This will be a massive rant. You have been warned.
In a response to those commenting the follow-up to his popular “Blizzard Hates You” post, Fate reposted the old tired complaint many raiders have about Arena, “lose 10 games a week and you’ll end up in great gear nonetheless”.
Let me hasten to say that this isn’t about Fate, or raiders in general. It’s about the complaining, about perpetuating the same stupid myths over and over, and it’s about the mentality behind Nerf calling.
Regarding Arena gear, the O-boards are stock full of complaints from a certain fraction of raiders about its quality and how “easy” it is to obtain.
Let’s dispell the 10 games / week notion first, because that’s the easiest thing to do. The first epic armor piece costs 1100 arena points, that’s 5 or 6 weeks of losing games for 1 epic. The second one will take you another 8-10 weeks, and at that point the season’s over before you can get your third piece. How many epics can you get in 13 weeks of raiding?
But this isn’t really about the time investment, is it? Those raiders who complain aren’t really complaining that there’s a way to get good epics, they are in fact complaining because people can get those spending a lot less time than they do, all things being equal (a moderately skilled 2v2 team can get to 1700-18oo rating within 10-12 weeks or so and pretty much afford 3 or 4 pieces of the current season’s gear, and that can be done, let’s be honest, in an hour per week or so). But whenever I read those complaints, my first question is, if it’s so damn easy, why don’t the raiders do it? I mean, arena gear is pretty decent kit for PvE as well, you can gear up any role with a couple of merciless glad pieces without gimping them, except of course for the poor tanks, whom Blizzard doesn’t want to kit up through PvP.
No, what really gripes those complainers is the sheer envy that someone else, with obviously less skill than them, the elite raiders, can get gear comparable to them. “It lessens our achievements”, they say, advancing an age-old strawman argument, which pops up whenever access to something they already have has been made simpler. Well, it doesn’t. If you walk around in full T5 or T6, you’re still part of the Catassing Few, you can still pat yourself on the back for killing Kael’thas or Illidan, a job well done. How does anyone walking around in Arena gear lessen your achievements? Have you not bragged about running the Serverfirstmobile, or even the Worldfirstmobile? Have you not claimed, to people questioning how you can invest 4-6 nights a week raiding and the rest of your time farming for consumables to support that that raiding had its own rewards, that it was all about overcoming the challenges Blizzard was throwing at you?
Different people with different interests get different means to get gear. Arena isn’t exclusive though, you don’t need any attunements to enter there, only level 70. The challenge posed there is different though, as you’re facing something dynamic created by a mix of classes, gear, and player skill (up until everyone is in full current season sets, at which point gear becomes largely irrelevant and arena becomes, at last, a pure game of skill and class choices). But perhaps, as others have suggested, what annoys those complainers most is that contrary to what was the norm pre-TBC, the top PvE gear isn’t really well suited for PvP anymore. That after an evening of wiping on whatever boss in BT you can’t just walk into a BG as a guild preset and just waltz over the opposition in your shiny T5 or T6 gear to vent your frustrations because this night’s challenge simply couldn’t be beaten.
I postulate that these raider’s problem isn’t arena gear at all. I postulate that their problem is envy and a misplaced sense of entitlement. And I postulate that despite all their claims to the contrary, if they do begrudge other players their arena gear which is on an equivalent level than the rewards they can get out of the activity they have chosen for themselves, they are actually nothing but loot whores at heart.
Let me say this again: If the quality or ease of obtaining Arena gear bugs you, you are a loot whore. Deep down there where you don’t want to admit it, but you are.
And beyond that, if it annoys you that for one hour per week people have access to same-quality gear than you do after learning an instance, putting up with wipes, repairs, farming consumables and whatnot, could it be that the other secret you won’t admit to yourself is that… you’re actually not having fun raiding anymore?
Both are your problems, not an issue with the Arena reward system.
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13 Responses to “Of Welfare Epics and Loot Envy”
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/agree
Well said indeed!
The whole term “wellfare epics” irks me. The fact that Blizzard has fed into this idea and put a 2000 rating on season 3 shoulders is depressing.
Score one more for the vocal Bitter people.
Here here! Very much agreed with!
Nicely put. I’d also like to add that, this is partly due to Blizzard’s own design scheme.
Raiders also get jaded when stuff (upgrades) doesn’t drop for them and/or stuff drops but isn’t really all that (sidegrades). For quite a period of time on TBC release, the epic Kara drops were barely competitive (iLVL wise) compared to specific pieces of Blues and Heroic gear that was available at the time.
So here you have raiders spending gold/consumables/time on gear that most guilds ended up sharding (this was before Blizzard bumped up stats through iLVLs across the board on Kara drops and up).
At the same time, with a weekly lockout for a simple 10 man (yet most hardcore raiding guilds fielded 2-3 Karas to be able to race through gear and key process for 25s), sometimes you wouldn’t get a drop for quite some time, and God forbid you miss a raid one week and the item does drop.. or it drops in some other raidID.. all this can lead to more frustration (remember, guilds who like world and server firsts don’t like giving up “time” to petty mechanics).
