Why is exclusivity now such a bad thing in MMO's.

[-Skye]

I know this may seem like some troll topic on purpose to get people riled up, but I'm genuinely curious.

I've noticed a lot of threads even general comments from people about bringing things back and "oh you can just link the achi anyway". I don't know what's wrong with wanting exclusive items/rewards for hard effort put in at the time of relevant content. Why do so many people feel self entitled just because they pay the monthly sub amount. It's like buying a gym membership, then complaining because you don't have time to use all the equipment and demand they give you some (I know this is apples and oranges, but it's the best example I could think of at the time of writing).

Now don't get me wrong, I was like this once back when I was younger, I wanted everything for nothing and thought it was unfair that the people who were more skilled than me got better stuff than me, but eventually you learn it's just the way life is. If you want it bad enough you try harder, if you don't have the time to in a video game then you're SoL. But times are changing and I don't know why.

I remember back when I was a newb and I wanted everything, but yet when I inspected someone and seen their epic mount/gear, it didn't piss me off, alright I was envious but it gave me drive to try and get to that point of attaining it myself.

So sure, this guy has lets say.. Atiesh *not the best example* you see him and you think holy shit, he was around back then and he put in the effort and he got that legendary (or mount, or whatever). Now lets say theirs 20 people walking around with it, and it's still obtainable, you don't inspect every single one of them until you find the one which had it way back when, you just think "meh".

Now this is where people say "why does it matter what other people think about you?". If I didn't care, I'd go play a singleplayer game, I like achieving things and showing them off, I like getting a CM set, or an epic mount and telling people about it. Why is it a bad thing for wanting recognition for your achievements/things you've done that used to be difficult/challenging/required a lot more effort.

TLDR: Why is it a bad thing for wanting recognition for your achievements/things you've done that used to be difficult/challenging/required a lot more effort.

[Bullettime]

It's not just in WoW or MMOs. It's in every single genre of every single game. There's even starting to rampant bitching in shooters about having to unlock things and they should get everything at once because they bought the game.

What used to be playing for the experience and leveling, raiding, etc being their own rewards have become expectations. Everyone wants to feel special basically, regardless of their contribution to the game or effort put in, because "it's a video game! I don't want to work and I spent money as him!"

edit: To be fair though, some accessibility is a good thing. Raiding being accessible in a game like WOW is great compared to the older model where sub 1% saw the content, making raid development extremely cost inefficient. But some people push too far. I've seen threads on the official boards where people were legitimately (not trolling) asking for heroic gear from Timeless Isle because it wasn't fair that they could only play for an hour a day because of school and work but they bought the box and paid the same sub. There's a balance to be had between exclusivity in content and accessibility and it's not an easy thing to balance.

[-Skye]

But why, has it always been this way and people generally kept it to themselves, was their some big revolution I missed, I don't understand, or maybe I'm just noticing it more.

[Revi]

It's a horrible consequence of trying to get more new players to buy the game (not just in WoW).
The gaming industry started serving everything on a silver platter to retain players and gain new ones, so that's what's expected now. If people buy a game, and it's not what they expected, they complain.

I completely agree with you. The only reason I ever started raiding (in vanilla) was because of the people I saw in IF in full T2 and awesome weapons. The realm was very populated back then, but everyone knew their names and looked up to them, they were the closest thing you can get to a celebrity in WoW.

There was no entitlement. Everyone understood that these guys were better than them, and that they had put in a lot of effort to get it, and we were perfectly happy grinding for epic mount and running UBRS in our blue gear while admiring the hell out of them whenever we saw them.

It's like with gold IRL. The ONLY reason people want real gold jewelry is because gold is rare. If gold suddenly because extremely plentiful and cheap, no one would appreciate it the same way.

[ComputerNerd]

The issue isn't about recognition, but in wanting to feel superior to those you deem inferior by some personal and artificial standards.
Rather than simply being happy for progressing in a way that suits yourself.
I don't demand the same rewards from LFR as from normal/flex, but I object to those who want everything removed from LFR simply because they are too damn arrogant to accept that LFR suits an audience that is not them.

Heroic is still exclusive, but it isn't just all raiding being inaccessible to a large portion.

[Smokinya]

To be honest I love it so much! Back in Vanilla I didn't have a lot of time too raid and I always seen my hunter friend in his full T3 gear looking sexy as fuck and I would always think too myself "One day that'll be me..." It kept me playing and I just loved the fact that someone was good enough at the game to get such gear. I was envious of him of course but I didn't whine and bitch it just made me want to be a better Hunter :]

[Aeluron Lightsong]

To be honest I love it so much! Back in Vanilla I didn't have a lot of time too raid and I always seen my hunter friend in his full T3 gear looking sexy as fuck and I would always think too myself "One day that'll be me..." It kept me playing and I just loved the fact that someone was good enough at the game to get such gear. I was envious of him of course but I didn't whine and bitch it just made me want to be a better Hunter :]

SOme exclusive things is good. If you put it through everything it iwll just piss people off.

