I think that I will quit playing MMOs at one point and go backl to offline single player games - if any are still produced then, that is …
The reason why I find myself drifting more and more away from SWTOR (curiously I never had this feeling in DDO ?) is a thing I call Eliticism.
It's bad.
Some people seemingly solely play SWTOR - and, most likely, other MMOs as well - to get something no-one else is able to get.
And I get literally sick from that.
A part in my is jealousy, I admit it - but the part that really makes me sick of it is the "bragging attitude". They just want to be someone exclusive.
I just don't understand this, because I haven't grown up with such an attitude here in Germanmy. It's totally alien to me. Meyne it is an younger generations thing ?
As a child I have spent a lot of time in my vacations with my grand parents. They had been growing up during WWII and the time after that. What they had told me was simple . Never throw things away you still can use, and, most importantly . Help each other !
After WWI it was a question of helping each other - or die. I think it was the same in most WWII-affected countries within Europe.
I had once had the thought that in the U.S. there never had been a post-WWII time, I mean REALLY with with fully destroyed towns consisting of nothing but rubble and stones ( ! ) and people making food of things no-one would eat today (like wheat made of acorns, for example, or salad made of oak tree leaves, if I remember correctly, and "coffee" made of several local plants).
This thought made me think of that would perhaps be the reason why in the U.S. there had always been such a distaste of communal helping each other, and instead rather focusing "the american dream", and, more importantly, the focus in an rather capitalistic way, too.
Nowadays studies and hard statiatical data reaches our newspapers stating that the amount of millionaires had increased in the last few years - and especially in Germany. The "social gap" is spreading further and further since 10 years ago the so-clled "americanization" of our economy began (paying low wages for being competitive, meanwhile increasing the wages of the bosses 10-25 % in the same time - possibly to be competitive as well ?).
There is a thing called the "Gini Index" - after an Italian scientist named Corrado Gini.
You can read about it here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
It shows gives an measure of the inequality of wealth.
And in it, Germany rises and rises …
I tend to think nowadays that this Eliticism thing in MMOs is another facet of the same thing : A trend towards being the elite of something in general.
Countries with a lesser Gini Index, I would expect to be lesser signs of Elitticism to be there - in-game and out-game.
The more inequality exists within a country, the more it would be visible in other areas as well. Like the wish to brag around with things no-one else has. Limited Edition Super Deluxe version of Mike Oldfield's album "Crisis", for example, which I'm hunting because I just love his music, but didn't have the money to get it. In me, this creates a feeling of "being locked out".
To lock people out of something might be a sign of this "Eliticism" as well.
It is a sign that the "I, The Ego" is king within a person, and that the thought of helping others is buried far, far away …
I'm not quite sure, yet, how entitlement fits into the scene. It clearly shows signs of an inflated Egho sometimes as well. Especially entitled people tend to say - I have often read remarks in this tone in the SWTOR forums - that they are special special
special persons and that therefore they should getsomething no-one else is able to get - so to say as an reward to their entitlement. They pay (as subscribers), that's why they want something no F2P should be allowed to get. Eliticism signs again.
Or, another example, they buy things that were limited to the "Life Day" tiny event during the Christmas Time of 2013. One argued that he had payed millions of in-game currency to get this items from the year before (2012) - and demanded therefore that no-one should be able to get these Life Day limited stuff as well during last year's (2013) Life Day.
Entitled people appear for every major game, it seems. They more and more act as if the developers were at their mercy (see "developer harassment" for more on that) and that because they are potential buyers or have already bought the game they are allowed - through that sum of money ( ! ) they were allowed to do literally ANYTHING with the developpers. The novel "She" by horror novel writer Stephen King comes to mind.
Entitlement and Eliticism might even be the same face of the same coin : An inflated Ego. The "I" society. Or generation.
And that's probably why this behaviour is so alien to me. I grew up wih grandparents who taught me that there was once a gread NEED, and that it was important to SHARE things.
That Greed might be, for the lack of a better word, "good" is something that never came to my mind. I was grown up in a society that was proud, [i9very[/i] proud on their "Soziale Marktwirtschaft", their "social economy".
But this "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" has been - ans many analysts and commentators call it - "americanized" during the last ten years. Nowadays, gree id, for the lack of any better ord, "good" now as well. Maybe even better as just "good". It shows in the increase of the Gini Index.
So, if I will ever quit playing MMOs, then it is because of peoples' Egos.
"I !, I !, I !"! and "Me ! Me ! Me !"
"I want everything, and I want it nao."
And firms catering them, thus making them believe - and thus strengthening this kind of behaviour - that an demanding attitude and Eliticism in itself gets rewarded, as long and
if you cry out loud enough.