On Elitism and Free T8

As you may have heard, Emblems of Heroism and Valor have been phased out in favor of Emblems of Conquest. Everything that used to drop Heroism/Valor badges now drop the latter.

In short, yes, this means that as of 3.2, you can get T8.5 gear by running plenty of Heroics.

Naturally, the elitist are up in arms and furious QQ, the casuals are pleased they can gear up new 80 alts faster, and the intelligent realize that this, in essence, changes nothing.

There’s an attitude I’d like to talk about.

“I’m special.”

Let’s start with the basics. Nearly everyone suffers from this at one point or another, and in a single word, this is called “elitism”.

Some of us suffer from it a lot, some of us just have small, easily squashed inklings of elitism.

Pike over at Aspect of the Hare had a blog post up a while ago that exemplifies what I mean.

Essentially, Pike collected mini-pets long before they were fashionable. She had a random mini-pet button back when most people had a couple pets, tops.

I was different that way, and unique, because I was that willing to give up my bagspace for them. But I was never a collector so much as just a fan.

And then Patch 3.0 and Achievements came out. Minipets became summonable, and fashionable. Even though it sort of bugged me on a minor level that now everybody could and likely would become a minipet junkie, on the other hand the idea of actually having bag space again made me so ecstatic that any potential sadness caused by a loss-of-uniqueness was nullified.

And that, ladies and gents, is elitism in its purest form.

While Pike is nowhere near the level of this current QQ, it exemplifies the attitude.

You had something that was unique, something special. Something you sacrificed for and worked for. Then, suddenly, everyone else has it. You feel sad/bothered/betrayed, as “Blizzard has trivialized your achievements”.

Of course, Pike, being intelligent, recovered rather swiftly from this, and honestly never really felt any nerd rage in the first place.

Let’s get this straight here, Ulduar raiders. You worked hard for your epics. You raided long hours, painfully wiped, had triumphant wins and bitter defeats. You dropped Yogg-Saron before the nerfs, beat Hard Mode X before Y was nerfed.

People being able to get the same level of loot from much easier content in no way diminishes that. It’s all in your perception.

Brutallus being nerfed at the tail-end of BC didn’t diminish the prestige and skill of those who killed him before the nerf. You still beat him when he was hard. You can brag about it later, that you “downed Illidan before the nerfs” or whatever you want.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, can take that away from you. You have achievements now, that come with time stamps, to prove to everyone you downed the hard content when it was hard. You have unalterable, in-game records of your achievements.

And yet, you still complain.

Newsflash: You are not special, and never were.

You can try to say you are, act like you are, but you aren’t. You may be better than the majority of other players, be able to clear the hard content better and faster than 90% of the guilds out there.

How does that warrant your skills being worshiped? How does that warrant keeping the peasants in-line and the grand overlords (namely, you) in positions of, essentially, royalty?

It doesn’t and never will, and it is utterly insane to think for even an instant that it could ever work that way.

An elitist attitude means you want to deny the lesser mortals stuff on sole merit that you are better than they are.

Frankly, this disgusts me on a level I didn’t even know was possible.

I have three sentences  for all you egotistical, selfish elitist bastards:

Shut. The Fuck. Up.

Look, PvP gear has worked this way since BC launched. It takes a whole lot of effort to get the current season stuff. Then, when next season rolls around, the current season stuff becomes much easier to get. The skilled PvP players start getting all the new stuff, and those who aren’t as good now have access to the old stuff.

Let’s put it this way. The skilled players are always going to have the best gear. Those with less time or skill are going to have gear, too, but of lesser quality.

That’s how it works, that’s how it always has worked, and that is how it will continue to work.

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