Saturday, July 26, 2014

Sometimes I Just Have to /Facepalm

I get that a lot of people have different perspectives and enjoy different things.  I lead a raiding guild that full clears heroic content every patch.  Navi leads a casual raiding guild that's working through heroics on this crazy long raid tier.  Stubborn plays WoW casually, doing Flex/Normal modes when the opportunity presents itself.  Theck is a theorycrafting genius who loves doing loads of complicated math.  Etc.  People are different.

And because of that, people like different things and thus have different opinions about stuff.

...but sometimes, you get people who are just flat out wrong.  Not different opinions, not valuing different things...just wrong.

Like this blog post, for example.

Now, before we get to picking it apart I want to explain *why* I am coming down on this so harshly.  One of my major pet peeves is rose colored glasses and nostalgia.  I hate it when people go "OMG IT USED TO BE SO COOL, NOW IT SUCKS!" without any actual reasons.  Keep in mind this is coming from someone who still plays several 10+ year old games (such as NWN, Half Life (2), WC3/TFT, etc) so I still enjoy older games.  I'm not obsessed with the "latest and greatest."  But I do strongly dislike when people instinctively hate newer and different things simply for being new and different (especially when they don't even UNDERSTAND the newer things).

So let's look at the blog post title:

"Slower Combat Had More Depth."

Okay.  I can somewhat buy the general premise.  Games that require reasonably fast reaction times don't give you a lot of time to consider your best move, part of the challenge is deciding on a good action quickly.  The board game Chess has more depth than the card card Speed.

But then we just go into loony town with bizarre and incorrect statement after bizarre and incorrect statement!

Complexity of Decisions
Today there are very few decisions to be made. One simply walks up to a mob and executes abilities in any order. The real decision is which order to use the abilities to kill the monster fastest–everything is about actively attacking. There isn’t much thought to being hit yourself, or minimizing usage of abilities to preserve mana or stamina. The two real thoughts that I have are, (1) Do I need to kill this, and (2) Do I want to? The HOW has been completely lost.

First of all, there's contradictions right in that paragraph.  So we can execute abilities in any order...but we're also making a decision on how to kill the monster fastest...but we don't have to make a decision on how to kill the enemy?  Huh?  I'm already lost!

But which order to use the abilities to kill the monster the fastest actually winds up being incredibly important, as anyone who has done challenge mode dungeons or raiding in WoW knows well.  Hundreds of hours of theorycrafting and testing are done to determine optimal strategies for play.  The differences between playing correctly and not playing correctly can easily double your damage per second.

On top of that, there's plenty of thought devoted to being not hit yourself -- one of the basic mantras of WoW raiding is "Don't stand in the fire."  Sometimes the fire is lightning strikes on the ground, sometimes the fire is a cleave type ability, sometimes the fire is robotic bombs trying to run to you and explodes, and sometimes the fire is actually simply fire on the ground.  Etc.  NOT getting hit by stuff is insanely important or you will simply die.  Or, in other cases, you'll require so much healing that you'll drain the mana of the healers and thus your group will die...which is an example of how you DO need to minimize usage of abilities to preserve mana (see the fourth sentence above).

This isn't even talking about things like kill priority, AoE vs single target, pooling resources for burst windows, holding DPS to time things better, ets.

This ALSO isn't even getting into PvP where using abilities correctly, not getting hit, preserving resources, etc, are also critical.

In short, that paragraph is so, so, so very wrong.

Aggro
Tanks used to require a decent amount of time to get aggro. I really can’t remember the last time I grouped and waited before DPSing. In EQ a wizard absolutely would not nuke until the mob was below 80% — the wizard wouldn’t even stand up. Healers wouldn’t even heal because aggro would come off the tank. Tanking took time, monsters took time to taunt and build up a safe aggro, and players respected that or died.

And...where is the awesome depth in this?  Sitting around for 15-30 seconds doing nothing is some kind of compelling gameplay?  Not only that, but consider some numbers.  Say 1 damage = 1 threat for everyone, you have a group of 1 tank, 3 DPS, and 1 healer, and we'll remove the healer from consideration.  Let's also assume the DPS do twice the damage per second as the tank and let's assume the tank is doing 1% of the mob's HP per second.

