I'll never understand

[Deleted]

Why soo many WoW players care what their fellow gamer is doing...
Be it casuals v hardcore, RPers PvErs and PvPers, what rotation others use outside of grouping, what others UI looks like, whether they hit 90 asap, etc, etc,

9 times out of 10 it's usually all irrelevant too

[Aberration]

I agree. You play how you want, I play how I want.
We all pay 15 bucks a month, I think we are all entitled to choose how to spend the time that we pay for. No one should dictate or judge us for that.

[Deleted]

It's not exclusive to WoW. I get a lot of hassle off people I barely know sometimes for what other games I play, for what music I listen to, what TV series I'm watching... I don't know why anyone cares about what anyone else is doing full stop. I get why friends might care, because they want to share and do stuff with you, find things in common and get to know you... but when someone on the internet I don't even know rages at me because I'm doing something they personally wouldn't do it provides me with endless entertainment. Just people for you I guess.

[Tharkkun]

Lack of self esteem and depression. They have to put down others to make themselves feel better. A study was done years back and over 70% of online gamer's suffer from some form of depression. It's also what leads to the addictive nature.

[jayishere]

When people tell me I'm playing wrong...I shoot them with an arrow in the knee and go about my business.

[Kraenen]

I agree. You play how you want, I play how I want.
We all pay 15 bucks a month, I think we are all entitled to choose how to spend the time that we pay for. No one should dictate or judge us for that.

Except for Mike Morhaime and his suits of course

[reckoner04]

What I don't understand is why so many people say "why do you care about the others?" or "why do you care about what others think about you?". The answer is simple: Humans are social beings. If you don't care about this stuff, you're either forcing yourself not to care or you've grown up in a rather strange environment.

"Why do so many players care what gear the others have?"... well, they're simply being social and want to compare. Besides, it doesn't even matter why it is that way.

[Deleted]

Why soo many WoW players care what their fellow gamer is doing...
Be it casuals v hardcore, RPers PvErs and PvPers, what rotation others use outside of grouping, what others UI looks like, whether they hit 90 asap, etc, etc,

9 times out of 10 it's usually all irrelevant too

Because WoW grew to a real life replacement for many, at least as far as achievement goes. Many of the players are still in school or not very successful in their real life, so they naturally tend to get their acknowledgement somewhere else - like WoW. And that only works if they see that they are "better" than others.


Which is good, to a degree. If we as humans wouldn't strife to be better than others, then we wouldn't be where we are technology wise. Most of our technology came from races, like in the cold war and such.

It's even anchored in our instincts, that is if darwin was right. Only the strong survive, and only the strong gets the prime mate. So you try to be stronger than your fellows.

[Aberration]

Except for Mike Morhaime and his suits of course

I don't think Mike Morhaime would care what we are doing in-game as long as they are getting our cash. :P

[Peacemoon]

Why soo many WoW players care what their fellow gamer is doing...
Be it casuals v hardcore, RPers PvErs and PvPers, what rotation others use outside of grouping, what others UI looks like, whether they hit 90 asap, etc, etc,

9 times out of 10 it's usually all irrelevant too

Why do people care about what their neighbours do within their land?

I do love the concept that we all play in a nice cosy vacuum where nothing we do effects anyone else. I think psychologists would describe it as denial and rationalisation (Defence mechanisms, feel free to look it up). Denial because we want to believe nothing we do impacts other people and hence we can do whatever we want, and rationalisation because by believing that nothing we do impacts anyone else we can justify whatever action we are taking.

Obviously there are things that really don't effect others, but it is not "9 times out of 10".

[inux94]

Can't agree with you more, it took me a week to get to 89, I stopped playing because the questing was so boring, all of my fellow WoW players asked me why I stopped playing & why I was so slow.

It was uninteresting, boring compared to WotLK & Cataclysm,

[Peacemoon]

Because WoW grew to a real life replacement for many, at least as far as achievement goes. Many of the players are still in school or not very successful in their real life, so they naturally tend to get their acknowledgement somewhere else - like WoW. And that only works if they see that they are "better" than others.

Wow. How dare people strive to be good at a game they enjoy. No computer game should ever pose a challenge and should definitely never allow one to rate their accomplishments.

[slime]

let me chime in on this. No one gives a shit about what other wow players are doing, you will get a few that care about world firsts/server firsts/ and actually compition for achievement races. That's it - no one gives a shit about what you are doing in wow.

