy greediness they amass millions of $$, following only their self-centered interests. This kind poses a real threat to the society! By comparison, serial killers have an insignificant role in the grand scheme of things.
@ Emily Lorange;
"The thing is WoW is an equal ground. Everyone can get the same thing if they put in the effort or time. We all look the same and act the same."
WoW is not an equal ground. The idea that people are "equal" is a myth. It's simply not true that people are equal, and is easily discoverable any way you measure people.
Those avatars, in the game, are being controlled by people. (Who are not equal.) The avatars DO NOT act the same. There is a very large variation in behavior which mimics the variations of the people playing said avatar.
If you are an intelligent, logical person approaching a situation, do you think that you will be just as successful in navigating that situation as a drooling moron? Most likely not.
To use an analogy; Say several people are playing monopoly. 3 of them are 4 year olds who barely grasp the rules. One is an economics professor at Harvard. According to your "all people are equal theory" they are all equal. Since they use representational objects, they have the same opportunity to succeed. (Horseshoes, silver cars, thimbles, etc) Obviously this is simply not the case. The intelligent person will easily triumph over those who cannot even understand the rules. (Or is aware there are rules.)
The goal of education is to limit the range of negative behavior that people entertain, and to sift through the masses of idiocy and discover and nurture the brilliant minds that discover things.
@Healer24: People approche games in a different way than real life only because they have the anonymousness and that what they do ingame won't have a real impact on them IRL (dieing ingame is not same than IRL)
For the rest, they totally act like they would IRL.
@chewy
I agree, that education better be accessible to anyone who want to learn. But believing, that it would reduce the numbers of M&S? No way. People tend to believe, that M&S lack education, when it's clear as day, that what they lack is a desire to have it. Therefore, it's quite useless to force any education above survival minimum (such as reading). It won't do any good and would mean placing a lot of M&S, that don't care to learn, with those, who really want to learn, severely slowing they progress with no real gain. Examples can be easily found in any school around the world.
@Dàchéng
"That's just whining. The world is full of it. It doesn't mean they can't do it. Thanks to state education (i.e. education organized and paid for by us as a society), they can do both."
I know it is, I had forced them to do the "impossible" plenty of times, this example wasn't to illustrate people overall stupidity. It was about people desire to learn in situation, when they job is to know some things. As long as they can evade it (no matter, how simple it is, and no matter, how it will improve they own working experience), they will.
By the way, there are well known "presence effect", when in presence of tech support personnel bugs and undesirable behaviour of programs and equipment tend "magically" dissapear, with said tech support doing exactly nothing. I did some research and found, that it have the very same origins. In presence of someone who supposed to know how to do things right people tend to start actually reading equipment responses and react to it as they've been taught to. So, even if M&S learns something, it don't mean he'll be able to use that knowledge unless threatened with severe bodily harm.
I think what it really boils down to is incentive.
I like to research my class/spec and other WoW-related things because I find it fun and I like being ahead (and I don't like sounding as stupid as those who ask questions that can be answered simply by reading a tooltip).
For most people, however, knowledge itself isn't a good incentive. As far as WoW is concerned, they play the game to have fun, and doing that extra effort to get informed is anti-fun.
Same thing goes for real life, but there is more incentive in real life to learn than in the game. Of course, there are still millions of M&S IRL, but the fear of being homeless, for example, is usually going to be more motivating than the fear of doing 3k DPS instead of 4k.
That said, one prominent problem is that many people don't make the connection between education and well-being. That's where an educator comes in. He needs to show them that informing yourself will provide more fun (I don't know about you, but I find it more fun being informed and doing top DPS and not dying than being uninformed and wiping my group).
Same thing IRL. If you seek education, odds are life will be easier to enjoy than without. But recognizing this requires a broader viewer of things, which people usually don't have. They'd rather have fun in the present moment than invest into future well-being.
For most people, then, knowledge isn't a good enough incentive, because they only see the effort to acquire it, and do not understand the benefits of having it.
M&S are also those guys who can afford to pay 300 bucks for an WoW Account and are just to lazy to learn anything about the game since its just "fun" for them. Maybe they just want to slack a little bit in a game and in real life they dont...like you also not run around 24/7 and allways educate yourself in real life, how about this possibility?
@Chewy
No just the ones who act like the right honourable Alan Beresford B'Stard who was the glowing example of Thatcherism.
@Jana
first you say "no game developer can teach the game mechanics of their game for the "rofl i aint no nolife tard to read tooltips lol" crowd." implying that only idiots wouldn't/couldn't read tooltips to better play the game.
then in your P.S. post you say "Blizzard is already reducing the insane complexity of their tooltips."
I'm confused. Do you think the game contains enough information to play well, or is it "insanely complex"?
I'm a college educated professional. The tools with which to learn to play this game well are NOT contained within the game itself. They are contained only in the collective culture of it's players.
