Blizzard Forums: The Masses, QQ, and Theorycrafting
There is a large difference between the signal to noise ratio of the Official WoW forums, and places such as EJ. Part of this comes down to the heavy moderation that goes on here (and produces amusing infractions), but mostly it is because the Official boards are seen by many as their "conduit to the developers" and thus vent their frustrations and post suggestions until the cows come home.
I find it surprising how nit-picky and narrow minded most of these posters can be. Nobody seems willing to give Blizzard (or more accurately, the Community Managers as well as Ghostcrawler) a chance or a bit of lee-way. It's all "you said this" and holding them to the letter, or whinges about how the proposed changes are not enough.
An example would be the recent 3.0.8 changes that Ghostcrawler posted for Elemental Shaman. There were two "rounds" of changes, and he said that there would be a 10-12% dps increase after the second. Many a heated post was made, and when the clarification was made that this was just regarding the second round of changes, it should have made many of the "enraged" posters feel embarressed (not that I actually expect any of them to be). Everyone seems to be going "Well, 10-12% on top of highest dps figure X gives Y, which is no-where near the comparison point of Balance Druids" and going on a little /rant. Hardly anyone seems to be doing any math or theorycrafting on the issue, insisting that "raid experience" trumps "paper-crafting", which seems a bit silly given the fact that I'm certainly a more hardcore raider than casual (DeC is just outside the top 2000 guilds, but given we only re-formed at the start of December and cleared everything during the first two weeks of raiding, I wouldn't necessarily say we're behind the curve either).
So why does theorycrafting have such a bad "rep" with some people? Is it that there is a perceived correlation between level and raiding experience, and the ability to understand spells, talents and mechanics? (The irony here is that when I first started work on Elemental, I was still raiding as Restoration) While raiding experience is fine, if you don't understand the mechanics behind something, then you can be completly wrong. Vice versa, if you understand the mechanics, but can't test them, then you may get something wrong as well. However, part of the advantage of being in a community like Elitist Jerks is that you don't need to get all of the picture yourself, which means that if you are more on the TC side, you have people available that can do testing for you, or if you're a raider type, you can talk to the theorycrafters for mechanics information. We don't work in a void, and we receive and take onboard feedback to our work, pointing out possible errors or inconsistancies.
Given this article on WoWInsider, I'm guessing that the ratio of "hardcore" to "casual" players is higher than you would think (and there's people that haven't even heard of EJ, like a mage I ran a pug with in heroic Old Kingdom a few weeks ago). This means the fight against Stupidity (the capital S is intentional) will probably never be won, and I will still ask myself every time I go back to the official boards "why did you bother to click that link?", but I'll still wander back every now and then...
I find it surprising how nit-picky and narrow minded most of these posters can be. Nobody seems willing to give Blizzard (or more accurately, the Community Managers as well as Ghostcrawler) a chance or a bit of lee-way. It's all "you said this" and holding them to the letter, or whinges about how the proposed changes are not enough.
An example would be the recent 3.0.8 changes that Ghostcrawler posted for Elemental Shaman. There were two "rounds" of changes, and he said that there would be a 10-12% dps increase after the second. Many a heated post was made, and when the clarification was made that this was just regarding the second round of changes, it should have made many of the "enraged" posters feel embarressed (not that I actually expect any of them to be). Everyone seems to be going "Well, 10-12% on top of highest dps figure X gives Y, which is no-where near the comparison point of Balance Druids" and going on a little /rant. Hardly anyone seems to be doing any math or theorycrafting on the issue, insisting that "raid experience" trumps "paper-crafting", which seems a bit silly given the fact that I'm certainly a more hardcore raider than casual (DeC is just outside the top 2000 guilds, but given we only re-formed at the start of December and cleared everything during the first two weeks of raiding, I wouldn't necessarily say we're behind the curve either).
So why does theorycrafting have such a bad "rep" with some people? Is it that there is a perceived correlation between level and raiding experience, and the ability to understand spells, talents and mechanics? (The irony here is that when I first started work on Elemental, I was still raiding as Restoration) While raiding experience is fine, if you don't understand the mechanics behind something, then you can be completly wrong. Vice versa, if you understand the mechanics, but can't test them, then you may get something wrong as well. However, part of the advantage of being in a community like Elitist Jerks is that you don't need to get all of the picture yourself, which means that if you are more on the TC side, you have people available that can do testing for you, or if you're a raider type, you can talk to the theorycrafters for mechanics information. We don't work in a void, and we receive and take onboard feedback to our work, pointing out possible errors or inconsistancies.
