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What's needed in most news comment forums is human moderators consistently applying well-defined local cultural rules about what's acceptable.

Have you ever seen the ElitistJerks forum rules and the consequences for breaking them?

These rules and moderation style keep the post count somewhat limited, but have made the forum an invaluable source free of trolls and thoughtless comments.

Seriously... since when math and fun are two separate ideas?

Ever since people who cared about winning more than anything else starting playing video games.

Seriously, though, a lesson learned from World of Warcraft is that if you have a class that has multiple different build options, no matter how much you try to balance them, as long as they have differences, one of them is going to be mathematically superior. The people who play the game will figure out which build that is, and then everybody will use only that build. Don't believe me? Go spend some time at Elitist Jerks.

People want to be able to use the "best" build and still make their character different from everybody else's character, and that's why the math choices are being separated from the fun choices.

Most people that want to post on Elitist Jerks are fairly well behaved and well informed people to begin with (Why else would they visit the EJ forum in the first place?)

If you think this you've probably never read The Banhammer (the forum on EJ where infractions are posted) or The Thread of Ultimate Suck (where bad posts are moved, usually after receiving said infraction).

in the meantime the official forums have to handle what must be 100 times the volume with a much lower average post quality even before moderation. Just saying "Well get more moderators then!!!" probably doesn't scale well to that sort of post volume.

Moderating forums scales fairly well with more people. A major problem with the official Blizzard forums is how much you have to do before you get banned. A much harsher policy would clean the forums up tremendously. Or so I'd like to think anyways.

Most people that want to post on Elitist Jerks are fairly well behaved and well informed people to begin with (Why else would they visit the EJ forum in the first place?)

If you think this you've probably never read The Banhammer (the forum on EJ where infractions are posted) or The Thread of Ultimate Suck (where bad posts are moved, usually after receiving said infraction).

in the meantime the official forums have to handle what must be 100 times the volume with a much lower average post quality even before moderation. Just saying "Well get more moderators then!!!" probably doesn't scale well to that sort of post volume.

Moderating forums scales fairly well with more people. A major problem with the official Blizzard forums is how much you have to do before you get banned. A much harsher policy would clean the forums up tremendously. Or so I'd like to think anyways.

I have a feeling this change will cause similar forums to rise in popularity and Blizzard will accomplish little other than losing control of the conversation and pissing off their users.

This is already largely the case with the min/max raiding crowd gravitating to a few non-Blizzard sites/forums for their information and discussion.

For example:
http://www.elitistjerks.com/

Interestingly, one reason the referenced site grew to popularity is the iron-handed approach to moderation - the slightest hint of trolling or asshatery is generally quickly stomped upon and/or mocked relentlessly by both the moderators and user population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_XNA

This is how Microsoft has an identity crisis to trumpet it's "me-tooism" that they're trendy and hip in the world of computing.

Here's some other recursive acronyms to show how dreadfully 'clever & original' the "_________ is not ______" style is.

Personal story: I'm not a coder but the only place I've heard of XNA was from a frat boy dropout who wanted to be a game programmer that wouldn't shut up about it on our WoW ventrilo.
Yet he didn't know what Blender or C++ are.
Hell he couldn't write any LUA mods or tank worth a darn, so he was useless to us.
All he did was misquote EJ forums into every guild discussion and somehow turning it into an argument to show how smart he was.

Yeah we hated that kid.

I think you're doing it wrong, and here's why. In the interest of full disclosure, I play WoW, Counter-Strike, and QuakeWorld. Also, I can't understand EVE (but I tried).

I'm getting quite sick of games with small learning curves - the ones who's mechanics you can master in less than a month without any special instruction.

Depending on your definition of "mechanics", mastering them should be quite easy in less than a month. For example, one can learn the mechanics of Chess, in a day or so. The rules aren't particularly complicated, but to reach any level of interesting play, it can take years.

My point is that the mechanics *should* be simple. When they're complex, you end up with EVE; and I think there's a general consensus that EVE is impossible for outsiders to comprehend enough to appreciate, let alone play for themselves. I've tried playing it, and my experience is that the game is completely inaccessible to those with anything but a dedicated interest in playing EVE. My guess would be that most EVE players are probably close friends with other EVE players, or they would never have been able to overcome the learning curve (or lack thereof) in the first place.

If you have a chance to watch the Portal "Director's Commentary", they explain precisely how the learning curve was developed for that game, and the rationale behind it based on feedback testing.

The ones that become a game of who went deeper into the dungeon for the better armor, who buys the more expensive weapon, who can snap-aim better (which takes skill, but is not a particularly interesting one).

But not true. At the highest levels of play, all people are geared similarly with armor and weapons, and they can all aim. It's already assumed at being at a high level of play. Competitive WoW players already have their full sets. Competitive Quake players have insanely good aim. That's why, when you reach that level of play, you no longer have to worry about armor or aim. It's built-in. Check out the discussions going on over at the Elitist Jerks forums for WoW. Or go watch some QuakeWorld videos. Or if you have the patience to setup nQuake, go download it and watch some QuakeWorld demos .. or Quake3 for that matter.

Sure, you might find cases where the winner is decided by having a super rare WoW-drop, or where someone's lightning gun or rail gun is what wins the match based on exceptionally good aim. But for the most part, it becomes a game of strategy.

MMO's are very big into number-crunching, like the kind you'll find at Elitist Jerks. FPS's are very big into demo watching and strategy. Keep in mind, however, that it's only at very high levels of play that you'll see this.

