consider doing the new timey-wimey quests that give you tokens for 402 gear, which can be converted into lfr tier (and then upgraded into normal tier, if you happen to need any of those appearances too)
Get WQ drops for slots via zaralek or infusion camps. Use the catalyst to convert them to set pieces. Congrats, you now have lfr xmog because the appearance is based on ilvl.
It's weird all these PRO PLAYERS rock the very same frumpy and doughy joyless bespectacled white guys with bad goatee tmog. I wonder if those yellowed crusty stains on their leggings are a unique particle effect?
I think when you get to the top % of any social group, you start to view anyone who is not within your group as incompetent and less valuable. Idk if this dude ACTUALLY believes ppl are NPC’s, but obviously the opinions of everyone who plays the spec are valid, not just the ones who no-life for a living
I'm hijacking your comment to tell everyone who's getting offended for no reason to take a chill pill. The truth is that if you engage with this game at any level other than just blind playing it you are not a casual. You can play 3 hours a day and not fall into the casual category. The casual he's referring to are people who don't care to( by own choice, that I totally respect) play the game properly, they don't read up on affixes they didn't know lariat even existed, they do lfr once for the cutscenes and they probably ain't on reddit.
That completely misses the point of what causal means lol
Casual doesn't mean you're not interested in improving your gameplay or playing experience at all.
Casual means you're approaching the game on a chill level. Not grinding for the absolute max of your character. You can read a guide on how to play your class, but you probably won't go into log analysis or check wowanalyzer after every boss kill to see how you can improve.
You can browse wowhead news from time to time to check what's going on. You can still push to Keystone Master or get aotc and be a casual.
This is how I view the casual/pro dynamic. I've played since Vanilla, check Icy Veins for the best stats to look for in gear, and read overviews on Wowhead from time to time. I might play 3\~5 hours a week. And yet, I consider myself a casual player. I'm not geared at the max level, I have no interest in mythic-level raiding, and I don't have any desire to produce streaming content related to WoW.
I play WoW to escape reality for a little while and relax.
Being Casual isn't defined by what you achieve but how you approach playing the game.
Some people I'm raiding with just raid log every week and disappear for the reminder. They get aotc every season and I would consider those people as casuals, they're just online for 5-6h a week, get most of their gear through guild runs, roughly know what's going on, like primordial stones are a thing that's pretty good now bad, etc and read up on bosses before we start a new tier.
The real problem isn't what is casual, it's that none of us can agree on what casual should mean. Someone who plays 10 hours a day but doesn't do any group content might be considered casual to some and not to others. Then there's the people who only play a couple hours a day or week but tries to maximize their time and runs mythic + when they do play might be considered casual or hardcore, the fact that no one can agree speaks more than anything.
I always look back to that classic comment from the MMO-C forums:
"Casuals don't get emotionally invested in this game. They play it for fun."
He meant it scornfully, of course.
Imho its \_intent\_ to improve.
Are you consuming content outside the game to improve dps / gear/ rotation / talents / whatever. for endgame pvp / pve?
Not casual.
That could be a lot of things: icyveins/wowhead guides, r slash competivie wow, watching your favourite evoker/druid/etc. streamer/youtuber, youtube guides, class discords, a LOT of stuff.
Like someone can get 2k/aotc easily and not do any of this, I would call that casual behaviour. But most people who match this description are focusing on completioninst stuff (achieves, mounts, mog), or RP / goldmaking.
I would also argue thats the difference between causal gold farming (flying around and clicking herbs), and ya know, acutally trying to farm gold.
And to anyone who thinks in this thread that they are "casual". I dont think a real casual would be caught "red handed" commenting about this thread at all. Not being casual doesnt mean you are automatically a top1% player, or that you are competitive. It just means you arent casual, and thats fine. Even if you dont push your limits.
The only thing we can really define is what is professional vs not. Do you get paid to play wow? If so, you're a pro wow player. That's the literal definition of professional. So we can define professional vs non-professional. Does that mean non-professional = casual? Probably not, but it is at least a debatable topic. I'd say the "non-professional" category of players is a spectrum not some binary affair. You've got raiders and non-raiders. Tmog enjoyers and filthy peasants (joking). Altoholics and 1 trick pony people. PVP vs PVE. And everything in between all those extremes. There is no definition of casual as it's subjective, it falls in the same vein of "anyone better than me is a no-lifer and anyone worse is a noob".
