Thursday rant: Pandamoanium
I’m not sure why I subscribe to Gevlon’s blog anymore. Lately it provides fewer and fewer insightful posts on making money in WoW, and instead just seems to be post after post about how he considers a lot of players to be morons for having a different definition of the word “fun”. There are actually a few blogs on my blogroll that annoy the heck out of me because I read the posts and think “wow, I can’t believe you’re so far off the mark”, but I can’t bring myself to unsubscribe. I’m going to put it down to morbid curiosity. 
Gevlon has snatched hold of the $10 vanity pet concept and decided that only morons would spend tangible cash on intangible in-game rewards. He now seeks to understand why people want to own them (although I suspect he has no real desire to understand, he just wants to reiterate that it is folly.)
Figure 1: Morons collect these because they are stupid sheep
and like to waste time collecting shiny things.
Figure 2: Intelligent and sensible people collect these
because they like the challenge of collecting shiny things.
(Note: This is completely different from collecting pets and other worthless pixels)
Figure 3: Waste of time vs Not a waste of time.
As long as someone else’s idea of “fun” doesn’t interfere with my idea of “fun” then frankly they can spend their subscription any way they like, who the hell am I to dictate to them what’s fun? Who am I to tell them they’re a moron for buying a minipet, or spending weeks grinding for The Insane, or spending 5 nights a week raiding for server firsts? Where do I get off making those calls?
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Personally I don’t view Gevlon as a blogger, he’s a writer. He writes to incite and annoy you because it makes you comment and link his articles and that gets him a large readership.
I read him occasionally but refuse to add his blog to our blog list because I don’t really condone sparking debate just for the sake of well, sparking a debate. Blogging to me should be from the heart because its your personal opinion and views out on the internet for all to read.
And I love my vanity pets – AUD$22 to me is small change I’m not a teen working at Macca’s, it’s the same price of a new novel for my bookshelf so why not a couple of cute pets instead?
Lath´s last blog ..Spinning Emblems into Gold
He’s very interested in psychology, so I don’t want to judge him for wanting to explore that.
But I do resent the fact that he slaps the label of “moron” onto people who want to buy a minipet because it’s “fun”.
Fun can’t be the end of it. Fun must mean “I’ll enjoy showing off” or “I love having more pets than my friends”. He is asking people to explain WHY they think it’s fun – but he’s trying to lead them to say that it’s because they want to impress, or be accepted, or that they enjoy being competitive.
A baby Lich blasting a squirrel and then laughing his tinny, echoing, maniacal laugh is hilarious. It makes me laugh, and lord knows lately I haven’t had enough things make me laugh.
So my reasoning – the pets make me laugh. Laughing makes me feel good.
I guess that’s a classic “ape subroutine” – pet makes me laugh. Me want pet!
Now, if he left it at that – and simply said “you’re buying this pet because you’re playing to the tune of your subroutines” (god I’m sick of that term), that’d be fine. But he feels the need to tack on a “and that’s stupid” insult onto everything.
Just because it’s ape, irrational, uneconomical, unessential – doesn’t make it wrong or stupid. He can’t get that.
I’m all for a good discussion or debate, but his blog is so one-sided, repetitive, and preachy lately that I don’t think I’ll bother reading much longer. It wasn’t so bad when there were more gold posts, but now it seems to be 95% amateur psychology, with him looking down his nose at people who don’t subscribe to his ideals.
Meh.
Like I said in one part of my post – I don’t subscribe to the idea that doing “pointless” things makes you a moron.
As Tobold said – sometimes we just want mindless entertainment.
I could go get a cheap movie ticket, buy a book or a DVD, or I could buy a pet. Nobody would give me a hard time if I bought myself a DVD; but I’m a moron for spending real money on digital vanity items.
I don’t buy it.
I really don’t mind if someone says to me:
- I think grinding reps is pointless
- Collecting pets is a waste of time!
- Titles are a useless timesink
- Why do you need 100 mounts?
That’s opinion. You’re welcome to it. I have similar opinions about other things in the game, like PvP. Or camping the Time Lost proto. I don’t see the value in doing those things (personally).
