Hello all,
Just before I start, I want to make clear that this is not a rant, just an observation of a trend I notice starting that wasn't ingame before and there's no need for.
In the past few days I haven't joined a pug group without either a gear check or some level of elitist and/or hostile pug behavior, that wasn't in game a few weeks back. I don't have trouble meeting this ridiculous requirements to participate in runs, but they remind me of the days of UWSC in GW1. For those who don't remember, or don't know what UWSC were, they were speed clear runs of the elite area called the Underworld in GW1 in which to participate you needed a certain amount of a stone item that only dropped in the area's end chest(basically tokens to prove you know the run and how much experience you have). Of course you could buy the stones and get into the runs, but this type of runs quickly became the norm of Underworld farming in GW1 to get ecto and wealth.
So, where am I going with all of this? A quick search in gw2lfg.com for CoF will yield in hundreds of "GLF3M Zerker wars and 1 mes, PING GEAR OR GET KICKED" posts. Only in rare occasions do you see normal composition groups for this type of runs. The same goes for FotM, "GLF2M fotm lvl x, must have Y AR, PING GEAR OR GET KICKED". I am one that understands the need for good gear(specially in higher levels of fotm) but this limits the community's participation in runs.
I express all of this with the fear of losing one of the greatest features the game has in my opinion( which is also one of the selling points of the game): the ability to play how ever you want doing whatever you want. I know most of you will disagree with me, maybe share another point of view, but I really don't want the community to be separated by a rising trend that can be avoided.
EDIT: It seems there's a bit of confusion regarding what the purpose of this post is. I'm not picking on CoF SCers. Im just pointing out a trend that may expand to other places in a future(no one knows) and I would hate to see SC become the norm for dungeon farming.