My, my world first! A bloo bloo bloo (WoW-nerd drama)

[Fabricated]

Short Version: One of the main/most outspoken guys from Ensidia is quitting WoW conspicuously after they lost literally every single heroic world first in Icecrown Citadel. Also this guy in particular (along with a couple of others) pretty much slagged off all the other uberguilds as basically being shit.

Normally I'd just be a bit amused and move on but his "I QUIT FOREVER" rant is pretty funny.

http://www.ensidia.com/muqq/blog/4436/

...So, what do I want? What do I think could be changed to make World of Warcraft a better game? Jumping to conclusions, some might think that I would want more high-end content and encounters of higher difficulty. That's far from it. I want to be able to log on, and have worthwhile content to do which would lead to me actually progressing my character. It can be anything from 5 man up to 25 man, all is game as long as it's fun, challenging and worthwhile doing.

Compared Final Fantasy XI, another MMO that I played, there's a lot of content that can be placed at the mid levels, as well as much more group oriented content that is not in form of a 10-15 minute zerg through an instanced dungeon. The gear progression could easily be slowed down as well, so you don't constantly replace every item as soon as a new content patch is released. Sure, it might be nice to be at the top of the foodchain upgrading from the second best item to the best item for any of your slots, but that does not change the fact that it's also enjoyable to upgrade the 10th best weapon to the 9th. That's one of the biggest things that I think Blizzard have intentionally overlooked to adjust the game for their new target audience. In other words, the lack of character progression makes the game as it is today; boring, very boring. No amount of vanity pets, mounts, kill x, deliver y, collect z quests, mirrored instances, heroic instance zergs, arenas, battlegrounds and homogenized classes will change that fact. All to cater to an audience that won't be playing the game for more than 2-3 months at most...

So basically...you raided really hardcore for 5 years, shit on people doing the same thing because you thought you were better at killing imaginary monsters, you actually blogged in an unironic manner about the details of the game, complained about casuals ruining it...

...but your problem is the lack of low-mid level content and gear inflation? Did you fall down the stairs and hit your fucking head? You do remember what game you were playing right?

[kildorn]

The funny thing is, there IS gear progression where he's asking for it. It's just that it doesn't really matter if you farm for BEST LEVEL 31 BRACER, because who the fuck cares about it.

Basically he's whining less about gear progression, and more about a desire for non instanced progression. Which is pretty much the uberguild way of saying "I want to be able to cockblock other guilds from progressing by killing their raid targets"

I mean, that's what non instanced raiding essentially has been and became the few times WoW tried it. Either get to the mob first, or try and interfere with the raid who got their first so you can wipe them and take over (remember when they had to add non-interference rules because people were exploiting the dragon mechanics to force wipes? Whee!)

edit: he essentially also wants some form of post level cap grind (AA), or for the game to take so long to level that you have to slog through it and raid your way up. "Think about it. You get some of the best weapons in the game from the end bosses of the dungeons, but for what purpose? Just so you can show them off in the main city? By the time the next raid instance arrives, you'll quickly replace it anyway." <-- one of my favorite bits. He's essentially complaining that he gets item X, and can't do anything with it. Including when new content comes out because there's now an item Y to get. He just doesn't LIKE MMOs anymore.

[Paelos]

Who cares what some douchebag Euro thinks about progression when his e-world comes crashing down around his ears? Anyone who dedicates this much of their life to being world-first in a game has lost total touch with reality and should be pitied.

[Ingmar]

Yeah this translates to me as wanting outdoor raid content a la EQ.

[Sjofn]

Didn't they rage quit already?

[Wolf]

Who cares what some douchebag Euro thinks about progression when his e-world comes crashing down around his ears? Anyone who dedicates this much of their life to being world-first in a game has lost total touch with reality and should be pitied.

Sounds like a Yank is all sad over their poopsockers still not having a kill :(

In all seriousness, I never got the hate over the hardcore. They do their stuff, you do yours. They decide to sink countless hours into a game, you decide to sink less hours into a game and you have friends that sink no hours into a game. To random people of the last group _you_ should be pitied. You should be happy that blizzard realizes we're the majority and makes the game for us and not for them.

Muqq has done much for the shadow priest community. I'm pretty happy he played some wow and I have moderate ammounts of respect for the guy (outside of being an ass most of the time and having crazy ideas over what wow should be).

[Ratman_tf]

I honestly can't see what other players are seeing in the game to keep them going, especially the veterans.

"I'm burned out, and you should validate my feelings by being burned out too."

[Merusk]

Didn't they rage quit already?

