...REALLY?!?

So after scrolling through several of my habitual blogs, the title above was my reaction to following a chain from a popular one to its source. For anyone that knows me (or read the definitions), this reaction entailed a few moments of dead silence, followed by the word shrieking from my mouth. Since that time I have actually been trying to formulate a somewhat sensible and less... reactive response.

The article that started this was posted by Tobold on his blog site. He made a reasonable post that I pretty much agree with, but not NEAR so much as I am in spirit with his source. Just reading the post on Screaming Monkeys made ME want to, well, scream. Not at the blogger himself (who I'm concerned might have suffered a fit of apoplectic rage while posting), who sums up my thoughts well, but at his source. Still following the blog chain?

So here we have an elitist jerk, who feels that those of us who pay the same amount of money per month (and for the intitial game box) but do not dedicate most of, oh, our LIVES to raiding, do not deserve the same experience as the l33t hardcore raiders. This was where the ... pause was triggered.

"I’ve been arguing for a long time that casuals don’t deserve the same experience as people who devote more time and effort,.."

Holy crap, I think I might have hurt myself. I and my "casual" Guild of friends don't deserve to experience the same content as your elitist ass? Seriously? Because I have dedicated my gaming time to playing with people I actually care about IRL and NOT to jockeying myself into a top server raiding Guild, I don't get to even SEE the content? Bullshit, I say.

Now I have proven to myself on a couple of occasions that I can do almost anything in game I set my mind to. When in BC WoW I wanted to get invited to raids in my non-Guild time, I actually listened to the non-elitist people who were willing to provide advice on gear, playstyle, etc and I improved, and was invited to Kara and Zul Aman. But it wasn't as fun as when our group of friends got to see it the first time, and after a bunch of tries finally make it through together. Did we do it in the first week? Nope. Will we ever make server firsts? BWAHAHAHAHAHA. I'm in it to play with my friends, and if it takes us 3 months to do what teh uberest playerz did in 3 days, I'm okay with that. But by no means is it okay for anyone else to tell my friends they don't deserve to see end-game content because they won't buckle down, lose sleep worrying about their gear score, or just have fun instead of an aneurysm when the old god at the end of the instance doesn't go down first try. You sir, deserve a kick in the balls for belittling anyone that way.

Blizzard has done a great job of addressing this in Wrath. I will never sport lvl 245 items or weapons with the pretty "Heroic" label on them for everyone to see. That should go to the folks who want to spend all of their time that way. And now you can enter hard-mode and get extra phat lootz and titles that will forever remain unreachable to me.

I'm okay with that.

"While it's easy to be shocked and dismayed that Blizzard would betray their
fanbase, anyone who has been paying attention this expansion will feel this is
par for the course..."

Their fanbase? This person now speaks for all of us? I actually don't know ANYONE that I play (or rarely PUG) with that feels this way. Extending raid locks and different modes of play actually meets the needs of a greater percentage of the fanbase. You're allowed to not be happy with it, but you are NOT the voice of the damn people. Our Guild will finish Ulduar on its own time, around our real lives, and we will still all be friends, and LTB will live on long past when your heart gives out. And personally, I don't care whether that makes you screaming angry or not. I will agree that WoW has become WoW-lite (oh look, I think my quest might be that shrub over there that's glowing. How'd I miss that?), but ANY game that only caters to a small percentage of a community will never see the success or longevity of one that at least tries to meet the needs of more than the hardcore few.

Why this all affects me so deeply is that this elitist issue parallels something that is strongly rooted in our community right now. The battle for gay "marriage". Call it what you want, I'm not here to debate semantics or religious dogma. I am speaking of the legal rights that I and my same sex partner should have that a married straight couple does. How the damn hell does MY relationship to my partner, and the legal ramifications (like property rights, medical decisions) affect YOUR life and relationship? If I happen to sleep with another man in Georgia, why the hell are you and your God-says-this-is-right fascists losing sleep and marching to protest me in another part of the country? The American constitution is supposed to treat us all as equal, yet in your mind I deserve less? Doubtful.

And so, to bring it all home, if I want to proceed at my speed in a video game I love and play with people I have relationships with, this impacts your experience how? Your legal rights (or uber lootz) won't change or go away if I am given equal footing, merely your perception of them. And while your viewpoint is valid, it is still only your own. I thought your president Lincoln took care of that pesky issue of imposing your will on others...

I will be gay my entire life, and I will never let anyone tell me I deserve less than they do because I'm "doing it wrong". And if I want to take 4 months and 3 extended raid locks to finally beat Arthas to death with gear that will never be as l33t as yours, I will enjoy the hell out of it.

Then I will log off early and go play TF2. Then play with my dogs before snuggling up in bed with someone I care about to watch cartoons before I fall asleep at a reasonable time.


And if you don't like it, c'est la vie.