[Senka]

I get that you're more interested in the overall audience change rather than all the social philosophy behind the issue itself (which has been debated to death and then some). I wish I had a concrete answer, but I'm still forever in the process of grasping an understanding of this myself. While my points will be talking about myself, I'll try to write in a way that you could apply the same self-reflection to yourself.


I think part of it is simply that I'm getting older and more aware of this stuff, or in other words, I have more experience. I've also been dealing with this longer, so maybe it's just "getting to me" more. There could also be many others like me, and so everyone gets desensitized and retreats into a shell or otherwise puts up a front. That then serves to argue with people for fun.

I think another big part of it is a massive flood of people that didn't belong online came to live online around 2005 or 2006 thanks to Apple and likely other... innovations. It is probably wrong of me to label people that "don't belong" online, but it's my opinon, sorry. By those that don't belong, I mean those that live on Facebook, those that can live perfectly normal in real life but instead choose to thrive on social crap online.

To be honest, I think gamers from the "old" era of MMOs had to have something at least slightly screwed up about them. That doesn't make them bad, horrible people that can't function well in real life, but you know.. just something a little off. However, social media has brought in so many people that weren't raised on games or are completely unable to adjust to video games in general. Gamers were always outnumbered, so now that other people have flooded this area, video game companies are seeing a massive market. Even if these supposed non-gamers have a high turn-over rate, it doesn't matter because there's just SO many of them.

Personally, I do think there should be a balance like Bullettime said. What is "correct" balance will always change with the type of game developers and majority type of people that are playing any given video game. Personally, I think raiding itself should be accessible. I think the kind of admiration we had for people with Atiesh or Tier 2 in Classic was misplaced because you didn't know any better just HOW stupid it was, in one extreme or the other, to get those items. You were also younger, inexperienced, see point 1.

Oh, and the last major point is that games are so much less limited than way, way in the past. Technology has expanded so much that game devs CAN do whatever they want instead of forcing a game mold out of limited tools and hardware. By human nature this can lead to some oddities.


All of this is practically conjecture. I just wanted you to know I get what you're saying, but it's probably impossible to really narrow it all down. That's why, just for fun, I just blame Apple and "social media that isn't about being social" and call it a day, but I also don't defend it that fervently.

[-Skye]

The issue isn't about recognition, but in wanting to feel superior to those you deem inferior by some personal and artificial standards.
Rather than simply being happy for progressing in a way that suits yourself.
I don't demand the same rewards from LFR as from normal/flex, but I object to those who want everything removed from LFR simply because they are too damn arrogant to accept that LFR suits an audience that is not them.

Heroic is still exclusive, but it isn't just all raiding being inaccessible to a large portion.

No, it's recognition, at least for me.

[Bullettime]

But why, has it always been this way and people generally kept it to themselves, was their some big revolution I missed, I don't understand, or maybe I'm just noticing it more.

Internet and online gaming became mainstream, bringing the console game players and mentality to the online world.

Online gaming used to be really grindy time sinks and everyone pretty much accepted that. But when the internet hit huge and became a household thing, internet gaming suddenly had larger audiences and playerbases, but also brought the console mentality of everyone who bought a game expected to be able to complete it. Companies started shifting their design to cater to the much wider audiences in order to maximize profits.

There were both positives and negatives of it but it's up to the company to try to find the correct balance to cater to the different audiences at the same time.

[wych]

One of the best feelings in TBC was working on it for months and finally being able to set foot in Hyjal and BT.

It felt incredibly epic that I was in this place that not every level 70 could just step into, it made me feel great. And our raid went there without even knowing the tactics for a couple hours after killing Kael and were all in awe and excitement.


Now you can just click queue LFR and see everything.

Now your months of hard work to reach the last few bosses is the ability to play the same bosses in the same environment but with 1 more ability and harder hitting abilities.



There's just no "goal" for me anymore and why I can't get into raiding anymore.

[Nemah]

It's not just in WoW or MMOs. It's in every single genre of every single game. There's even starting to rampant bitching in shooters about having to unlock things and they should get everything at once because they bought the game.

I believe it is also generational. There is a new generation of gamers entering the market and the market is adapting to them. I'm not knocking those generations here - or at least not trying to - but they have different expectations of games than the previous generations before them. Companies that want members of those groups to spend money with them will reorient their models to include them.

