Cozmo’s got his finger on the pulse about something I hadn’t even noticed was happening. He says there’s a bit of a feeling of the blogosphere being a warzone – of some blogs declaring their corner of the internet a “Rift free” zone. Heck, he says there’s a special badge to put up for the “no Rift” cause, too. Really? A badge?
I don’t get it. So help me understand – is Cozmo right; are you feeling like this about Rift? Cozmo doesn’t cite examples but he’s convinced it’s happening. He thinks folks are doing this because they feel somehow threatened by Rift, which makes some sense.
What I don’t understand about the whole debacle is all of the animosity between some of those people involved. Some of these people are taking this crap very personal. The question is, Why? Why are they so upset when another person likes a game they don’t like? Hell some of the people involved haven’t even played the rival game. It is insanity.
But what are we defending in eschewing Rift – WoW or ourselves? Cozmo points out this isn’t the first time MMOs have been released and looked to challenge WoW’s supremacy. The crux of his post is that if this time there’s a danger of that challenge being met, well, Rift isn’t at fault for achieving its own goals. Rather it remains to be seen whether WoW’s the one at fault for failing.
Either way, Cozmo’s convinced that there’s something different about this particular new MMO/new WoW expansion tussle, and he thinks some folks are being a little OTT about defending WoW.
Here at the Pot covering multiple MMOs is how we roll. We don’t bite though, so tell us – are you happy to talk about different games either on your blog or with your friends, or do you feel such loyalty to one game that others must be drop kicked?
Quote taken directly from Cozmo’s post
You can find Cozmo’s GTFOOTF homepage here
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Exactly the same thing happened around the launch of W:AR. It’s just that bizarre tribalism that often pops up in this sort of situation.
I guess the question is why do people feel threatened by it?
Oh, and the same thing happened amongst the D&D tabletop players when magic started to get popular.
Gordon McDonald recently posted..Fumble Fairy Raises Money for Charity
After reading your take on my post, I realized that links and examples might be beneficial! (some times I forget others are reading)
Anyway I added a small update to give some credit to where I was introduced the site badges, it also provides a different prospective on the drama.
I know (or at least I think I know) which posts Cozmo is referring to. It isn’t that people hate Rift, or feel threatened by it. The Rift-free badge was created as something quite tongue-in-cheek, and blogs who declare themselves “Rift-free” zones don’t do it because they dislike Rift or the people who talk about it.
It’s just a matter of what you’re interested in really. I have zero problem with MMO blogs or gaming blogs talking about Rift, they can talk about it all day (though I’ll probably skip those posts). The problem comes when a self-classified WoW blog starts turning into a Rift blog. If that’s the way they want to go, that’s fine, but it can be quite disappointing to lose a resource/source of entertainment to a topic that you aren’t interested in.
As a side note – the Rift/Twitter integration is the work of the devil. To those people who play Rift (or any game with this functionality) please, please turn that option off. Just needed to get that off my chest
Pretty much. It’s an “each to their own” situation, and people have seemingly forgotten that. In the past few months I’ve seen a lot of WoW players whining about WoW players turned Rift players for jumping the gun, not giving Cataclysm enough chance (really? 2 months ending in wanting to tear my hair out in absolute boredom isn’t giving it enough chance? Get the **** over yourselves), talking about Rift too much for their liking, being very verbal about their unfollowing Rift fans.. and all that kind of thing and it’s utterly pathetic. Fine, you don’t appreciate Rift, no need to make other people feel like crap for finding something new to occupy their time that they enjoy and talking about it as much, if not even a bit less, than they did with WoW. WoW has dominated the MMO scene for so long, and I massively don’t expect that’s going to change any time soon even though a hell of a lot of people are quitting or resorting to just logging in to raid, perhaps it’s time for a new new games to pop up. I just wish people would remember, it’s just a game, and if you don’t want to hear about it, you don’t have to. Each to their own.
