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[1.Local]: The week in reader perspectives

Lisa Poisso
Updated ·6 min read

[1.Local] serves up a smattering of reader comments from the past week, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Our readers are pretty cool. Oh sure, WoW Insider gets a fair share of senseless rants, immature finger-pointing and off-topic flaming in the comments area. But if you've never taken the time to dip into the reader comments, you might find you're missing something pretty special. It's not the Barrens in here. You'll discover a growing community of readers that looks forward to spending their day together, chatting and debating the latest issues in the World of Warcraft. Sometimes it's silly, sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's controversial – but I have to hand it to you, readers, it's always engaging.

This week, readers pulled up a chair to a number of engaging conversations, from writing their own WoW-ku to analyzing their reactions to PvP Season 4 gear changes or to "subliminal" images in machinima. In the shadow of the coming expansion, many readers seem to be focused on rediscovering the joy of playing for the sake of playing – avoiding slogging through raiding or dailies as a dull, joyless chore. [1.Local] surveys a slice of all of it. As always, be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.



Budd's bag: Scam, exploit or service?
Readers got into a tussle over terminology of whether escorting players into Zul'Aman on someone else's raid ID to complete the bag reward quest was a scam, an exploit, a service ... or something else entirely. Jagoex commented, "Liel, I think you got your analogy a little mixed up. This isn't like paying someone simply for a service like lawn work or painting. It's like paying others to do work you are supposed to do. A better analogy would be to pay someone else to do your homework for you. Sure, it gets the job done and you worked to have the money to spend it however you wish, but there is something inherently wrong with relieving oneself of such responsibility... especially when that responsibility is fun and makes you a better player too.

"Now don't get me wrong. I do not think less of people who take this individual up on his offer. However, I do believe that they are selling themselves short. If Bliz agrees, they'll nerf it like they did the Chess event loot chest in Karazhan."

Krizzlybear sweeps the WoW-ku challenge
With a sharp eye for an inside joke, Krizzlybear won the internets with the best haiku-style verse in this week's WoW-ku challenge. His zinger played off a comment posted in last week's thread about feeling remorseful at killing ogres:

"Hate killing ogres?
In time, you'll get used to it.
-A.M. the L.K."

Readers eye "subliminal" images with suspicion
Readers reacted strongly to "subliminal" images in Olibith's Tunasushi machinima in one of this week's Moviewatch creations. Were the images artistic, were they subversive, were they inappropriate -- or did they matter at all?

While readers seemed anxious, machinima creater Olibith took things much more lightly: "I was just trying to add more jokes to this video. If I ever felt like making those images subliminals, you'd never saw them and you'd be eating sushis naked in a schoolyard right now. Consider this as the only apologies you'll get. Time to watch WoW machinimas frame by frame to know if it is still art might have just begun -- have a nice time."

Season 4 gear requirements: yay or nay?
The debate continued over new requirements for Season 4 PvP gear. From Heraclea: "A lot of people seem to think that it's easy and trivial to obtain 1600-1700 ratings. These folks are in for a rude awakening. People were able to achieve these ratings relatively easier because they had a steady stream of players who used Arena to gear up eventually, and didn't mind losing all that much. I know, I'm one of them. Call me a scrub if you like. I don't care.

"For anybody's rating to go up, somebody else's rating must go down. It's really quite simple. That's how the system works. High ratings rest on the foundation of people willing to play even if they lost -- because even losers were eventually rewarded. Take that motivation away, and you remove their motivation to try. This means that people who babble on about 'welfare epics' and how this change means that 'skill' is now required fail at math.

"As I've said before, enjoy your new queue times, champs. I'm betting on a reset a couple weeks into the season, once the realities of arithmetic defeat the expectations of half of those folks who imagined that their skills were l33t. Arena will be as pointless and juvenile as ever, but the coming firestorm from all those who fancied themselves winners before promises to be truly amusing to watch."

Ease off the throttle and enjoy your game
Meegeekai breathed a sigh of relief at reading our article on stopping to smell the in-game roses. "Good article!" Meegeekai wrote. "It really is about how you set your attitude. I have been going crazy over the dailies since the patch as I need the dough for the epic flyer. I have limited play time, so the game quickly became a job. Had to stop and start taking my time. Pick them up when I can, but really need to bring some variety back into what time I do have to play. Made a big difference. Oh, and the fishing advice rocks. Sometimes if I only have an hour or so I just 'go fishin'."

More on finding your own playstyle and niche
Finding your own play niche was a continuing theme for many readers this week. "I post here a lot and this article and the 15 Minutes of Fame section in general has evaded me until now," confessed ShafeNutS. "I have been very frustrated with WoW lately and have been debating letting my accounts go unpaid because of general WoW headaches. Hearing about others and the things they enjoy about WoW makes me remember some of the things I haven't stopped to enjoy lately. The OP was a very uplifting story for me thank you for sharing. All this NE talk makes me wanna roll a Druid, and when she mentioned badge gear I totally realized there are still servers that don't have it yet and I have five pieces. Then I also realized I need to cut back on PT and really enjoy the time I do play."

Caw! Caw! Caw!
And finally, we feel obliged to point again to this post about how a flock of druids on the Dark Iron realm ruled the roost with a server event that hit on all cylinders. Readers roared their approval: "Awesomtacular," summarized Harmun. "Wunderbar. So cool it hurts." We agree!