The Like/Hate Thread

[Kaden]

If you want a honest comparison to communities, LoL is perfect. Compare the top guilds (who are often the asses), with the top players on LoL.

That isn't that great of a comparison, actually, and your own wording explains why. The way a guild "acts" is through a perceived composite of their members' actions. You can't accurately compare that to how a single person acts.

And even if you wanted to inaccurately compare it, it doesn't actually mean anything. Yeah, some people in a guild are going to be dicks, but that doesn't mean that everyone in the guild is a dick. That's not analogous to saying "some of the top ten players on LoL are dicks but that doesn't mean everyone on LoL is." You're using two completely different paradigms in a single comparison and that just... doesn't make any sense.

[Nori]

That isn't that great of a comparison, actually, and your own wording explains why. The way a guild "acts" is through a perceived composite of their members' actions. You can't accurately compare that to how a single person acts.

And even if you wanted to inaccurately compare it, it doesn't actually mean anything. Yeah, some people in a guild are going to be dicks, but that doesn't mean that everyone in the guild is a dick. That's not analogous to saying "some of the top ten players on LoL are dicks but that doesn't mean everyone on LoL is." You're using two completely different paradigms in a single comparison and that just... doesn't make any sense.

Actually, you just made it prove the point I wanted to address. I'd assume you meant to do so.

Top Players of Lol = most obnoxious.

Not everyone in the top guilds in wow = obnoxious, but give off the impression the entire guild is.

If that wasn't putting your statements together correctly, then tell me. I understand that I didn't word what I wanted correctly, but I'm pretty sure you got my point regardless.

Edit: Also, I believe in the majority should have final opinions in a game, afterall, is is their game. Considering the vast majority of the people who play WoW don't care about pugging 25mans or 10 mans enough to actually "do" anything, or even really voice concern, it's not important. Now, if you say the forum goers care, that's just silly. I don't think even 1 million players of wow frequent the forums, when there's 11.5 million players.

Now, if you can show me that the majority of the people who play the game hate the lockouts, I'll agree. Until then, I stand by the fact it's not important.

Also, I stand by the fact that it is a logical choice. If you can run through content twice as much, you will get gear that much faster. Then it is far more likely for you to be sitting around waiting for new gear for months. It isn't needed, and it isn't a smart business plan.

[Vad]

I pugged everything back in the good ole days.

[Nori]

By old days, I assume you meant wotlk? The expansion that, in my humble opinion, is what Blizzard needs (and is trying), to deviate from?

Edit: Also, ur rogue suxed k?

[Vad]

By old days, I assume you meant wotlk? The expansion that, in my humble opinion, is what Blizzard needs (and is trying), to deviate from?

Edit: Also, ur rogue suxed k?

Vanilla WoW. BC and Wrath can blow me. Cata can too.

[Nori]

You pugged 40 mans in vanilla? I don't think so. Considering the instances to even get into raids back then (strat comes to mind), required a group that had a raid-like setting. Either that, or getting carried by a guild at the start.

Same goes with BC. One of the few realms that pugged was area 52, and they only pugged Kara. Pugging barely existed in the initial game, or it's first expansion. Wrath, however, is the expansion where Blizzard said it's not only okay to pug, it has just as many, if not more, benefits then guild raiding.

[Milk Bubble]

I would show you how many people wanted to be able to pug again, those in guilds and those not in guilds, but they deleted my thread after 4 pages.

And apparently I got banned for bumping my suggestion thread once every few hours. You are only allowed to bump it once every 24 hours or something, but nowhere in the rules does it say that.

Here was the reasoning:

"Reason: 1 week suspension from the World of Warcraft forums for spamming the forums. 11+ bumps in <24 hours on the same thread. This is a final warning. Further violations of Forum Guidelines could result in a loss of posting privileges."

Most of those bumps were me replying to people, and saying "Bump" and then adding onto why it was a good suggestion. One person even replied and said to me "You should bump this thread in a few hours when the Blizzard CMs get online so they can see it", and I said "I don't know, I'm afraid I might get banned for bumping the thread too much". So I kept bumping it every few hours for a whole day without anyone saying otherwise, and people replying and saying they agreed throughout the whole day. Then I come back the next day, my thread is deleted, and I'm banned for apparently an entire week.

And getting rid of shared lockouts will not only help people who pug, but people in guilds alike. I like my guild, but we are having serious trouble finding people to raid with because all we can do now to interact with our server community is just to either post on our realm forums, or advertise in trade chat. The new guild finder thing is surprisingly not that useful either. If we could run pug raids with people throughout the week, we could not only help out the new raiders in our guild learn the raids, but we could also find people to recruit and see how they perform.

