Go Back To WoW

[Shjade]

I don't usually visit an MMO's official forums, so I've only ever come across the phrase in-game. And in that case, it's usually directed at jerks and miscreants, which I can agree with. Having played WoW for quite a while, I can say that the game is rightfully infamous for breeding griefers and immature brats.

Having spent substantial time on THE INTERNETS prior to WoW's explosion on the scene, I can say that the game is wrongfully infamous for breeding griefers and immature brats when, in fact, it is merely a repository of previously-bred griefers and immature brats. In most cases they were the way they are before getting into WoW - it isn't some corrosive entity de-souling our youth to transform them into hellish monsters. It's just an online game. A very popular one.

As for usage of the phrase in question, I find it's usually used by the jerks and miscreants rather than directed at them, save in cases where it's jerks and miscreants talking to miscreants and jerks. I can't think of a time when I've seen someone say "go back to WoW" who otherwise seemed a rational, level-headed, mature person. It has always been some jackass with nothing better to say in response to either a) another jackass or b) someone expressing an opinion contrary to the jackass's point of view, regardless of the difference.

Mostly I see it come up when someone mentions being fed up with some flavor of grinding, asks for help figuring out a quest line (as obviously this means the game is far above their level and they should go back to EZmode MMO, rather than - god forbid - someone help them enjoy THIS game and thereby add to the community), makes some remark about balance (X class is OP, Y race needs Z ability, etc. - this is actually coming up in Blizzard's own forum for the SC2 beta, amusingly enough. Yes, you read that right: people in the closed beta for an RTS game are telling people with gripes to go back to an MMORPG. It knows no boundaries!), or expresses any generalized sort of ignorance about the game.

Elitism is so attractive.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

Don't make me go back to WoW... Don't say it... Exam Season is starting...

Calumon: Please don't make him... He's clean for 3 months tomorrow!

5 months clean here, hurray! Look, I dont even use the patch anymore! (ignore the avatar)

 

[PieMaker]

I remember when I lurked Warhammer Online forums, back when I played it, I saw plenty of "Go back to WoW". Apparently most took the hint and went to WoW. Warhammer having marginally a theme similar to WoW, more than the ones compared at least, took a huge hit with poor user experience and dev relations.

 

[Krelias]

I think it sometimes has to do with hatred of WoW itself (or the WoW fanbase). I sometimes get so frustrated with my friends' obsession with WoW and unwillingness to play and apreciate other games that I start developing a hatred of WoW itself. So I go online and look for better MMO's just so i could rub it in their faces. So far all my attepts failed but I put my thrust in TOR. So you cold say, in my case at lest that the "Go back to WoW" was brought on by the fanboyish nature of WoW players who see no wrong in their precious WoW and think all games either rip off or don't rise to the same level as their precious WoW (and i'm not talking about just MMO's here). So yeah maybe the "Go back to WoW" bit is fanboyish but they where the first fanboys so any thing goes.

 

[theSovietConnection]

I'll admit, the title confused me. "Go back to WoW? But Shamus hates WoW!" I proceeded to read the article, which clarified it for me. I, personally, have not seen those words used often. I play WoW myself, and never really understood the hatred people treat it with.

Angry rant below. I'm not looking for a fight, this is just how I feel about people who don't consider that some people like WoW.

Spoiler

Yes, your game with wars and guilds and such is nice. That doesn't mean that my game that also has guilds, wars and such is a piece of crap. Unless that game is WoW, in which case I'm just a n00b who needs to L2P. I'm such an inferior example of humanity, a speck of scum on the pond, because I play a game you got tired of, or maybe heard about thirdhand from a friend of a friend's cousin who got a trial account. This reliable source told you in full detail about the endless grind for loot, the broken economy, the balance issues, how Blizzard is catering to the casual gamers. So, go ahead. Talk about a game I enjoy like it's shit, while yours is such a shining beacon of hope to the world.[/rant]

In response to what you have said, it is never WoW itself I have a problem with, but the fanbase, because the most vocal among them I have encountered are exactly as you describe people treating WoW. Though lately it's less been the WoW fanbase and more Valve's, but that is an entirely different topic in and of itself, and as such I digress back to the article at hand.

*Snipped for length*

Well said.

 

[RN7]

I think the insult towards WoW is because it's sorta like Disney... huge, popular, successful, and brings lots of joy to young and old people alike.

But they don't hate jews. As much. And they have yet to sell their souls to the devil to continuously and shamelessly reap in money in the stupidest way possible. Blizzard basically just put the candy on the stoop and waited for all the kiddies to come running. As long as theres candy, there'll be kids. Disney went past overachieving into some dark, anti-seminist, prideless territory.

