Ahem.
This is a stupid thing to say. Yes, in the most literal sense it is true, no one is stopping us. But when 99.99999% of the population is pushed into impersonal cross-faction randoms and have abandoned any general channels because they're overrun with spamming crafters and spamming gold sellers, it's a lot more difficult to form groups "the old fashioned way."
There is no longer a world-wide LFG channel, so if someone isn't in a city, they're out of reach beside the obnoxious method of individual /who and asking anyone in the level range. There is no method to queue for "full runs" rather than "run straight to the random loot bag".
Sometimes on cloudy days I tell people to quit whining about the lack of sun, that it's still there, they just have to go get it. Lazy fuckers clearly don't care enough if they can't rent a plane to fly up above the clouds.
My point is that changing the available tools and social patterns has an impact, even if it isn't "forcing." If you think the new way is better, that's fine. It probably is better, for you, so good for you. But don't pretend that anything is free, that all change is 100% universally good just because it benefited you.
[edit]
I decided that taking part in a flame war is not proper conduct at a civilized place like the Pink Pigtail Inn. In light of that, I have deleted my comments there and copied them to a post backdated to fall just before this one. Feel free to argue about it there. Oh, but note that I said argue. Being a retarded monkey troll will not be tolerated.
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6 comments:
Remember that old addon Call To Arms? It basically relayed city chat with keywords lfg and lfm through a back channel so that you could see groups forming while you were farming cauldrons or doing field duties. And even when you got a group, you'd end up filled with dread that the pug would collapse at the first wipe, or halfway through the run and you'd have wasted an hour.
I remember when the first 'hard mode' run was to finish the instance in under 45 minutes, and you needed to be in a tier-equipped group to have a chance at it, and people freaked out on the forums about how rushed it felt. Now a 45 min instance annoys people for how long it takes. :P
Now days, I'm extremely wary of anyone who tries to pug from their own server. I always just kind of assume they're looking to get carried. These are the people who not only aren't friendly enough to get anyone in their own guilds to run with them, but can't even do random dungeons because the other players kick them. o.O
I find that argument invalid too, it's very very unrealistic. if the entire world around you changes, you cannot just go on do things your way. ESPECIALLY not in a game that puts (or shall we say 'should put') great emphasis on the community and cooperative play. you can want to find your 5man pickup group the 'oldschool way' as much as you like, you wont find it; the system has changed that for you and taken that choice away. if 99% of all players now use a simple dungeon finder, your wish is simply put a thing of the past.
I agree. I use to say 'fun is not an inherent proterty of an isolated activity' to describe this. Your environment has an influence on you and on the fun you have doing things.
I wrote extensively about it in that past.
Nils, you've reminded me of my post about my mage who entirely skipped Outland. I made an active decision to avoid the content that I didn't particularly enjoy, in favor of the late vanilla content, which I did enjoy. I was able to do it, which is good, but I had to actively fight the incentives and rules of the game. Since then this has gotten worse with the addition of a XP reduction for lower level expansions (Azeroth at 61, Outland at 71, etc).
I'm simply stunned at the number of people who cannot seem to understand that discouraging behavior, while less drastic than banning it, still has a negative impact.
I can only agree. I got similar comments when I posted about how I felt that the new Cataclysm zones were pushing me too hard towards questing. "Oh, but you could buy this and this item from the Auction House and take really slow travel routes everywhere etc." Or when the changes to raid sizes in Cata were originally announced. "25-mans will be fine, nobody is stopping you from continuing them!" Never mind that reduced incentives for that format make it much harder to recruit 25+ people. It's a common line of thinking unfortunately.
Klep,
I got up this morning with the specific intention to write this post, but you beat me to it. I also checked out your 'Fun Fallacy' post Nils, which was excellent also. I may still post about this but I'll link both of these if I do so.
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