What's Wrong With WOW - Elitist Assholes

Opinion from Matt - Wednesday, 12 May 2010 @ 12:32am

As described in my Timesink article there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time playing World of Warcraft. There are people with spreadsheets to calculate maximum damage effectiveness using a series of variables, such as weapons and enchants. They’re called Theorycrafters. Or losers.

These people consider their time in the game reasonable, and that anyone who isn’t up to their standard is a “scrub”. “Scrub” is a derisive term used in wow to describe someone who has been to busy fucking girls to properly gear up.

The elitism takes many forms. My gear is better than yours, look at all the achievements I’ve got that you don’t, check out my epic mount that I got from killing Satan himself with a spoon, etc. The elitists are abusive and abrasive when it comes to stupid questions – defined as any question they know the answer to.

“Would there be any benefit to a Titan's Grip Fury Warrior wielding a 1h in his offhand to get faster and more consistent rage generation?”

“YEAH IF U WANNA NERF UR DPS OMG FUCKWIT”

A more normal human response would be “You’d still get the fury 2h hit penalty, without the benefit of the 2h damage. It wouldn't help.” But no. The elitist is better than you, and it’s important that you know it, not just through correction, but through belittlement.

The elitist is unforgiving of mistakes. The ones they make are dismissed as someone else’s fault (g0t no healz while I was in fyre?!). When the elitist's uber DPS (on the wrong mob) pulls Agro it's because the tank is a scrub who needs to l2p. By contrast, the mistakes of others are unforgivable example of the player's incorrigible uselessness, not to mention proof of account ebaying.

The elitist wants to skate through content. They're not willing to consider any "scrub" for their group, even if the group is going to old content. They don't want to "carry" people. The elitist has the best DPS of any group, regardless of the actual dps of other members - that mage doesn't count because I was on the boss and he was just aoeing the adds. And the DK doesn't count because he died near the end (what a scrub). And the warlock doesn't count because he was being buffed by the Elemental Shaman.

The most interesting thing about the elitist is that it's a person who's managed to turn the willingness to dedicate hours of time a day, every day to gather the best fake items in a fantasy world, and is so proud of this they think it makes them a better person than you.

The probable description for the actual player behind the elitist is not that cool a picture. In order to really be particularly "elite" you have to dedicate massive amounts of time. This is rarely possible for older people with families, or for people who work full time. Even a girlfriend would cut into that time, relegating him to a "casual raider". Many of these "elite" players are therefore young men, single, and students. In a sense the elitist by virtue of being elitist admits to the world that his real life is not that special. He's a kid who lives with his mum.

In fact it's for this reason that elitism is both possible and necessary.

I've seen articles that describe lonely and nerdy young men who imagine they're a great warrior, escaping the patheticity of their own sad lives by living in a fantasy where they're a powerful mage astride a giant flying horse. But that isn't the case. Few people playing games like WoW actually imagine they're the character, or associate with that character in any way. That would be delusional, and isn't the

The reality is both more subtle and more significant. More insidiuous in a way.

For an elite wow player who is young and going through the typical shit that assaulted us all in high school, World of Warcraft isn't an escape from reality. It's just a game. But if they truly are elite their guild becomes a major part of their social life. After the stereotypical "getting picked last for soccer" it's a team that picks them first. The impact and importance of that can't be overstated. It's not the fantasy that has the appeal it's the reality. Being good, being valued - that matters. And no wonder people without much in their lives feel the need to be assholes about it the one thing they're good at.

How Do We Fix it?

We probably can't. And really, let them have it. They need all the elite they can get.