After 20 seconds the mob is at 80% HP and the tank has 20 threat.  The three DPS open up.

After 30 seconds the mob is at 10% HP, the tank has 30 threat, and each DPS has 20 threat.

After 31.43 seconds the mob is dead, the tank has about 31 threat and the DPS each have about 22 threat.

That means the DPS were literally sitting around for 20/31.43 = 63.6% of the fight doing nothing at all.

If the DPS want to live dangerously, they could open up at 87.5% of the mob's HP and each DPS and the tank will wind up at 25 threat the end.  Which is *still* sitting around doing nothing for 50% of the time.  This sounds like depth and good gameplay?  Really?

Class Specialization
This could also be called the “characters do one thing well” category. Having certain classes in your group would actually slow down the rate at which you could kill a single mob, thus slowing combat, but might improve your abilities to survive, pull multiple mobs at once and take a tougher spawn, or recover from battle quicker and move on to the next kill. Sometimes a class would literally be invited to do nothing but pull and contribute very little to DPS. Sometimes a class would do nothing but heal or buff. These days everyone is a DPS.

Everyone is a DPS?  Weren't we just talking about tanks and threat and how healers would wait to heal them?

I mean, even look at that second to last sentence: "Sometimes a class would do nothing but heal or buff."  You mean...like...a healer?  Part of the holy trinity?  Usually about 20% of a group?  Ring a bell?

But let's be generous.  Let's even assume they meant "All non-tanks and non-healers are DPS" instead of some classes being solely about pulling or solely about buffs or something.  That rings a bell...raiding during BC anyone?  Bring an enhancement shaman (but only one) to buff the melee group?  Bring an elemental shaman (but only one) to buff the caster group?  Bring a boomkin (but only one) to to give a debuff?  Bring an Arms warrior (but only one) to give a debuff?  Bring 2-3 shadow priests to regen the mana of your casters and healers?

Blizzard moved away from that model for a reason -- it's not fun or engaging or deep or anything to have to deny players because the optimal path is to have only one boomkin or one enhancement shaman or whatever.

But even within the "all non-tanks and non-healers are DPS" model there's still class variance where certain DPS classes and specialization are stacked for encounters.  And even when they aren't stacked for encounters certain parts of encounters are handled by certain DPS players based on class differences.

Ask someone how a warlock compares to a rogue compares to a mage compares to whatever.  They each have different strengths, different weaknesses, and different buffs (though usually about 1/3 of the classes can bring a specific buff).

Managing Resources
Managing mana consumption was often the difference between a great player and a good one. Healers who knew which heals to use and when, Wizards who knew how many times they should nuke to add the most efficient DPS to a group (the key being “efficient”), etc. Consume your resources and combat was slower. Have to worry about them at all and combat naturally becomes much, much slower.

Interestingly enough, healers *still* need to know which heals to use and when.  They *still* need to manage their mana.

And a caster conserving their mana as part of a DPS rotation is just another DPS rotation.  Except now the DPS rotation involves standing around doing nothing apparently because this is more deep?  Or something?

Auto Attack
Remember our old friend “white damage?” I love auto attack. I remember the days when it comprised of a massive portion of overall damage done by melee characters.  The entire concept is all but completely done away with in favor of rotations and constant ability usage. Older MMOs had fewer abilities (most of the time).

Isn't this the *opposite* of deep?  It's literally saying "I wish more of my damage came from stuff I didn't have to control or worry about so the game has more depth."

That makes zero sense.  If you want depth and the most decision making, in theory you'd want NO auto-attack (like a caster) so EVERYTHING is your decision and has to be chosen wisely.

Conclusion
Please, consider this a PSA.  Check your rose-colored classes at the door and shed your nostalgia.  Approach things critically and think them through carefully.  Don't get so attached to "the way things used to be" that you blind yourself to all of the flaws that existed then.