[Milk Bubble]

You pugged 40 mans in vanilla? I don't think so. Considering the instances to even get into raids back then (strat comes to mind), required a group that had a raid-like setting. Either that, or getting carried by a guild at the start.

Same goes with BC. One of the few realms that pugged was area 52, and they only pugged Kara. Pugging barely existed in the initial game, or it's first expansion. Wrath, however, is the expansion where Blizzard said it's not only okay to pug, it has just as many, if not more, benefits then guild raiding.

And Wrath was by far their most successful expansion. Suddenly WoW appealed to the mainstream more, and people who had jobs and families could sit down and play it for cheap entertainment whenever they felt like it. They made tons of money off of that idea.

[Kaden]

Edit: Also, I believe in the majority should have final opinions in a game, afterall, is is their game. Considering the vast majority of the people who play WoW don't care about pugging 25mans or 10 mans enough to actually "do" anything, or even really voice concern, it's not important. Now, if you say the forum goers care, that's just silly. I don't think even 1 million players of wow frequent the forums, when there's 11.5 million players.

Now, if you can show me that the majority of the people who play the game hate the lockouts, I'll agree. Until then, I stand by the fact it's not important.

Also, I stand by the fact that it is a logical choice. If you can run through content twice as much, you will get gear that much faster. Then it is far more likely for you to be sitting around waiting for new gear for months. It isn't needed, and it isn't a smart business plan.

The issue isn't actually what's "important" or not. It's whether or not someone should be able to infringe upon how someone else chooses to play the game.

Because you don't think something is important, you think other people shouldn't have that option available to them. To shift it to a more familiar paradigm, that would be like me saying "I think saiyans are dumb so people on Chubbs can't be saiyans." Even if 75% of the RPG agreed with me it makes no sense whatsoever because it segregates part of the player base while giving nothing back to the community as a whole.

Let's say that, in WoW, Paladins were way over-powered and stomping through the game and performing healing/tanking/dps better than any other class. Blizzard looks at that and ends up over-nerfing Paladins. That's an action that segregates a part of the player base (the part that were playing Paladins to be a Paladin, not to use the most OP class) but benefits the community as a whole by bringing things back to into parity (or close). That's a decision that makes sense.

Unless removing an option benefits the player-base as a whole, there's never a reason to remove it. Taking it out just because it's "unimportant" makes no sense. It infringes on one player's ability to enjoy the game the way they want to enjoy it while giving nothing back.

[Kaden]

Actually, you just made it prove the point I wanted to address. I'd assume you meant to do so.

Top Players of Lol = most obnoxious.

Not everyone in the top guilds in wow = obnoxious, but give off the impression the entire guild is.

If that wasn't putting your statements together correctly, then tell me. I understand that I didn't word what I wanted correctly, but I'm pretty sure you got my point regardless.

My point was actually that you have no point.

It's a completely inconsistent comparison designed only to make your argument look better.

EDIT: And I would argue that the top ten players in LoL are actually pretty awesome. The players that get the most publicity are usually pretty good about being cool dudes and talking about the things they do in a game that make them the top players. Everyone rages from time to time, of course, but picking out extremes is not how you establish a baseline for behavior.

[Vad]

You pugged 40 mans in vanilla? I don't think so. Considering the instances to even get into raids back then (strat comes to mind), required a group that had a raid-like setting. Either that, or getting carried by a guild at the start.

Same goes with BC. One of the few realms that pugged was area 52, and they only pugged Kara. Pugging barely existed in the initial game, or it's first expansion. Wrath, however, is the expansion where Blizzard said it's not only okay to pug, it has just as many, if not more, benefits then guild raiding.

Yep. Forpolk on Ner Zhul was just a group of 10 leaders and we pugged the rest. Molten Core was the most common for us. So much fun. Siddhart was the guild leader. He actually still is, but he stopped playing a while ago.

Carried? Raid-Setting? You needed the right gear of course. To do anything in Molten Core you had to stack fire resist. I had an entire set of Dark Iron stuff on my Orc. We also pugged AQ 40 once or twice. It was rare. We were usually doing AQ 25 and Molten Core with Onyxia and ZG thrown in there. So many "Lawls" to be had when Hakkar controlled me. XD

e: I was Main Tank and Off Tank/ Main Healer and Off Healer. It depends on who was online and what they needed.

e2: Oh and to further my point. You're talking to a guy who poured his life into WoW during vanilla. I nearly flunked out of high school because of this game. 6+ hours a fucking day raiding and doing things with the guild. We'd usually raid Molten Core for 5 hours then call it quits and come back.

