What's the point of appearing so out of character, though? I certainly don't mind people acting intelligent and sophisticated in character - that only benefits everybody, and that's likely how it should be since the character is different from the player. However, WoW players and Lusternia players are almost incomparable when using RP as a measure. WoW was never setup to involve RP. Yes, there's a story line. Yes, there's RP servers. No, neither are immersive and they never will be.

My point was misdirected though; The scope of my argument was focused on out-of-game socialization, regarding many players believing they're intellectually superior to other players and other games. Dwelling on someone's intelligence or lack thereof doesn't immerse you in the game any more than making any other derogatory remark. So what's the point of doing so?




Trolls are usually a lot more clever than your average "idiot." Unfortunately, it's the prolific confusion of the very meaning of "trolling" that you call idiocy, which really isn't trolling.

EDIT: Sylphas, that is simply amazing. See, that's what I'm talking about. How can you hate that? That's so much more fun than "RAWR CHOMP CHOMP I R AMS SMARTERS THAN YOU!!111 IDJIT"

It'll be pretty tough to dissuade me from believing that the average MUD player is a cut or three above the average WoW player.

Particularly in IRE MUDs, there's far more reading and writing involved, the competitive combat is tougher, everyone is held to a certain standard of good grammar and role-playing, it's significantly more expensive (on average) if you want nice things, and even the nature of the game is different, encouraging creative arts, meaningful politics, and so on.

Lusternia is a nerdier game, designed for and by nerds, which tends to attract nerdier people. WoW is much, much easier for the everyman to pick up, play, and keep on playing. That's not to say smart people don't play WoW. I've know plenty who have!

Then again, smarter, nerdier people can be much nastier and stir up a lot more drama, so at times this can be double-edged sword....

WoW's range of players is far larger than Lusternia. MUDs attract a certain niche, whereas WoW does not really have that niche. You have variety of players. The raiders, the theorycrafters, the RPers, the PvPers, the Lolorenerds, and others. While people tend to walk in several spheres. Imo, its not that Lusty's player base is smarter, it is that they are more well behaved and are willing to follow the decorum of Lusty. WoW has no real set decorum. You can act however you please, more or less, until someone takes offense and reports you to the GMs.

You also have a different mind set. Lusternia, you're putting yourself into your character aren't really acting as yourself. WoW, you are you. There's no "hmm, this offends me but does it offend my character?" in WoW. WoW just lets people run loose with themselves, where as Lusternia you have adhere to certain things (i.e. what would your character do).

Lusternia is a role playing game. You take on a role and you live in that world for a while. World of Warcraft is an MMO designed around killing things for shiny loot. It's like saying chess is a smarter, more well behaved game than rugby. Sure, by most standards you could probably say that, but the comparison doesn't really mean a whole lot in the end.

Spelling words correctly and using more commas and less sentence fragments doesn't make you smarter. It makes you appear to be smarter. All of those aspects you mention about IRE MUDs appear to be true, until you scratch the surface. Furthermore, just because those elements are native to (IRE) MUDs does not mean that someone is smarter for belonging to the community. I've been successful in other IRE games without much of a focus on writing, and I barely ever read anything that goes on in combat - only look at the essentials. It's virtually the same thing, but in two different mediums.

If you want nice things you can get them without spending more money; this game could be completely free, and with the amount of time the average WoW player spends grinding, they could buy enough credits in Lusternia to fund anything they wanted.

To say that Blizzard itself doesn't encourage creative arts is misleading. Blizzard sponsors many competitions (similar to Artisanals) for comics, writing, etc, specifically for their game(s). Stressing the creative arts in Lusternia is just as prevalent as in WoW.

Sure, good grammar isn't required for World of Warcraft, but saying that it is required for Lusternia would also be inaccurate. Most people here don't use proper grammar (me included), and many skirt by, barely spelling anything right. The only difference here is that everyone spells everything out because if they don't they get ostracized by the community - elitism.

IRE likes to say that roleplaying is required, but I met many, many people who didn't roleplay at all, or who cleverly skirted that rule. I've seen several (9) logs of Magnagorans (I don't mean to pick on you guys, but those are the only people in the logs I've read) who were "lol"ing and "rofl"ing on clans, as well as doing the lol emote in roleplay. Not only that, but they could barely spell correctly, and most of the time their "character" was just about being rowdy and beating up on other people. That's not roleplay, that's extending your personality further to create an inflated e-persona of yourself.

So that leaves us with...politics...There's no political system in WoW, if you don't count guild political systems. So that's like comparing a float and a string.

And who's to say that WoW players aren't "nerdy"? I mean, I thought acne-ridden adolescent males with crackling voices and obsession with Mountain Dew Code Red was nerdy. But then, nerdy is a term subject to opinion and interpretation, so...

This is apples to oranges and then saying that because apples are delicious oranges have to suck and could never get their GED.

To continue on the subject of WoW's creative arts, Blizz encourages people to submit fan art as well as Machinimas. Every Blizzcon that is held has a Machinima Contest, song contest, Costume and Sound a likes alongside the Warcraft/Starcraft tournies. They also announce whenever there is new fan art up, and will post a spot light of blogs/machinima. Blizz puts as much emphasis on creative arts as lusternia does.

