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Tuesday 9 July 2013

Nostalgia...

I've been wanting to write a blog post about in-game nostalgia for some time now. I have however struggled to work out a way of writing down my feelings without sounding like an arse. But, WoW Insiders Matthew Rossi has inspired me!

Firstly the inspirational article in question. Matthew Rossi posted an article about The living game and the end of nostalgia which I highly recommend everyone reads (especially if you intend to read further on). I think that he has hit the nail on the head repeatedly throughout his article. It's well balanced, well written and most of all sums up how I feel.

Anyway, I have decided to jump right on into the deep end so here goes.

Nostalgia is very common in my guild. Compared to a lot of my guild I am a newbie playing WoW. The vast majority have played for several expansions and some since beta. Obviously the game has seen many changes in the 8 years its been around and people have rosey memories of the past.
"The past is a vast and detailed country we believe we have a perfect image of, frozen forever in our minds as a perfected world. Indeed, only the past can be so perfect, because it's the only place that doesn't change on us." Source

As much as I appreciate people are entitled to their memories I am quite frankly sick of hearing that the game has been ruined, it was better 'back then' and a whole heap of other criticisms. What really gets to me is that 99% of what's said is as unconstructive as you can get. I never hear/read "I loved how you had to form a group in trade and use the summoning stone", no it's "Dungeon finder sucks" or "LFR isn't real raiding". Now last time I checked nothing was stopping you forming a group in trade and doing things the old fashioned way. But when I've bring up points like this at I get it thrown back in my face because I "didn't play WoW back in the old days".
"This difference between fond remembrance and willful drowning in the past has to always be kept in mind, and managed. The reason the game has changed and changed over the years is in response to us. As the player base changes, so does the game it plays in." Source

Personally though the worst thing I hear/read is people comparisons. My guild master has a very rose-tinted view of the world. Sometimes I even wonder if he is on the same planet as the rest of us! Now raiding hasn't been going all to well so yes there's pressure etc. but I don't feel alienating and insulting people is not the way forward! For example, saying to the best geared raider in the guild that you'd 'rather play with x, y and z'. Granted this may not be too uncommon a thing to happen but when x has left never to return, no-ones heard from y for months and z is deceased it's pretty darn rude (in my opinion). For me this really is an example of the ugly side of nostalgia!

In addition, they don't seem to want to even contemplate that the game has changed as a result of changes in the player base and changing needs. In fact, if you spent time reading /gchat you might even think that Blizzard have purposely sabotaged their own game
"Looking back is fine, even healthy - it informs us as players, it helps us decide what worked the best and what didn't - but you can't live back there. It's buried with Mankrik's wife." Source

In conclusion, it seems that a select few people in my guild just can't move on and really are stuck back in time. The need to constantly bring up the glory days doesn't just annoy me though. There are other guildies who also get frustrated by the constant need to complain - some were even around back in the day. I just wish they realised that they can't live back then. Hopefully they'll soon realised the game has moved on and now-is-now. Or they'll quit. Or they could find themselves a few guildies down!

Sorry about the massive wall of text!

8 comments:

  1. There were things I loved about vanilla (same server battlegrounds/AQ40/being able to feral charge as resto although that lasted a bit longer than vanilla/the newness of the game) but the reason I still play is because there are things I've loved about every expansion since. I don't see why people who make out they hate the game these days are still here.

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    1. One of the main protagonist has quite WoW several times and keeps coming back - I honestly have no idea why!

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  2. We have had a few guild members like the ones you have mentioned in your post and they just suck the fun right out of the game! I'm not sure I could be in a guild where that kind of negativity comes from the top, as I personally think it poisons the whole atmosphere. Not only that, but it's alienating players like yourself. Way to make new players feel like second citizens :-/

    There was a lot of awesome stuff "back in the day" but there was a lot of shit as well. If people hate the way the game is today, well I'm not really sure why they are still paying a company $15 a month to do something they despise.

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    1. Usually I just ignore it but recently it's been getting increasingly worse - I think as a result of the crappy raiding (or rather lack of).
      Yeah they never seem to mention the shit stuff. It really is a classic rose-tinted glasses scenario. Funny thing is they do all this complaining but like you day continue to pay - Blizz must love people like that :P

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  3. People change, so the game changes. Do we all want yo sit around thinking how much more fun life was without mobile phones? Or maybe without wireless internet? I mean we actually used payphones and we would go to the library to get internet... I miss those days because everyone was so much more xxxyyyzzz...
    I wish people wouldn't say things to wreck the game complaining about things which are gone. Wake up and smell the roses bud there's a new breed of wow player now. And as Neri said... Don't pay if you wanna complain.

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    1. When hunters lost the ability to equip polearms there was a bit of who-har in the guild and I used mobile phones and the conversion from imperial to metric money then. Sadly, these types of people don't see the perfectly valid points we make - I doubt they ever will!

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  4. Makes me wonder how people that hang on to the "good old days" of WoW handle real life, it is exactly the same. The only sure thing is that there will be change. I have many happy memories of every expansion. Do I want to go back? Nope, nope, nope.

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    1. That's a really good point. Obviously there are medical conditions that make dealing with change difficult for people but the people I speak of don't suffer from these.
      It really is a case of stuck in the iron ages. One of them is rather patronising and walks the fine line of sexism an awful lot!

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