Newer isn't always better, no.  In fact, perhaps it's not even better most of the time.

But by the same token, newer isn't automatically worse either.

24 comments:

  1. Hehe, again you show more tolerance than me, I tend to ignore these posts or respond with two-liners. The whole "no decisions to make" is one of Tobold's mantras, BTW.
    Overall this only shows that people who don't play a game know absolutely nothing about that game. And, to be less diplomatic, people who suck at a game will find tons of weird reasons for why it's actually the game which sucks.....

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    1. Yeah, it's quite annoying the ignorance people display about other games. Queue the "OMG WOW IS OBVIOUSLY SO EASY" complaints. Note those aren't the heroic raiders or realm best challenger moders or high ranked PvPs complaining. It's like if you don't log in and die 10 times during the first 30 minutes then it's a cakewalk.

      I definitely find much of what Tobold writes interesting, though I don't always agree. One of his recent posts (http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2014/07/less-fun-jobs-in-group.html) definitely rang a bell given how NWN is based on the 3rd edition rules for DnD and I see parallels to the problems he discusses.

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  2. You stole my blog post for Monday! I was going to write the exact (well, not exact) same thing! I agree largely with your rebuttals, though I disagree with some of the nuances within them. But honestly, my first 3 thoughts after reading the linked blog post were "What", "the", and "F?"

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    1. Sorry!

      I say you should still post it, would be curious to see the disagreement on the nuances. Like I said at the beginning of the post, I find different perspectives interesting.

      Unless they're utterly ridiculous and flat out wrong that like that blog post, that is.

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  3. In all fairness, aggro/threat was completely trivialized and the depth removed from that system. However, I would agree with Blizzard's reasoning that throttling dps or healing = not fun or compelling gameplay, and I think the overall game play feels much better than it did back before tank threat was buffed.

    The auto-attack section did really made me wonder if I escaped to a strange twilight zone where depth actually meant "passive damage with no thought whatsoever."

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    1. How much depth actually existed, though? For most classes it simply boiled down to "stand there and do nothing at times." Even for something like a rogue it boiled down to "hit Vanish 60 seconds into the fight and never worry about threat again."

      I'm willing to acknowledge there was *some* depth, but I think it was incredibly little and had numerous gameplay problems.

      And something like "the DPS can't attack until the tank reduces the mob to 80% by himself" is completely insane. Might as well bring 5 tanks and things will go faster, right, because it doesn't matter who has threat. Literally would kill stuff faster according to his math.

      And yes, the auto-attack section...yeah. Let's leave it at that.

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  4. Okay, I'm going to have a stab at defending the sentiments of that post. Or, rather, address your rebuttals. This is gonna be a long one....

    "First of all, there's contradictions right in that paragraph. So we can execute abilities in any order...but we're also making a decision on how to kill the monster fastest...but we don't have to make a decision on how to kill the enemy? Huh? I'm already lost!"

    In this, Keen makes perfect sense. You walk up to most (level-appropriate) mobs in WoW and it doesn't matter what order you use your abilities in: it's gonna die. As long as you press *something* to attack, you're not going to run into any serious problems. You don't make any meaningful decisions apart from whether to maximise your dps. I've walked around Pandaria just spamming Wrath because I cbf paying more attention, and it worked fine, even with more than one mob. The only reason optimal rotations even exist is for the hardest group content. For pretty much everything else it's just a matter of hitting whatever buttons you feel like. I don't think that qualifies as depth.

    "But which order to use the abilities to kill the monster the fastest actually winds up being incredibly important, as anyone who has done challenge mode dungeons or raiding in WoW knows well."
    "On top of that, there's plenty of thought devoted to being not hit yourself -- one of the basic mantras of WoW raiding is "Don't stand in the fire.""
    "This isn't even talking about things like kill priority, AoE vs single target, pooling resources for burst windows, holding DPS to time things better, ets."

    All of these points only apply to the most challenging group content - raids and challenge mode dungeons, for example. I think that Keen was talking about open world combat mostly, which makes all those decisions you list minor at best, irrelevant at worst. Talking about WoW, anyway - I think some mobs in games like GW2 and Wildstar might have some of those decisions to make.

