The Perils of a Single Source

As Tobold has shown, there are potential risks when using a single source for information. I ran into this problem when forming my opinion of City of Villains. My source of information was a friend of mine and watching her play and hearing how she talking about it.

If you were to hear me talking with her boyfriend we'd be complaining about paladin healing and arenas and elitist raiders and this or that nerf. Sometimes we'd talk about lore or quests or leveling. In general though, you'd get the idea that WoW has a lot to offer and something for pretty much anyway, even if we don't appear to like all of it. In contrast my friend talks about farming. That seems to be all she does. I made the false assumption that she played more than 5% of the game (can you imagine if all I ever talked about were arenas?) and as a result, from this single source and a false assumption created the notion that CoV is mostly farming.

Eventually this led to a very negative opinion, with me comparing it to the massive, constant farming for old Naxx which led to various nerfs to consumables, but without the raid. It did not help that as far as I knew from her (and she had directly said this) just about everything was BoE, so there's no incentive to do what is challenging, but instead what is efficient. Imagine the badge change, plus removal of all boss loot tables, and then make heroics soloable.

Apparently CoV has actual storylines that my friend just skips through. There also appears to be something almost like raiding, but tuned very softly: think Naxx, but you could get by without tanks, or healers, and you might even be able to solo it with Ulduar 25 gear.

Dammit. I was trying to explain the perils of single sources and next thing I'm explaining why CoV is bad. Okay there you go: when you use only one source if that source isn't perfect you're going to end up with really skewed impressions.

In unrelated news, I'm not very good at Civ4. I am apparently incapable of building and maintaining a defensive army and strong diplomatic relations, so I end up in almost constant offensive war just to ensure that I maintain a strong military and no one can attack me first. I really only stop fighting if my citizens complain too much or reinforcements cannot get there fast enough. In my second most recent game this didn't become too much of an issue because I swept across the other continent with bombers and tanks, taking over the entire place (and ironically triggering a diplomatic victory) before anyone could get weary and thanks to airlifts and bombers replacing artillery and transport ships.

An observation related to the unrelated news: I find it fascinating that as the Civ games increase options away from predestination (such as France must be Christian or America must be a republic) the results end up totally different from history. The game before my current my American empire was culturally dominant and rich, spreading Judaism across the world and enjoying peaceful relations, before being attacked by the Zulu and getting into so extended a war that I quit out of frustration.