Imagine you are on a crowded beach on a sunny summer day and you start building a wonderful sand-castle. You put in a lot of effort to make it look just perfect. But then you notice that the other people around you aren't participating. They either just build imperfect small sand-castles, or none at all. Except for your perfect little corner the beach is just a random mess of footprints in the sand. That makes you all angry, and you start berating the other people on the beach as being clueless or jerks . But are those the only two possible explanations? I would say it is far more likely that the majority of people on that beach simply don't care. They are there to get a tan and relax, not to put any effort into sand-castle building.If you followed that link above, the article about people being either clueless or jerks is of course about players of World of Warcraft. Blizzard recently said they would consider putting in a skill test as a requirement for running heroic dungeons, requiring a "silver" score in the Proving Grounds to access those. That is supposed to solve the problem of players in dungeons being "clueless". Talarian quotes another player whoBut just like on that sunny beach, I would say that the majority of players of World of Warcraft are neither clueless nor jerks. They are simply not interested in putting in a lot of effort. I mean, why would they? Didn't WoW teach them for hundreds of hours that progress is something that comes automatically for just playing effortlessly? The idea that at the end of simply enjoying your sunny beach or cruise holiday you would suddenly be forced to put in some effort is really quite ridiculous. You could call it a bait & switch scam. The majority of players aren't clueless or jerks, they are simply tourists. They regard the kind of people who take that game very seriously with the same bemused look as tourists on the beach give to somebody who is working hard there.It isn't for me to decide who is right or who is wrong here. Obviously heroic dungeons and raids require players to perform at a certain level for the venture to be successful. But I can't really blame the tourists walking into them and wondering what the fuzz is all about. A performance requirement *IS* out of place in a casual game like World of Warcraft. I just seems to be part of the game because the developers failed to come up with a better idea for the endgame which would have been more fitting with the rest of the game. If WoW had that sort of performance requirement starting from level 1, the heroic dungeons and raids would fit a lot better, but then WoW wouldn't have millions of players.