But unlike Gevlon, I don’t feel the need to call people morons if they enjoy doing mindless and “pointless” things. I think that’s the take-home.
I don’t mind you telling me that I’m wasting hours grinding reps, doing dailies, collecting pets. I already know that (and probably agree). But calling me a moron – that’s just not cricket.
(sorry for the multiple comments, I just keep thinking of “one last thing”)
You like grinding? Yes, you ARE crazy!
I’m crazy, but not a moron!
I have a herb/miner alt, absolutely LOVE doing laps of the basin with her – finding a big lump of saronite, or finding a frost lotus, is fun. It’s not a very good way to make money (compared to when I play the AH), but it’s a bit of mindless fun while I chat on vent.
Ditto for fishing, or grinding for just about anything else. I enjoy immersing myself in something completely mindless. It’s relaxing, and I do consider it fun.
But I do acknowledge that it’s a bit weird to like grinding that much
I totally agree with you here! I too have considered taking Gevlon off my blog list. He’s just gone over the top ranty for me. I enjoyed his how to make gold posts and some of his mocking of “morons”, but now it’s gone political, socio-awareness and I just can’t be bothered with it.
I have 113 pets. I have about 113k gold. I play 3 or 4 nights a week in a moderately competetive guild (Top Alliance guild on our server for strict 10-man achievements – brag brag). I play for relaxation and enjoyment, not for analysis of why I play a certain way. I like pets. They make me smile. They make my freinds smile when the give them to me. I make gold so I can buy all the worthless tat that is in the game (mammoth, motorbike, Haris Pilton bag) and also the best gear that I can get.
Mostly though, I play for fun. I socialise. I have made many friends through WOW, met a few of them and I chat daily to a lot of them, in and out of the game.
I think Gevlon would class me as a wasteful, moron who is as stupid as the person who buys resilient parchement for 5g off the auction, but I kind of prefer being the girl next door who has nice pets and admirers who buy her flowers and gets great pleasure from both.
Sephrenia´s last blog ..Squeeee! I can haz a pandaren monk 
I think Gevlon would have kittens if he knew how much gold I dumped into “Realm First Grand Master Tailor”
People liked being able to buy the pets so much that Blizzard “ran out” of the digital item after a week and had to fix their database to be able to let people buy them again. My bet is that they ran out of digital codes, and they just underestimated the popularity of the items or something… I see the monks & little KT everywhere on my server. People like in-game pets, so I don’t see collecting them as a problem. It’s fun.
I find Gevlon annoying too. He’s just so negative about just about everything. I have given up his blog and only look if I see some title catchy enough to engage my curiosity, and the large majority of the time, I give up less than halfway through because he goes on and on about idiots, which is anyone who doesnt subscribe to his view.
What is the purpose of this game if not to have fun? That’s what we pay $12-15 a month for. That is REAL money, btw. In-game gold is like in-game pets. What are you going to DO with it? It has no value either, but heck, if it makes you happy to have a tons of it, then go with it, if it makes you happy to have a fawn, then go for that.
This game is about having FUN, however you enjoy it. From his writing style, I often think he doesnt have fun playing the game and that is a sad thing.
In reality, Gevlon is not a goblin, just a regular internet troll. He talks about the ease of which one can write without mistakes while his posts are riddled with errors. He never responds to any well-reasoned comment disagreeing with him, only the ones full of holes that are easy targets. And his arguments -are- full of holes, he’s just too blind to see them. Or he does see them and just muscles on anyway, not understanding that he is a “social” merely by doing things he doesn’t find any enjoyment in to explain the process to others for their consumption.
He’s just not worth reading anymore, besides to watch the train wreck.
My game, my money, my pleasure, my decision…
Gevlon, divert you considerable intelligence to something useful
Shon
xxx
I see the ingame pets as Blizzard’s foray into a luxury-item micropayment service. Lots of people do this, although usually with a points-based system.
XBOX Live lets you buy custom avatars, skins, premium media, downloadable (usually add-on) content with their points. You purchase points with real money, and trade them for either “luxury item” benefits, or in the case of DLC add-ons, new functionality (the “practical” side of micropayments).