Given this article on WoWInsider, I'm guessing that the ratio of "hardcore" to "casual" players is higher than you would think (and there's people that haven't even heard of EJ, like a mage I ran a pug with in heroic Old Kingdom a few weeks ago). This means the fight against Stupidity (the capital S is intentional) will probably never be won, and I will still ask myself every time I go back to the official boards "why did you bother to click that link?", but I'll still wander back every now and then...
Total Comments 13
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So why does theorycrafting have such a bad "rep" with some people?
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Simple: because those people are too stupid to conduct or understand it themselves.
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As it says in Bink's signature, the quote from LodeRunner. People don't like being told that they are wrong when they have been doing things wrong for a long time. When you tell someone that they have been doing it wrong, the average person will become defensive and waspish. Very few people will accept constructive criticism, which is what the best TC is.
Conversely, the TC community is human as well, and the tendency can be there to simply write off people who are wrong as terribads. There is very little overlap of people who are "bad" but willing to admit, the same way there is very few people who are "good" but have the patience to try and teach others. |
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If you remember, near the end of TBC a blue poster mentioned that the "vast majority" of players still weren't level 70 yet. Think about that - this was after TBC had been out for... 2 years?
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I remember that post, it came out when 2.4 dropped, the "something for everyone" patch. Your hardcore had Sunwell to slam heads against, and casuals had (infinite-1) dailies to grind out and buy some half decent epics.
It boggles the mind somewhat to think about that though - as much fun as levelling is (!) even a semi casual such as myself knows that the vast majority of the game is at max level. |
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I don't know if I'd say that, I can still remember when I was leveling and I had no idea what the 'end game' involved until someone told me that I should "start getting ready for MC" and I'd probably been playing for 2-3 months by that time. For the vast majority of the population the entire game might consist of the leveling grind, many of them may not even be aware of the concept of raiding.
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That's a good point, I should probably have specified that I meant "from Blizzard's point of view" the vast majority of the game is at max level. While there has been... umm, lots... of patches increasing end game content (BWL/AQ/ZG/Naxx in vanilla, BT/ZA/Sunwell in BC), I can only think of one that increased mid-level content, the Dustwallow Marsh revamp. My memory could be failing me on that point though.
Even Dire Maul was introduced after release, wasn't it? [edit] I got pedantic and counted them. Going through the patch listings in WoWWiki, I counted 21 changes since release for 60/70/80/endgame at the time, and 9 changes for characters at lower levels. I think I was generous to the lower level stuff, and there was very little scientific rigour involved, though. |
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Updated 12/30/08 at 12:18 AM by Memento (edit: actually doing research) |
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Leveling content definitely doesn't get 'new' stuff anywhere near as often as end game stuff, but that's because leveling is linear, you don't go back and do easier stuff if you've already passed it, and you don't do harder stuff till you're ready for it. Whereas at the endgame new content can be accessed at any point in time really. The amount of content that provides the leveling experience is static, but far exceeds the quantity of end-game content. End-game content though is expected to be repeatable (to some degree) whereas leveling content is consumed once and never done again (by the same character), so naturally there needs to be quite a bit more of it.
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While it is true that there needs to be more of the levelling content, a lot of my theory that Blizzard considers the end game to be the main part of the game is based on the recent changes to levelling XP required. The changes to XP required for 20-60, and then the recent changes to requirements for 61-70 mean that levelling is a more streamlined process. You don't even need to visit Stranglethorn while levelling these days, although the change that lets you get your mount at 30 makes it less of a slog.
I just realised that this is getting well off topic; good thing we're in the blogs not the forums. |
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Laziness and/or lack of knowledge is why many people rather "feel" something than use a spreadsheet or do some math.
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I disagree with this last point, as many people stick to their incorrect assumptions even after being corrected. At that point, they aren't being lazy anymore; they're being stupid. It doesn't take any effort to go for one piece of loot instead of another or to do a quick respec to fix a bad talent spec. In fact, most of these people end up expending more energy fighting for their foolish ideas than it would take to correct their mistakes.
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Its because people don't like being told they're wrong, plain and simple. There's a lot of emotion attachment to a style of play they've been using for however many months of play that they don't want to feel as though they've been doing it wrong.
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"In fact, most of these people end up expending more energy fighting for their foolish ideas than it would take to correct their mistakes."
"The lazy take the most trouble" - I, for one, believe this to be absolutely true :p |
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