Why the elitest attitudes?!

[Cantatus]

Originally, it may have been - "sure - to make sheet metal, you get ..."; now it's more like "go to www.eqtraders.com

I believe this has more to do with the fact that you can now legitimately task out of EverQuest than people's changing attitudes. Before SOE allowed this, many of us had many print outs to which we referred. I have a huge, black binder filled with maps, tradeskill recipes, vender locations, etc. and I frequently used it to look up information for friends, guildmates and just random people who didn't have the information handy and couldn't come to this site without logging all the way out.

Nowadays, that black binder is sitting under my bed. Whenever I need to look up something, I hit alt-tab and do a search. If it's that easy, why not give people the information necessary for them to do it themselves? And yes, even after that time I continued to give advice and answer questions for people, but I no longer dug out my black binder to do so.

[eniamn]

have a drawer in a file cabinet in the computer room with stuff organized and labeled. much easier than alt tabbing but i do the same thing.

i get anoyyed at the second or third identical post of the day. anyone should at least scan the thread titles before posting. i also get anoyyed when people don't read the faqs and ask that question repeatedly. their is lots of good information in the faqs and they should read them anywyay. i get anoyyed at people violating (seriously violating i give larger grey areas than the mods from what i've seen.) the rules in the visitors corner. i was a lurker for quite a while before signing up and i read them. i expect people to read stickies at the top of the page. questions that have been answered in the sticky annoy me. if it is in a guide and you are really interested in that area i think you should read the guides before asking questions. many are already answered.

i don't expect people to come here and instanly know all about the search engine. if you are asking for solstice earring recipe (or similar) i exspect you to have looked on the main site and tried at least 3 times to discover it on your own. your information or lack of can determine how successful you will be and then you can post if that didn't work. its much simpler to search for yourself than to post and then wait for replys.

for the most part anyone new (bright eyed and bushy tailed and overwhelmed here) i cut a lot of slack. it gets tiring after so many though. in game i am much better. here the information is normally easily available. sometimes the replies will be about how to use a feature so that next time they can find the anser themselves instead of having to keep waiting on info handouts.

[Utope Eljugador]

Who remembers when they made it possible to pick up a single item from a stack with ctrl ? I do. Fletchers in particular were overjoyed.I did fletching to maybe 100ish before that change. Where's my fruit cake and cheesy gold watch? Before that wasnt it something like the arrow combines only gave 1 arrow? Then they changed it to increased cost but increased yeild? I wasnt even around for that but I remember talk of it.

There's quite a bit of "I did it the hard way" sentiment, but mostly its misdirected frustration and anger. Unfortunate yes but understandable. I simply ignore it.

Complaining about it doesnt change the situation nor change the facts. And calling everyone "a bunch of jerks" not only is ridiculous and whiney but you've now become what you're complaining about.

I happen to enjoy EQtraders. I think its the best eq site available, has the most accurate and available information. Due in part to both the contributing members and the hard working operators of the board.

PS, eqtraders > teh S4feh0us3 (i remember when it was a useful site.. /sigh), alla's, or eqmaps.

[Koru]

Some of it for me is also being tired. I mean you give someone info once and all too often it's all "how many to make that?" "where's that drop?" "where's that merchant?" from there on. Look, I enjoy the game, I like knowing things, but I'm not in this just to be a walking knowledge base. If I were I'd apply to be a guide (and probably do poorly on account of both knowing the stuff and being mostly willing to share that knowledge).

Sometimes it just gets a little overwhelming when yet another person wants to know the names, places to buy, how to make and what to make from skill point A to skill point B where gap between those skill points is 100+. A part of it is that the skill guides up are old and out of date I would say. Maybe if they had better From 0 to 250 Skill Guide there would be less questions that are easily found or get asked over and over again until everyone hates them.

I know in game I expect the people around me to show a certain level of respect for my time and I in turn will do the same for them. Things like 'do not expect me to gate out of the dungeon to port your latest twink from BB to EC - use the frigging book!' yes this has happened to me and to some extent I apply this to boards I frequent. Now my response is to just not reply to questions that I consider too easily answered to take up my time. But then I've always been the lurking kind and generally don't open up posts that sound like they're gonna be big on easy questions if I'm not in the mood. Ignorance is bliss that way.

Oh and the big black binder is what I call the BoEK. Binder of Essential Knowledge. I still have mine, it saves time. More useful than any in game item I have. As nice as it is to be able to tab out there are still times when I can't, or it's complicated enough that I need both my screen in EQ and the info on hand - the BoEK is the best for those times. If I could give every single person I know one who doesn't have one I would. Those things seem to be +50 int/wis with focus effect Self Sufficience IV.

