Originally Posted by
Zenfoldor
I think there are many different kinds of gamers, but there are two I'm most interested in. Min/Maxers and Min/Max haters.
I never really separated them like that before, but I noticed it after I showed my brother Diablo 3. I've played it for a long time and he never had. I told him the entire time exactly what he should do each step, but he refused to listen to me, going forward on blind faith that simply playing the game would give him a comparable character that we could play together with.
As you might expect, as we went into the end game, he couldn't even stand at the entrance of the rifts I was easily soloing. Literally, we couldn't play together and he got depressed.
I told him, "hey buddy, let me show you" and we farmed up the set I told him about at first, then I showed him how he needed to change his gameplay style(to which he was VERY resistant) and showed him where he could research his character.
He finally was able to barely keep up with me in a rift, but his dps never really got great, and he certainly couldn't have solo'd the rifts I could, but he at least had a passable character that could do some end game content.
Later I talked to him about it and asked if he had fun. He said he loved the game, but didn't like min/maxing. He wanted to play how he wanted, and didn't find it fun to have to research and work outside of the game to get good inside the game.
I told him that was so strange, because I was the exact opposite. The fun I have with games is planning my epicness from day 1, researching, logging, improving, and finally becoming competitive with top tier players based on plans I started weeks, months, or even years earlier.
He couldn't understand that, just like I couldn't understand his preference for a shallow arcade experience.
We just like different types of games, we are different people.
So, in WoW, lots of different gamers play this game. These "elitists" you run into are probably just those with the same mindset as a min/maxer and you may have a different mindset. There are also classic players who have the mindset of my brother. Despite all this time playing these games, I never really realized how differently people prefer to play. There are so many people that just don't care if their character is meta, and my min/maxing is just as strange to them as their character decisions are to me. Even my own brother has a totally different mindset.
Anyway, cool story, tldr. I get it. I just found it interesting.