Yes, but that doesn't stop people from reading their site and being influenced by them.  FoH hasn't been relevant in the MMOspace for years (Aside from the MMO discussion boards), but still has a huge cult-like following.

In all seriousness, I never got the hate over the hardcore. They do their stuff, you do yours. They decide to sink countless hours into a game, you decide to sink less hours into a game and you have friends that sink no hours into a game. To random people of the last group _you_ should be pitied. You should be happy that blizzard realizes we're the majority and makes the game for us and not for them.

The hate is old school you hint that you know EXACTLY where it comes from. That Devs have a history of catering to and bending the game around the hardcore folks, making it shit for those less-so.  Often times it stems from their own hardcore nature, so they simply can't understand WHY their players won't behave the way they want them to. (Hi CCP!)   

Some folks carry it on for that reason alone.  Others latch on to it just because it's trendy to hate things.  Others because of jealousy at the time or ability of those players that they lack. (Insert ob. "wow takes no skill - but ignore the bad PUG thread! - joke here.)   I'm sure there's other reasons I'm missing.. but it winds up being  a larger chunk than those who'll just go their own way and do their own thing.  Exacerbated by the fact that the last group is busy NOT saying anything because, y'know, they don't give a damn.

[Malakili]

I mean, you can understand why someone who treats(ed) the game that way would be upset by the way the game is now.  No one really gives a shit about progression and world firsts anymore.  Everyone is beating the end game raiding instances in a reasonable time frame, and pretty much everyone gets to at least see the content if they want to.  Combine that with badge based look and everyone is in epics.   The result is, everything that the super hardcore worried about has happened, and the kinds of player he is  are getting phased out.  Of course he is upset.  Too bad for him it is better for 99.99% of the playing population.

[Musashi]

"I'm burned out, and you should validate my feelings by being burned out too."

That's as accurate a description as I can imagine.

[Fabricated]

I just think it's ironic he's playing the wounded casual player role after basically being a douchebag and a turbo-hardcore raider for 5 years, and conveniently after basically being humiliated in that world by people he slagged off.

[sickrubik]

I just think it's ironic he's playing the wounded casual player role after basically being a douchebag and a turbo-hardcore raider for 5 years, and conveniently after basically being humiliated in that world by people he slagged off.

It seems that a majority of the people who claim to be casual are not casual at all.

Hell, I have one level 80, have played since release, and don't consider myself a casual player.

[Sheepherder]

Goddamn casuals don't know their place!  Blizzard, make something shitty and broken for them so my e-peen can continue to be bigger than theirs!

[Fordel]

I just think it's ironic he's playing the wounded casual player role after basically being a douchebag and a turbo-hardcore raider for 5 years, and conveniently after basically being humiliated in that world by people he slagged off.

It seems that a majority of the people who claim to be casual are not casual at all.

Hell, I have one level 80, have played since release, and don't consider myself a casual player.

No, you really are in the casual bracket.

[K9]

Fuck Ensidia

[Paelos]

Who cares what some douchebag Euro thinks about progression when his e-world comes crashing down around his ears? Anyone who dedicates this much of their life to being world-first in a game has lost total touch with reality and should be pitied.

Sounds like a Yank is all sad over their poopsockers still not having a kill :(

I don't think we'll ever kill the Lich King in a regular format before 30% buffs. That's not my group's style. However, I'm not going to make some ridiculous post claiming we're not the ones to blame though.  

[Musashi]

This is that problem that's as old as time.  I can work harder than you for x amount of time if I make unrealistic sacrifices in my real life.  I can do this until my brain explodes.  And when my brain explodes, I can't be responsible for what the fuck I say because I have no brain.  This guy is literally fried.  He's pooped in his last sock for at least a while.  And now he's looking around and confronting the fact that he really did take a shit in a sock.  It's got to be embarrassing for him.

There are a lot of people who play these games who spend more time than they can actually afford to spend.  This catches up, invariably.  In order to avoid this problem, you need to be in a guild with a real leader.  I'm not talking about softball coach quality skill.  I'm talking about someone with the clairvoyance to evaluate on an almost superhuman level.  It takes some serious talent to do all the shit that needs doing to lead an internet monster killing fun club.  I know that sounds like a joke, but it really isn't.  As far as I know there has been only one guild to consistently play at a high level since launch.  If you have this kind of guy at the helm, then you don't need to play every second of the day in order to maintain your elite dork status.  It's also a horrible, horrible burden to place on someone.

[Jayce]

Joining the dogpile...

That's one of the biggest things that I think Blizzard have intentionally overlooked to adjust the game for their new target audience. In other words, the lack of character progression makes the game as it is today; boring, very boring.

