Proven Fact: The Average WoW Player is a Complete Scrub

This article goes out to everyone in those #11-20 ranked PvE guilds, the duelists that barely miss Gladiator cutoff, the arena competitors still wearing Hateful gear, and everyone else that the average "pro" would consider a "newb." Almost everyone has been there at some point: You know, being a nobody that still strived to impress people, make friends, fit in, and be in a good raiding guild or on a competitive arena team. But when you're sitting there wiping on the nerfed Hodir hardmode and thinking your guild is completely awful and that everyone else farms him, or when your arena team is struggling to get 2350 for t2 weapons losing to facerolling cleave teams, just remember: there are always people... many, many people... out there that are far worse than you.

When TBC was about to launch, I was in a guild that killed Kel'Thuzad 8th in the United States and we did pretty well overall. However, we had also been farming Nax for quite a while and most guilds had at least gotten to 4-horsemen before the end of vanilla WoW. So when I went into a local gamestop for a midnight sale of The Burning Crusade, I was kind of expecting to overhear a lot of people talking about similar things (Naxxramas, their T3 characters, etc) but much to my surprise, almost everyone there was boasting about their amazing t1 and being "1-upped" by the studs who had a few pieces of tier 2 to flaunt. Even the screenshot contest where people brought in the best screenshots of their pimped out toons was full of people showcasing their awesome Nightslayer and Arcanist armor.

I didn't really think too much of it at the time because I lived in a smaller area at the time and figured it might have been a coincendental fluke. After moving to a more urban area for school, I have kind of been doing my own thing for a while now as far as WoW goes. I tend to avoid talking about the game at school or at all in public for that matter because it just seems weird to me; maybe that's just me. Anyways, as fate would have it, some issues came up and forced me to leave town due to a family emergency and I don't have my own computer at the place I'm staying at. Enter the amazing LAN center/cybercafe I found here.

So it's basically the first time I've been to a LAN center slash cyber cafe and I heard it was the only one in town, too. I kind of expected some insane rates that gouge money from people too naive to get their own computer, but the rates are surprisingly cheap. $2 per hour, $3 for 2 hours, $10 for a "day pass" which is unlimited access until they close. Not bad, eh? The computers, while not state-of-the-art, arn't too bad either. There are about 40 of them and most of them are quad-core systems with 4GB of RAM and pretty good video cards. Anyways, more to the point.

I've had to come to this LAN center for almost a week now in order to attend raids online, do school work, everyday things, and of course, get my Aion fix. The first day here, no one really paid much attention to me and I just kind of did my own thing with our Ulduar raid. The second day here, though, I was flying into Ulduar on my gladiator frostwyrm and the guy next to me says, "whoa, is that the arena mount?" and after telling him that it is, he's all like, "wait, your character name is Serenn?" I'm basically like, "uhh yeah..." all casually and remarkably his next words are, "did you used to play a warrior???" After initially wanting to facepalm IRL, and after a slight eye-roll, I tell him I did and of course he explodes into fanboyism and explaining how he knows me, watched my videos, and of course, wanted arena tips. He shows me his character and he's basically a level 80 in savage/hateful gear in a guild that still wipes on Grand Widow Faerlina. I kind of felt bad for the guy so I did give him some tips with his talent spec, gearing, arena, etc.

Seemed pretty harmless to me until the next day or so and word starts getting around in the LAN cafe that "omg serennia plays here" which of course leads into a plethora of other random questions including the obligatory, "dude, do you still talk to that swarm guy?" The questions and comments from all of them were all over the place, mostly harmless and random, but all of them had one thing in common: they were complete scrubs in-game. I don't really mean that in a negative way, either. They all seemed pretty nice and funny, but their characters all seemed like they had just freshly dinged 80, yet they've been playing since the release of Wrath.

In fact, of everyone I've seen that plays WoW at the LAN, I'm the only one that raids Ulduar. Other people I've also met here are either leveling up to 80 still, do Wintergrasp or BG's, run Heroic: Violet Hold, wiping away in Naxxramas, and even some that raid horde cities on a daily basis. So, it really got me to thinking: since all these guys seem to be having a blast and all of the "top" arena players seem extraordinarily bored with the game, who exactly is the scrub? The player who's always rushed to be the best, strived to do anything it takes to win, and almost kill themself to min/max their character, or the one that doesn't give a rat's ass about his socket bonuses, making sure his meta gem works, or the fact that he might not be getting a challenger title this season?

Although there isn't very much of a deeper meaning to this article than what you see at face value, just keep this in mind next time you see Blizzard nerf another Ulduar encounter (*cough* Mimiron) and cry about them catering to casuals. There are a lot more of them than you think.