Thursday, February 4, 2010

More Thoughts on Elitism in WoW

A few days ago I spoke about elitism in WoW. The topic is still on my mind, so I'm going to continue putting my thoughts down about it.

Today a top raiding guild got banned for exploiting a bug to defeat the Lich King encounter and gain the world first killing. (I'm not putting the name of the guild because I don't want it to show up on searches. Stupid as it may sound, I don't want to feed their elitist egos by adding to posts in the blogosphere about them. This post isn't about their ban anyway. It's about the elitism that went along with it.) One of the guild's main members put up a blog post in which he highly criticized Blizzard, including accusing them of making content too easy. (OK...end of reference to that incident.)

"Content is too easy." Who are the people that say this? Some (many? most?) members of top raiding guilds do (mine included). But other people do too. Who are they? What do these people have in common? Saying "elitism" is the common quality is a bit too easy. I want to understand it on a deeper level. What makes someone become an elitist?

I wish it were possible to do a survey of elitists to get statistics. I'd suspect that a large number of them are one or more of the following: (1) young -- teens to early 20s, (2) male, (3) able to spend lots of time in game, (4) insecure, (5) unable to discuss ideas rationally and with an open mind.

Why do I say each of these?

(1) Young -- Immaturity is definitely a factor. In general, the experienced, developed, educated mind is one that is less selfish and more aware and tolerant of others. I know that's a big generalization and there are millions of cases where that's not true (look at the Ku Klux Klan as an example), but I think it's safe to say that it's generally true. Most young people are not fully matured intellectually and emotionally. They often lack the ability to be tolerant of others. And, as we all know, young people can be cruel to one another. If you are different, don't fit in, aren't able to keep up with the cool kids, you are ostracized and ridiculed. Of course, this type of behavior isn't limited to young people. Even middle aged and elderly people can exhibit this behavior. But, I'd say that despite their age, they're still intellectually and/or emotionally immature.

(2) Male -- Testosterone is evil. :-) Really, though, men seem to always need to compete for top dog. They need to be the best, strongest, fastest, most skilled, most whatever. Of course, that doesn't mean that females can't be elitists. Surely I've run across many elitist women. But, in the world of video games I think it's safe to say that most of the elitists are male.

(3) Able to spend lots of time in the game -- I don't believe I've run across many elitist players in WoW that are only able to play 3-4 hours a week. In order to be an elitist, you need the gear to back it up. Gear is only obtainable by spending time in the game. Even with heroics being easier to run these days (because of the current LFG system AND the average gear level players), a person with limited time to play will still find it hard to keep up with the Joneses gear-wise. My priest has close to a 5700 gear score at this point because I raid about 18 hours a week with her (25-man and 10-man combined). My druid, on the other hand, still has a gear score in the mid-high 3000s since my time on her is limited to a daily random heroic and the occasional additional heroic if time permits.

But, I've gotten off track. My point with this is that people who say the content is too easy are, more often than not, the people that have enough time to obtain the gear to make it easy. I think the first encounters of ICC are easy -- on my priest. But, when I'm in ICC on my mage and her guild mates, I find it challenging. Why? Mostly because of gear. My priest's guildmates are all highly geared. My mage's guildmates are average to well geared.

I'm not trying to get into a discussion about whether or not the end-game raiding content should be doable by the masses. I can see both sides of the argument on that. Making raid content difficult for top raiding guilds gives them incentive to stay in the game. If the content were too easy for them, they'd get bored and move on to another game. I get that. But, I also remember wanting to see raids such as Black Temple and Sunwell before I was in a raiding guild. I knew I never could because I wasn't geared enough. It made me a sad that there were parts of the game I'd never see because of this, despite paying the same amount of money per month to play the game as the top-end raiders. So...I understand both sides of the argument regarding that.

But that's not my point.

My point is that many elitists are only able to be elitists because of their gear. The only way to get exceptional gear is by spending lots of time in the game. But...does the ability to spend a lot of time in the game and get better gear entitle anyone to feel superior to those who don't have the time?