Actually, while my current focus is WoW, I enjoy exploring other games whether MMO or single player. Is there such a thing as too much loyalty to one game? I harken back to the fact that the MMO world in a way mirror’s our own in social context. Are you a staunch republican/democrat that votes for either side no matter if they are right or wrong? Kinda sounds like too much loyalty to me. It also shows a bit of narrowmindedness. This happens in MMO’s as well. I used to be a huge and staunch fan of Age of Conan. It had the potential to skyrocket passed any of the other existing mmos and in my opinion AT THE TIME give WoW a serious competitor in the sales and subs. Hmmm…I still love that game, but I was wrong. Mainly because I couldn’t predict developer intent or investment. Oh well, still has it’s good marks. I haven’t tried Rift, and to be honest I’m not ready to as yet. NOT because I’m narrow focused, but honestly untill I feel I’ve seen what I want to see in WoW I can’t afford to play 2 games at once. I tried that once and it was disasterous. The other point to that is I don’t want to pay for a game that explodes on the mmo scene, then disappears after a couple of months. Personally, the things I remember truely enjoying about WoW, come from trying out other MMO’s. Could there be improvements? HELL YES!! In my own BLOG as much as I love the game I will next be discussing what I wish the game included beyond what it has now.
Id believe however that there is such a thing as too much loyalty to a game. I snicker at the little badge humor which I think was the REAL intent, but people do take their games seriously. It tends to be a self realization issue. If an MMO defines who you are in the mirror, you tend to defend it to the point of zealotry. Taken on the social aspect, you build virtual friendships with other members that play alot as well. This can create loyalties that overlook slipups of the game content itself. Take a minute and relax folks. Enjoy the game, I do. But explore a little as well. Anyways, my nickel of thoughts for the day!
Like Jasyla said the icon was created as something of a joke and really is not at all about disliking WoW. The person who created it was just doing it for fun, and it wasn’t – as said – about disliking the game but that WoW blogs turned into Rift blogs.
People can write about what they want of course, but after a while it gets a bit tedious when you want to read about WoW and you keep coming across Rift posts – in a place where you’re meant to find WoW related articles.
The point isn’t “don’t play Rift” or “don’t write about Rift” it’s more.. write about it somewhere that’s not a WoW blog. If I want to go to Paris I wouldn’t be happy to get there and find that I’m in London.
But in the end, most people will just not read the Rift articles on WoW blogs – which is fine. And again, the image really was more of a joke and not at all part of the Rift vs WoW mentality (a mentality Trion admittedly themselves have helped by having the tagline “We’re not in Azeroth anymore”).
I can’t help finding it a bit ironic that he talks about WoW bloggers being too defensive. Maybe it’s because I don’t read any Rift blogs, but I see people complaining about WoW left right and centre and everyone deals with it. Yet when someone makes a jokey badge about not wanting any Rift content on their WoW blog, everyone goes nuts and it even makes the news on several gaming sites. Now that‘s what I call defensive overreacting…
Hmm, interesting. Good to see some quick comments on this, keep the debate coming guys! I haven’t got a problem with the whole badge humour thing, or folks wanting to know what they’re getting in a blog. I find the whole game loyalty thing, and exactly how deep it goes, fascinating. As Gordon says, it can get almost tribal. And I feel like I’m sitting here with a monocle and a white lab coat now so I’ll just get on with the other side of my comment.
I appreciate that if bloggers start writing about something other than their usual topics/game, it’s a bit sudden and can get tedious. It’s a bit like the supermarket having everything except your favourite flavour drink. Still, I’m a bit boggled, and as I said, finding it fascinating.
In some cases folks still write about their original game, and that makes it easier as a reader if you don’t want to read about their Rift or other new/different posts – because as we’re all noting you could just skip those posts and read the ones you’re there for. But I appreciate it’s harder to swallow if they suddenly go all out Rift/other game, and it leaves you with a choice of either not reading their blog or reading something that doesn’t interest you (at present. Maybe reading it would change your mind – but heck, that’s a whole new topic).
But at the same time, a blog is someone’s corner of the internet and so what they write about is their choice. After all, we’re always saying folks should write for themselves because readers aren’t guaranteed! I also think that, given it’s their corner, it’s natural for their blog to evolve and change as they do as a person/player.
“I guess the question is why do people feel threatened by it?”
The answer was in a blog recently about making real friends in online games. Every time there is a new game that steals players from an old game, then it is breaking (or threatening to do so) friendships that were built up by a common interest in the old game.
There are friends that I miss from my time playing Planetarion, from Guild Wars, from Eve, many of whome I will never type at again, simply because we no longer play the same games.