Blizzard Fan Art

Very Cool Machinima

Actually one way of getting noticed by Blizz and offered a job there is by doing Machinima/art. I have heard of several people being asked by Blizz to join the team because of their exceptional stuff.

These are all very good points. I've done envoy work, but I've never looked at that and said, "Man, I don't know enough calculus to do this." Ever seen theorycrafters go to work? I don't know enough calculus for some of that, and that's far and away more relevant to a person's intellectual prowess than any RP-relevant skill. It's like trying to have a conversation with a liberal arts major--they might quote dead guys at you at a dizzying pace, but it's a very superficial understanding of the world.

I also think it's wrong to dismiss something purely because it appeals to a wider audience. Robert Parker likes heavily alcoholic, oaky wines. Most people don't, but because he's a big name wine critic, people choke 'em down anyways. Hollywood puts out some mainstream dramas and comedies that're better than Shakespeare's work, at least by modern standards, but Shakespeare is still considered the "higher" pleasure. (And on that note, the second half of this is worth watching.) Truffles taste like trash, caviar has a texture that makes me cringe just remembering it, foie gras...is actually pretty good, but not so good as to justify meat paste being upheld as some sort of cultural icon. On the other hand, a Taco Bell potato soft taco with fire sauce is really tasty, but reviled by insecure social climbers everywhere.

I understand your point. My point I guess I was trying to say was because wow has such a large player base means you've got a wider range of "intelligences" whereas with MUDs in generally you tend to have a closer gap (perhaps) in intelligence. We, lusternia, as a community I feel are often on the same page as one another and can easily understand and comprehend what's being discussed. Wow is far more diverse and thus the "like mindedness" is further apart.

Basically I think its :censor: to assume to say that one group of people is smarter than the other or better. Imo, its just a matter of what kind of facade you're willing to put up. Here, we put up the slightly intelligence, I can comprehend most things facade. Wow is the I don't give a fucking damn who thinks I'm smart or not facade.

Also note that in fact, a large portion of the Lusternia player base, have also played WoW. So, yeah, really. Also without naming names I know a few lusternia players as dumb as any WoW n00b I've ever met.

I'm much better at combat in WoW...

The Elitist Jerks forums have some amazing analysis. There are are people who will sit there and cast Fireball 10k times to get a data pool large enough to do statistical anaylsis, people who will write programs that will simulate almost every every aspect of a fight in order to optimize every last detail, and people who will write and maintain massive in-depth guides to everything you could think of. And then those people will sit and debate the merits of spell rotations for weeks. Saying WoW players are less intelligent than published scientists is an untrue generalization, let alone saying "MUD players are smarter."

why u say that we who like to bet pepl up r dum. We r smurt. I done went 2 8th grayd tree times, i r smurt as a tack.

An interesting thread about WoW

Things you might not have known about WoW.

As much as I never think I played all that much before BC, I remember half of these.

I knew I couldn't transfer from an expansion account to one without, but reading that again makes me sad. Tempted to level a dwarf shaman on my classic account, or maybe get my warrior to 60 finally. My 60 druid on my main account with experience turned off is fun, but it's not the same if you can't do AV.

I've been doing some numbers, and I think the worst ICC staff is actually the best ICC staff- at a certain point.

Nibelung, considered to be the worst staff, provides only Intellect, Stamina, and Spellpower. In exchange, you have a 1% proc to summon a Val'kyr. This is actually a suprisingly good proc, as personal testing has revealed that you will likely produce at least 4 over the course of your average boss fight, each dealing several hundred thousand damage. At lower to mid levels of ICC gearing, it lags behind other staves, providing roughly equal DPS to a staff one sub tier lower then it. However, at the upper levels of ICC gearing, it has been shown that both Crit and Haste have a distinct and reachable "soft" cap, where the additional points provide a negligible benefit. With haste, this is found when your attacks move below the Global Cooldown in cast speed even during staggered cooldowns. With Crit, this is a much more nebulous value, with distinctly higher emphasis placed on it for classes like Fire Mages and Destruction Warlocks, where critical hits provide important procs. Due to this fact, certain classes, such as Arcane Mages or Shadow Priests, may find that the proc from Nibelung actually provides a superior benefit. The cause of this is that Nibelung's proc both favors faster casting classes like the Arcane Mage, it also acts independently of the rating system. As such, when a character reaches the stage in their development when they find that they are "wasting" stats, Nibelung distinctly pulls ahead.

TL:DR:

When you are reaching the haste/crit cap from your gear and your procs, switch to Nibelung. The Val'kyrs will provide more of a benefit then pushing the soft cap.

Man, I have troubles playing one character consistently. All this talk about 80 raids is. Wow.

I can switch to level 80 arena instead if you'd like.

Screw stats, I want a Nibelung just for pretty Val'kyr. And I desperately want to get enough gear that Arcane doesn't do disgusting amounts more damage than Fire and I can be the spec I like.