Champions Online lets you purchase additional costume pieces using their points system.
Bioware’s new Dragon Age also supports this through the EA store – you can purchase new content which goes beyond luxury items, as it adds new areas, stories, characters and items to the game – albeit this is a single player game, so this is all added value, not “something you need to buy to keep up with everyone else”. It’s worth noting that every special feature that comes with the deluxe edition of Dragon Age is available as points-based DLC, so you could conceivably retroactively upgrade your “standard edition” to the “deluxe edition” if you so choose.
Usually, the price of a sum of points is small ($1 = 100 points in the xbox system, I think), and the price of points items is likewise small. The benefit to this is that they can sell the points in one normal-sized transaction ($10 or more), then use the points to sell you cheap items for $1, $0.50, and so on. In a normal ‘virtual’ market where credit cards are normally the only means of conducting these sales, it would be impossible to sell this cheap, as credit cards normally take off a flat-fee ($0.25 or so, I’m led to believe), on top of its percentage fee (2% or so) – meaning that your $1 transation would lose 27% of its value to processing fees, and your $0.50 transaction would lose 52% of its value.
By contrast, a point system sells in $10 batches, which means you’re only spending about 4.5% on overhead processing fees (less if you can sell in batches of $20).
Anyway, where am I going with all of this? Points-based microtransaction systems are becoming common, and this is certainly just an extension of this trend. I think the price point Blizzard has set ($10) is actually obscenely high for what you get, but lacking a points-based system, they can’t charge you just $1 or $2 for these things without taking it up the ass in terms of processing fees.
Microtransactions are going to be something we definitely see more of – but I don’t think Blizzard can make a habit of charging $10 for everything. Recall that the cost-to-produce any given individual panda or lil’ KT is essentially nil – the profit they make just has to be enough to pay the artists to build the models and textures, but that’s a static one-time cost. Once that’s made back, and it likely will be very quickly, it’s almost 100% profit.
So I’m not philosophically against this kind of system, I just think Blizzard has to more carefully consider their prices if they make this an ongoing trend. Donating to the MAW foundation was a nice way to sidestep it this time (sure it costs $10, but half of that goes to charity) but I’m not sure that’ll be possible going into the future.
As a sidenote, one concern I have with ‘points’ systems is that we’re effectively breaking our perfectly valid real-world currency up into tens of units of virtual currency that can only be used for one thing because credit card processing fees make it impossible to do microtransactions in units of “real cash”, so I wonder if we won’t see some sort of unified microtransaction service pop up sometime?
Ok, I’ll need to actually sit down and read this through when I get home (I’m on my lunch break and pressed for time), but lemme just say, @ Gev: stop yucking people’s yums, man. It’s like when your co-worker sits down next to you with a thing of cottage cheese during your lunch break, and your other co-worker is like, “Ew, man, how can you eat that? That’s nasty.” It’s like, maybe he LIKES the cottage cheese. Maybe it’s seriously delicious to him. Stop yucking on his yum. You’re totally ruining his lunch experience.
Averna´s last blog ..OMG a MEME
Gevlon’s shift from blogging about gold-making to social commentary is why I’ve removed the blog from my Blog Roll.
Collect what you want, do what you want. Sure, if people demonstrate actual stupidity I have no problems with calling it out – my blog demonstrates as much! – but um, there’s not much difference between collecting tons of gold and collecting achievements or pets. Both are challenging activities.
@Averna: On my ‘lunch break’ right now reading the response and I just literally chocked on my soup with laughter.
I used to enjoy the money making posts. But then he made fun of someone for helping out his girlfriend (!!!) when his guild ‘ran her’ through VoA25 even though she was so undergeared.
Like.. what’s it to you? If they wanna help her out, let them help out damn it, without you going “OHMYGOD! LOSERS!”
I think Gevlon would burst a gasket if he knew how many times I’ve answered a trade ad to do a transmute or make some flasks and NOT ACCEPTED the tip. Sometimes, I feel like a care bear. I guess, in his books, that makes me a Moron.
