Difficulty: Asian

[Wildmoon]

Warcraft's "home" isn't and never will be in China. China has an absurdly high population therefore its not much of a surprise when a game sells more copies over there. Even if large swathes of the country are dirt poor the gap between 1.3 billion and 300 million in the US is just too large. Selling more copies =/= the game's home.

Warcraft franchise is most popular in China. WC3&Dota huge Esport scene is in China. WoW is incredibly popular in China. There's WoW theme park in China http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/07/20/un...pens-in-china/ . If you follow Warcraft3 Esport scene you will know how big Warcraft3 was in China.

[Himora]

Korean gamers are pro.

[loki504]

I think it has to do with the culture.

A lot of Asian countries (please correct me if I'm wrong) have a very STRONG sense of discipline. If you do something you put ALL of yourself into it, 100% of the time. Granted you can say families around the world do that, but it's not something necessarily built into the culture as it is with Asian cultures.

Thus the running joke began. Asian difficulty unlocked etc etc.

thats probebly why asain mmo are very grindy/more hardcore then western mmo's.

take a look at tera online l2 and c9. they all made less grindy for western market.

[sleekit]

^^

that and the fact games that have come from Japan (and the rest of Asia) have been toned down in difficulty for western audiences since BEFORE the birth of home consoles (anyone familiar with old school console imports or who knows what Mameinfo.dat is will confirm this)

[TacTican]

Having had a chance to observe from a crossroads between Western and Eastern (interpret: American and Chinese) backgrounds, I definitely think that the dominant factor is the difference in cultures. American culture seems to emphasize romantic individuality, getting ahead in the rat race, social equality, communication, and appreciation for one's creativity and uniqueness. Chinese culture, on the other hand, seems more to emphasize personal strength and skill, community contribution, respect and deference to one's elders, and cultural/societal conformity.

(Bear in mind that these are not "rigorous scientific" studies whatsoever, just my own personal observations.)

My father was born and raised in Taiwan, and from an early age I was brought up on horror stories of schoolwork and study from dawn to dusk. Nobody in the family dared speak at the dining table before grandpa spoke, they did math problems and handwriting until their fingers bleed, uphill both ways in the snow with stripes painted on their feet because they couldn't afford socks, etc. etc. Now, even discounting the parental tendency to exaggerate, he must still have worked damn hard. To this day, my father can still recite over half the chemical periodic table that he learned in high school without even having to think, his math skills are still sharp, and he can switch between a score of programming languages as easily as your average person changes out of various clothes.

High expectations Asian parent? You bet.

I, however, went a different way, since my parents moved to America right before I was born. My parents gave me and my sister personal notebooks when we were young and encouraged us to fill them with whatever we wanted. Of course we still had schoolwork and piano practice (which we both loathed), but I never grew up with the idea that education was something that could be pounded into a person through sheer practice and repetition. This is not to imply that I think practice and study are bad; far from it. What I am saying is that my learning and education did not come at the expense of fostering creativity and imagination. We lived next to a library. We visited all the time. Our parents encouraged us to read various kinds of literature. In our schools we had story times, arts and crafts, physical recess, and it was individuality and creativity, not conformity, which our teachers prized. Some things still had to be learned and polished through brute-force (multiplication tables and cursive handwriting come to mind), but it was increasingly emphasized that creative problem-solving and finesse would be a better solution in nearly all cases.

And herein lies the crux of it: my father's education, and from what I can tell the Chinese system in general, is very specialized and target-focused. Core skills designated as important were drilled almost to the exclusion of anything else. I still think that my father's creativity in general has suffered badly from this - he used to tell me that when he went to college, about the only things he did well were math, history, and mechanical work, the last only because his own big brother taught him. He was the ultimate specialist. Western education, on the other hand, tends to be less training than actual education - more emphasis on critical thinking and expansion of perspective than on pure skill. I emerged well-rounded from my studies. I concentrated on physics, but I'm ahead of him on plenty of other matters - typing with ten fingers, singing on-key, playing the piano, composing music, creating art, critical and creative writing, video gaming skills, sports skills, and fighting skills. However, the price I've paid is that I feel my mind has never been truly tamed by intellectual discipline. I have difficulty concentrating on a single matter as my restless mind likes to jump from topic to topic, quickly perceiving connections and moving easily in the realm of the abstract but lacking the patience to just sit down and grind.

