Sliding scales

I was having a discussion with a few guild members today about differing standards that different MMORPG players have, that they hold themselves to.

These standards can be to do with anything. Most commonly, its to do with raiding. Person X gems, enchants, and gears according to research he does on his character. Person Y doesn't have the time to do exhaustive research, so he looks at what his experience tells him is good, and does that. If he is wrong, well, he might change, or he might be comfortable where he is. Another standard might be applied to PvP in WoW. Player X is a raider at heart, so he just does 10 arena games a week for some points to see what he can do. Player Y likes PvP a lot more, so he takes it very seriously, researches tactics, plans his gear, and eagerly awaits new arena seasons.

The key thing is...neither of these two people in these two examples are playing the game wrong. They are just holding themselves to different standards.

This is fine. However, problems tend to arise when these two players want to play together, to do the same activity. Inevitably, the one who is, in his mind, playing the game better (which is usually both of them) develops a certain amount of negative feeling towards the other. Either the person putting in more effort gets annoyed with the other, or the other gets annoyed at being expected to devote so much time to a videogame.

You can see this in the age-old Casual Raiders vs Hardcore Raiders argument. Hardcore raiders research specs, fights, gear choices, profession choices. If something proves to be better to their character they will go to any length to obtain it. That's one end of an extreme spectrum. Casual raiders don't do any of these things, they just show up to have fun, and don't care if they wipe or not. That's the other end of the spectrum. The key thing to remember here is that very few people exist at an extreme end of this sliding scale. Most of us fall somewhere in between these two positions.

However, the prevailing attitude currently is that there are casuals, and there are hardcores, and there is no compatibility there. This is one that I myself held until I recently came to this revelation; we are all on the same sliding scale. We all love to do that one specific thing, in this example, raiding. There needs to be understanding coming from both sides. Someone with a more casual attitude will not fit well into a guild whose predominant focus is to be hardcore. The casual player needs to refrain from being contemptuous of the hardcore players for this; they are on the same sliding scale as he is, just further along towards the hardcore side of things. He should realise that if he wants to play on a hardcore level, he must adopt a more hardcore mentality. And the hardcore players need to not look down too much on the more casual players for their lower focus on the activity; they simply have different priorities in their game and that does not make them worse players.

We are all on the same sliding scale.