Finally, some drops from PVE just seemed nonexistant for certain specs and/or classes, which is an itemization issue. No really solid Leather base for Boomkins in Kara? Why do I see all these Hunters taking Gladiator gear and socketing/enchanting them for PVE? Why are PVE Rogues and Fury Warriors nabbing up the Arena offhand weapons? It’s because from PVE, no equivalent item(s) was easily available at the time or point in their progression. “I won’t see X boss until who knows when, so I might as well spend a few hours doing PVP to get X item slot filled with the next best choice in the meantime.”
Remember, someone who sucks at PVP (doesn’t know class dynamics, group dynamics, initiative, momentum, parity, etc.) will still suck regardless of the color of their gear. They can have all the epics they want. All it does is give them a larger HP pool to live with when my team faces up with geared but shitty players, which essentially gives us more time to laugh to ourselves while we take their rating points.
[...] connection to my previous venting, there’s another element which annoys me to no end, the endless calls for Nerfing you have to [...]
Hear, hear indeed!
Not only is it a tired argument, but one that used to be even more ridiculous.
Let’s look at 40-man raids pre-BC for example. When raids were of this size, not everyone needed to pull their weight, whereas in smaller raids, there’s more emphasis on people playing to max capacity. So, in the old days, we’d see some rather poor players walking around in epics, when the argument could easily be made that they didn’t deserve them given that they were just “along for the ride”.
So things are a little different now, but nonetheless, the whole point of raiding is that you get to experience content no one else does. If that’s not enough for you, then you are, in fact, a loot whore. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, since we all are to some extent, but at least call yourself what you are.
To be completely honest, I think its a two-side “problem” that raiders describe.
1. Lazy reskinning. Sure, its a pride thing, but I’m afraid thats known as human nature. If you work damned hard and get your tier 5, you want it to be seen and admired. I personally always loved seeing Bloodfang rogues; sure, I would never get it, but it was something rare to aim for. Arena gear simply being reskinned tier 5 means EVERYONE looks like that now. Its not rare, or special, its dull. Changing the look of items for arenas would, I suspect, have solved all this a looong time ago.
2. Its frustrating for those who don’t LIKE pve to have to do pve for gear to pvp. Hence the complaints that, pre TBC, pve gear was so effective in pvp it made up for any lack of skill on tier 2 raiding guild’s part and allowed steamrollering of better skilled, far lesser geared opponents. If you don’t like something but are forced to do it to do something you DO like, you feel aggrieved. Hence the raiders who suddenly basically *have* to arena to get viable raid gear feel frustrated, and this leads to the epics being degraded in their minds to worthless trash given to anyone; it was frustrating to have to work for that weapon in a setting you don’t enjoy, Blizz ought to make pve gear gainable through pve (please note ZA goes SOME way to solving this, but the S3 OH will now be the best combat rogue OH available till BT. Which, given the time and im afraid, skill differences required for it, seems harsh).
Frankly, for a game in which gear is almost the ONLY objective, the rarity of epics has been undermined. Sure, we all can now get them and thats a *good* thing, but only relatively speaking. Epic gear is not epic if everyone has it; it just isn’t. The ability of every player to gain epic gear now might be seen as being good, but frankly it creates a false sense of acheivement because everyone has epic gear. Its similar to just giving everyone tier 6 on the PTR; you log on thinking “wow! t6!” but, everyone has it. Its just not as exciting then.
(oh, and pre TBC? I had 1 epic. Just 1, and I collected cards for it. So I don’t come from the “omg I had tier 2 now everyone has it omfg” background. I just feel epic gear for everyone defeats the point of it being classed as epic in the first place.)
[...] the Season 1 gear now added to the normal BG honour rewards, the nerf cries about Welfare Epics are back with a Vindication. Yes, I spent some time on the o-boards, poor [...]
[...] ways to fix arena loot distribution from the perspective of sour, disgruntled raiders with a barely hidden agenda of denying other people loot they didn’t catass for through [...]
Amen.
Like I said, I don’t care about how much effort it takes for people to get the gear. Blizzard put in an alternative method for getting it and I’m fine with it. I’m actually quite happy that I can get gear with friends without having to deal with the drama and stuff that accompanies raiding. I don’t understand why at least some raiders would thank Blizzard for cutting a lot of that crap out.
Besides, Arena gear doesn’t really help me in raiding anyway, except for that nice S3 caster dagger that I’m eying. ;P
Just so you know, some people will poke at it further and say that Arena is still easier because no matter how many times you die, you still get Arena points, (painfully) slowly but surely. It’s a guaranteed thing, whereas you never get loot until you kill a boss period. *sighs*
It’s irrelevant and dumb, but they’ll never be satisfied. No one ever will. They just like to complain.
As far as I’m concerned, these days the only thing I’m still pissed off about is when the “welfare” trash talking turns into nerf propositions. I hate nerf calls