    "And...where is the awesome depth in this? Sitting around for 15-30 seconds doing nothing is some kind of compelling gameplay?"

    I'm not sure that you can argue that threat management as a serious consideration does not add depth. It may not be awesome depth, it may not be compelling gameplay by itself, but in context I think it adds way more to the game than the current model of WoW threat. I get that you (and a lot of people, really) don't want to have to make those decisions, but for a lot of people it does add more depth. Given Keen's main point is that slower combat had more depth, this is a prime example.

    (more in the reply...)

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    1. "Everyone is a DPS? Weren't we just talking about tanks and threat and how healers would wait to heal them?
      I mean, even look at that second to last sentence: "Sometimes a class would do nothing but heal or buff." You mean...like...a healer? Part of the holy trinity? Usually about 20% of a group? Ring a bell?"

      Again, I think you are talking purely about normal/heroic raiding and challenge mode dungeons. Out in the world, everyone is a dps. In heroic dungeons, in scenarios, in hunting Warbringers or farming elites on Treasure Island, healers do not do that much in the way of actual healing. Hell, when leveling my disco priest in LFD I would mostly just bubble the tank and dps the rest of the time. It's the same logic that makes raid groups go in with fewer healers: more dps shortens fights and reduces the need for heals. Slow combat down and suddenly you can't afford to do that anymore.
      Additionally, I think the trend these days, especially in WoW, is that the answer to any given mechanic is more deeps. Adds? Gather them up and AoE. Forget that CC nonsense. Forget kiting. Just hit it harder. Heal harder. Mitigate harder. That severely limits the amount of differentiation between classes.

      Can't really argue with the last two rebuttals. :) I think Blizzard did concede the mana issue for casters though, with the introduction of non-mana resources to manage, like shadow orbs or chi.

      I think the major problem you have with Keen's post is that you seem to only be thinking about the high-end raiding/endgame aspects of combat, whereas I think he is talking more about the leveling, open world experience.

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    2. "Okay, I'm going to have a stab at defending the sentiments of that post. Or, rather, address your rebuttals."

      Appreciated! Let's take a look.

      "The only reason optimal rotations even exist is for the hardest group content. For pretty much everything else it's just a matter of hitting whatever buttons you feel like. I don't think that qualifies as depth."

      And?...

      Presumably this is supposed to be some kind of revelation, no?

      How is this any different from Half Life (2) on easy? Or SC (2) on easy? Or Dragon Age/Mass Effect on easy?

      You basically seem to be saying "while doing the content meant to be doable by anyone, even bad players, things are pretty easy."

      I could also point out things like Warlock green fire, Brawler's Guild, Proving Grounds, and hell, even Pet Battles apparently. That's all solo stuff that is far more difficult.

      That also isn't just the hardest group content either -- it matters even for lower medals of challenge modes, lower arena/rated BGs, and flex/normal raids. Not just realm best challenge modes, gladiators/grand marshals, and heroic raiders.

      Most games require you to seek out challenge in order to be challenged.

      "I get that you (and a lot of people, really) don't want to have to make those decisions, but for a lot of people it does add more depth."

      What decisions?

      You remember Void Reaver in Burning Crusade? About 2-3 minutes into the fight I would simply stop attacking. Why? Because the tanks had hit their threat limit, I had caught up, and doing anything else would pull aggro. I literally could not do anything for the rest of the fight but dodge stuff and we only did that to preserve reagents/repair costs.

      If you think you can actually lay out intelligent gameplay involving threat management that offers serious depth, by all means do so. But I've never seen it.

      "Out in the world, everyone is a dps."

      Are you suggesting that it should require a group with a tank, healer, and some DPS to quest?

      "Additionally, I think the trend these days, especially in WoW, is that the answer to any given mechanic is more deeps."

      Could you give some examples?

      "I think the major problem you have with Keen's post is that you seem to only be thinking about the high-end raiding/endgame aspects of combat, whereas I think he is talking more about the leveling, open world experience."