Keeva I saw your excellent post on Gevlon’s site about his tirade on the new minipets and I couldn’t agree more with what you wrote. A few weeks ago I decided to stop reading his blog for a lot of the same reasons that other posters have listed here. Gevlon’s blog has unfortunately gone from being one about WoW and his in-game economic strategies to one about his personal philosophies. He spends more time now on calling people out as noobs and morons and “welfare leeches” than anything else. Now, he can write about anything he wants, but I don’t feel the need to read a blogger that constantly struts around saying how smart they are and how dumb everyone else is just because they don’t subscribe to the same elitist viewpoint.
Arrowrest´s last blog ..Blizzard Buys Water Skis!
Wow Keeva, this guy… what to say? He’s just ignorantly throwing around psycho-babble to justify his misanthropic world view. He claims to have insight into the psychological aspects of why people play WoW and yet there is not a single mention of the game’s exploitation of the the player’s Pavlovian Response in any post on his blog? FAIL. All his pontifications about “ape subroutines” are nothing but justification for his superiority complex. Pathetic.
People still read that waste of a blog?
Seriously?
It isn’t even good for learning how to make gold.
I once posted a topic about a point he made that I agreed with, but I admit, I can’t stand his dribble.
Completely agree with your post Keeva. I like pets and collecting them — the fact that part of the money went to my favorite charity just sealed the deal for me making the purchase.
Although I agree that Gevlon has become a hypocrit with poor personal insight (what could be more “social” than writing a blog?), he has the right attitude toward these pets. That is: they stink.
Why are the two of the best (and argueably, the absolute best) pets in the game not available via playing the game?
Blizzard has always made a big deal about banning any player who used exploits to “trivialize the content of the game.” Well up until now collecting pets was a great part of the game. Now that you just f’ing buy pets instead of working to earn them in-game, the entire mini-pet aspect of the game has been trivialized. The fact that the best pets are simply bought with 10 bucks completely cheapens mini-pets, cheapens achievements, and just cheapens the game.
What annoys me most about the people who bought these pets is that they’re encouraging blizzard to continue this trend. So, to everyone who bought one of those pets: GO FCK YOURSELF!
Couldn’t agree more, and he is off my list of daily websites to read.
- Learning how to make gold in WOW = Yes please.
- Reading pointless tirades from some that I don’t even agree with = hell no.
I Agree with Bellwether and Jesharai in that gevlon doesn’t know what he’s really talking about.
His post he wrote actually reminded me of an essay written by an American about Pokémon. He said that after years of research he came to the conclusion that Pokémon was immoral and used by Japan to brainwash American children
. Yet he failed at spelling the name Bulbasaur correct (he said it was bulbasure) which is a very strange thing to get wrong after “years of research”.
That essay gave me an interesting and unpleasent feeling of wanting to cry,laugh and throw up all at the same time. Just like Gelvon post did.
This post REALLY made me laugh. I think I read the Greedy Goblin around the time of the “Look we did Ulduar 10 in full blues” which was a genuinely interesting post, but more and more his posts became about “everybody but me is a moron” so yeah I took him off my reader, I don’t enjoy reading that kind of thing so I don’t read it.
Moreso, I remember he basically called anybody who doesn’t use Auctioneer or some varient of, and undercut people by insane amounts, is an idiot and bad at making gold. >.> I actually can’t stand that amount of undercutting and make gold just fine tyvm.
Only reason my gold is so low is the motorbikes and pets I like to buy, and epic flying for my alts, and I don’t enjoy spending almost all day every day in front of the AH, once in a while yeah cool, but not as much as he seems to.
Jaedia´s last blog ..Just An Update
[...] fact, Keeva at Tree Bark Jacket also made me smile with the longest rant about Gevlon I have ever seen. I agree with her entirely, [...]
I like reading Greedy Goblin largely BECAUSE I don’t always agree with him. He makes me stop and ponder “oh why do I think this? Is there another way I could think about this?” Because he’s so extreme, he makes me consider things I never would have otherwise.
There are flaws in his arguments. You certainly shouldn’t read GG to see some professional debating, you’ll be disappointed. But I like that he suggests a point of view that, while sometimes ridiculous, is different from the PC stuff you see everywhere else.