 

[Skizle]

Don't make me go back to WoW... Don't say it... Exam Season is starting...

Calumon: Please don't make him... He's clean for 3 months tomorrow!

I know how you feel. I've tried to quit several times and this time (3rd for the record) is my longest at over a year. The only problem is that you will feel like playing an MMO. So you try something else and its just not the same. It's an endless cycle, but I have high hopes for The Old Republic and potentially Fallout Online and if those fail me then I'll just have to keep going strong.

On a side note: I wonder how many times "go back to WoW has appeared on the Warhammer Online forums?

 

[Allevil]

"Go back to WoW" makes perfect sense when someone makes a suggestion that would turn a fun and unique game into a less-fun WoW clone. Seriously, if you want to play a game exactly the same as WoW, just... play WoW. Not all MMO's need to be the same.

 

[spikeyjoey]

strangely, i didnt really like WOW first time around, yet about 2 years after stopping im having stronge urges to play it again- is this weird?

 

[KillerRabbit]

In my experience, "Go back to WoW" is a response to someone demanding a nerf of a boss/quest/generally making something easier.

Having played WoW (And also Ultima Online for ~8years) since day 1, and experiencing all the nerfs to WoW, I realy love using the expresion on people complaining that something is difficult, you simple tell them to go back to WoW!

Because that's a game where you will recieve epics in the mailbox soon, and legendary drops from Van Cleef. Blizzard has listened TOO much on their whiny customers who can't play the game themselves!

Wotlk raiding was joke!

 

[JMeganSnow]

I find it interesting that it's so prevalent on DDO, which is the only MMORPG I've ever played. I think this has a few different causes, and it's not necessarily because the game is "unhealthy" or "struggling" (it isn't, that I've noticed).

1.) a lot of the people who play DDO seem to have some sort of religious belief (religious = faith without proof) that their game is "more complex" than, say, WoW. This is not true, from what I've seen--I'd like to see some of these elitist twats do a feral druid dps build in an elite guild raid on Professor Putricide in WoW. The raids in DDO are LAUGHABLY simplistic compared to WoW. Anyway.

2.) DDO started out as pay-to-play and suddenly became free-to-play. This, predictably, brought in an enormous crowd of amazingly clueless yahoos, and because DDO is NOT SOLO FRIENDLY (there is NOT A SINGLE a quest flagged as "solo" above level 3, I believe) long-time pay-to-play people leveling their sixth alt are almost forcibly brought into contact with said clueless yahoos. Needless to say, they get frustrated. Part of this just means you need to be patient and reasonably kind with newbies, but part of it is exacerbated by the fact that it's impossible to kick people mid-quest and very difficult to get useful info about other players when you're setting up a group. (All you can see is their user-name and class levels, you can't, say, examine them as you can in WoW to see their build and their EQ.) And before you think that "clueless yahoos" bit is out of line, I ran into a newbie who COULD NOT figure out how to EQUIP ITEMS. I finally convinced him that he needed to go back to Runequest because he wanted to auto-follow me (no such option in DDO) and "hated questing" (which is the only way to level/get gear).

3. DDO is NOT LIKE WoW. The quasi-tabletop-esque leveling system is unspeakably bizarre and arcane (not actually more complicated, just way out in left field) to people used to playing most other MMORPG's. And people genuinely do come over from WoW, realize that the game is nothing like they expect, and start pissing and moaning about it.

 

[Coldman42]

I will never go back to WOW.

Ever.

 

[Shjade]

Because that's a game where you will recieve epics in the mailbox soon, and legendary drops from Van Cleef. Blizzard has listened TOO much on their whiny customers who can't play the game themselves!

Wotlk raiding was joke!

That logic makes perfect sense. Obviously if WoW is easier than you'd like then it's impossible any other game could have content that's stupidly hard for no reason and would benefit from being made a bit easier. No, really, I completely agree. Your argument does not at all sound like someone saying, "If you don't like being robbed then get out of our city!" I mean it would be totally unreasonable for someone to hope that some more effective law enforcement might take place to prevent those robberies that define the very character of your city - obviously they should just get the hell out rather than try to improve the neighborhood. Definitely the more sensible course of action to demand that they leave for even suggesting such a ludicrous idea.

>.>

 

[Natdaprat]

Apologies if this was already mentioned, but you forget to say that the term is often used when the thread is about making the game more like WoW. Which you get ALOT. It can be used out of context and not appropriately, but in general it's used as an insult to the theme park MMO's when one of the bazillion players suggests "let me keep my stuff if I die!" or "will i be able to max my character in a month?".