[sumamael]

I have always believed in the concept of teaching people how to fish instead of giving them fresh fish.

Those who been around for over 2 years might still remember my 'search' sig and zealous moderation of the smithing forum.

I have learned one very important thing from my time as moderator here, not responding to a post is sometimes much better course of action than doing so.

So I can only suggest one thing to the board residents, do demonstrate as much self control and courtesy as what you are expecting from the visitors. Also, by all means, please learn how to ignore stuff that irritates you.

[Daikoku Ashikaga]

Aid Grimel / uber guild people not worthy type of complaints. Trade skills are for everyone and different people will do them for different reasons. Your reasons are no more "worthy" then anyone elses. So what if they went from 0 - 220 in everything just to get a quest earring. It's their time and their dime. They earned it just as much as the next person.

This pretty much hit it on the head for me, even before AG there was always resentment (At least I felt it) to anyone that was 60 (now 65) in a high level guild, that if you were not 56 or less, guildless your interest in trades was unclean and dirty and we all got paid to got skill up by our guilds.

AG just made that all the more worse.

I had fun in the days of Angelsyn and I debating economics, but under that, not from Angel, there was a real sence of growing hostility, I was far more then a contributor on the old board, I am just starting to really post here now, really brought back in to things because the uber guilds call for the nerfing of ele bows, as I am one of them, an ele/time flagged person, I felt I could call them on their own elitism without the taint of self interest.

Dai

(Guess I am bavck to Hobbist now, I spam)

[Auricula]

Do I care why people decide to skill up their tradeskills? Nope!
Do I care if they are in an uber elemental guild? Nope!

What Drives Me Nuts ....
are the LAZY people who think THEIR time is too important to look at the wealth of information provided at the website. Hundreds of people (both 'staff' and just ole tradeskill junkies) have already put in thousands upon thousands of collective hours to compile just about EVERYTHING you could ever want to know about EQ tradeskills.

Yet you can't take the time to research what to make after level 46 in pottery, and even when told that Item A might make be a good next choice you then want to be spoon-fed the recipe.

I do find the searches on the message board difficult to narrow down to a manageable number of results for most questions. But for goodness sake, there is an amazing database of information at your fingertips. Instead of expecting others to spend THEIR time wiping your nose, take YOUR time and do some homework.

Having vented that (smile) .. I do try to take the approach of just not responding to messages that make me just sit here and shake my head

[Lilosh]

It all boils down to laziness for me.

99.999999% of all questions can be answered by searching the new DB that the Admin Staff and Volunteers spent HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of man hours putting together. Or by scanning the first two-three pages of thread titles in the appropriate forum. Or, as Suma used to have in their BEAUTIFUL sig, Using the search function. In about 1-2 minutes of searching, I have the answers to 99.999999% of my questions.


I refuse to encourage laziness.

When I point out to people, normally in a not-rude but semi-direct manner that they'd be better off getting the information themselves, they always seem to call me a ****, and suggest that I should shut up and let other people feed them the answer.


This is why I sometimes slip and get a little snippy with people. After the fourth "How do I make XXXX armor?" "Ok, where do I buy the ore" "Ok what zone is that it" "Ok, who's the merchant" "Ok, how do I do subcombine YYY" , we (the regulars, as it were) tend to get tired and cranky.

-Lilosh

[Aethia]

I'm reading posts while the servers are being patched.

And while I haven't been playing since beta, I do remember the days of sitting and medding with your book. I do remember having 5 food and water thinking I was going to die if I ran out. As for tradeskills, all I remember is casks not stacking.

But things change. And I have to ask a strange question and the analogy may not be perfect, but for me it strikes a cord.

100 years ago, our ancestors had no microwaves. Does that mean their cooking was better then ours?

TV dinners came out in the 1950s as a way for the family to enjoy dinner while watching television. Was this good or bad?

I am a US citizen living in Germany. I watch my bf's grandmother cook a huge meal for 8 in a tiny little kitchen, the size of most closets in America. I need 4x that space to do the same thing and my food doesn't taste anywhere as good as hers.

Personally, I don't want to go back to the RL days of cooking over campfires. And in EQ, I don't want to sit and look at a book and med. I don't want to take boats (given that PoP introduced books as quick travel). I don't want to go back to the days that people describe of clicking a stack, have having to type in 1 to get one item. Or having one container open.

I have GM'd 5 trades across various toons the 'old fashioned way'. I'm looking forward to having more skills higher. I'm looking forward to having more of my friend become addicted to tradeskilling.