"New" as of four years ago, when they realized that poopsockers don't number enough to pay the bills.  Boring, if you spend 16 hours a day in game.  I play 1-3 hours a day at most, and believe me when I say that there are unexplored vistas still available to me.  I've never had a high level engineer, or seen the inside of AQ40, for example.

[Musashi]

I've never seen [sic] the inside of AQ40, for example.

You should probably consider yourself lucky.

[Ironwood]

Indeed.  It's fucking awful.  Molten Core levels of boredom and stupidity.

[Dren]

It seems that a majority of the people who claim to be casual are not casual at all.

Hell, I have one level 80, have played since release, and don't consider myself a casual player.

Casual is not about number of hours played.  Everyone has free time hours to spend on something.  You might choose to use them on an MMO.  I have a crapton of hours into the game, but that's just how I choose to use my free time.  It is my replacement for TV.  I don't watch it.

Casual is about what those hours played are.  Do you?:
1.  Tell friends, family, work that you can't do something with them because secretively (or not so secretively) that is raid night?
2.  Do you constantly put off chores like mowing the lawn, shovelling the sidewalk, changing the babies poopy diapers, etc. just to play?
3.  Do you spend more than 50% of your actual play time in game, out of game looking up data to min/max your character?
4.  Do you wake up every morning completely pissed that you stayed up so late playing the night before?  Work suffer from it?
5.  Do you get emotional when your guild fails to reach an objective to the point of affecting your attitude/emotions in RL?

If you said yes, you might be a hardcore MMO player. (There are a lot more examples.  We should start a thread on it.)  I think most of us can say we've been on the fringe of this or occasionally fell into this.  I certainly have from time to time.  However, 95% of the time I get my RL stuff done before logging in and regret the other 5%.

[Malakili]

Indeed.  It's fucking awful.  Molten Core levels of boredom and stupidity.

AQ40 had some of my favorite bosses, of course, it had some terrible ones too.  Way better than Molten Core though.  To this day I think C'thun is the best fight Blizzard has ever made

[Merusk]

If by "best" you mean "Hey wouldn't it be awesome if a little bit of lag RIGHT AT THE START could kill everyone in the place,"  then sure.

It was a fun fight, to be certain, as it was still entertaining when I did it 3 years later. However when a fight insta-wipes 20 overgeared & overpowered level 80s it's a fucking cockblock of stupidity at the appropriate level.

[Typhon]

I've never seen [sic] the inside of AQ40, for example.

You should probably consider yourself lucky.

crap.  I know I should just let this pass, but it's bothering me because I'm not sure that what's bothering me is correct.  I think you should have done the quote like this:

I've never [...] seen the inside of AQ40, for example.

which would make clear that you cut out the parts you weren't interested in?  If I understand the use of [sic] correctly, you use it when quoting someone who made a mistake which you are leaving as-is.  So you modified his quote and inserted [sic].  But the [sic] indicates that, "this is the way he wrote it", which is not factually correct.

Also, I'm pretty sure that there is nothing wrong with the part of the sentence that you [sic]'d - "I have never seen the inside of AQ40, for example".

Must be something in my coffee that is making me more of a douche today... yeah, that's it!  Can anyone tell me what is/isn't correct in that usage?

Edit: I swear I proof-read!  ... I just suck at proof-reading.  Changed the "So, you modified" sentences to make more sense.  Pretty embarrassed that I whipped out the grammar snake.  Really embarrassed that I whipped out the grammar snake and made no sense.

[Malakili]

If by "best" you mean "Hey wouldn't it be awesome if a little bit of lag RIGHT AT THE START could kill everyone in the place,"  then sure.

It was a fun fight, to be certain, as it was still entertaining when I did it 3 years later. However when a fight insta-wipes 20 overgeared & overpowered level 80s it's a fucking cockblock of stupidity at the appropriate level.

Actually, I think thats WHY it was so good.   It wasn't about gear level so much as execution, I never felt more accomplished in WoW than when we finally beat that guy because we had to have all 40 players playing near perfectly at level 60, and we did it anyway.

[Merusk]

Several of the ICC fights are all about the execution rather than the DPS without resorting to such bs.  Hey, so were several of the BWL fights.

Insta-wipe mechanics: Never fun.

[Sheepherder]

Insta-wipe mechanics: Never fun.

