Weekend Confirmed Episode 43

Garnett, please stop talking about WoW.

This has been bugging me over the past few episodes, but I think if you're going to keep it up, it has to be said. You don't know what you're talking about.

Now I don't mean to mount a fanboy-esque defense of the game, or try to convince you that you're wrong about your opinions, but you are out of your depth. The "12 million people can't be wrong" defense can be a bit flaky, but in this case, 12 million people know way more about the game than you do. And to them, you sound like someone who plays Farmville debating Starcraft 2 race balances with someone like Leahy. There are WoW podcasts that pull in more listeners than your show every week, where people sit around talking about minutia of mechanics, and while that may be considered a niche audience, it is a fairly large one.

Everyone has a right to their own opinion, and you may argue you have the experience to justify shouting yours from the rooftops. I won't proselytize you on an experience you are just not interested in. But when you make snyde reductive comments about a game you haven't really played in 5-6 years, that some would say you never truly experienced it's potential even back then, it sounds silly. You throw a temper tantrum, and never let any of your co-hosts complete what they're saying without interjecting.

The fact that you think level 15 is an accomplishment in this game is crazy in itself. I appreciate you dedicated some time to give it a shot, but if you want to honestly say that you have had enough to make an educated analysis I have to disagree. Earlier today I played to level 15 with a fresh character, on a fresh realm, with no support structure or BoA heirlooms to grant me bonus experience. I ran through quests I had never done before, spent my time reading through them and leveling professions, and I was half way through level 15 in 4 hours of play time.

I've never been a fan of the argument that you need to dedicate a ton of time to a game you're not enjoying to reach the true experience. FF17 sounds like a terrible game to me, and every apologist that claimed you had to make it through 30 hours of a linear tutorial to reach the good part made me shake my head. But 4 hours in an MMORPG, is nowhere near enough to justify the attitude you deploy against WoW. You make second-hand reductive comments about the end-game you've never played. You claim the game is nothing but just mashing keys, when it has about 20 times as many actions available as the average console action game, and manages to balance them all well in both end-game raiding and player vs player. And while WoW may have the odd "collect 5 goretusk livers" quests, I could trivialize 90% of the games on the market right now as "go from point A to point B killing all dudes in between".

Other games may pile on the scripting, shooting an in-game matinee at you once and a while to compel you through the levels. No matter what level of polish they've applied, they can all be reduced to "pushing keys". Leveling up all the unlocks in every CoD game takes just as much time as hitting the level cap in WoW, and with much less diversity in experience. Playing as an "OCD" achievement whore on your console and S-ranking as the Bombcast crew like to refer to it, has easily as much grind that an MMO. I'd even argue that they do it with much less finesse, as Blizzard dedicates so much time reducing those types of grinds.

I'm getting side-tracked into a defense I didn't want to write, so I'll sum it up. Love WoW or hate WoW, that is your right, but you need to calm down while other people are talking about it. Your co-hosts are too polite to tell you, and maybe they sympathize with you and the audience members that share the same depth of knowledge of the game, but you don't know anything about it anymore. Interact, question, but please stop judging the game and cheering when a friend decides to take a break.

Why do it to WoW when you wouldn't do it to any other game?