Ophelie´s last blog ..Think Pink
@Alyz – someone actually read my post! I feel obligated to elaborate… xD
For those who may not know (if you care) about what I was rabbiting on about re the Pavlovian Response and how it relates to WoW, here is is:
WoW is built on manipulating the work-reward-pleasure mechanism of the brain – you spend long amounts of time grinding mobs, doing quests, you get rewarded – you ding, you occasionally get a random blue drop or you win that long-sought-after epic, whatever and that makes you feel happy.
The reason this conditioning works is because the brain is hardwired to release chemicals that make you feel good when you get the “payoff” for a bunch of hard work – the biological incentive for doing something that keeps you alive. Hard exercise is a great example of something that hurts and yet makes you feel good because your brain rewards you for doing something good for you.
However, the brain can be tricked into making you feel good for something that wasn’t really of any consequence at all in terms of your survival for another day as a living organism.
In short, the reason people enjoy collecting pets or grinding reps or whatever is that they get that biological sense of reward for doing so – the game makes them do “work”, and then the game both predictably and also randomly rewards them for that work with something cool. Did I mention how over the moon I felt when I was levelling in Dustwallow Marsh and I got a Dark Whelpling when I wasn’t event farming for it? I was ecstatic, and I had wanted one of those things for the longest time, ever since I first learned about them. I even sent emails to my RL friends with a picture of me… err, I mean, my toon… with my new Dark Whelpling friend and they were like “WTF?!? what is this crap?!?” and I didn’t care because I was so so happy. But I digress…
People don’t collect pets or mounts or exalted reputations just because they want to “keep up with the Joneses” as Gevlon ignorantly proclaimed (although of course there will be some who do do it for that reason) – most people do it simply because it makes them feel good for the well-researched biological reasons I outlined. Even though I just quit WoW for the umpteenth time (I know, don’t ask lol), I will be up front and say that when I saw the two new pets my immediate reaction was “OOH SHINY!”.
It’s pretty obvious from his constant reference to “ape-subroutines” that he read that pathetic “Monkeysphere” article and had an epiphany. It’s no surprise that his rantings are as intellectually bankrupt as that same screed.
I have 100-and-something pets, but I don’t do it to be better than someone who only has 99.
If I cared how many my neighbour had, I would be constantly asking each person about their collection, or looking up their stats on the armory to see if I was “beating” them.
Certainly the cooler, rarer items are nice to show off – I had a huge amount of fun taking my Ethereal Trader through Stormwind and Ironforge while I was stealthed – watching everyone wonder what on earth he was, running through the city.. but I don’t “show off” my pets because I want to feel superior to people who don’t have them.
I have the rocket mounts. I get them out occasionally because, like the turtle mount, they crack me up. Cruising around at a snail’s pace on the blue rocket is hilarious to me. Hitting spacebar over and over on the turtle or doing laps of Dalaran is well worth the price I paid, for the laughs I get (and that others get, while I’m having gigglefits over it).
I will concede that sometimes, “cool stuff” is for showing off on the Dalaran bank steps. But Gevlon is way off when he thinks that every pet and mount that we ever get is purely to add another chalk mark on the board to represent what we have and what our neighbours don’t.
Cute and entertaining pets make me laugh – there’s really not much else to it.
The sound of my clapping with echo throughout eternity.
I check in on Gevlon every 2-3 weeks to see what’s up. I like how he started out, and I do enjoy some of the MotW posts, but the rest is crap these days. It’s never been on my blogroll because it has nothing at all to do with leveling, and I find that most people actually hate his methods rather than enjoying them.
But, he has his right to playing/doing whatever he wants just as much as the rest of us, so I’ll leave him to whatever he enjoys doing.
I didn’t buy the pets for myself because as much as I like the Panda’s kung fu goodness, I’m not really big on pets myself. I buy a lot of them in game and don’t mind grinding for some here and there, but I never actually use them. I’ve got a macro that randomly summons them, but I never remember to click it either. So it just wasn’t a reasonable purchase for me to make since it does take real money.
However, my wife really likes the minipets, so I went ahead and bought both of them for her the day that they were made available. She loves them, she uses them, and she has a blast showing them off to her friends and getting them excited about having them too.