1. Consumables and raid buffs become infinite duration / persist through death while you're in a raid, and only apply while in that raid for that week.
2. Wipes / nobody in combat resurrects your raid beside the group > at a respawn point > at the door.
3. Drop the death penalty. (optional)

[Lantyssa]

which would make clear that you cut out the parts you weren't interested in?  If I understand the use of [sic] correctly, you use it when quoting someone who made a mistake which you are leaving as-is.  So, you modified his quote, and they said, "this is the way he wrote it", which is not factually correct.

Also, I'm pretty sure that there is nothing wrong with the part of the sentence that you [sic]'d - "I have never seen the inside of AQ40, for example".

Must be something in my coffee that is making me more of a douche today... yeah, that's it!  Can anyone tell me what is/isn't correct in that usage?

It was bugging me, too.

I passed my save on commenting until I got the negative modifier of your reinforcement.

[Musashi]

Grammar Snake

I amended his original quote, which gave it an accidental mistake.  Then I decided to write [sic] in there to look cool but forgot to put back the original accidental typo, which as I look at it now was my mistake in the first place.  I fail.

[Musashi]

I defy anyone who was fighting C'thun at 60 within six months of the opening of AQ on their server to tell me it was a fun, well-balanced, encounter.  It was not.  It was an over-wrought, guild-destroying, stupid piece of shit.  Also, shout out to post-emps trash.

[Jayce]

What's funny is that C'thun, apparently a boss that took skill over gear, was behind a boss (Huhuran) who was all about the right resists.  Resists that essentially didn't exist in the game on high level gear when they released the content.

Casual is not about number of hours played.  Everyone has free time hours to spend on something.  You might choose to use them on an MMO.  I have a crapton of hours into the game, but that's just how I choose to use my free time.  It is my replacement for TV.  I don't watch it.

Casual is about what those hours played are.  Do you?:
1.  Tell friends, family, work that you can't do something with them because secretively (or not so secretively) that is raid night?
2.  Do you constantly put off chores like mowing the lawn, shovelling the sidewalk, changing the babies poopy diapers, etc. just to play?
3.  Do you spend more than 50% of your actual play time in game, out of game looking up data to min/max your character?
4.  Do you wake up every morning completely pissed that you stayed up so late playing the night before?  Work suffer from it?
5.  Do you get emotional when your guild fails to reach an objective to the point of affecting your attitude/emotions in RL?

If you said yes, you might be a hardcore MMO player. (There are a lot more examples.  We should start a thread on it.)  I think most of us can say we've been on the fringe of this or occasionally fell into this.  I certainly have from time to time.  However, 95% of the time I get my RL stuff done before logging in and regret the other 5%.

That description* sounds more like "you might be irresponsible".  If you only slip into irresponsibility 5% of the time, you're well within the norm, no one being perfect and all.

* #1 might be an exception, since if you commit to raid with someone, you should honor that on the same level as real life.  #3 just means you're OCD, no real problem there  

[Ratman_tf]

Casual is when your main isn't 80 yet, and you don't care.

Serious is when you raid, or LFD and spend more than a handful of gold on your gems and enchants.

Hardcore is when you realize that skipping your shower gives you 15 more minutes to finish dailies on your 3rd raiding alt.

[Mrbloodworth]

Casual is when your main isn't 80 yet, and you don't care.

Serious is when you raid, or LFD and spend more than a handful of gold on your gems and enchants.

Hardcore is when you realize that skipping your shower gives you 15 more minutes to finish dailies on your 3rd raiding alt.

/thread

[Dren]

I was suggesting at 5% irresponsiblilty I am normal.  We agree.  Actually, that number goes down since I regret it more and more as it happens.

Yeah, it is tough to stay positive when talking about some of the pitfalls of "Turning Hardcore."  Many times it drops into jokes about poop socks, etc.

Yes, if you commit to a raid, you should follow up.  The difference is, I know that so I do not commit.  I just don't ever want to be in that situation.  "But honey, I promised my WoW guild I'd raid with them during that time..."  Ummm, no, that would not go over well and I would not feel comfortable saying it.  I don't care if I lose a spot due to it.  Not important to me.

[Malakili]

 "But honey, I promised my WoW guild I'd raid with them during that time..."  Ummm, no, that would not go over well and I would not feel comfortable saying it.  I don't care if I lose a spot due to it.  Not important to me.

For reasons that you stated (not wanting to have to worry about showing up) I also don't raid anymore.  However, I've never understood the part I've quoted here.  Would it not go over well if you had made some sort of other plans with friends?  For instance, Saturday I am going to play golf, but my SO wouldn't expect me to give that up at the drop of a hat.  In the same token, she wouldn't expect me to bail on friends in a video game either if I've made plans in advance.  It isn't about losing a spot or whatever, its, as you said earlier in your post, doing something you said you would.