[Ashe]

Too many opinions about the various comments made, and not enough give-a-shit to post them, but I did want to comment on a few things.

1 - I have seen the 24 hour bump rule listed before in something, but no, I'm not going to wade through looking for the link because "being right" isn't that important to me in this situation, but it is there.

2 - I pugged in Vanilla for UBRS a decent amount as well as ZG (UBRS was a raid). I knew people who pugged Ony and MC a bit, but I never did myself since I spent more time in AV knocking horde off the bridge with snowballs. Priceless.

3 - Actually, its widely accepted that the largest number of assholes in LoL are from the lower ELO brackets, not the highest. Its there that every single god damn player is "stuck in ELO hell" and "being held back by the noobs they are teamed with". There are definitely some cocky ass people in the top. HotshotGG and Reginald are well known for being arrogant and trollish. Grackis is well known for frequent raging. That said, all three (more so the last two) are known for releasing guides on a regular basis about characters and discussing new builds with the community. This is similar to StarCraft 2, with certain players being very well known for ragequitting in actual tournament games and even flaming their opponents, in tournament broadcasted games (I don't recall his name, but there's a very specific person I'm thinking of here). Then where StarCraft 2 has Day9 and other great commentators that release replays and guides regularly, LoL has TreeEskimo (widely accepted as the best commentator/streamer and the least raging) and pretty much every other high ELO player - they nearly all stream. Top WoW guilds could fall into that category as well. So I'd say the majority of the players in online gaming that create the "fucking asshole" persona we all know and love tend to be in the low to mid tiers. Hell, even in Magic I notice that almost all the pros are fairly cool guys all around, with a few being obnoxious as shit but not being the majority (GerryT, I'm looking at you).

[Jonathan Meer]

If any of you get an opportunity to watch I, Claudius (BBC mini-series from the 70s), check it out. It's fantastic.

Patrick Stewart in one of his early roles. John Rhys-Davies is in there too, along with John Hurt (AMAZING, he plays Caligula and just fucking nails it).

If historical drama is at all your thing (at all, at all, 1% your thing), do yourself a favor and watch this.

[Milk Bubble]

1 - I have seen the 24 hour bump rule listed before in something, but no, I'm not going to wade through looking for the link because "being right" isn't that important to me in this situation, but it is there.

It's not listed in the current forum Code of Conduct. The only thing that comes close is this:

"Excessively communicating the same phrase, similar phrases, or pure gibberish"

Nowhere does it say anything about a specific time period that's acceptable for bumping threads. How am I supposed to follow their rules if their rules that they ban you for aren't even listed?

And I only found out what I was banned for and how long because I went to one of their front page blog things that you can comment on, and I could FINALLY see the link that says "Click Here" after why you were banned to see the details of your ban. If you try to post in a thread on the forums, all I get is this:

"This account has limited posting access due to the following condition: Account Banned
Forums that you have permission to post in are marked as [Limited] on the forum list."

There's no link. There's no reason. It just says I'm banned and I have no idea why. How am I supposed to know what I did wrong so I don't do it again if they won't even tell me and in the forum rules you are not allowed to ask what you got banned for, or guess what, you get banned again.

Did I mention you are also not allowed to question their moderation? It also gets you banned!

I've been banned so many times for the most retarded reasons, I don't even know if I've ever actually done anything offensive that would actually warrant a real ban.

[Nori]

Pugging infringed on my game, 'cause I'd rather do raids with a guild. People would pug instead, which means it's harder to solidify a good group. It all comes down to server unity, which pugging helps to destroy. Once again, if people actually cared enough, there would be more then a handful of people up in arms. It's like when you nerf a class, and members of that class are mad. Doesn't mean it wasn't the right decision, especially when it's a positive influence on the experience of the game as a whole. Four pages of people complaining on a internet forum doesn't equal even 1% of the population of wow giving a flying fuck.

Weren't those raids that you both pugged entry level raids Vad/Ashe, the equivalent of Kara? I'd imagine it's the same as pugging Baradin Hold, or even the current raid in wow (which, despite the death of raid pugging thing, still happens). I'd imagine, for instance, that pugging of that one raid in Silithus never happened. When every raid in wotlk was pugged from start to end. I'm not going to mention Nax, because that's not fair; most people in vanilla never even saw it.

