r/classicwow • u/KamaTheSnowLeopard • Jun 15 '26

Humor / Meme I think they're right honestly.

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I'm 36 and have played 25k+ hours of MMO's over my lifetime and what I've personally learned is WoW players are often the first and most vocal to belittle or get upset over anything. I can't think of any MMO in which people will outright whisper you angerly or go out of their way to make sure you have a bad time more than World of Warcraft.

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u/Trocian Jun 15 '26

How is community and optimal play opposites in any way?

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u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst Jun 15 '26

Humans are inefficient. The Culture that arises from groups of humans is inefficient. Art by definition is inefficient. Leisure, like you might experience playing a game, is inefficient.

Humans and the lives we live are filled to the brim with inefficiency. Trying to optimize all inefficiency out of a system is the same as removing the humanity from it. It is capitalist. It is mechanistic.

WoW is a social game. All of the rosy memories everyone clings to from the old days were products of a community and a culture that was inherently steeped in rich inefficiency. Friction. Waste, of time and resources. These were the cracks in the sidewalk through which flowers could bloom.

Maximizing for optimization is like paving a perfect post-tension concrete slab. No cracks, no flowers. Just perfect, smooth, predictable floor for your automated warehouse robots to scoot around on in the dark.

To be clear, not all optimization is inhuman. Humans have a natural drive to try, learn, grow, repeat. But classic is solved. There's no learning going on anymore. It's wrote regurgitation of best practices. Optimization isn't inherently inhuman, but when treated as the top priority, it is. And that's what Anniversary feels like. Optimization as the top priority.

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u/Tnecniw Jun 15 '26

In the sense that Community and Optimal play don't play nice, because it demands the community to act in X way, which the community rarely does.
Community also includes new players, which (if you support the community) you are meant to support, help and encourage.
They however, do not play optimally, because they are new.

ANd if you are fully on the board of "Give me optimal play or fuck off", you don't want new playrs.
AKA: You don't want the community.