Does the new UI diminish your efforts? only if you allow it to. And that is an individual choice. I still believe the 'old fashioned way' should be used for cultural and similar niche trades. That's just me, and I have yet to work on my cultural smithing, but close. I think it is a balance between spoon feeding and getting carpal tunnel.

Change is growth - not always positive, but if we didn't change we'd all be waiting for the boat, while looking at our spell books.

Now... if we could just do something about the people I encounter in game, that expect me to know every single item tradeskilled made, the stats, the full name, the trivial.... then I'd say that change would be good

[dahna]

Although most of eq server are PvE and favor grouping and helping each others in order to achieve the same goal, competitions cannot be avoided : competitions between group or guild or just some players who need the same objective at the same time (camping a mob).

Sometimes you can discover a feature or a trick that would make goal achievement more easy before everybody. Most people who discover them tend to keep for themself first, then talk about that to their friends, their guildmate, then perhaps in popular forum. Telling the method in open forum make you sure people will try it, and "competition" will increase. Also some will try to monopolise the feature, to "sploit".

I think this situation can be applied too in tradeskill. That is also why most "old school" people, who were enthousiast at the first time, became bitter in delivering "free info"

[Phabos]

I've been around the boards for a year. Not a long time, but enough to read and think and see trends and patterns.

When I first read this post, it didn't mean much to me. Yes, I've seen the examples from time to time, but they were usually few and far between. After the past couple of days, however, especially in reading the posts since GoD and the UI were announced up through today (2/13/04), I'm beginning to notice something.

I don't know if this has just affected tradeskillers, or if this is a trend among the general EQ populace, but it seems like a lot of people have developed a decided lack of common courtesy and respect.

I've seen it here, I've seen it in channel. "SOE screwed us again," "SOE is (insert favorite insult, usually modified with profanity here)," and my favorite, "SOE doesn't care." Sony Online Entertainment, Inc. is a company with customers. Nope, you're not the only one that matters in the whole scheme of things, no matter what you like to think. If you accept to be a customer by paying your money, then you accept what the game has to offer.

If you don't want to play the game, if the game frustrates you that much, if you hate what the developers have done to "your" game, leave. Go. The rest of us really don't want to listen to you. EQ is a game, not a way of life. Too many people treat it as life or death. Get a grip on reality. You don't like what happens in "your" virtual world? Go outside. Read a book. Participate in the real world. Oh, and if someone changes something there that you don't like, guess what? Life ain't fair. Life has its authority figures, and you are just small interest to be considered. You won't always get your way.

So SOE put in something you didn't like? What would honestly happen if you publicly criticized your boss for making changes where you work? You'd be gone eventually.

Oh, but you're a customer and you're too important to be ignored? You are one of thousands. You choose to pay your fees. Accept that the interests of the many, or, more importantly, the interests that SOE sees most vital to its corporate well being, are probably more important than you are. Don't like it? Play another game.

Just please stop subjecting those of us who actually enjoy EQ as a means of relaxation from your mindless "me-first" or "I'm better than you" attitude. Some call those elitist. I call it childish and selfish.


Phabos Aphsion

[Bennan]

Dead Horses

Only thing that bothers me is the Dead Horse posters. I just see red when posters start putting that into threads.

It got really bad here about 6 to 8 months ago, alot of threads were just full of "beats the dead horse" posts etc. I just stopped visiting the messageboards for a while heh. Now I just ignore them.

This board has too many good informative posters to keep me away for too long anyways.

[Eggborn]

I have always done my best to search for info many places, and I assume if someone has actually managed to find this board they do too.

At first it is a lot to sort through, so you will get FAQ's. Heck, that's how the moderated get their FAQ's in the first place, so it's not a bad thing I think.

I get a little more frightened to ask for help each time, but I do it anyway. I feel that yes, we are to work and find as much as we can. I do hate it when people ask me to mostly just do the quests for them, but this board and site is here to help us find stuff. It is here to make it easier for all of us. That is the point! I say ask away, and dont worry about the people who jerk you around. They probably had a bad day or are a just a little competative maybe.

[Bigtoxic]

For the record Fattimus( note..not an insult,,just good fun) contrary to popular belief, us trolls didnt get kicked out of or lil town. It was a well planned strat to get closer to the dark elven wenches. That was a long walk to Nek for a late night romp. And while ill admit....we trolls are not the brightest.....that was a supurb move. SO dont go thinking your all bright nand stuff cause we all know no matter what you say orges r stupider( note again...not an insult,, just good fun)

[kiztent]

Originally posted by Phabos
So SOE put in something you didn't like? What would honestly happen if you publicly criticized your boss for making changes where you work? You'd be gone eventually.

Interestingly enough I had the same thought with a different focus about certain events of late.