The good games, in my opinion, are easy enough for anyone to pick up, but complex enough that only the most dedicated can reach the highest levels of play. WoW does this very well. Quake is too inaccessible, and suffers from a lack of players (even bad ones) as a consequence. Counter-strike has a different problem, where the game isn't very good at high levels of play, but it is very accessible. The FPS is difficult to get right in a way that doesn't alienate newbies or pros. EVE is an enigma in the sense that it even survives at all. (Someone feel free to explain this to me.)

Give me something rewarding, where I can be playing a year or two later and still improving my skill. Items are cool, but after a while they don't cut it.

And that's why there's a casual gaming market. You're asking that a game neither be too hard that you can't pick it up nor too easy that it doesn't feel rewarding. You should pick a game that has both a large enough following that skill makes a difference at the end-game stages, while it is accessib

These kids are not practicing science, they're practicing being human beings.

I dunno, boss. That "theorycrafting" stuff looks awfully scienciful to me. :)

Check out an example here. Specifically, the analysis of enhancement shaman and an attempt to figure out the best weapon/spell combo to maximize damage output.

Basically, what theorycrafting is is people attempting to deduce formulae of game mechanics from experimental observation, and then figure out how they can optimize their character's stats to deliver maximum performance in different settings (player-versus-environment or player-versus-player).

It's also worth pointing out that this section of the community is not very tolerant of wild-assed claims with no data to back them up... they will want to see your data and will demand you explain the logic behind your conclusion.

PhD level stuff? Not even close (well, maybe in a liberal arts program). Organized and consistent? Hell, no. But I believe that it's a mistake to dismiss it as simply a bunch of bright kids merely stumbling onto the right answers after putting their thinking caps on for a few minutes. :)

These kids are not practicing science, they're practicing being human beings.

I dunno, boss. That "theorycrafting" stuff looks awfully scienciful to me. :)

Check out an example here. Specifically, the analysis of enhancement shaman and an attempt to figure out the best weapon/spell combo to maximize damage output.

Basically, what theorycrafting is is people attempting to deduce formulae of game mechanics from experimental observation, and then figure out how they can optimize their character's stats to deliver maximum performance in different settings (player-versus-environment or player-versus-player).

It's also worth pointing out that this section of the community is not very tolerant of wild-assed claims with no data to back them up... they will want to see your data and will demand you explain the logic behind your conclusion.

PhD level stuff? Not even close (well, maybe in a liberal arts program). Organized and consistent? Hell, no. But I believe that it's a mistake to dismiss it as simply a bunch of bright kids merely stumbling onto the right answers after putting their thinking caps on for a few minutes. :)

This means that you need a critical mass of people who are, in fact, playing 40 to 60 hours a week, a hardcore contingent, to provide much of that sense of persistence and mutual recognition.

No. MMOs need people to be online, but we don't need them to be on for long periods of time. During "peak hours", a game has between 10-30% of the total active accounts online once it has matured. So, people will be online during most of the time. Also note that "critical mass" is much lower than "expected populations" for a well designed game. For my own game, Meridian 59, critical mass on a server appears to be about 30 or so players online, so in my case I don't need to snare a large number of people to keep the game reasonably healthy.

Also, note that the average person in WoW spends about 2 hours per day in the game. (Reference: Blizzard vs. WoWGlider lawsuit, quote at: http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t28385-blizzard_wins_lawsuit_against_wowglider/#post812739) If we were looking at a true epidemic here, I would think that the largest game would have figures that were much higher than the average hours of TV watched if we accept that TV watching is not similarly addicting. The 40-60 hour per week people are statistical outliers, many sigma away from the average. In WoW, every person playing 40 hours per week needs 3 people playing only 1 hour per week to balance things out to the average.

And, carefully consider what you are saying. Your core argument in this post is that socializing and feeling like you have social obligations is bad. Few rational people are going to agree with that position. The fact that people do engage in social activities online is a good thing. The fact that people do stupid things in social situations, such as when trying to find a potential mate, doesn't mean that the activity is generally harmful. It means that some people just need a bit more help than others.

Have fun,

Actually, if you follow the link, you'll see that that is just the front page.

The front page is the face to the world. It's like sending in a resume full of typos. These guys have extremely high standards if you look at their forum announcements, so it's extremely glaring to have such an amateurish front page.

Actually, I think it has more to do with insecurity.

I'm sure that's part of it. There's also annoyance and frustration at things that are obviously wrong. This is a result of thinking critically all the time. Look at their announcements that I linked to. I support most of their high standards, but many average gamers would be like "wtf, lol".

They provide info for the benefit of all rather than keep it to themselves (something a true elitist would do).

Which is great, hats off to them.

Funnily enough Elitistjerks.com aren't into bought arena ratings at all... mostly they are into excessive maths and gentlemanly discussions regarding wow theorycrafting

the example post i linked to has a frequency graph for spell effects on weapon speeds for goodness sake...

I have a full time job (game developer) and I'm part of one of the high end WoW guilds here in the US, http://www.elitistjerks.com/

We raid four or five nights a week. It's scheduled during the evenings and we try to keep our raids to a maximum of four hours. I get home from work, eat dinner, then raid in the evening. I'd rather be doing that then watching mindless television or something. I'd say I play around 12 to 20 hours of WoW a week and quite enjoy it. Sure, that's more than a casual player who plays it a couple hours a week, but I'm not putting 80 to 100 hours a week into the game.