Just Some Food for Thought

Much has been discussed of the class make-up of the top ten teams on the official arena tournament realms (though nearly every discussion tends to devolve into either DK/Pally bashing or flame fests where the european players call the american players “skill-less cockmonglers”).

You can read the MMO Champion post in it’s entirety here, though really the only important part are these two graphs: the class makeup for the US realms, and the EU realms here.

Nearly every discussion on this comes down to how overpowered Death Knights or Paladins are, and if it doesn’t do that, then the poor players on the US realms get flamed for being FotM imbeciles.

Note: It stands for “Flavour of the Month”.

What many people fail to realize is that standing behind every successful Death Knight there’s a paladin. And not just any paladin, but a Holy paladin. And even then, there’s either a hunter or a warlock standing somewhere nearby, too.

The class(es) in themselves aren’t overpowered. It’s when you combine them with other classes that powerful synergy breaks out and renders that specific composition of classes much more powerful than any of them alone.

That’s just the way WoW works. DK/Shaman/Rogue, for instance, would be a sort of retarded comp. There’s not really enough synergy there for much of anything to work properly. While a grouping like that has it’s tricks, it isn’t coherent. (Just watch that comp become the most powerful in S6, just to prove me stupid.)

But replace that shaman with a paladin, and replace that rogue with a warlock, and suddenly you have an immensely powerful combination.

Random side note. Warlocks don’t need buffs in PvP. Warlocks are fine. The problem is all the melee characters that outgear them on live servers. Put Warlocks on even footing, gear wise, to all the melee characters ripping them apart on live servers, and suddenly those issues disappear.

I digress.

I find the hatred between random US and EU commenters to be hilarious. I highly doubt any of the actual top players from either side invest in trolling and flaming each other on the internet; it’s all of their strange, angry supporters that are nowhere near as skilled, and yet want to get in on the whole epeen strokefest anyways.

Nothing makes you feel better than belittling some anonymous idiot in a quasi-racist argument on the internet about a small portion of a video game.

Anyway, the primary insults used by the EU players is that the US players don’t have as much skill as the EU players, and thus go with whatever comp is most powerful that patch because they’re incapable of playing anything else.

The EU players, meanwhile, are obviously extremely gay. Because they’re from Europe. And Europe is gay. Right, Europe? Or should I say EurGAY?

Commit that insult to memory. I’m sure you could use it to devastating effect in an argument with anyone from Europe or Uruguay. Providing they’re twelve.

Laughably awful insults aside, I think the difference between the top classes for EU servers and US servers has everything to do with the mentality of the players.

For pure example’s sake, let’s say every player has two values: they want to win, and they want to have fun.

For EU players, it’s the latter value that’s more important. They want to play the class they have fun playing. They still want to win, but that’s secondary to doing what they liked doing in the first place.

There’ll be, say, a 3v3 team with the comp Rogue/Mage/Priest. They like that comp, they like their class, they want to keep using it. They hear how powerful DK/Warlock/Paladin is, but they aren’t going to reroll. They like what they’re doing, so they stick with it.

These players still want to win, but it isn’t an overiding concern. They aren’t going to sacrifice their own enjoyment just for the sake of hopelessly crushing their opponents.

US players are a little different. That whole having fun thing is secondary to winning. American players want to win, no matter what the cost is. Sure, maybe Bob from Texas really likes playing his warrior, but if warriors suck in PvP and DKs rock, well… just take a guess as to which one he’ll be playing at 80.

It’s not that these players don’t garner any enjoyment from playing a class they may not particularly like. Quite the opposite.

More than anything, these players like to win. Bob the Warrior doesn’t like Death Knights as a class, hates the mechanics, and finds the whole rune system to be clunky and awkward compared to the finesse of a rage bar, but he sure as hell likes to win.

These positions are exaggerated, but I hope it’s easy to see the mentality behind it.

To exaggerate it a little more, EU players want to have fun, win or lose. US players can only have fun when they win. Losing is intensely frustrating at best.

There’s obviously a major disconnect between these two schools of thought. One can’t understand why the other has this need to always win, and the other can’t understand why the one finds it acceptable to be a failure.

Draw your own conclusions on psychology, it’s 7AM and I’m going to bed now.