It's getting about that time in the xpac cycle that all this crap gets recycled. When I started back up mid-Wrath, all this was in full swing: "Catering to casuals, dumbing down the game, welfare epics". Then mid Cata, with LFR on the horizon: "Catering to casuals, free epics for everyone, class homogenization". Now in mid-MoP: "Catering to casuals, raiding made easy for noobs, talents mean nothing anymore". OK, so I'm a hypocrite here too, since I bitched about Tier gear dropping in LFR.
Like a dog returns to it's vomit:
What brought this to my attention was Big Bear Butt's post, and he reams this guy a hell lot better than I could, so check it out. I also want to ream him a little myself, so here we go with a few quotes from the video:
"Over the past few expansions, more and more methods have been developed in order to let players see the content regardless of time commitments, or even ability to actually play. This has gone to far though. With very easy accessibility to the latest content, what is there to incentive or drive new players to become better and see what the game has to offer? What is the reason they should stick around?"
One word: Mastery. No, not the stat. Why do people play the guitar? Because it's fun. Because you get better at it, and that's satisfying. (The relevant section of the video starts at 6:45)
This opening statement of his reveals him to be so out of touch of what new players experience, simply because he cannot drop his endgame bias. New players are not raiders. New players might actually like leveling, questing, doing dungeons, exploring for the sake of it, not for xp. Economically speaking (gold and xp being the currencies) most activities new players engage in are terribly inefficient if your goal is to level, gear, and complete endgame content. But it's fun. And you get better.
"I must point out that the apathy of the community is one of the big struggles here and it's only by Blizzard's reckoning that this has happened."
First off, I don't think he's using "reckoning" right, unless he means to say that Blizzard's judgement of the accessibility issue is the only thing that has caused this apathy. Really? No one else had a hand in it? And exactly what apathy is it anyway? The apathy toward trolls. This douchbag set out to simulate a new player, but what he really simulated is a troll looking to be carried. New players don't stand around. New players don't know what auto-follow is. Trolls do.
"Why do you want to defend this? Why would you defend this situation? I did nothing. I was the worst player imaginable. I never got hassled. The community didn't try to help me. The community certainly didn't try to remove me, and as such, people are doing this every day and there are so many players falling into this trap of 'I've played the game for a couple of days and I've finished it... and I did it without even trying. I did it without ever being abused. I did it without ever having any remote incentive to possibly get better to see something more in this game.'"
Never mind the strawman at the start. I am not the strawman. I'll have to agree here and say that, yes, he was the worst possible player imaginable. He was a troll. Again, he is clueless that getting better is the incentive. Again, he shows his endgame bias. Again, he assumes that new players are helpless without direct intervention by a more skilled player.
"Describe heroic mode to a new player 'Well, you get better gear.' 'Oh, that's cool.' 'But it's considerably harder, there's going to be lots of wiping, going to get lots of costs, lots of bills. You have to farm potions. You have to be there at a certain time. There's no guarantee on loot by any means. You have to play with the players who got trial process to go through.' It sounds very off-putting."
Off-putting to whom, exactly? I'll answer primarily with an excerpt from a favorite book of mine, The Runner's Rule Book by Mark Remy:
Rule 1.1 Have Fun
You thought I was kidding when I called this the first rule of running? No way. I'm serious about having fun... There is a fundamental joy in movement, in forward motion.
Rule 1.2 Expand Your Definition of Fun
For runners, fun might include:
- Waking up at 5:30 a.m. to run 10 miles
- Running in blistering heat
- Running in the rain
- Running in 400-meter circles
- Feeling as if your lungs will explode
Moving on.
"This is why guilds aren't being formed other than paltry 10mans with aspirations of greatness, spawning all over every server like the plague, while the big guilds that are trying to do something are becoming smaller and smaller, because there are no new players, or very very few that have any incentive, any drive to be more than what they are already doing, which is so considerably easier."
"Paltry 10 mans with aspirations of greatness." Type that into trade and run that experiment. He can't get outside his own bias, and these masturbatory meanderings become revolting. He says there's no difference between raid finder gear and normal or heroic gear, and yeah, I made that mistake once myself, but I've since remembered (again and again, it takes reminding) that that's not the point of raiding!
The point is to have fun. Maybe even get better. And if you want to get even better and have more fun, just... expand your definition of fun.
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