WoW Wednesday: To Selfie or Not To Selfie? .

Yay! 6.1 has been out for a while now, and surely I need not inform everyone of what’s in store for them! In fact, people are incredibly aware of what’s what to a point that many are blindly raging/praising the new update. Besides the awesome gear updates, garrison missions, various content, and pretty much everything needed to refresh the weakened soul, people have been more focused on the new twitter and selfie feature. Some people like it, a few don’t care for it, while a whole lot picked up pitchforks and are ready to burn Blizzard to the stake. It’s a useless feature, I’d have to say, but an interesting and silly one at the very least, but the hatred that it has unwittingly spawned throughout the forums, other websites, and the internet in general has me baffled. Is it so bad that it merits such an intense loathing from the cynical populace?

CAHZHOOL!

Patch 6.1 has delivered a lot of necessary upgrades to a game that has been quickly devoured by hordes of content-hungry players, giving us more and more things to do. Other than serious updates such as tweaking some classes, garrison buffs, new quests, or upgrading everything in general, MMO developers tend to, you know, make fun things. Of course, not everything will be perceived as “fun” by everybody, and it certainly is always a matter of personal taste. You know those silly quests that reward “dances” in FFXIV or when glamouring was introduced? Sure, more types of dancing and transmog won’t ever matter, but it doesn’t really change the game now, does it? It’s a simple matter of liking it or not. Now, I’m not here to say that it’s a good thing or a bad thing, rather, it’s an extremely negligible thing.

 

The Varian Degrees of Gaming (see what I did there!?)

The main argument that most people maintain is that Blizzard is wasting resources by allocating manpower to such trivial features rather than focusing on main content because, Lord knows, that’s all that matters, right? Well, I agree with the sentiment on main content. Nothing is more important to me than the main progression, but I like having a bit of fun from time to time. I don’t think it is fair to criticize on where and what Blizzard chooses their allocation of work to a specified thing. Frankly, I don’t run that facet of the company, nor am I even on their payroll. But what I do know is that if you tell off the staff at Weiner’s Circle that you wanted your hotdog cooked like a Swedish Waffle, you’d just get an earful of stfu’s and gtfo’s.

THIS GAME SUCKS! *Unsubs*

People often forget how the basic mode of selling works. Guy makes something and then proceeds to sell it. Like what you see? Buy it. You don’t? Move on. Guy them proceeds to add glitter on said item. You like it even more? Then buy it. Don’t like it even more? Then freakin’ move on. You decide to subscribe in a game knowing full well of a developer’s nature and habits, and then complain that what you bought isn’t what you wanted months or years down the line of owning it, even coming up with the ridiculous argument that you, as a subscriber, pay their salaries. Of course, your hard earned cash keeps the game and the company afloat, but merely remarking that you, as a solitary person among the millions of others that pay the same rate you do, own them and that they owe it to you solely and, therefore, you must be followed, is a remarkable lapse in cognitive thinking and a menial checkpoint for fullblown self-centered apropos.

This, as developers, is what they decided to put a small degree of focus on. The rather extreme outpouring of hatred for this feature completely overshadowed everything 6.1 brought to the table. This is the product and you know full well how Blizzard treats the game. You bought it and subbed for it in its entirety knowing that changes to said product can and will change in the future. If you don’t like the new changes or menial additions, then stop paying for it. It’s as simple as that. And if you so happen to not be aware of what you were getting into, then I think you need to rethink how you spend your money, buddy.

Now I can’t focus on the raid! I’m becoming casual because of this stupid camera!

“What about focusing on other things instead? Surely, Blizzard has better things to do than these stupid things!” It’s a very small addition to the massiveness that is WoW. Selfies probably didn’t even take that much work to be honest, though the twitter function might have been different. Content is gated as it always has been in WoW’s past, so you really won’t be seeing more crap past BRF until they actually do annoucne a next raid, so I don’t think it should be an issue in that aspect. Class balancing? Hey, 6.1 has those too; not to an extreme degree, but tweaks are the only things we should expect as is the case with many other MMOs. Or is it something more important, like the ability to appear offline on battle.net or some such nonsense. That, too, sounds like just as big of a waste of time as selfies and twitter. Seriously, what was everyone expecting in 6.1? Some groundbreaking game changes that would recreate the idea of MMOs forever? Did they announce the new raid of Hogger’s Lair that everyone was so keen on getting into at day 1? Damn them for releasing the ability to selfie instead of crafting an entirely new raid in the midst of BRF’s prime which doesn’t even have a complete LFR yet (at the moment anyway)!

We, as gamers, have varying degrees of what is important and what is not. It is unfair to assume that everyone within WoW would all like the same exact thing all the time, because it never really is the case. Yes, I did just say that Blizzard’s product is its own, but it doesn’t hamper them from listening (albeit extremely rarely) to the player base from time to time. They will focus on what they think is best for them and the people that play it, but that’s all we can really hope for. If they made more mounts, there would be a portion of the player base that boil in anger, urging them to focus on something else. Then if they focused on, let’s say, PvP nerfing that would inadvertently affect PvE, well, the crowd most favoring the latter would go nuts as well, and those that wanted things unrelated to the two would also riot for a lack of whatever it is they want. There is simply no way to please everybody and that includes you, dear reader.

NOW I WON’T EVER HAVE A CHANCE OF BEING HARDCORE AND GET GROMMASH WORLD FIRST!

Now, that’s what I would probably argue if the topic at hand were something of great import, like a hardy nerf to Monks, making them difficult or even downright impossible to play as, or number-crunching stat changes that screw up everybody’s min/maxing, or perhaps the removal of certain content, but it isn’t. It’s an extremely peripheral addition to an otherwise decent patch. Selfies have gotten a bad rap for being one of the douchiest things since being a douchebag, and I, for one, couldn’t care less about the trend all who partake in it. To each their own, right? But the point is, the Selfie update has little to no effect in the main game of WoW, spawning nothing more than a bunch of needlessly inane pictures on the internet that can be either hilarious or dumb to whoever chooses to view them, in a fashion not unlike how MMO gamers used to do screenshots in the past fifteen-odd years. Now, it’s just complete with the arm extension and facial features on command. Nothing has changed. Nothing

 

Cahzhools be damned!

I’m not even sure why people argue that selfies is a casual thing that will inherently destroy WoW from within, therefore completing its casual transformation. I could care less about the casual being bad tirade, so I won’t bother with it, but how does adding a screenshot app make this game any less hardcore than what the discerning eye perceives it to be? How? HOW!?

It’s like a portable Goldshire!

Pretty much, if you find that WoW is becoming a crapfest of casuals, then move on to another game that will suit your needs, but I would hardly consider selfies being the cause of that conclusion. If you find that WoW is a crapfest now more than ever due to this being added, but don’t even play it, why the hell are you keeping track of it? Like any bad breakup, either move on or keep complaining, because the other one sure has. Whatever it is that people regard WoW of being, patch 6.1 has only made the game better in ways that differ from person to person. Some may have found the buffs/nerfs to certain classes unnecessary, while others find the optional garrison side-questing to be lacking/amazing, but these things we just take in stride. But C’thun forbid that they add a feature made purely just for fun. Unheard of!

So, take a chill pill, relax, and have a good time with what’s left of your love for WoW. It hasn’t changed for the worse nor has it become more casual, or Blizzard just eating up your money, but it’s the same old juggernaut just with more access to twitter and stupid screenshots no one would really ever care about.