The Entitlement Generation article

[Gilian]

I would have agreed with it if somebody was paying me a salary to participate in WOW.

But, that is not the case. Instead I pay to play it. I PLAY it... so it is something I do in my spare time, if I choose to. As it is a game, it should be entertaining (that being the main-purpose of a game in my opinion). Entertainment is subjective, so nobody but me can decide if something is entertaining for me or not. A company selling entertainment and wanting me as customer, will be interested in knowing what entertains me, so I will be providing some kind of feedback, in some way. If that game becomes something I don't find entertaining, I won't pay for it anymore; it is as simple as that.

Yep and you can do that perfectly fine by answering a few questions when you cancel your account. There is really no need to spam threads on forums like some people do in the hopes something changes. There is big difference between not enjoying something and then stop paying for it and giving some feedback or spamming the forums like a 10 year old crying for toys.
There is also nothing wrong with wanting to help to improve the game by giving GOOD feedback or to voice your opinion. It's only the way people do it that is completely wrong and looks like they are all infants.

So when changes are made to the game, which causes them to not be able to achieve anything valueable in-game, they will loose interest but will also get angry. They already have invested quite a lot and now suddnely, without them having any say in it, things change in a (for them) unacceptable way. This makes all investment of the past, a waste. So they will vent their anger.
Also when the game-philosophy changes, this will happen.

This is very understandable but from my experience of sitting on the official forums multiple times a day for a few weeks now this is really not the case in most situations. Most of the time it has nothing to do with the game changing. Most of the time it's that Blizzard give us something great and then people complain but are being very unreasonable. We get LFR, a great tool to experience content and gear up through. Some person does LFR for one week and gets no drops and makes a thread on the forum without any good arguments, it's just a big whine thread. This has absolutely nothing to do with wasted investments in the past and roughly 75% of the threads are like this.
This has nothing to do with you being entitled because of your investments and having the right to vent. These are just people being extremely unreasonable. If you think this behaviour is right then good luck defending it. I will never ever in my whole life give something to someone when they act like that.

---------- Post added 2012-12-07 at 11:36 AM ----------

...and what you failed to see is that the complaints come from players who enjoyed the game (some for MANY years), but had the game changed from what they enjoyed into something they no longer enjoyed - and want it changed BACK to what they enjoyed previously - or adjusted in a new way to offset what they didn't like that was changed.

Nobody came to these forums and said "I just started playing WoW and I hate this game. It should play more like Medal of Honor... in first person perspective with crossbows and guns".

And plenty come to the forum with useless unreasonable rants. "Hey *!@#!@# Blizzard. I used this stupid coin and didn't get anything." We should really support this behaviour by saying: "You are entitled to enjoy the game when you payed for it."

[Whiskra]

Ummm... no. Mostly because I don't see how any of that is remotely relaxing or pleasurable... unless you're a masochist. The only "pleasurable" moment I could see is when you get a shiny piece of loot.

One could say you gain pleasure after you defeat the boss after a week of fighting it... but to me, that's not pleasure - that's just flat-out RELIEF... the same relief you get after slamming your head in a car door for a week and finally the car door breaks off its hinge... with you now knowing you won't have to hurt yourself anymore.

After a hard days work, I can easily look forward to an entire night of progress raiding, and I value my spare time very much. It's just obvious you don't play games for the entertainment in challenging yourself, and that means you're not even on the same page as some of us others. I for one can't fathom the idea of playing a game like you would read a book, ie just mindlessly taking in experiences rather than making your own experiences.

[Synstir]

Yep and you can do that perfectly fine by answering a few questions when you cancel your account. There is really no need to spam threads on forums like some people do in the hopes something changes. There is big difference between not enjoying something and then stop paying for it and giving some feedback or spamming the forums like a 10 year old crying for toys.
There is also nothing wrong with wanting to help to improve the game by giving GOOD feedback or to voice your opinion. It's only the way people do it that is completely wrong and looks like they are all infants.

Answering questions when leaving is a bit too late for some. Mind you that the people making those threads want things changed, because they want to keep playing.
I agree that players need to provide GOOD feedback, the blues are asking for it also. While agreeing with this, I have to add that getting a lot of rant-posts also gives a message, although there are no arguments provided. Seeing hundreds of players angry on the same subject must be some kind of message for Blizzard; after all they are a company who wants to sell something to us. So I think it goed both ways... just not saying anything because you cannot provide details is not the way. In my opinion of 1000 people just come on the forum and say: I don't like the game anymore, then that is a clear message that somewhere, somehow something is wrong. Blizzard should investigate as this is their product, if they care that is. maybe 1000 unhappy customers is acceptable, I don't know what the policy is.

This is very understandable but from my experience of sitting on the official forums multiple times a day for a few weeks now this is really not the case in most situations. Most of the time it has nothing to do with the game changing. Most of the time it's that Blizzard give us something great and then people complain but are being very unreasonable. We get LFR, a great tool to experience content and gear up through. Some person does LFR for one week and gets no drops and makes a thread on the forum without any good arguments, it's just a big whine thread. This has absolutely nothing to do with wasted investments in the past and roughly 75% of the threads are like this.
This has nothing to do with you being entitled because of your investments and having the right to vent. These are just people being extremely unreasonable. If you think this behaviour is right then good luck defending it. I will never ever in my whole life give something to someone when they act like that.[COLOR="red"]

Also here I can agree to some extent. In case of people whining about going 2 or 3 weeks without loot, well that is dismissable. That is not a reasonable complaint... nothing new there. But when it comes to content and lots of players are complaining about them, then it is something else. So this is somewhat of a unclear area and Blizzard has to decide what they find viable and what not.... in the end, it is their product and they have to sell it. What is unreasonable and what not, well I don't think you and I can say.

Look for example at cata and the HC dungeons released. They where hard, too hard for a casual player. Blizzard was defending their choice, telling players to step up and get more skill... what happened? 25% of their playerbase left wow.... result? 4.3 brings a turnaround of 180 degrees. Up untill today we are not back at the number of players before the exodus started. I think it is better to prevent then to heal.

---------- Post added 2012-12-07 at 01:46 PM ----------

After a hard days work, I can easily look forward to an entire night of progress raiding, and I value my spare time very much. It's just obvious you don't play games for the entertainment in challenging yourself, and that means you're not even on the same page as some of us others. I for one can't fathom the idea of playing a game like you would read a book, ie just mindlessly taking in experiences rather than making your own experiences.

Well this shows how diverse a playerbase can be. Different people play games for different reasons.
I myself, am no material for progression raids at all. I couldn't stand wiping time after time on the same boss for weeks.... really that is not why I play a game.
It should take effort en skill, I agree there but it should be doable in short period of time.... because in the end, I started a game just to relax en enjoy myself.

I can fully understand that there are players out there who like to wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe and learn to finally defeat a boss. I understand that is a feeling which is great.....the difference between them and me is that I am not looking for that feeling in a game; that is not my reason to play a game.

So Blizzad has a tough job to do. They have a very diverse playerbase. This I understand also... but Blizzard is making money with this game and it is their main product.
So it is their JOB to do this. If my company is not able to do what it is founded for, that company should be shutdown. It is as simple as that.
Blizzard's job is make games and they are great at it. Now they have a brilliant game on the market that has not been beaten by any other game, older or newer. That says enough about the expertise. It doesn't matter how hard it is, it is their job to please their playerbase; their can be no argument for the opposite (because we pay to play). We can play when we want.... but for Blizzard this is their JOB!