Regarding Min-Maxing Culture

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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Parsing culture, Gatekeeping, Elitism or whatever you may call it, has been a heated topic of debate within our community in recent years and wanted to share my thoughts on this matter. I’ll be writing this through my own lense and my own experience and I think I can relate with the situation from one end of the spectrum. Maybe I’m alone in these thoughts but I believe many share this feeling. Anyway, here goes…

Those that detest and stand against this culture have directed their frustration at the forums across many platforms as of late. For me personally, I find the min-maxing culture to be a large demotivating factor within the WoW community and already starting to have my worries for Cataclysm and how that would play out in PvP and PvE content.

However, the counter-argument to this is a logical one and makes complete sense. That being: ‘One should create/make ones own group or join a guild that has like-minded people that won’t have to deal with these factors they dislike so much.’ From my point of view, it is a very fair argument to make and many times you will not see a response to comments like these.

Issue is, I simply do not wish to deal with creating my own raid/party group as it is an act of taking more responsibility and places you at the fore-front of a social environment. To me I find that too stressfull, so much so that it outweighs the benefits/rewards. I would rather quit WoW all-together and play something else. It may seem as a petty reason but I’m playing the game to relax and enjoy my time, not to stretch my limits.

The expectation of having people take matters into their own hands is one that is being actively declined and it is noticable. This change in culture is a large deterring factor that puts a lot of gamers off including myself so much so that I wouldn’t want to deal with this game all together. I believe there is a group of people that are actively being pushed away from this game right now because of this.

I haven’t played WoW for 5 years and came back for the classic variants and I’m especially looking forward to re-experience Cataclysm - a time where I’ve had most of my fun within my time of WoW. However, I cannot help but feel dread that I may get turned off from the game because min-maxing will influence our culture greatly. I dread not being able to play what I enjoy because it is deemed as a lesser specialization - that I may get meme’d on for not following the trends.

If that is the case, then I may not see WoW as a valueable option for entertainment anymore. I do believe that those that are against this culture, will inevitable make the same decision and find their joy elsewhere, a place that isn’t rooted in WoW. It’s a development that I find rather saddening but I will accept nonetheless.

As a great warchief once stated: “Times change.”

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Just join a casual guild. You can play what you want and you won’t have to deal with the ridiculous pug scene.

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Your opinions are fine to have. But min-max has been a part of wow since vanilla. It just wasnt as prominent but even in vanilla when I was raiding naxx everyone had started going down the mathing for the best damage sort of structure.

I can see how it is frustrating especially from a puglife view. Which is one major negative of removing gdkp. If the bliz team could control bots and gold buying gdkp would actually open the door to many people who want to see the raid life with 0 interest in logs and all the interest in whether you have some gold farmed up.

It is work pointing out of that the raid is currently in such a stupid position. It’s fully clearable by literally a raid of people in greens if they just do mechanics. But you need to actually do the mechanics. Ive done it with a very suboptimal raid group but you can 100% see why people min max.

Going with suboptimal takes excessively longer. Especially if you’re having to direct people who are uncertain. Where as min max whiz through it.

How do you change this mentality? Good question. I’m assuming blizzards answer is. Let’s increase the raid size. You can hide more suboptimal specs in 20 compared to 10.

Ivw no real clue what to suggest though man. Just try and enjoy your game. And if you don’t enjoy it. Play something else till next phase and see if it’s got a bit better

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I mean, I get your point to some extent but in the end you can play the game in best way suited for you. You dont want to PUG then join a guild, there is plenty for different times and reasons.

If you want to be accepted to any sort of group at any given time without contributing you´re gonna get som problems with that. I´m being carried from time to time by friends but that works for us, in the end its a MMORPG and you will have a thought time “soloing” content without being top tier.

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My take on this (and I am probably the opposite of you at that point), is that the vast majority of the times you have very little “social forefront” interactions.
You “have” (or should) do some work when making a raid group, personally I check logs to see if people have 6/6, but after inviting everyone, there is very little else to do other than pressing the Ready Check button and “/rw roll item X”. If you feel this will be enough to stress you out, then you may have a case of anxiety disorder, and I recommend getting help with that (and I do not at all say this as some sort of insult, anxiety disorders are a very common problem).
But you are playing an MMO, massive multiplayer being the first two words. If you have social anxiety, then you either fix it or play games that do not involve social interaction. You really can’t have both.

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+1

Everyone says “Just join a guild bro”. I have been looking for a guild on Living flame for weeks, not a single one wants a rogue. Same as PuGs don’t want a rogue.

So what to do ? I can’t do gnomer…I’ve tried making me own groups, but even those who are not getting into other groups want optimal group make ups or “parses”. It is ridiculous. So again, what to do?

