The “Debate”
It goes on and on. Hardcore vs casual, casual vs hardcore, Raider vs PvP, PvP vs Raider. WoWInsider points to a forum post today that purports to cover the history of the hardcore vs. casual debate.It’s not a bad thread, for a forum thread.
The thing about this thread is that it won’t change the debate. People will still constantly gripe because “casuals” will be getting a shot at better gear (the prereset for WOTLK, where T6 equivelent gear can be obtained for Badges of Justice). People will constantly gripe because there’s content that only “hardcores” will get to see. People will constantly gripe because PvPers are getting gear that can be use for raiding or looks like raiding gear. People will gripe because they are raiding and PvP gear drops and they hate PvP. Such is the nature of the WoW Forums, I guess
But the people arguing are losing sight of the overall context of what this GAME is supposed to be: a game! And a highly interactive one with some social content at that. The real issue is that one group or another wants Blizzard to exclude everyone else from having worthwhile content to satisfy their own whims. These “raiders” don’t want anyone who won’t “put in their time” to have gear equal to thiers. These “casuals” don’t like being told that they aren’t worth a chest peice because they don’t want to make “sacrifices,” which in the end, are real sacrifices of time that won’t get them anything useful in their lives.
I guess I also see this as a WoW Forums issue. In many cases, the people who spend the most time on the forums have a disproportionate level of their self-worth wrapped up in their niche in the game. If you ground to High Warlord/Grand Marshall in the old PvP system, it’s likely that you played 8-12 hours a day for months, judging by the people I knew who did the grind. And, with every “hardcore” raiding guild I have been associated with in one way or another, the guildmaster and officer corps winds up being tyrannical and abusive in their push to conquer the next level of content, no matter how genial and enjoyable they started out to be, because “progression” becomes the end all, be all of their existence in the game. They lose the ability to step back and see if they are having fun anymore (after all, they are progressing, so they must be having fun, right?)
Meh. I’m not impressed by any group trying to wage this debate. It’s a game, people. Quit acting like it’s the war in Iraq, for Thrall’s sake. I would simply like to see the developers spend less time trying to please one group or another and take a more reasoned approach to the changes they are making. When they make a change to class balance because they want to level out PvP, they need to make sure they rebalance PvE appropriately to compensate (which they continually fail to do). If you want to make both aspects of the game fun, make both fun. Don’t force people to PvP because of the frustration that PvP changes cause in PvE. But that’s a gripe for another post, I guess.