That's why you're here reading this blog.
Playing well requires considerable perserverance, concentration, study, and awareness of this culture and how to access it.
@Aljabra
Therefore, it's quite useless to force any education above survival minimum (such as reading)
But isn't this a contradiction in terms since before there was the literacy levels that the developed world now enjoys (many decades ago) then reading itself was considered a useless education for the masses ? Except for a few of course, who pioneered this minimum level of education we now take for granted.
Education is surely always worthwhile, even for those who seemingly don't appreciate its benefits. Ultimately it is a progression that leads to a better society - an evolution if you will.
The method of education, be it tiered by ability or mixed ability is a different subject and I wouldn't disagree with your observation.
There is considerable truth to what you say, but don't read too much into your WoW experience.
The WoW players are spending money to play an MMO; in particular, the one well known for being a time sink. Clearly these people - on average (does not apply to some of the special snowflakes reading this )- have below average ambition and desire for self-improvement.
And not just an MMO but WoW. WoW can be fun, but it is a mass market game just due to its size. You don't go to a mass market fast food restaurant if you want sophisticated, challenging food. You don't choose WoW if you want the most sophisticated content or players. Playing Darkfall/EVE/WoT? and making fun of WoW is one thing. Playing WoW and expecting niche sophistication from a mass market game is illogical.
tl;dr; WoW players self-improvement and ambition skills are not a random sample of the population.
@chewy
"then reading itself was considered a useless education for the masses ?"
Not only considered, it was quite useless up to some point. How usefull is this skill in a world, where the cost of one human in good working order is only a small fraction of the cost of the book? To make it usefull you first need to give people what to read. And now it got to the point when you must be able to read, or suffer serious consequences.
"Education is surely always worthwhile, even for those who seemingly don't appreciate its benefits. Ultimately it is a progression that leads to a better society - an evolution if you will."
Such evolution never came with education of those, who resist education. They got there later, when knowledge became trivial enough for someone to carry them without unhuman effort. Like it or not, but most "educated" people of modern times are still happen to be on a level with circus monkeys, who learned a few tricks, just on a bigger scale. They learned a lot, but it is utterly useless to them, they don't understand it and can't use it in any way anyway. Still, they can repeat some actions they've learned, so you can use them as voice-programmed automatic units (buggy and lazy, but still a little better, than modern robots, at least, in some cases).
@Greg
"WoW is not an equal ground. The idea that people are "equal" is a myth"
You are confusing different ideas of equal.
If Joe Newb and I both go to a new server and create Undead Warlocks (or any other race/class combo you care to name), the game grants us equal opportunities. One of us doesn't magically start out with more money, better gear, higher base stats, or a guild to help us.
We have Equality of Opportunity.
Now, I have greater knowledge of the game than Mr. Newb so I will likely progress faster - I will be better able to organize my leveling, make better gear/talent choices, etc.
What we do not have is Equality of Outcome.
Joe Newb can, of course, chose to put in the effort to learn things that will enhance his ability to progress.
I agree with you Gevlon
Education is not the answer to M&S in WoW or Society.
I believe this is the mechanic we have working:
In most of the world if you are a M&S you starve.
In western societies with large social safety nets you have M&S go on the dole (welfare). As time goes by more and more M&S are created through discovery (gee I don't really have to work to be fed) or breeding (gee if I have more children I get fed more).
And in western societies that have elections this really gets problematic since majorities CAN be created with higher birth rates. And those with majorities CAN vote themselves more social benefits.
The hope of the left is that universal education will produce enough non-M&S contributors to society that will balance the drag created by the M&S.
Most societies (Japan being one) have felt universal education is a fallacy and early testing to determine M&S is the best way for efficient allocation of limited education resources.
This in turn creates barriers for the non-elite to get into higher status jobs. Thus creating a class system by education.
Ultimately we see life mirrored in WOW. There are (and always will be) elite players who invest time and energy to gain entry to higher class of play (top guilds) while others toil at the bottom in fail-pugs.
Education of all does not guarantee access to all. Education of all cannot guarantee equality in WoW or life.
But in Wow Blizz has an incentive to force the wow player base to boost M&S therefore they are making the admission tests and rewards of end game content super easy (nerfed and badgegeared).
So how long before better Wow players start saying "Atlas Shrugged"?
Oh and how much will they start shrugging as we get closer to SWTOR's launch date?
I had that.
Was in a Pug on my hunter, had a Paladin tank. He wasn't terrible, but certainly wasnt good - and needed constant ToT from the Rogue and MD from me to keep him at top threat.
After inspecting him - his talents were horribly munted - i VERY politely advised him that there were alot better specs out there to improve his threat.
The response I got was:
"I dont care lolz"
I replied:
"One usually plays a game to have fun and to 'beat' the game. Why play to be mediocre?"
I never got an answer to that one.
Ellifain @ Khaz'Goroth.
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