Welcome to the first edition of Reloading…
It has been quite some time since I’ve written a column for TenTonHammer.com. It has been so long that I can’t even find a copy of one of my original columns on the site. I guess they were just that awesome; even the Internet forgot about them.
Choosing a topic for the first edition of any column is a daunting task. It has to be something that people might actually care about. Unfortunately, what people really care about seems to be nothing short of obnoxious. At my most odious I can’t hold a candle to the most viewed videos on YouTube.
First up is Airport Pr0n by a spikey haired gent who, like many attention seekers, uses three names, Ray William Johnson. This video has generated over 2,900,000 views. Seriously? How many times can his mom watch that thing?
The next most popular home school video is Candy BBQ by EpicMealTime. It’s like a train wreck. You don’t want to watch, but you can’t turn your eyes away. This disaster had over 1,600,000 views. The main man in this little ditty wears a shirt that says “Sauce Boss”. There are far too many jokes in there to ever pick just one.
After watching those, I pretty much ruled out being popular. I don’t like to look up facts, detest grammar, and can’t be popular. Looks like a big win.
Just when it seemed that all hope was lost I came across a World of Warcraft article at GamesBeat titled “Why I (and probably 600,000 others) stopped playing World of Warcraft.” Again, seriously? Isn’t it a bit presumptuous to think that because they came up with a reason to do something, that every single other person must have the same reason? Many of you have heard of Occam’s Razor. The more educated of you have heard of lex parsimoniae. Whether you are in grade four or an MBA it all boils down to the theory that the simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation. Taking Occam’s Razor to the extreme makes headlines, or does it?
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Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime |
Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s Chief Executive thinks that players blew through the Cataclysm content faster than developers expected and because of this they unsubscribed until new content was available. This hypothesis seems logical to me. If I didn’t have so many alt characters I’d probably be bored with the game too.
GamesBeat disagrees with Mr. Morhaime. They believe that the game is simply too hard and that players quit in droves of nerd rage and face palming.
What we have here is a chasm of philosophy so wide that even Lady Gaga couldn’t come up with something to say about it. Blizzard thinks the game is too easy and a writer who believes to be representing every person who unsubscribed thinks the game is too hard. I’m not sure that there is a lot of common ground there other than they both play the same game.
Perhaps, just maybe, Mike Morhaime is right. Perhaps, it isn’t that the game is too hard, but rather that some gamers (not all) feel a sense of entitlement to experience content whether or not they are physically or mentally capable of doing so. I watched a great video the other day about this exact thing. Comedian Louis CK sums up how I feel about gamers who can’t see the awesome in a game because they feel entitled to something they simply aren’t capable of experiencing. Enjoy Everything’s Amazing and Nobody Is Happy.
If you are having issues with the new content then I suggest checking out the following pages.
Is WoW too hard? Is it too easy? This feels suspiciously like a three bears story I used to tell my kids.
Leave a comment and have your say. Anyone who doesn’t comment obviously agrees with me. Those who disagree model their lives after One Tree Hill.
Until we meet again,
John “Boomjack” Hoskin
