Forlorn Drifter wrote:Menegrothx always has great posts.
I completely and totally understand what you are saying, but I think we need to look at games other than MMO's for this- MMO's have always been better known for awkward sexual advances over the internet compared to console or arcade games. However, you bring up an interesting point with clans banning women because they "hurt the guild". I'm not much for MMO's, but why in the world would it be so important to someone that they would bar someone from entry? Personally, I think that is not only a poor way to deal with the situation, but also reflects badly on the gaming community as a whole. It says something along the lines of "You're allowed to play with us, as long as you don't cause any potential problems in our fantasy world."
Thanks.
Indeed, MMOs are quite unique in this regard. Not just because of the social and community aspect mind you. In a FPS or RTS game, even if it's based upon team work, there's nothing more to the game than playing it. Even if you are working as a team, you're ultimately playing for yourself. In a MMORPG the situation is very different though, since in order to get better gear you must work as a team with other people. Still that doesn't guarantee that you'll necessarily benefit from this teamwork at all. After a long night of trying to kill a boss with your guild mates, loosing a lot of money that you worked hard for to repair costs, potions and such, when the boss finally dies, it drops 2 or 3 items. There are 25 or 40 players, which means that most people don't get compensated for their efforts at all.
FPS games, fighters and RTS games are very quick to get into, there's no down time. MMOs on the otherhand have a lot of busywork. You'll level for months so you reach the maximum level and can thus start raiding with a guild. You'll farm money for 3-5 hours a day 5-7 times a week so you can raid with your guild 3-4 hours a day 2-4 times a week. It might take months of practice to finally kill one single boss. It might take months of killing that boss on a weekly basis over and over again for you to finally get that pay off and compensation for your efforts, as item drops are limited and you can only kill the boss once a week. So other competitive games are more based on short term plans and goals while MMOs require long term plans and dedication. You form much stronger social bonds and networks in MMOs and when you finally overcome an obstacle with your mates it feels great, but there's a lot more of tedious work, repetitive grinding, planning, strategy and stress involved. A single raid might last for 7 or 8 hours, during which people might take breaks that last longer than an entire round of Call of Duty or multiple fights in Street Fighter.
People dedicate a lot more work and effort to WoW, so the whole culture surrounding the game is very different. If you don't feel like finishing the round in Call of Duty or Halo, you can just leave the game and join another game within a minute. When that one tank that you have helped to gear with your guildies for months in order to defeat that really tough boss decides to join another guild that has progress further into the game, it will have devastating effects on your guild. It's much more personal, as your guild mates as a collective have dedicated hundreds of man hours to that cause.
And as to why hardcore guilds are willing to ban women as a whole? They'll do anything to increase their efficiency. Run relatively complex calculations and simulations so they can find out the most efficient party composition, spell rotation etc. Try to find programming loop holes in the game that they can exploit and so on. People at the top are super competitive and they're willing to do anything for the sake of min-maxing their efficiency. Guilds compete with each other who can kill the newest boss first in the world/first in EU and USA/first on their realm. The guilds who get the world first kills become "e-famous" and are often sponsored. Besides that there's also the player versus player arena tournaments, which is a popular form of eSports.
Back when I was in school I used to dedicate all of my free time to WoW (15:30-16:30->00:30-03:30 on weekdays and between 30 and 40 hours during Saturday&Sunday) and I still couldn't become an "elite" player even on my realm which wasn't a good one, as there weren't any really good guilds nor PvPers on it. Some realms on the other hand have a lot of good guilds and PvPers, so it's a lot harder to get on top on those realms. I haven't counted, but I'd say that judging by
this list there must be around 200 realms in the world.
So, that should give you some kind of picture how hard it is to get to the top in World of Warcraft
I'm getting kind of off topic here and I apologize for that, but my point is that MMOs are basically another job rather than a fun game you can pop into for 15 minutes when you feel like it and leave when you feel like it, so I hope you understand why such attitudes exist amongst MMORPG communities. Bottom line is that even if you are a hardcore Street Fighter, Quake or Starcraft gamer and you play daily as much as an MMORPG gamer, no one can take away the efforts of your labor from you. Every round you play, is for yourself only. In an MMORPG game guild drama can fuck up something you've worked for hundreds of hours.