(4) Insecure -- This one could be hotly debated (and denied, of course), but behind most elitists there is an insecure person. Anyone that has to base their worth and self esteem on their status in a video game is making up for something in their real life. I'm not saying in-game elitists are no-life losers in real life. Nope. Not all. Some might be. Others might be very successful people with wonderful family lives who contribute to society in very positive ways. But, even the most successful person can have insecurities. And when I say "successful", I'm not limiting it to having a good career. I mean anything that would make a person feel successful, including, but not limited to, being a low income single parent raising a healthy well adjusted child. In my book, that person is just as successful as the most infuential lawyer or doctor. (And sometimes even more successful, but that's another discussion.)

Anyway...I think elitism is often a manifestation of insecurity. The need to make yourself feel superior to others by putting them down. That's so often a blatant sign of insecurity.

(5) unable to discuss ideas rationally and with an open mind -- This is the typical internet era jerk. There's John Gabriel's Greater Internet F!kwad Theory that basically says, given total anonymity and an audience, even the most normal person can become a jerk. My own take on that is something you find everywhere on the internet, including in WoW.

For example, just today I read a post on the WoW forums in which someone was saying "stay away from such and such players because they do low dps in heroics". They actually said the names of the players and revealed their dps numbers in a recent heroic run. They claim they were doing a public service. This, of course, led to a debate regarding the notion of the acceptable amount of dps for heroics. Those who felt the original poster was wrong stated reasonable arguments: Heroics were originally desgined for fresh 80s. When Wrath first came out and we all started running heroics we had ilvl 200 gear or less. We made it through heroics just fine, though maybe with some difficulty at times. Now that many people have ilvl 245-264 gear, heroics are much easier to run. In some cases, the heroic dungeons themselves have been made easier by nerfing certain mechanics. Many people are leveling alts who are fresh 80s. They haven't been able to get to the point of gaining the 245-264 gear. They're as geared as we were when we started heroics and, in many cases, the dungeons are easier.

With all these reasonable arguments, the original poster and those that supported him continued to hold their ground. According to them, anything under 5k dps is just unacceptable in heroics at this point. End of story. Anyone with less than 5k dps is fail and needs to learn to play or just quit WoW altogether.

I'm sorry, but any reasonable rational person can see the lack of logic in that position. But most elitists fail to debate reasonably. They can't admit the true sub-par DPS for heroics is DPS that is lower than expected for ilvl 175-200 geared people. That's the ilvl that heroics were designed around. Instead they insist that everyone should be at 245-264 at this point. They won't even respond to posts about fresh lvl 80 alts.

What they really should say, and a reasonable/rational person would, is that they recognize that ilvl 175-200 is fine for heroics, but they prefer to run heroics with people with higher gear levels. That is perfectly acceptable. It's a preference for them...they want to get through heroics quickly. And, saying it that way does not put any judgment on the people who have not achieved that level of gear yet. But, instead, they call anyone without their expected level of DPS "fail".

Another example of an irrational or unreasonable stance is the discussion about the ease of current raids. Uber-geared highly-sklled end-game-focused raiders will definitely find encounters in ICC easier to beat than others who don't match that description. In fact, I'll even stipulate that it's not necessary to have uber-gear to feel that way. As long as you're highly skilled and focused on end-game content, you'll probably find many ICC encounters to be easy.

But...does that mean that anyone who doesn't have the same perspective as you is "fail"? Take my mage's guild for example. They are a group of good, and in many cases well geared, players. They still struggle on 10-man Saurfang and, the last time I checked, they are still trying to kill Rotface. If anyone asked them if they thought the content was easy, they'd say "no". Are they as geared as the top raiders? No. Are they as experienced with end-game raiding as the top raiders? No. Do some of them lack the quick response time as top raiders? Yes. But...are they "fail" because of these differences? No.

Any reasonable/rational person would agree that the top raiding guilds have an edge (gearwise and skillwise) over other guilds. They would admit that their perspective of the game is only shared by a small percentage of the WoW community. They would say that, although they find the content easy, they can understand why it's more difficult for those with less advantages than they. (And they'd say so without condescension, of course.)

Does better gear make you more valuable of a human being? Does more skill, experience, reaction time, etc. make you a more valuable human being? No, but elitists make it seem that way.

OK...I've gone on and on. But this topic fascinates me. There are so many facets to it; surely not every elitist is an elitist for the same combination of reasons. And, I'm sure there are more personality traits behind elitism that I haven't thought of.

It's such a negative force...and yet there doesn't seem to be any way to rid the world of it.

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