I Hate Mila!

Mild mannered bloggers over at Are We New At This? and High Latency Life are tackling an important issue in blognation. Why all the hate on WoW? I mean, it has eleventy (.2) billion subscribers! Something must be going right over at ActiBlizzEnron. It is a curious (and good) question in many ways. Chris Cavelle tries to calm the masses and instead suggests we all enjoy some Mila instead.

Thing is, I hate Mila.

I mean, she was talented in that 70’s show, but her newer work in film has just been so much shallower.

I always have preferred red-heds to brunettes

I think she is losing weight, and I prefer curves to stick-women

The kids these days may like her, but I prefer a classier ladies – like Kate Beckinsale

Too much photo-shop

(See what I did there?)

All joking aside (and I really don’t dis-like Mila) and light-fun-poking at the topic – personal tastes leads to criticism – constructive or not. While I prefer to read opinions that are constructive, people are going to write what they feel like. WoW is held as the ‘standard’ in MMO’ing, love it or hate it. Their design decisions, as proven by the whole failed-wow-clone design cycle syndrome, has impacted the direction of the genre for many years. Current and Ex-players like to wax  their opinions on that impact, and the secret desire for every gamer to have every game “made just for me” ™.

Just like everyone critiques every speech, decision, and outfit worn by the POTUS due to the perceived impact it has on people’s lives, they do the same with things that impact their hobbies. Perhaps that isn’t an entirely relevant analogy, but you wouldn’t be able to guess the difference in importance reading some of those constructive criticisms (including some of my own.)

I played WoW for many years through the ups and downs, and had my fun with it. I’ll no doubt pop back in next expansion to see if it’s improved (for my tastes – important qualifier – I know many like it just as it is, even if sub numbers are shrinking). I think personally, I “hate” on WoW because the experience doesn’t work for me like it used to. And because I still secretly want to play it, I complain about it. So I can still be involved in the discussion somehow.

Of course, if you wade through the mass of WoW ‘bashing’, you’ll find some great gems in there that would indeed improve the game – and not just for whomever the author may be. You can see Blizz pushing for some (perhaps) real big changes (dissolving the holy trinity?) and adding features they swore up and down they never would do. Who knows, maybe Blizzard will Transmogrify their development. Will be fun to see. And bitch about. 🙂

Never fear my friends, I predict WoW complaining will drop to an all time low on December 20th.