Some say reroll, but what is the point? Players like me who don’t min max tend not to have multiple alts and value our limited playtime. I only hit 40 on this character some weeks ago.

The new buff is great and I might consider rerolling on a different server like Lone wolf as Living flame is just so min max it’s practically toxic. But if lone wolf is the same situation? What if the next class is the same situation next patch? Reroll again?

Honestly it makes me think of just unsubbing. Maybe this game is just not for players like me. Perhaps time to go back to ERA.

This was marketed as Season of Dads, it’s anything but.

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I think the text you wrote is too short for me to waste such little time reading it, Please write a book next time and send it over!

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Except your character is level 30.

Then you wonder why people won’t take you to Gnome x))))

PS: your entire post is full of BS.

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This character is level 40. Look me up on living flame. Everything I’ve said in my post is accurate.

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This, for starters, is not accurate. The “this character” would refer to the character you’re using on forums, which, as we can all see, is level 30.

And you are still full of s***. I’ll give you plenty of reasons why.

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Living Flame is now at “Full” status. Unless some incredible statistical improbability is going on, not finding a single guild wanting a rogue is bulls***. I’m on Wild Growth, which is currently on “High” population, and there are plenty of casual guilds that are advertising, usually with stuff like “all are welcome”. I guess “all” includes rogues. And if a server with lower population than yours has lots of guilds looking for “all” classes, then yours definitely has some too.

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The day my hunter hit level 40, I finished getting the Belt and Feet runes and made a raid right after. She had no logs, I did not mention on the ad that it was an alt, AAAAAND she is Marksmanship Hunter, aka RANGED HUNTER. Which is currently far worse than rogue at dps charts. And guess what? The raid filled as usual, in an average time, and the raid was done. So, again, you are full of BS.

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You’re saying that you hit level 40 “some weeks ago” and yet you have done Gnomeregan a total of zero times? And at the same time you claim to be trying to do it. Something doesn’t add up. BS again.

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So you have very limited playtime so you don’t have alts, using it as an excuse to not reroll a different class, but then…

Then you’re already assuming you can reroll on a different server! So I guess you have limited time that you can’t have alts, but not limited enough so that you can actually have another char on another server?

5- And finally

You’re already making excuses to justify your laziness/lack of skill, to make it seem like it’s in no way your own fault. Once again, what a surprise: total BS.

PS: oh, and btw. You’ve been level 40 for “some weeks” but somehow still don’t have a rune on your feet.

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I dont get it.
You want others to play the game the way YOU want? And you do not want to let others play the way they want???

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Minmaxing was the thing already in vanilla back in the days, of course not in so big scale like nowadays.

It’s up to you how you play the game, no one can’t force you to play like sweaty tryhards.

You can clear the same content being a member of the casual guild, or even without being in a guild.

There is nothing new under the stars literally, just play the game how you want and focus on the things you like.

That’s how you play MMO’s.

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Lower your standards. There are plenty of guilds that will invite just about anyone. But they’re not the semi-hardcore (lmao, lol) or sweaty parse guilds. Other than that you have to accept that you are playing a class that is incredibly high in supply while at the same time being in low demand.

Furthermore you are playing on the number one meta slave server. Living Flame was the only place to be, so the kind of player that this would appeal to is the same kind of player that thinks that only the meta comp is viable, nothing else will do.

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  1. My character is level 40. I don’t know how many times you need to be told this.

  2. Yes, I have been looking for a new guild on Living flame for weeks. I have wrote this all out. There is no BS here. Living flame is classed as a Full but a great deal of these players are bots, it’s not really that busy a server.

  3. Good for you, but this is irrelevant because hunters were FOTM for months and people wanted them in raids. You obviously also have a lot of time to play.

  4. Yes I have limited time to play and roll alts.

  5. The only reason I’d consider to roll another alt, is to try another server that may be less min max. However as I point out, I’m reluctant to do this too because it may be a waste of time if that class is not treated properly in future.

  6. Yes I do not have feet runes on this character. What is your point? 10% extra damage on ambush will help me get a Gnomer group? Waylay will help me get a Gnomer group :joy::joy:? Rogue feet runes are pretty meh and I will get round to them eventually, they are not mandatory to have. Like I said I have limited playtime.

I do not why you argue with me when you are a FOTM roller who has no idea what he is speaking about.

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I’m a Fotm roller?
Yeah, nothing spells fotm roller like rolling a ranged hunter in a phase where ranged hunter is one of the worst, if not the worst dps in the game.

More bs

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These no life, toxic low IQ people that play this garbage made it like this and its only a few like 1% of the entire player base mind you. So the general MMO population that used to play this WoW back in the day all already left and are in the process of leaving playing other games. Let them cook themselves!