      Which I feel is like complaining you can beat the easy mode of a chess game while only using pawns. In addition, like I said above, anything past random battlegrounds or LFR (which is still nowhere close to high end) involves the stuff Keen claims isn't there.

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    3. "You basically seem to be saying "while doing the content meant to be doable by anyone, even bad players, things are pretty easy.""

      I think that is what Keen was getting at with his post. By slowing down combat and forcing players to have to make more decisions about what skills to use and when, the (standard) gameplay would become more interesting. By being able to slaughter stuff with single button spam, the gameplay has become more shallow.

      "Most games require you to seek out challenge in order to be challenged."

      First, I don't really agree with that overall, though it is true of the current stable of MMOs. Second, I think that is Keen's point. I think he wants a more challenging combat model right from the start, one that you can't avoid, that you have to master in order to proceed into the game.

      "Are you suggesting that it should require a group with a tank, healer, and some DPS to quest?"

      No, I'm pointing out that Keen's assertion was correct, given the wider context of his post. You devoted a large part of your post to saying how wrong he was for saying that, but your entire context was endgame group content (raiding, challenge modes and PvP). The stuff that a very small percentage of the playerbase actually experiences. Your arguments might be true for your context, but they don't rebut Keen's assertion for the wider game.

      "In addition, like I said above, anything past random battlegrounds or LFR (which is still nowhere close to high end) involves the stuff Keen claims isn't there."

      And this is where the perception problem lies. For you, that isn't high end game. But for the majority of players, it is. For them, even LFR is high end. I believe that Keen's post was aimed more at the type of game that those people play rather than the type of game that you spend most of your time in.

      I'm not really interested in arguing the merits of various gameplay design decisions. I think you're both (mostly) right in your own ways. But you being right about your own narrower context does not debunk Keen's wider context arguments.

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    4. "By slowing down combat and forcing players to have to make more decisions about what skills to use and when, the (standard) gameplay would become more interesting. By being able to slaughter stuff with single button spam, the gameplay has become more shallow."

      How? Chess is very slow turn based gameplay, but you could still probably beat the easy AI with just pawns or close to it. In other words, combat speed isn't really the issue here.

      "First, I don't really agree with that overall, though it is true of the current stable of MMOs."

      Did you notice the non-MMO examples I gave? Off the top of my head (and sticking to PC games that I've played)...

      Half Life (2)
      Left 4 Dead (2)
      Command and Conquer (everything from the Tiberian games to Red Alert series to Generals universe)
      Starcraft (2)
      Mass Effect (2/3)
      Dragon Age (2)
      NWN (2)
      Lords of Magic
      Warcraft (2/3)
      Mechwarrior (2/3/4)

      And that's barely scratching the surface of games out there.

      Hell, the only non-multiplayer competitive game (obviously something like Team Fortress 2 has no difficulty settings) that I can find without a difficulty option at the moment is Portal (2)...which is a puzzle game anyway.

      Let me put it this way: how many games can you think of that DON'T have a difficulty option?

      "I think he wants a more challenging combat model right from the start, one that you can't avoid, that you have to master in order to proceed into the game."

      How are you expecting people to master the combat to the point where 10% output/defenses/etc are a matter of life or death AND still compensate for different classes/gear/skill?

      "You devoted a large part of your post to saying how wrong he was for saying that, but your entire context was endgame group content (raiding, challenge modes and PvP). The stuff that a very small percentage of the playerbase actually experiences. Your arguments might be true for your context, but they don't rebut Keen's assertion for the wider game."

      So would an apt summary of his (your?) position be "Leveling is too easy in WoW?" Not just WoW, I know, but WoW would be an example. You think every fight should be a matter of life or death and require mastery of the combat system to progress beyond the first few levels?

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    5. "So would an apt summary of his (your?) position be "Leveling is too easy in WoW?" Not just WoW, I know, but WoW would be an example."

