"Welfare" is Stupid

| Thursday, June 25, 2009
Gevlon has become a man of the underdog, advocating for the handicapped players who cannot play constantly. Oh yes, he is standing up and showing that welfare is destroying WoW for those most vulnerable. Sadly, as is typical, he's managed to still be a complete asshole and wrong. Both at the same time: he's a talented guy. Let's find the fun.

"Military dictatorships where huge tax is collected and spent on the army are usually much more developed and having much higher GDP than socialist dictatorships, spending on welfare."
This ignores that military dictatorships so often have outside support or unusually valuable natural resources far in excess of their need. See Iraq, US support, and oil for more information.

"Gnomegaddon found the real reason (/bow). As you know Blizzard will implement a welfare system, where you can get Naxx25-Ulduar25 gear for no effort, just by grinding 5 mans."
This is an easy one: "No effort" followed immediately with "grinding."

"He will be much less geared than the facerolling moron, who spend his infinite free time (unaffected by working or learning) on grinding 5-mans. If Gnomegaddon logs in, sees a "LFM 1 mage to Ulduar 10", he'll have practically 0 chance to get accepted against a completely useless facerolling M&S, due to much worse gear."
As before, the M&S, with S meaning slacker, is using his unlimited free time to get better gear. So the slacker is putting in a lot of time and he's a moron for using an efficient source of gear?

If anything I see this being a boon to infrequent players. Limited time or unpredictable schedules aren't kind to raiding, but they work well with the much shorter heroics. Most guilds use some sort of system that rewards contribution to the guild, usually by some measurement of attendance such as DKP. Our gnomish friend would likely have very little DKP or other pull in the loot system, so getting gear outside of raids is a very good option.

"If some new player reaches level cap, he will be completely uncompetitive against the ilvl226 M&S. Normally, his ilvl200 blue/crafted epic would be enough to get into starter raids. I'm damn sure that you can clear the siege area with a full 200 group if they know what to do. It's proven that you can clear all T7 content in ilvl 160.

Due to the welfare system he has no other option than join the welfare leech class, stay out of raiding for months to grind enough badges just to apply.
People expecting new players to be overgeared is hardly new and not the fault of badges, it's the fault of people doing the unthinkable: wanting easy smooth runs.

"The upper class of the world (the raiders of Ulduar) are not really affected by welfare. No geared M&S will risk our positions as their skills are ridiculous. Our work will always be needed, both RL and WoW."
Wrong. This is actually really great for guilds in Ulduar or late Naxx. This means that they can recruit more easily and suffer much less from any loss of members. Easy badge gear means they don't need to scrutinize gear as closely since they can quickly gear them up if necessary. This is in fact the complete opposite of Gevlon's earlier claim that this hurts new players.

"If there would be an even field, the working person would be rewarded for his work. Even if he is poor, by the end of the day, he would be less poor. With welfare he can easily be more poor (compared to the society average) due to the fact that the lazy welfare leech got more money for doing nothing than he got for his work (after tax)."
Whether you start with no badges or 100 badges, you get the same number of badges for equal heroics. Is there a relative loss? Sure. That's a very limited perspective though. The bottom still gets higher. IRL a poor person in America is just as relatively poor as 200 years ago, or possibly even much worse, but by absolute standards they're much less likely to starve to death, end up in debtor's prison, or become an indentured servant. Moving up from the bottom to the lower middle class the difference is even bigger. Much of this is due to those damn socialist communist, anti-American safety nets called welfare.

"If there would be no welfare epics in WoW, the players would be forced to improve and "work", by becoming useful to the server community. They could only get gear by actually defeating bosses, or producing enough gold to buy BoE."
Heroics have bosses which must be defeated to get badges. Buying BoEs is nice, I won't argue with it. But the overall effect of badges is that a player can get better than naxx gear without having to run naxx, meaning that they can much more quickly be ready to help in Ulduar.

