Do you think elitism is a major problem for the MMO industry and community? I think it is most certainly is, and it severely threatens the continued growth of the hobby. A hobby that cannot attract new members eventually withers and dies. The current culture of noob hostility is frequent comic fodder, but there is a very serious underlying problem. What can we do as members of the MMO community to put a stop to it? Do you think we even need to? (NOTE: I blogged about this topic here - MMO Elitism - A Major Problem for the Industry - but you don't need to read it to share your thoughts and opinions.)

If it was such a big problem, how did we get this far? You think this is the first time in gaming history people have been mean to noobs? That's a severe lack of perspective you've got there.

If anything, history has shown that absolutely nothing any elitist gaming community does has substantial impact. Games are built from the ground up by people who like them, not elitists and noobs. Those are just side effects that appear afterwards and are largely inconsequential.

Cliques have existed for all of human history and "MMO elitism" is just minor variation on the theme. Yes, it can be a problem, at least when viewed from the perspective of those outside the clique (those inside might have different opinions).

However given the long history I'm inclined to think it's a fundamental aspect of human behavior and thus can't really be stopped. Attempts at trying will be either ignored, scorned, and/or face charges of being equally elitest.

Side note: your link is broken. It has a trailing html break on it.

Anyways, since your blog mentions WoW I thought I'd through in my 2 cents. I have been playing WoW off and on since its release. I am by no means a hard-core raider, and usually my play time consists of a few 5-man runs (I raided some pre-BC, and can count my raids after WotLK on one hand).
One thing about the 'elitism' is that if you invest enough time in the game, and want to run 25 mans, you need to know how to play and how to gear yourself. You need to do some research before trying to get into 25 man runs.
As for the people who deny 'noobs' a spot in said raids, some of them may be jerks and elitest assholes, but I understand where they are coming from. Raids take time and knowledge. The knowledge obviously can only be learned by doing the raid (or doing research online, watching/reading about boss fights). However one way to drop the time issue is to only let geared people in the raid. Nothing is more frustrating than being in a bad group that is wiping left and right.

Now, I personally think Blizzard has done a good job of allowing the casual players chances to get good/better gear. I am in a relatively small guild that does 5-mans and the occasional 10 or (PuG/merged with other guild)25 man (although I rarely do either), and I have the gear for 10 mans, and the easier 25 mans. Why? because I've done my research. I know what heroics to run to get the upgrades I need. I spend time on the forums reading about my class, what is a good spec, good rotation, what the hit cap is, what stats are most important, etc.

Also your acceptance into a raid given your gear level depends on your role in the raid. Some dps can get by with perhaps less than expected gear. Tanks especially can not, and healers not so much either.

So do I think its an issue? Abselutely not. Your always going to have assholes calling people noobs, regardless of whether they actually are or not. Its part of the game, just like you're going to have bullies on the playground pushing around the smaller kids.

Sorry that got longer than I expected.

Personally if I think there's any one problem with some MMOS like WOW it's that if you have an online game with two teams. Skilled / Coordinated / Dedicated players always side to one faction.

I've started playing wow again after 3 years of not being on it. The game has changed and improved but one thing that hasn't is that the Horde is still more coordinated and skilled at PVP. Woe to you if you want to play an alliance race. Don't expect to win any PvP matches soon.

Same went for when I played on alliance in Warhammer Online. Destro was more organised. I know many of these players use tools like ventrillo.

This is a game breaking issue because it sends the message to people who want to play well that if they want to play with good teams they need to go horde/destro in which doesn't allow the alliance side to grow.

Kinda annoying.

There was a video on college humor that reminded me of this discussion.

In planetside a lot of people quit normally after playing due to elite players. That's one of the bad things when a game is based solely on skill. Actually I got one of my friends online to try it and he complained since he was died like 20+ times with no kills, and didn't want to figure out the strategy to the game. I guess it's nice to target casual gamers as well which WoW does really well with it's different areas for different levels. (I got bored after 2 weeks so I never saw anyone bragging or anything). I do know when my brother played, rogues like to kill mages. That's funny to watch, and I bet it can get pretty old after a while.

From an ex-"Elitist" WoW player, I think elitism has very little impact in overall subscriber base. I played wow religiously until the first expansion. I figured the majority of players were level 60, doing runs daily, and the low levels in the game were all alts. In my defense, this was who I spent 99% of my time in-game with.

It wasn't until I met tons of people from real life who played WoW that I discovered I was the abnormal one. Of the 20 or so people I met IRL at the time that played WoW, only 3 had max levelled characters. The rest were casual players that just liked to quest and interact in the game. A few were completely blown away that I had epics and an epic mount.

These kinds of players could care less if they were "noobs", they played the game cause it was fun for them. I would doubt that they even interact with "elitists" unless they happened to get ganked by one. This is probably the vast majority of subscribers.

I'm not sure I follow. Why is this a problem for the "industry". What industry? GameDev?

As with other people, I think elitism presents little to no problem, and at the same time, isn't only present in MMO's. I see it in FPS, and even casual games such as XBox's 1 vs 100.

The main thing is people are only elite in their eyes, and the eyes of people who want to be elite. But to the majority of us, they're nobody's just like you and me. Just read about all the ex-players from games such as Everquest and WoW, who ran some of the largest and most popular guilds, and they almost always share 1 common factor. They thought the game couldn't move on without them, and they were wrong. In the end, they find out that their "friends" soon forget about them and continue playing the game like they always have.

Excluding cheating, games seldom die because of a problem in the community, and more that just better and/or newer games come along. Although, I'm honestly surprised that Ultima Online is getting it's 8th expansion pack next month. But I doubt it's like the UO I remember from 1997.

I think this is more of a problem with niche games than large MMOs.

If you try joining a small game with a few hundered users that are all 14, it may well be unbearable(but then I'd tend to find a large game laoded down with kids unbearable).

Because most people who are on WoW are casual players, they aren't likely to encounter many elists at all.

The only people who might not like it are the people who start the game late, and want to be king of the hill.
Elistism can throw them into fits of rage due to inadequacy. But those are a tiny minority of players.

And so the above statement isn't misread. I'm not saying all small MMOs are hostile. In my experience the users of those will usually go more out of their way to help newbs to get base expanded or help or help stint a dying pool.