My dad and I tend to be extremes but the general trend does tend to follow what I've outlined. If you look at the majority of Korean StarCraft 2 progamers, they're very, very good at StarCraft 2 ... but in interviews they talk very awkwardly with rather limited vocabularies, because most of them dropped out of school at an early age to focus solely on the skills necessary for pro-gaming, and therefore they lack the education you'd normally get in middle school and high school.

In Mandarin Chinese, there's a phrase called "kung-fu" which means "great skill." Most of us probably think of kung-fu in terms of martial arts, but in Chinese it can be applied to just about anything which requires skill. One can show enormous kung-fu at underwater basket weaving, if one has the skill. I know an old lady who can hold scalding hot teapots in one hand without a tremor, a skill that she calls her kitchen kung-fu. This kind of skill is something that can't be given to a person - no matter how much you learn in school or have someone walk through the ropes with you, you just. can't. do. it. without a great deal of personal dedication, discipline, and time investment (and suffering!) into polishing your skills. It's this kind of skill which is emphasized by the Chinese culture - although, with the important caveat that one uses one's skill for the good of the community or for self-improvement, not for self-advancement or self-aggrandizement. Skill is understood, or assumed, to be something which is inherently valuable, independent of its use. It makes you a better person for having it.

In American culture, as far as I can tell, there's no real equivalent for the concept of "kung-fu" as understood by Chinese culture. Skill is treated more as a tool to get the job done, and results are held to be more important than any kind of personal cultivation. Because of this, skill is simply another tool in the bag, and there are other easier, less taxing, more useful tools if personal skill does not work. As another example, consider the differences in EU and AS guilds when competing for world-first kills. The Chinese and Korean guilds tend to be filled with very, very skilled players where every single individual is capable of executing at extremely high levels, while the EU guilds place great emphasis on clean communication, clear strategy, and a solid battle plan. (This is not to imply that world first EU guild raiders are unskilled or the Chinese and Korean guilds go in with no planning - far from it - but merely that different roads are taken to the same goal.)

If I had to guess, I would say that this cultural difference is probably the root cause of the whole perception of "Asian difficulty".

[HuyyNguyen]

If you look at the majority of Korean StarCraft 2 progamers, they're very, very good at StarCraft 2 ... but in interviews they talk very awkwardly with rather limited vocabularies, because most of them dropped out of school at an early age to focus solely on the skills necessary for pro-gaming, and therefore they lack the education you'd normally get in middle school and high school.

School doesn't really affect your vocabulary after maybe elementary school. The ones that have an awkward speech phrases seem to show lack of socialism. There are MANY Korean Starcraft Pros who have a very intelligent mindset in their words, but there are others who are shy when it all comes down to an interview in person. They may be smart, but anxiety gets the best of many, including those who socialize IN school. I go to a University and loves socializing at parties and try to be out there, but put me in front of a camera, or just make me stand in front of a small class for a speech as a matter of fact, I WILL stand there confused with my words jumbling and a studder anxiety. But anyways, I believe that the asian stereotype of being intelligent is true for "most" is due to the parent's struggle to make their children better than them. No matter how successful my parents are, they strive to push me better than where they ever were by setting my standards at their level at an older age while I'm young. This is the reason why technology is always improving. Also, not sure if it is for other asians, but as for us "Vietnamese," parents would often make us feel bad by doing a comparison to other family members/friends on grades if theirs are higher and that it was the worst thing imaginable. And growing up with that mind-set, you don't ever want someone to be better than you. It's not a "if he can do it, I can do it too" thought. It's a "He's doing it, so you better do it too" thought lol. Any career less than, let's hypothetically say (a job a step above a nurse [I guess dealing with pay and recognition), is demeaning. There are those who become nurses, but that's when the children are older and feel they can't make it, but the parents are still semi-disappointed because being a doctor is obviously the better choice in the same field just mocking their children that they are way more successful while doing similar things lol. Oh, and being hit while kneeling because I had some B's on my report card at a young age helped too =P I do however believe that the stereotype will decrease in about 10-20 years because Asians are slowly "Americanized" with a thought of their own, more than the parents controlling their lives, which leads to on par education with other nationalities. I can already see many of that happening now. OR the ones who do move on to succeed, will set their standards to their children. I guess that would kinda balance out the ones who don't excel, but the ratio is still high, so the stereotype lives on :]