[split] Stormrage Lurker Guild Discussion - Formerly known as Cat Beta

[Bun-Bun]

I hate to see this bickering within a group of people who have so much more in common than they have differences. I guess it's human nature to stress the divisive issues and ignore the unifying ones.

I don't think there is any fault to be assigned to anyone. No one has gone out to insult or disrespect anyone else. Different people have different opinions, and the modern 'philosophy' is to polarize and demonize. I would have hoped that the Lurker ideal was a bit higher than that. Perhaps it is, and a few folk just lost track for a moment.

Perhaps what is happening is inevitable. I'm only familiar with one other case, AoH years ago when EQ (IIRC) came out. A feud started between those who felt the EQ AoH players (many of whom had never even seen the website) were the 'true' AoH and those who thought only the people who actually participated in the guild were the true AoH. When the dust settled, many of each, and some in the middle (myself included) were gone.

I think you're greatly overestimating any frictions currently present, at least inasmuch as they affect how any of us plays WoW.

Perhaps it is the nature of the beast, perhaps it is a change in the people, but there was a time when you could spot a Lurker because s/he was doing strange things, trying strange tactics, and playing with strange builds, all out of curiosity. Now, there is no noticeable difference between a Lurker and any other player. That's not bad, that's not good, it's just changed. Some regret the change. I do. But the way others play has no bearing on how I play. And that seems to have been lost in the fury.

There are a raft of game design decisions that make Diablo-style variants much more difficult in WoW, for reasons of gameplay and time availability. And there are still a some of us that try strange things.
Much of my exploration has been with alts, which recent design changes have mitigated against.

I'll have to disagree with your statement that you can't see the difference in Lurkers. There is a degree of integrity and relaxed play in Lurkers that is sadly lacking in much of the WoW playerbase. Perhaps that's not the axis of change you were going for, but I must protest the generalization.

I will not venture a guess why Bolty started all this so long ago in D1 days. But I will say that it has always been a refuge from the inevitable bickering of guild fora. When the Lurkers guilds were set up during the WoW beta, I did not voice my objection because I thought they would have been temporary. Had I been around when the game went gold, I would have been worried about Lurker guilds, for the guilds and the site were overlapping entities, neither containing the other. And it was that precise situation which caused the problem long ago in AoH and is causing the same problem here.

I think it was clear fairly early on that the guilds are not the site and the site is not the guilds. I'm still not convinced there's a problem here.

I have no solution to offer other than tolerance for how others play and respect for those who were once (and may again be) your friends.

I'll try.