One more thing: the socialist always whine about the income differences, that the society is split into a rich and a poor class with no middle. Currently the WoW-PvE classes:

* Ulduar-raiding "rich"
* Naxx25 and Ulduar-siege raiding "upper middle"
* Naxx25 2 wings raiding "middle"
* Naxx10 raiding "poor"
* 5-man playing "very poor"

After the welfare system implemented, there will be no reward in Naxx or Ulduar. So the classes will be:

* T9 raiding "very rich"
* 5-man playing "very poor"

This allows the Naxx classes to much more easily move into the Ulduar classes and the 5-man classes can move up as well. This will do the exact opposite of what Gevlon claims. After this there will be no "poor who is not responsible for being poor" because anyone with an hour can be on the road to the gear needed for Ulduar.

I don't mean to imply by all this that I think the badge change is great. I think it's overkill. However I dislike seeing assholes pretend to be friends of the disadvantaged. I also dislike seeing people use the term welfare in WoW. Any attempt to equate 'welfare' in WoW and welfare IRL is the result of trolling or a mental defect such as virtual elitism or just plain stupidity.


artery said...

Thank you for this post! I just took a new job and I am not able to raid with my guild anymore--not even on at the times they go. But my guild is big enough that several are on at almost all times. For those of us who have RL commitments that prevent us from raiding the change for loot from badges are great--maybe too great--but I wont complain about that.

What i really don't get is the "welfare" comparison that these people make. IRL, welfare goes mostly to young mothers that can't work and those who for various reasons have no marketable skills to get work. When one is on welfare, you get a check at the end of the month and you get to watch Oprah and the People's Court while the rest of us slave away for the taxman. (There is more to it--but lets leave it at the cartoon level for those who scream Welfare in WOW).

In WOW there is no system where you log on and get a bag of loot at the end of the month because you have no marketable skills or a young child. You still have to log on for a some period of time and actually do something besides talk in trade chat in Dalaran. You have to do heroics--that takes time to find and form a group and then more work to defeat several bosses.

Are heroics easier now than they were in BC? Yes. Are they so easy that it is no work whatsoever? Nope. Sorry, they aren't--especially with a pug group.

Andrew said...

I'm part of the "older" generation that play WOW, if you consider 40 as old. That being said, my time i have for playing seems to shrink by the day purely due to work family etc. I've even taken the step to stop my subscription for a period of time as a result of more RL things to do.

When i was playing, I did not have the option to go on a raid, the time frame is just to great, Heroics, helping a few mates with quests and a sprinkling of BG's was the extent of my play time. I just could not commit to extended periods of time. So heroics were great in that regard as they were not long at all.

From my perspective, there were still challenges in doing a 5 man, for me they were still fun. Does that make me a M&S? no i don't think so. I hate the term welfare as i didn't just sit on my rear end and wait for gear to magically appear in my mailbox, i had to go work for it with the limited time that i had

Heywood Djiblomi said...

If not welfare, then how about "spoonfeeding"?

Klepsacovic said...

@artery: People like to use words that advance their interest: it's not anti-choice, it's pro-life; it's not murder, it's abortion; it's not easier gear, it's welfare and we all know that welfare doesn't have a very good image.

@Sojourner: Hardly old, though compared to a game founded on bored college students.

@Orgauth: Why the need to add negative labels? Call it what it is: Ulduar-quality gear for heroic-level effort/time/coordination. If that sounds bad to you, it's because you see a problem with that way of distributing loot and that is a completely okay opinion. What's not okay is trying to distort issues by using terms with loaded meanings, especially when the comparisons are not at all valid.

I feel like claiming Klepsacovic's Law which states that any discussion which at any point addresses the topic of loot will over time have an increasing chance of someone using the term "welfare" and no later than that point the discussion will be devoid of value.

Fish said...

"Sadly, as is typical, he's managed to still be a complete asshole and wrong"

LMAO I have thought this for sometime, I honestly had to stop reading his blog because of it.

Technically, wouldn't someone who takes a ton of time to gear themselves up no longer be a slacker? I mean they could still be a moron, but spending all that time to get geared, precludes the slacker label.

Anonymous said...

Personally I don't have a problem with the changes... though i do fear that people that can run instances 5-7 days per week will quickly outgear me.

I feel a bit sorry for my mates that are already itching because they are reliant on me getting some RNG love when we run Naxx etc...

In future they will be Uldiuar AND emblem geared, and I will still be Naxx geared, with 1/2 dozen badges to my name.

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