Wotlk was not the most succesful expansion. It sold the same units as Cata at launch, and then started to decline in numbers, just like Cata. Where you say it was the "most" succesful, I think you should just replace with the words your favorite. In fact, if your talking about game reviews, Cata scored higher then Wrath. I dunno about BC, to lazy to look up.

Also, how do you know, Mario, if it benefits the game as a whole? Did you play WoW ever, for more then a week, or did you just jump into the conversation because I mentioned LoL? I'll admit I know very little about LoL or the other dota spinoffs, besides what I read on the internets and from you gents.

Edit: Head is still throbbing, apologise for gibberish.

[Vad]

Comparing Vanilla to anything Late BC and beyond is just stupid. Remember that. The mechanics of the game have changed SOOOOOO much that pretty much nothing is like it was in some shape or form. As far as raiding goes from what I've heard they tried to make it similar in Cata (Where you need to raid for 4+ hours for one piece of gear).

The Rogue Assassination tree used to stop at Invigorate(?). The energy +10 talent. Doom Guards were actually fun. SOOO many things I could name that, like Ashe, I don't care enough to remember for an argument. If I wanted to get some Lol's I'd start listing some of the fun times I had. Like unleashing a Doom Guard in front of the Iron Forge Bank. Soooo many pissed off people.

[Belle Hibiki]

If members of your guild are doing, or going to do, PUG runs of your current tier rather than wait for guild runs, that's THEIR fault - not Blizzard's, and not PUGing's.

If people in my guild were consistently doing PUG runs before guild runs and preventing our core group from doing raiding, we'd take it as a sign that those responsible didn't really want to be part of our raiding group. We'd put them at the back of the line, then pick up a replacement. Screwing over your guild for your personal satisfaction has never been an acceptable practice in any expansion, PUG-enabled or not.

And if that person is instead doing pug runs of previous tier(s), farm content that you're not officially doing... Who gives a fuck?

I'm also confused how PUG runs - in which you interact with a bunch of people you don't know, and wouldn't have played with normally - 'destroy server unity.'

[Jonathan Meer]

Hate: WoW

[Kole T. Merr]

Hate: WoW

^

[Kaden]

Pugging infringed on my game, 'cause I'd rather do raids with a guild.

Incorrect.

PUGing is an option. The existence of that option does not enforce its use. Players choose the option they want for their gaming experience. Removing an option penalizes and segregates those who took it and does nothing to actually benefit those who didn't. There are people who will tell you that there are benefits to its removal, but they're full of it.

Your quoted statement is, fundamentally, the same as me saying "raids infringe on my game because I'd rather stand in town and RP." That makes no sense. At all. People in favor of that option would say crap like "it will provide RPs with a broader audience" or "less people raiding means a more immersive in-town experience for RPing in." Your ability to be in a raid has no impact on those who want to RP. In the same vein, people PUGing has no impact on your ability to run a coordinated, scheduled raid with guildmates.

Also, how do you know, Mario, if it benefits the game as a whole? Did you play WoW ever, for more then a week, or did you just jump into the conversation because I mentioned LoL? I'll admit I know very little about LoL or the other dota spinoffs, besides what I read on the internets and from you gents.

I don't care if it benefits the game as a whole. I care how it impacts the players. Whether or not I've even played WoW is 100% irrelevant. Believe it or not, we're not even talking about WoW. We're talking about design philosophy, and this is an example of a very poor design decision being talked about as though it is anything else.

To make that more evident, I'll contextualize the conversation using LoL.

Kaden: "FINALLY they removed that stupid Twisted Treeline map. It was so dumb. I don't know why anyone played it at all. Now LoL is better."

Nori: "Did a lot of people play Twisted Treeline?"

K: "Hardly anyone. It was just annoying to see."

N: "So it only got used by the people who wanted to use it? How does it make sense to take it out."

K: "Because it was annoying. Just knowing it was there irritated me."

N: "So now the people who were playing it have to play on the Summoner's Rift map or they don't get to play at all?"

K: "Yup. The way it should be."

Replace "Twisted Treeline" with "PUG" and "Summoner's Rift" with "guild" and it's the exact same thing. Just because an option is less popular or under-utilized doesn't mean it should be axed. The only thing that does is alienate and segregate the players who used it without providing any benefit to everyone else.

I have about a billion more examples of how this has nothing to do with WoW. I just didn't want to type them out.