But, I can see why you ask this question - because it's hard to miss the constant bitching on this site about this or that in wow. What these people are complaining about is that what you like to do in wow - is now spilling over to what they like to do in wow - and it's killing what they like. Be it, the grind, the heroics, the pet battles, the challenge modes, mount collecting... whatever - when what the casuals like to do in wow - starts taking up developer time from releasing content that the real gamers like in wow well then you just stepped on my toe and I will care about how much developer time is wasted on pet battles - and crappy casual content, and why are my raid bosses so dam easy now.

I don't care or believe most of this - but I figured that's what the OP was asking about.

[TheLimonTree]

Wow. How dare people strive to be good at a game they enjoy. No computer game should ever pose a challenge and should definitely never allow one to rate their accomplishments.

There's a difference between being good at a game and being competitive.

Wanting to do good dps is being good.
Wanting to do more dps than the rogue is being competitive.

[Kurioxan]

Lack of self esteem and depression. They have to put down others to make themselves feel better. A study was done years back and over 70% of online gamer's suffer from some form of depression. It's also what leads to the addictive nature.

O_o pure bs.
Reminds me of facebook status of teenage girls "you are just jealous of me"

There are many more human emotions and depth to it, actually the biggest reason people criticize one another is... caring.
If you dont care about someone, you wont give advices or try to improve what you see wrong, aaand thats why many family and friends get "nosey" and always tell you what to do, it is not due to jealousy, its due to wanting the best for you want giving advice, obviously most of the time their advice is shit or doesnt apply to you, but it was not due to jealousy or depression lol.

Ofc, there are cases like those too, but that is so generalizing its silly -.-

---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 08:53 PM ----------

There's a difference between being good at a game and being competitive.

Wanting to do good dps is being good.
Wanting to do more dps than the rogue is being competitive.

Actually, one brings the other.
A good player will always want to improve himself, the only way to improve oneself past the limitations of the encounters, is to compete.
Competition does not have to be negative, i always compete against everyone irl and in games, i never tell them nor i care if i "win or lose", nor would i ever harm them, but i like to see how much i can do.

Gives you an idea of how good you are, when you compare your work with others, and lets you see new things to learn and improve.

The reverse is not necessarily true however, lots of bad players (or other things) who compete, simply cant improve or dont want to.

Wow raiding is quite simple, the skill "barrier" is quite low, lots of people cant do something not because they are bad, but simply because they arent willing to put enough effort, which others are.

[checking facts]

here's how it works: PvE guy enters a dungeon and has a PvP geared healer. healer keeps going OOM all the time and wiping the party. similar things happen every day. PvE guy now hates PvP guys.

PvP guy enters a BG and has lots of PvE geared teammates. they die a lot and fight in the middle. similar things happen every day. PvP guy now hates PvE guys.

casual guy enters a LFR run. an elitist hardcore in there keeps complaining about how they all suck and how they shouldn't join the LFR queue. similar things happen every week. casual guy now hates hardcores.

hardcore guy enters a LFR run. there are lots of casuals who are there for the first time and nobody bothers explaining the fight, so there's a wipe. similar things happen every week. hardcore guy now hates casuals.

non-RPer guy joins a ramdom dungeon. there's an RPer in the group and he has an annoying macro on every single ability. non-RPer guy now hates RPers.

RPer guy is questing on his RP realm. there's a non-RPer there god knows why, and he keeps going out-of-character and ruining the RPer's immersion experience. RPer guy now hates non-RPers.

you see, the "bads" from each group cause the opposing group to hate them. I don't mean "bad" as unskilled, but "bad" as in someone who spoils other people's fun. as long as there are bad PvErs on PvP, bad PvPers on PvE, bad casuals and bad harcores on PuGs, bad RPers outside RP realms and bad non-RPers in RP realms, one group will always have reasons to oppose the other!

[Auloria]

Why soo many WoW players care what their fellow gamer is doing...
Be it casuals v hardcore, RPers PvErs and PvPers, what rotation others use outside of grouping, what others UI looks like, whether they hit 90 asap, etc, etc,

9 times out of 10 it's usually all irrelevant too

But you care about what they care about what other players are doing?

And I care about what you care about--

Error: infinite recursion detected--aborting.

[Conscious]

People care only because they need something to gauge themselves against.

[paulywally]

I care how other people effect this game.

Like how casuals ruined one of the expansions. aka Caterpillerclysm.

Other than that, im a special snowflake, and i deserve to be different.

[philefluxx]

Because video games became the new pissing match that nobody and everybody can win.