Snobbery, Elitism and Things That Go "Boom"

Hmm. Interesting, beard-stroking times in the WoW community. Not that I have a beard. Or that I stroke anyone else's. Even Ratshag's. Anyway, I digress. It's interesting times. 'cos people are talking about elitism and differentiation in WoW. And it's a tricky topic, because no-one wants to feel like an identikit-clone.

WoW is basically a gear-based system, and with a limited set of routes for getting new gear in the end game, people start to graduate towards looking the same. And thus people start to find other routes to mark themselves as different to other. One way is the activity-based eltism my guildleader talks about:

In the wider WoW world there's been a number of forum posts from people demanding privelages for their 'elite' characters: "I must be allowed to AFK in battlegrounds because I'm a pro duelist", "I should be allowed to create new characters at lvl 70 as I've already levelled x of them", "Only hardcore people should be allowed to get item X", "Only people who have done SSC/BT/MH should be able to play/test new content", "You casuals are ruining the game by getting the attunements for Raid X removed"

Or the rather fallacious faction-based "I'm more mature than you" idiocy that Big Bear Butt Blogger is discussing:

I can't help but wonder if the perception that Horde players are more mature than Alliance players might stem, at least in part, from an unconscious belief that the people that choose to play Horde are mature enough to prize individuality and personality over appearance, and the people that choose to play Alliance are shallow or immature for choosing a faction that has pretty models.

The urge to differentiate yourself, I understand. It's one of the reasons I steadfastly refuse to go Primal Mooncloth and make the healing Epic set, because I don't want to be yet another healer loitering around Shattrath in it. I'm quite happy with my many-Kara-leather-pieces set, thankyouverymuch.

But the urge to prove yourself "better" than others, I struggle with. Perhaps I'm not competitive enough but, that aside, there are clear markers of being better or not. Someone in Tier 6 is clearly a better raider than me. Someone in full season 3 Arena gear is clearly better at PvP than me with my poor, honor point-bought gear. Coming up with other reasons to be "better" is just futile.

Ah, but anyway, the happy result of Andro's story, which saw a compatriot of hers, along with my young compatriot Ularia  and a baby druid called Corse go adventuring together, was that three low-to-mid 20s cleared the Deadlines. And I (in my space pally guise) finally got to do one of the most fun things in an instance ever.

Here's the video evidence:

Ularia Does Deadmines from Leafshine on Vimeo.