In the OPs example, that involves more convenience features, more accessibility, and less support for previous models (such as exclusive content being more overtly pitched). It's not good or bad, it's just business.

[Denkou]

To be honest I love it so much! Back in Vanilla I didn't have a lot of time too raid and I always seen my hunter friend in his full T3 gear looking sexy as fuck and I would always think too myself "One day that'll be me..." It kept me playing and I just loved the fact that someone was good enough at the game to get such gear. I was envious of him of course but I didn't whine and bitch it just made me want to be a better Hunter :]

This was me as well. When I started playing, I was 13. My friends who got me into the game was 17. Neither of us had the time or ability (at the time, at least) to be in a cutting-edge raiding guild, but whenever we saw someone walking around town with full T2 or T3, we would look at them in awe and aspire to one day have some awesome gear like they did. I knew I was never going to get there, but it made me want to become a better player, anyway.

I maintained the same mindset throughout TBC. I studied and did my research, learning my class and each and every encounter inside and out. I was always stocked up on flasks, food, potions, and any other consumables that would improve my performance, and always logged on early for raids. Seeing people in gear better than mine truly inspired me to become better so that I could have gear like that, too. I ended up raiding and clearing up to T5 content, which wasn't amazing by any means, but still required a good deal of effort and dedication, and I was happy to have gotten that far. Still, I looked at all the guys with T6 gear and I would admire them.

I am a firm believer that things should not simply be handed out, and that there should always be people above you and people below you. There are some people who believe that legendaries should be available to anyone; I, on the other hand, would be perfectly fine if the next legendary they introduced is only obtainable by a very small portion of the playerbase, i.e. something along the lines of the Atiesh/Val'anyr, even if I know I have practically zero chance of obtaining it. Those who put in more time, effort, and dedication should be rewarded more greatly than those who put in less.

[Skillslam]

Because every neckbeard preaching about exclusivity always places the threshold right beneath what they can accomplish

[Spraxle]

The short answer is the way people are brought up today. We have a very very very large self entitled generation 'coming of age' right now. They were never told no, always got a gold star/medal, and don't know what working for something means.

[Treno]

The issue isn't about recognition, but in wanting to feel superior to those you deem inferior by some personal and artificial standards.
Rather than simply being happy for progressing in a way that suits yourself.
I don't demand the same rewards from LFR as from normal/flex, but I object to those who want everything removed from LFR simply because they are too damn arrogant to accept that LFR suits an audience that is not them.

Heroic is still exclusive, but it isn't just all raiding being inaccessible to a large portion.

Agreed. I've posted before on this subject, but it seems a lot of people don't realize that entitlement comes from both people wanting to establish a sense of superiority over others as well as those who want something for nothing.

[Sylreick]

Too many people are seeing games as chores these days. "Work" they call it, and they don't want to "work" for anything. You know, people call knitting work, but a great many others call it a HOBBY. That's what gaming is. If you start seeing it as a job and you don't want to do the "work" it involves, you might need a new hobby. It isn't like TV, or a movie, where if you keep watching you'll see it all. It involves the player actually participating in the activity to accomplish a goal either self induced or set out by the designers, going within the limitations put in place by those designers.

- - - Updated - - -

Because every neckbeard preaching about exclusivity always places the threshold right beneath what they can accomplish

I'd rather it be placed out of reach but within the realm of possibility, so I have something to work for and can feel happy when I accomplish it eventually. Rather than a dull "woohoo..." after half paying attention and half watching T.V.

[Deleted]

WoW has probably been an all inclusive game since the start of WotLK. People are well within their capability to do the content that is provided for them that heroic raiders are. The only thing affecting that is the amount of effort they're willing to put into attaining it. That effort ALSO INCLUDES how long you are willing to spend playing the game, so people who complain about not having enough time to do these things do not have a valid complaint when it comes to asking for easier access to harder content.

MMOs tend to require more attention and time than other games, and rightfully so.

[Enosh]

but eventually you learn it's just the way life is.

except this is a video game

[Deleted]

It's not just in WoW or MMOs. It's in every single genre of every single game. There's even starting to rampant bitching in shooters about having to unlock things and they should get everything at once because they bought the game.

Well, I personally think unlocking weapons in shooters is bullshit. It is one thing to unlock cosmetics, but I believe games like shooters, everyone should be on equal footings. I should not have a better weapon than someone else just because I played more. That is my opinion on both shooters, rts and mobas really. In any competitive PvP game, you should be on equal footing as your opponents.

But thats just my 5 cents.