There is the other reason of blogs changing topic, too, but that is less personally threatening.
@Ben Good answer to that question. I’ve got friends from Planetarion, too, whom I miss but we never cross paths anymore.
I wonder though whether the feeling of being threatened is about a potential and unwanted change in community and friendships or is about something more personal to individual players. I mean, if we play a game a lot and enjoy it then it can become a huge part of our lives, and I’m wondering if such a threat can feel almost like a personal threat, as if our own perceptions and judgements regarding gaming are challenged and threatened.
I mean, I’ve felt like this when people say WoW’s rubbish, too, and I’ve never quite got to the bottom of the threatened feeling – whether it’s personal, or a sense of loss (of friendships? Or … what else?), or a thing about change.
Actually what might be interesting is looking for a pattern in past blogs or forums when new mmo’s came out. Take for instance when Aeion or Age of Conan came out. Look back to those time frames to see if the same pattern arose in the blogospheres. Was there in fact a drastic focus at the time or was it subtle? Did there exist the same amount of Blog attention 2 or 3 years ago when these other mmo’s were released or did the WoW Blog phenomena not truly take off till later? Sometimes spikes in normal behavior get accentuated by an increase of attention within the community as whole.
As in society, yes social circles change, evole or die away. This is somewhat tribal in nature, more so when the community is smaller in nature over all. As to defensiveness, perhaps. I mean see what happens when you tell a Packer’s Fan in Football that Chicago Bears rule….man that gets plain old ugly. I mean serious fighting words right there. It’s rivalries that perhaps the MMO world had not thought of before but are arising now that there are choices people can make.
Now that I’ve replied in this discussion what could have been a helluva blog post for my blog…well I’ll sit down for the next discussion point heh heh heh!
Mhorgrim recently posted..Because I aint a total FanBoi – Stuff I wish WoW Had but its ok
I started a post here, but it turned into something else, and deserved a post on the home blog.
My train of thought has left the rails.
Pathak recently posted..Wheres the WoW stuff
I think it’s less of being threatened and more of an over-rationalization of judging how others play, plus Rift’s marketing fanning the flames. This judging is already a culture in WoW – cocky people telling others what spells to cast, or inspecting others in cities and sending unsolicited whispers about how bad their gear is… and it’s not too much a stretch to start judging others on what type of game others play. Ego-boosting through unsolicited whispering – the whole “wow, you are bad, and I’m better than you” seems to be passing itself into Rift, where “WoW is better than Rift, and I will judge you on playing it to make myself feel superior”.
I think burden lies with the way Rift marketed their product – by taking aim directly at WoW, they essentially divided the group into “WoW players” versus “Rift players”, and you apparently cannot be both. Funny how the Rift-bashing players seem to be really buying into that division and exaggerating that red line further. Rift was really clever in even making the hardcore WoW players still talk about Rift (not in a positive way, of course, but any marketing is good marketing). They’ve polarized the player base into a “them against us” mentality, and while there is no real threat as Cozmo has said, alienation still exists, especially when one draws group boundaries along the lines of what type of game you play.
Rift “killed” my roleplaying group – almost all of them migrated over to “that other game.” I have to confess that I felt betrayed, and mentioning Rift when I was around earned you at least a little snide comment from me. Thankfully I got over that. Also, my experiences during the beta didn’t endear the game and its community to me very much. That Trion is actively fanning the flames is just the icing on the cake.
I still dislike it very much when a blog that is self-classified as a WoW-blog suddenly only offers Rift articles. I put those in my “check again later” folder and stop reading them for the moment. If they “recover” fine, if not, well, every author is free to write about what they want. As free, as I am to seek out the reading material I prefer. No bad blood here.
Italy is known for pasta, wine, mafia, dernier cri, roman ruins and renaissance palacesRecycling is what millions of people do with aluminum cans, mouldable bottles, newspapers and old clothes, but what can be done with soda can tabs, sweets wrappers, gum wrappers, and noachian essence boxes? You can make some cute modish wholesale handbags using these materialsSome of the favorite dominance bag designers cover:Bracelets, Bangles, and Cuffs “ More is merrier when it comes to decorating your wristsTheres also the $42 Smokey Judgement Brush Clot, which omes with six brushes intended in compensation creating the fictitious smoky eye