      His position. Or rather, what I understand his position to be. I have never been speaking for myself here. And yes, I said so above. You even quoted it. I don't think he wants to require mastery of the combat system, but he certainly seems to want to raise the skill floor. I also don't know if he wants to go back to open world content practically requiring groups, it's definitely a possibility from his post and a lot of his assertions seem to point that way.

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    6. Err, that should read "absolute mastery"...

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    7. Especially at lower levels, there's not that much you CAN do to raise the skill floor without requiring mastery because there are fewer abilities to even use. You'd literally have to do something like "Every fight you need to be at 100% HP/mana and you'll wind up at 10% of both."

      Also, do you acknowledge my point about how it is the EXCEPTION to not have difficulty levels in a game, especially in the last 15 years?

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  5. It may not be awesome depth, it may not be compelling gameplay by itself, but in context I think it adds way more to the game than the current model of WoW threat.

    The current model of WoW threat is simple: in multi-target scenario, aggro on the targets has higher priority than survival: one more add won't kill you, but it will kill a DPS. In single-target scenario, survival has higher priority than aggro, because the boss will kill you if you screw up your active mitigation.
    Overall, this makes for a much more interesting gameplay than the past, where tanking was more or less DPS-ing from the front and pressing one cooldown every 3 minutes. In the current WoW, tank gameplay feels really different than DPS gameplay.

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    1. "Overall, this makes for a much more interesting gameplay than the past, where tanking was more or less DPS-ing from the front and pressing one cooldown every 3 minutes."

      I love this description. Exactly. Tanking was mostly "DPS from the front" with zero thought to survivability except for using something like Shield Wall every few minutes.

      Stuff like Illidan where the prot warrior had to Shield Block the ability Shear was extremely, extremely rare.

      Now you have more defensive abilities with choices between Shield Block and Shield Barrier -- mitigating massive burst versus steady consistent hits, melee hits versus spells, pooling rage, etc.

      Very different from "bind heroic strike to everything and spam it" days.

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    2. Tank gameplay might be more interesting now than the past, and feel really different from dps gameplay, but that has nothing to do with the threat model. Tanks don't have to worry about threat management: that was the point. There is no gameplay depth from threat because you can basically ignore it except for tank switching.

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    4. But in EQ/Early WoW, Threat didn't add much depth either, because you had two choices: open up and die, or sit on your thumbs and wait. Is it more complex? Yes, there are more rules to follow, more buttons to press,etc. Does the concept add more depth? Not particularly, given the binary state of have aggro/not have Aggro.

      Wanting more complexity isn't necessarily a bad thing. People like having high skill caps. But it doesn't always add depth to the game--that is, give you more options. In fact, having Aggro reduces the number of viable options you have.

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    5. Back then tank gameplay WAS threat management. And by "threat management" I mean "DPS as hard as you can from the front."

      In fact, the people worried about "threat management" were the DPS because they were the ones who had to stop for a bad or undergeared tank.

      Also, what Talarian said. The "depth" was "if you pull aggro, you die."

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    6. All true, and good points, but the point was Helistar saying that the current model of threat in WoW makes for more interesting tanking. It's not. It is the survival game that makes for more interesting tanking now, not threat. Threat is not an important factor anymore.

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    7. I think Helistar was implying that the replacement of Threat with Active Mitigation makes for more interesting tanking, given the second sentence in his first paragraph is part of the "overall".

      I do agree that with no replacements, the removal of threat would make tanking less interesting.

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    8. Which goes back to the initial problem of how tanking was simply "DPS from the front" 99.9% of the time.

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  6. The commentary is almost as interesting as the post :) That poor K&G guy from my point of view is living in nostalgia, but though I did LOVE those things back then, I can't deny that I find the ability to maximise your abilities to stretch yourself ahead of the pack engaging as well. That is what WoW is now - but as Dah pointed out, that some people don't play at the heroic level, and that's ok because a game like WoW caters for those people, but those people who don't play at a heroic level may resent being compared to heroic players and been looked at as bad or dumb because they're not as good as the best. I think that is essentially the problem that people complain about because in the "good old days" they didn't have those comparisons because everyone was pretty much the same.

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