If Blizzard makes a ton of money off of these, then so be it. I happen to love blizzard and their products. I’ve played every game they’ve ever put out, and at one time or another have owned every one of them as well. If Blizzard continues to live a long, healthy life because of my contribution to their wallets, then so be it. That just means more games for me to have fun with in the future.
Psynister´s last blog ..Vanity Pet Analysis: Lil’ K.T.
“… he is exactly the same as any other collector who collects something for the sake of having a collection, but either doesn’t see it, or decides to rationalize his behaviour as “better”.
^^^^^ It’s that simple. Gev collects gold. He’s already tested his techniques but continues to hit the gold cap.
Cute as pets may be, I do not like in-game pets, free or otherwise.
But in my, across multiple 80s, backpacks you will find:
‘Faded photograph’ of Link and Zelda gnomes
Well worn, and well loved toy that was a quest reward from the child in Terrokar forest for saving his friends.
Neither of those items in my backpack add value.
I do not expect anyone to agree, or understand, with my reasons for keeping them in my inventory.
However, I do feel that I have no right to criticize what others consider fun in game as it does not interfere with my in game enjoyment.
I see your point, but to be fair buying digital pets = money for blizz for next to nothing. Buying music from itunes you can burn to cd. no one can delete what u paid for.
Each to their own i guess but i think digital pets from blizz is just another crass marketing ploy to get as much money out of WoW fans as they can.
Well said
I collect mini pets but definitely not to have better ones than other people, that doesn’t make any sense to me at all. For example my druid’s favourite pets are the dragonhawks you can buy from vendors, they fly along with her as she zooms through Outlands
Yeah, you’re right about him calling pay-pet collectors morons.. he shouldn’t be doing it, because as you say, we’re all playing wow, which is equally pointless as collecting pets. It’s cheap entertainment.
I think each faction of wow player kind-of hates the other, though. Min/max raiders think it’s dumb to do anything in the game that doesn’t improve your kit. Casuals hate achievement hunters for screwing up a pug when trying to do something silly in an instance and wiping it. Raiders hate casuals for getting equivalent gear to them for anything other than raiding. .. and don’t get me started on PvP, Duelling and Arena.
“Cute”-haters, myself included, are actively annoyed by the train sets, Mr T’s, Costumes, and noise-making pets. I mean, really? If you want cute, I hear there’s a ‘Hello Kitty’ game that’s out there. Why don’t you go play that, so blizzard can set their art people back to making things that actually pertain to the game. But, then, I don’t think you’re dumb for liking cute pets, and in fact, I’m sure the “Cute” collectors out there think I’m taking the game too seriously. It’s just human nature.
@Chimy
Well said.
Psynister´s last blog ..AoE Grinding: Frost Mage Edition
The way I see it is that I could pay $15 for a month of WoW and farm a pet like the Oozeling and never get it.. or I can pay $10 now and get it right away. Granted, these 2 new pets CAN’T be earned in any other way, but seriously, people pay to change their sex, their race, their gender.. why can’t they buy vanity pets?
Hell, half of the Pandaren’s cost goes to charity anyway.
Abi´s last blog ..The Icecrown Citadel Progression Plan.
Kinda late on this post but…
I can’t speak to what goes on in Gevlons head but what I get out of his blog is not so much the belittling of people who collect minipets but the people who do so and then join a raid and leave after a few wipes because they can’t afford the repair bill.
These are the type of people who show up to a raid and perform poorly because they don’t take the time to learn a proper spell rotation or can’t afford to Enchant and gem the gear properly let alone buy flasks or buff foods. When the raid leader tells them they need to be replaced he is called an elistist or worse.
These are the people who complain so much that the content is too hard for them that Blizzard nerfs the instances so that anyone who does it after the nerf can never get quite the same feeling of achievement.
As for the real money pet’s I’m not sure people have a problem with the pet’s in and of themselves but they take it as just the beginning of the slide down to where you can buy gear with real money.
Now I know some say “so what I could care less” but to some the epic gear is like a trophy of their achievements in the game and it would be like going and buying a sports trophy and displaying it as some personal achievement.