I’d be curious to know if chinese players’ play patterns are different to those in the subscription model. Or is the cost so cheap that no one really sees cost per hour as something important to work around?

No idea. I do know that none of the MMOs I know of that are available here charge by the hour, though.

OK, I’ll buy that. Personally I like to push myself. Settling for 2 stam less because I can’t be bothered to spend 10 minutes improving would leave me dissatisfied.

On the other hand if we’re steaming through Naxx half-asleep then I accept that mandatory consumables is a silly requirement.

I still think that trying to get a whole bunch of different players to appreciate when limited slacking is reasonable and when it’s killing us is a real hornet’s nest. If you’re herding cats “this way” works better than “pick a way to suit yourself as long as it doesn’t slow us down.”

I wouldn’t throw someone out of a raid just for having used green gems. I probably wouldn’t even notice unless they’d used wildly silly gemming choices. Because green gems are actually good enough.

The main reason I use blues is because either a friend who is a jewelcrafter offered them to me, or I have more gold than I know what to do with. But if gold was even remotely an issue, you better believe I woulnd’t be throwing it away on such minor increases.

The main thing is that good enough really does mean good enough. It doesn’t mean ‘not good enough’ (which is what turning up to ulduar in ungemmed green gear would mean)

I think that’s the danger with good enough, you end up having an internal dialogue over many many game decisions that are actually more fun if you just get on with things and don’t worry about them.

I also think his understanding of the maths here is flawed. Aiming to get your stats to 85% of what the best raiders have does not mean your raid will function at 85% of their performance, skill being equal. If your tank has 85% of the health, 85% of the armour, 85% of the evasion and is being healed by healers with 85% spellpower who oom faster you may be closer to 40% of the better geared raid’s potential.

Next consider the social aspects. If you run a guild where some people slack and some people try the guild will normally fissure once you meet hard content. I think Ulduar will probably do this to a lot of raid guilds that are happily farming Naxx at the moment.

I also think that sometimes these decisions are best if they are automatic. When I was raiding if I got a new piece of gear I gemmed it with blue gems and got it enchanted. If I had had the option – hmmm, should I slack and watch TV instead of doing dailies then possibly I wouldn’t have bothered but being in a guild where things were quite competitive for raid spots meant I didn’t feel able to do that. So I just got on and did it rather than wondering what corners I could and couldn’t cut.

These attitudes become habits and if you train your raid to slack untraining them once the content becomes hard will be very difficult.

Regarding “laziness” I think the point is if I have to wipe 4 more times per night which should have been kills because you and some others can’t be bothered to run some dailies to buy blue gems/enchants it’s annoying to me. I don’t see any issue in viewing slackers as lazy where it is impacting raid performance.

I do think it can go too far, eg requiring flasks on farm content that you really aren’t going to wipe on. I can see why guilds simply have rules though and expect people to stick to them, it adds a lot more decision-making for the raid leaders to decide well Noth is a no-flask boss but Patch is a flask boss etc.

In the end WoW is just a game and if you want to spend time with your spouse or watching TV you should do that. Regarding fun if you think it’s fun wiping in Ulduar because your unenchanted green-gemmed tank gets two-shotted then I expect you’ll be in for a world of enjoyment very soon!