Duct Tape and a Prayer

It’s almost certain that you know by now that Ghostcrawler (Greg Street, the lead systems developer for WOW) is taking a break from posting on the official forums. For a while now (it feels like about a year and a half), GC has been the players’ direct link to the development team, and right now he’s pulling back from posting (not from reading the forums or from his actual job) because an increasing number of forum posters think it’s okay to vilify and attack the messenger (GC himself) rather than deal with the message being presented.

Nice job breaking it, “hero”.

First off: guys? All nerdrage does is make you look like a f%^&ing moron. Seriously, it would be difficult to find a better way to make yourself look like a batshit-crazy imbecile than to shout seething, frothing invective over a video game. I am not generally one to say “it’s just a game”; I think it’s dismissive and patronizing. But when you’re getting so angry about a game that you’re risking an aneurysm? Chill the f%^k out.

That said: the big issue these days, at least among Shadow priests who like to bitch about how their class is underpowered, is that (some) Shadow priests feel that they are underpowered at 80. The systems development team, led by Ghostcrawler, disagree with this sentiment; they think Shadow priests are in a good place. I am being kind to the forum posters here, because what they are actually saying are things like “I have this WOL parse that shows that I do less damage” or “I have anecdotal evidence that shows that I do less damage” or “categorically, Shadow priests do less damage, it’s a known fact”, all of which are pretty damn stupid.

• “I have this WOL parse that shows that I do less damage”: Time for a lesson in basic statistical analysis. One data point is not enough. Two data points are not enough. Even if you have 50 data points, if they’re all about the same person, that doesn’t tell you about Shadow priests, that tells you about that Shadow priest. “But Chris,” you say, “a lot of people are showing WOL parses!” Yes, but this brings in bias: you’re seeing a lot of data from priests who are doing “subpar” damage, and not a lot of data from priests who aren’t, and it’s entirely possible that that’s because the priests who are doing okay on the meters don’t feel the need to come bitch on the forums. Meanwhile, Ghostcrawler and his team really do have access to the raw data from all the fights. I have no idea how long they keep fight data but it’s certainly more than 24 hours. They can actually see how all the Shadow priests are doing. And no, they’re not obliged in any sense to show it to you.
• “I have anecdotal evidence that shows that I do less damage”: You know that old joke, “the plural of anecdote is data”? That was a joke. The plural of “anecdote” is “anecdotes”. There is no reliable data present. It’s incredibly easy to generalize your own experiences; we do it every day, because we love having things in common with other members of society so much that we falsify commonalities based on nothing more than speculation: “if I experienced this, surely everyone else did too”. But there is no such thing as “anecdotal evidence” because nobody who knows what they’re doing is going to take an anecdote at face value. If you don’t understand why, I invite you to read up on observer bias, the fragility of eyewitness memory, cherry picking, and fiction.
• “categorically, Shadow priests do less damage, it’s a known fact”: man, do I even have to go here? This isn’t an argument, it’s whipping your dick out and expecting people to ooh and ahh over it. (And frankly, fella, there ain’t much there to ooh and ahh over.) Let’s restate that in a way that makes plain the absurdity of the statement: “It’s self-evident that I’m right, because I’m right.” You don’t offer evidence, or even argument. You just state your preferred conclusion and then go off to be self-satisfied. A word of advice: generally, when you use this tactic, you’re wrong. Just so we’re clear.

When you can get past the paucity of data – when you figure out that your own experience isn’t necessarily everyone else’s – when you stop trying to win arguments with your penis size – maybe, maybe you’ll get that pony – or figure out that you already have the damn thing and just had to shovel your own manure out of the way enough to see it.

(Apologies to Emily Dickinson for that last paragraph.)

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