I'm famous for slamming death knights and blood elves, and I like getting under peoples' skin when they take themselves too seriously, but when it comes down to it, I can respect anyone who plays this game for the fun of it. It's a really great game, the best MMO we've ever seen, and they deserve every penny we give them.
But I have to question why people are playing sometimes. We all know that there is a gear treadmill, and everyone needs to take a few steps on that treadmill or they fall behind the gear curve. But that's just a condition of the world, and we do what we can to try and improve ourselves as new content is released.
But do you really play for gear? Do you choose what you participate in only for gear?
If you hate what you're doing then the rewards will never be enough, trust me. I've been at peak progression in PvE in both BC and Wrath, and accumulated about a quarter million kills in PvP. All of these things have rewarded me gear, but it isn't why I did them. I did it because it was fun.
When I raided Kara twice a week for a year it wasn't because I was missing some gear, I was going back and enjoying the encounters with friends, their alts, their friends, and their friends' alts. It was a pleasant experience.
When I started PvPing back in the play-all-day-or-die old ranking system, I didn't do it because of gear. I topped out at the blue set on several characters and got to meet lots of people I otherwise wouldn't have interacted with. I even got to know the players on the other faction and we built friendly rivalries.
What I didn't see was begging. I didn't see quitters. I didn't see people asking 'what's in it for me?'
We knew that we were doing things in the long run for our own personal gain, that's a given. Things will work out if you do your part. In pvp healers got shafted for a long time on honor gains because of the way kills were calculated but it didn't keep them from participating.
Did you catch that?
The healers participated even though they were hugely shafted on honor gains, and back then they had some pretty low survivability. We were gibbed all over the field, we were harvested like wheat by rogues and easy kills for many classes. But when we saved lives and turned the tide of battle, we got a reward that wasn't measured. We felt pride.
It would be nice if anyone had any pride anymore, or if anyone had any shame.
Let's be clear - there's no shame in losing. PvP is like any other competition, if you fight hard and you lose, you have to tip your hat to the winner, they earned it. It doesn't mean someone automatically "sucks." You can't claim to be any good unless you play good competition, and if your opponent is just as good as you then they're going to win sometimes. Accept it. It's good for your healthy sense of competition to lose once in a while, but you should never learn to like it or let it happen to you, that's just poor sportsmanship, and this brings me to the point of my post:
Never say "let them win."
It's probably the most insulting thing you can say - to yourself. It means that you don't know how to compete, it means that you're doing something you don't like for rewards you may not get, and it means you have a poor sense of sportsmanship.
If your situation is so bad that you have to find a way to ease your own pain by appealing to your fellow combatants to let the other team win so the match ends, you shouldn't be playing. You need to log out, evaluate why you think this game is fun for you, and don't log back in until you really know what you want.
We all know that the game (and the forums) are playing a small part in filling the gaps that therapy and parenthood don't cover, so here's one old man laying it out for you:
Go play something else, and come back when you're ready.
In before 'cool story bro' and 'let them win' and TL;DR.
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