First post here. Hello all.
Firstly let me qualify some of the following with a bit of background:
I'm 36 years old. I've had a relatively (compared to some of you, though this is not a me pulling the age card) long life, seen many wonderful and terrible things (and the whole spectrum of "in between"). I've had thousands upon thousands of social experiences, played in bands throughout my 20s, toured Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Spain, Germany and the toilet circuit of London. I've had many friends for better or worse and had many sexual relationships with women. All this you might expect from someone my age I suppose.
In other words: I know a bit about life, have lived one and will continue to have one, tyvm.
Now I've prefaced the following lets just say that people love to generalise. That in itself is a generalisation, so I understand why people do it. It doesn't make it accurate though.
Reading some of the posts containing such paraphrased gems such as "the people who play [wow] suck" and "Blizzard haven't released anything new because of wow" - I don't really follow. Firstly, Blizzard surely have separate teams working on D3 and SC2. If anything, wow is affording them a very lengthy development time in order to create something as epoch making as the former games in those series. When they come out and are awesome you'll have the massive bank roll wow has given them for that. They have gone on record to say they will not release these games until they are perfect in their eyes. They haven't let their standards slip one notch.
Secondly, this whole "all wow players don't wash / have girlfriends / boyfriends / friends / social skills / lives / pubic hair" ... *cough* I am certain that I'm not only the exception to these "rules", because a number (the number being *all*) of my wow friends don't fall into the above "categories" either. Their lives feature such wonderful things such as partners, jobs, social lives outside of wow, and bathing!
They are mature, friendly, helpful, decent people. I've spent many years in the "real world" and these people are just as valid and worthy. They're like your friends in your FPS clan, or the people on your Home or Xbox live contacts, and your IM.
Another slight deviation: I mentioned that (shock and horror) I live a full life and have had plenty of relationships. Of all the socialising I've done, both off and online I have never met a more beautiful, funny, smart, caring girl (or woman, she's 27) as I have with my girlfriend, who incidentally I met through wow. I could spend the rest of my life hanging out at parties, bars, work etc and not find anyone as perfect for me. I know because that's what I was doing for 20 years or so.
I know, it's crazy. Functional people play wow. And they can stay functional.
My brother (who is more of an FPS fan) used to rag on me for playing wow. It wasn't until I pointed out that he spends as much time as I (a few hours a day, and in my case not at all some days) playing his games of choice that he realised he'd fallen foul of the narrow view of wow players. He might blow through a game in a few hours / days and have to buy a new one to keep himself entertained. I buy the expansions once every 2 years and my subscription fee. Guess who spends less on games? It's about equal. *Everyone* pays to play in one way or another.
So, for those that insist on making all encompassing blanket statements like "all" and "everyone" in conjunction with "something negative" about, well actually "anything at all but in this case wow or its players" are doing themselves and others a disservice. It's certainly not true and basically a self deception.
This goes for any kind of social boundary.
If you wish to appear knowledgeable, cut out the everyone who plays wow is a jerk, idiot, no lifer etc. It's not fair to make such assumptions and you appear a bit dim to those that know different.
One word about wow's gameplay mechanics. It's not as twitchy as your average FPS (though PvP can be *very* twitch based), but the amount of spells / abilities that you have to manage in such a situation really does eclipse that of many other genres. I can count 15-20 different keybindings for active skills (not pause, change weapon, inventory but actual attacks) I can and should do at any given point in PvP and that is certainly not for players with poor hand eye coordination, reflexes or keyboard skills.
I play(ed) other games, and I find wow more demanding in a PvP setting. In PvE it's more relaxing, and that suits me fine.
Wow is a grind. So is everything else. Kill 10 [generic wow beastie] or kill 10 [generic fps opponents]. It's all the same really. I realise that I'll be using FPS as a counterpoint (I don't hate them or the players, for the record), as it represents another choice.
I will agree that not everyone in wow is a paragon of virtue. It is the internet after all, whether that be expressed through forums, wow or any other kind of online multiplayer game.
It's a fact that you will get idiots whatever online game you play. Just be careful of stereotyping because you can just as easily be on the receiving end.
I'm not a fanboy. I just like people regarded as individuals. I'd defend a game I didn't like for the same reason.
If people can't get themselves together when discussing or judging something simple like a hobby or pastime without demonising, it doesn't bode well for the bigger picture and more important issues.
All in all, if I've managed to open a pair of eyes I'll be happy. That said, if people are happy to persist with their views, however inaccurate they may be, then I'm fairly ambivalent to it also. After all it's not me they're hurting.
If you managed to read it all, thanks for your time.
TL;DR: be smart. We're all human.
