They conveniently ignore that if that happened, WoW would probably collapse because most players are not hardcore.

Besides, it also says a lot about these people, and none of it good. I’d rather play with friends, or friendly strangers, who may have crap gear and wonky builds and abysmal DPS but are mature and relaxed and plain fun to be around.

And I must say, one of the fastest ways to my mental ignore list is being an obvious attention-whore, epixxed-out or not. You think you’re “k3wl” when you block a summoning stone or NPC or mailbox with your biggest rarest mount and your Tier-whatever epics? Nope, you’re not “k3wl”. You’re an infantile nuisance. I won’t look at your mount or where it drops. I won’t look at your achievements. I won’t look at your gear. I won’t care. I may look at your guild tag, but then I blank you out. Seriously, is anyone impressed by such behavior?

Though, in all honesty I think much of the bashing and flaming and pissing and ego-wanking is probably not done by the “real” hardcore — they are probably way too busy raiding or farming to make arseholes of themselves on random forums day in and day out. Most of the idiocy likely comes from wannabes somewhere in the middle between “hardcore” and “casual”, however you define those terms. They will never get any of the vaunted server or world firsts but they clear a raid faster and sooner than other guilds with less time, so they feel superior and piss all over them as if that put them on the same level as whatever the guilds of paid players (crazy thought really) are called.

I agree hardcore players do not have an exclusivity on the best players. I think that was one of your points.
I agree casual players can have situational awareness and be good players.
Also, yes, generally hardcore players need situational awareness in order to remain in their guild.
I do think there is a higher probability that people who raid hardcore hours will be better players.

What I had misread, was thinking you had said “hardcore players progress regardless of skill”, because of some of your elaborations like ‘Why, they went and raided until they get a lot of iLevel 213 drops across five people, and then they blew through it.’ imply brute force rather than skill.

:)

I guess with the time commitment people also assume that the player is more likely to have done some research, learned how to play, become familiar with their class, etc.

I raid in both 25 and 10 mans, do heroics, pug things, whatever. I have recently been running 10m Ulduar with another guild, one who does not have enough people to fill the raid normally, and generally only has 10m Naxx gear. They are absolutely incredible. I have had so much fun playing with them; they all have the skill you were describing. Playing with them made me want to try to recruit them, but I realized that being a 10m casual but skilled guild is who they are. They don’t want to spend time in 25 man raids scheduled multiple times a week. They are completely happy with where they are, enjoy getting better and seeing new things, but are not willing to sacrifice their identity and attitude toward the game to do so.

I think people always get wrapped up in thinking more is better because there is nothing else to compare to. There is no objective skill rating for players (besides PVP ratings). Can you imagine making a pug and saying “Oh, I’ll take that player, they have 4 stars rather than the one with 2″? Adding something like that would be absolutely ridiculous and impossible. Showing skill on the outside is never really going to be possible, so people turn to what they assume would correlate. I think the best you can do is earn a good reputation from encounters with other players and work towards your own goals.

I think I kind of meandered from what you were saying…oh well. Love that you bring stuff like this to light and make people think. :)

If you feel that situational awareness and reaction time can only be found amongst players that raid in large groups frequently, that’s your prerogative!

Oh, and yes, technically, the core of the post was about how all players should drop name calling and finger pointing and angst towards others based on how often they play, and stop being prejudiced about someone based on time to play [in either direction], and how a wise player would stop holding preconceived judgments on other’s potential capability and skill based on pretty pixels acquired by spending long times in large groups on a weekly basis.

But you chose to boil it down to one small part of the post, and then refute it, so I did the same.

Funny how I’m not a raider, don’t spend all my time raiding, and yada yada yada, and yet I can’t recall ever in my life dying to the fire in Heigan. Except after the grop is gone, anyway.

Demonstration of skill? No. Demonstration of bounciness and spatial awareness, yes, thank you very much.

I take pride in my bear bouncing.

It seems like people are much less concerned with having fun and “winning” than they are about holding other players down.

Reading forums makes me really start to hate my fellow players.

If someone’s having fun and not a jerk, they’re “winning” this game.