 

[theklng]

the reason that there is such a stigma tied to world of warcraft is because it is by far the most casual of all MMOs. that is not to say that you cannot be 'hardcore' (or whatever the opposite of casual may be), there are just tools set in place for you not to be just that.

personally i don't think there's anything worthwhile in world of warcraft; to me it is a testament how a game can become an excellent product, while at the same time being an awfully mediocre game (based on game elements and mechanics in comparison with other MMOs before and after the original release of world of warcraft in 2004).

 

[Shjade]

"let me keep my stuff if I die!"

WoW, casuals, bads, whatever else aside, this specific request I can never hold against anyone given my first MMO was Everquest just a couple of months after release.

Did you ever experience the fun of a long-distance corpse run in EQ due to having forgotten to rebind after changing continents?

How about trying to retrieve your corpse from one of the Planes in Downtown Badville?

No? That's not surprising, because it was not fun. It was terrible.

Oh, yeah, and if you couldn't do it within a period of time (fairly generous - something like 48 hours from death, I think), your corpse disappeared. With everything it had on it. All your gear, all your inventory, all your cash-in-pocket: poof! Gone now. Bye epics. Buh-bye. No backsies. So you couldn't just get frustrated and give up on it for too long, or you'd REALLY be giving up on it.

Maybe WoW has gone too far to the casual side of things now, I don't know, I'm not one to quibble about things like that for long. I can say that when I first started playing WoW (just before BC release) the tremendous number of user-friendly features compared to EQ's system was immediately apparent and welcome. I don't mind hard games - I like a good challenge. It's why I like to test the limits of what I can solo in MMO's: raiding is all well and good, but not really my cup of tea; soloing a raid instance, on the other hand, is a blast if I can pull it off. I do, however, mind games that are difficult in that they are actually hard to play due to UI problems, user-unfriendly design choices (Hey, you died! Now you lose the experience you just spent the last 7 hours grinding up. Way to completely waste a day's work!), graphical/geographical glitches (falling through the world isn't funny the first time, much less any time after the first), and so on.

I went off on a tangent. Point being, I never fault someone for wanting to avoid corpse-runs of the naked gear's-on-your-body variety. If someone's complaining about a ghost run or some other trivial penalty for dying, screw that, but if you just want to not lose your stuff when you die, I can sympathize with that.

 

[Eric the Orange]

Get off my slopes you damn 2 plankers.

Hah, if I was more creative I'd add my own made up insult here. But I just wanted to say I found that funny (though maybe not as good as boatfags)

anyway on topic, I don't play MMOs but I've heard of this syndrome from a friend who dose. It feels elitist to me, kind of the "It's popular now it sucks mentality". Like some pretentious Indy rock snobs who look down there noses at every one else because they listen to some obscure band and you don't.

Also you should have put WoW on the list of MMO forums. It's a big community so it has to have been said a few times.

 

[Eric the Orange]

I won't go back to WoW, I like to be able to play my games forever when I buy them. And yes Shamus I know it's cheaper to play WoW (or was it Funk that did an article on it?), but I prefer to diversify in regards to the types of games I play and the unique experiences that come with them.

I will never go back to WOW.

Ever.

Perhaps you should try reading the article instead of responding to the title.

 

[ffs-dontcare]

The only reason people are so elitist against WoW is because they want to be seen as "cool". They consider themselves "above WoW". They're sheep that call us WoW players sheep. They're "non-conformist" conformists.

In my experience, "Go back to WoW" is a response to someone demanding a nerf of a boss/quest/generally making something easier.

Having played WoW (And also Ultima Online for ~8years) since day 1, and experiencing all the nerfs to WoW, I realy love using the expresion on people complaining that something is difficult, you simple tell them to go back to WoW!

Because that's a game where you will recieve epics in the mailbox soon, and legendary drops from Van Cleef. Blizzard has listened TOO much on their whiny customers who can't play the game themselves!

Wotlk raiding was joke!

Bloody hell, you should see the WoW Suggestion forums. Whenever I venture on there, I'll usually see a number of people requesting that emblems be made Bind To Account. That's just incredibly lazy.

Blizzard posters always counter-act with, "Yeah, NO. We feel that if you want to gear up and work on a character, then you should put in the time with that character, not just stay on your main the entire time farming emblems to gear up your alts."

And I agree with them. Making emblems BoA pretty much makes the game even easier for the lazy players. So Blizzard is doing something right.