The Million-Gnome March

This past Friday a sea of Gnomish fury swept over the chilly vale of Dun Morogh. The reason? Their character class isn't balanced. AFK Gamer has details on this outpouring of tiny fury, with liveblogging from the event itself and pictures of the naked gnome march from later in the weekend. Despite GM crackdowns and general apathy towards the Warrior cause, they appear to have gotten some sort of response from a developer (even though the response has nothing to do with the march). Terra Nova has picked up the topic and poses it as a question about the right to assemble in virtual spaces.

Comments

So we don't even...

[incom]

mention the game anymore? What game is this concerning? It's probably World of warcraft as that is what people seem obsessed with at the moment, but still this posting is too vague.

Too bad they don't get that way about RL

[MBraynard]

I wish I could survey those participating in the protest and ask of those 18 or older:

• Are you registered to vote?
• If so, how often do you vote? Did you participate in the primary or just the general? What about school board races?
• Have you ever written a letter to a newspaper to express your views?
• Have you ever contacted your elected representative via phone, mail, or email about an issue that is important to you
• Have you ever written a check to a political cause that is important to you to help fund the printing of fliers, to pay for advertising, or to support a full-time staff?
• Have you ever collected petitions or volunteered for a candidate or cause? Have you ever even signed a petition?

• Guessing the answer to every one of these is no for 90%+ of these guys. But they DO feel it is important enough to go to a march on a microchip in a place that exists in only ones and zeroes.

Nothing wrong here.

[Temporal]

The admins had a point: This silly march was harming the gameplay experience for other players. Dun Morogh is a beginner region, so causing that area to have technical problems from server load will hurt people who are trying to play the game for the first time, perhaps leading to believe that the game sucks in general.

If you want to compare to the real-life right to assemble, then what the protesters were doing is more analogous to blocking traffic. If you block traffic in real life as part of a protest, you will be arrested. The right to assemble does not imply the right to make things difficult for other people with your assembly.

In any case, the whining about balance issues misses an important point: "Balance" does not mean that any two players of equal level will be evenly matched in a 1v1 duel. "Balance" means that each class has a niche to fill. For every class there is some situation where that class is better than all the others.

It seems silly to complain about warriors because warriors serve one of the most important roles in the game. Every group needs warriors to stand in front and take the damage ("tank") while the others do their things. It is, in fact, more important for a warrior to be able take damage than deal damage. The only other class that you could say this of is paladins, but even that is debatable.

And, anyway, who cares which class is most powerful? It's obviously more important to consider which class is most fun to play, and that completely depends on your own taste. If you don't enjoy playing a warrior, don't play a warrior.

Re:Nothing wrong here.

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

It is, in fact, more important for a warrior to be able take damage than deal damage.

It doesn't matter how many times you, or I, or Blizzard ( it's in the manual ) say this, it seems nobody is listening. From playing other games, they expect their warriors to be the last word in damage dealing. World of Warcraft doesn't work like this - deal with it. If you want to sit at the apex of the food chain, play a Rogue or a Mage.

Instead of constantly neurotically comparing themselves to every other class / player, these people need to sit down and assess, 1) Am I enjoying my playing experience? 2) Am I enjoying it enough to warrant what it costs?

If the answer to either of these questions is "No", they should either try playing the game differently, or leaving it altogether.

Re:EULA

[Minna Kirai]

EULA's have been proven to be invalid after you pay for a product.

Wrong. Triply-wrong (which works out to be right, I suppose).

1. EULAs haven't been proven invalid in the USA. The most recent court decision was pro-EULA.
2. However, EULAs are invalid according to a sensible reading of the legal principles, so hopefully a higher court will reverse that bad ruling.
3. But it doesn't matter, because MMORPGs do not use EULAs. EULAs are for software, the use of their servers is covered by a traditional service agreemet (like a phone or electricity bill) which is valid as normal.

invalid after you pay for a product.

Notice that with WoW or another MMORPG, you sign that agreement before paying the monthly bills. EULAs for software you already have are invalid; service agreements for things a company is promising to give you in the future are fine. (Mutual exchange of consideration and all that)

From the "wtf-bbq-hax" dept.

[Pseudosapiens]

As a Blizzard customer and World of Warcraft subscriber I demand the right to assemble with large numbers of thoroughly incompetent teenagers in low level zones to protest the imbalance of [insert class/race/skill here], regardless of how many times the developers have said "we know, we're working to address the issue." Any negative effects of this protest indicate Blizzard's inability to "learn some programming wtf." Clearly the players know more about running an online game for hundreds of thousands of people and have a better understanding of how [class/race/skill] balance works than the people that spent several years developing the game. Seriously. Let's start an online petition or something.