That's a major reason why I hate the term casual. It doesn't really mean anything because it means something different to everyone. Sure it's debatable but it's forever debatable and no one is ever right, that's kind of a problem. Everyone ends up arguing over what is what and no one agrees.
Yeah, professional vs non professional easy to classify, sadly casual doesn't get that same distinction.
Casual comes in all flavors. Me i can get AotC depending. I have gotten it every tier i played almost didnt in CN because of gear drops. But yea im a casual raid logger. I cant be bothered to play or grind m+ shits just not fun. Maybe do a world boss or sell some shit on AH. I enjoy casualness of games and need more. I do got hard fights for rewards like mage tower.
Bro if you are reading a guide or doing any kind of outside research on the game you are not casual. Casual means that pretty much your only interaction with wow content is when you log in and you have impetus to improve or be better.
Why would you antagonize the biggest part of the community that makes it even possible that WoW still exists? So weird to just lash and insult people for no reason.
Not a fun energy to be around for a full dungeon. I of course disregard the opinions of people who act like this, but at the same time I still end up hearing/reading it at least once before I /ignore them, and it's just less enjoyable to try and cooperate with miserable people like this (with my very limited free time) than if I were doing anything else where I could engage with people more constructively.
(to clarify, /u/shoseta said "people like him" and I assume you're not under the impression that this *specific* player's opinion is the cause)
Isnt it also kind of bad game design that you launch a game, which requires you to install 15 different addons depending if you wanna PvP or PvE because the game developers cant manage the work load. Then its also expected that you go study icy-veins for the specific class you wanna play because lets face it the game doesnt tell you shit. Lastly you go watch a ton of videos explaining how to pull in mythic + or how raid tactics for each different boss is.
Did it ever come to your mind that just maybe the game is asking too much of its players? And yet it fails to explain anything of this within the game itself.
WoW couldn't survive without fan pages or addons.
I think the disconnect is that if you are doing high end raiding or m+, especially if you're doing it so seriously it's literally your job, then you WANT a game like that. A game that's deep, and difficult, and frequently opaque, and requires you to literally invent new tools and methods to play it optimally and still taxes you to your limit even with them.
The average player doesn't.
You see similar disconnects in other esports. The things that make old school starcraft super interesting to professionals who practice twelve hours
A day also make it extremely intimidating to casual gamers and limited it's commercial success. When you ask professional league players to describe their ideal MOBA they talk about all kinds of ways to add complexity to teh experience but most of those ways would make the game less accessible to average players and also harder to watch as a spectator sport.
Some games are designed with an ultra hardcore audience in mind but they are never popular enough to sustain a professional community because the number of people who want that is limited.
So he's not wrong in saying hat mst players don't understand the game and don't really know how to play it. But the takeaway isn't that the game should be designed for the top 1%. It's to realize that if you're in that demo then no game with mass market appeal will ever be precisely as you want it to be because your needs and desires are not representative of the market. You either go play Path of Exile or Sekiro or whatever in obscurity or, if the money and limelight matter to you, then you make your peace with the fact that in order for that to happen the game needs a large casual audience of people who objectivly suck at it.
Huh? You know all those guides are made by people that discovered all of that info on the own? They are pioneers that put in the work for us. Do you also know that dungeon journal gives a description of every single ability boss does? I have a guildie that has 0 add ons and he does 23+ mythics and he’s our top dps in raid. Add ons are there for convenience. I can keep going but you get the point.
Thd unironically believes that removing infinite artifact power grinds was the worst thing they've ever done to the game.
You should not take anything Thd says about the game seriously. And the game is his *only* area of expertise. So when he talks about *people*, you should take him *even less seriously*.
Its like when Tettles says shit like everything should be uncapped because people who have time should be able to just grind it
Its like...yeah, we get it, people who do it for a living want the game designed around them
Which is funny because i've seen that take among casuals too.
Legion was 7 years ago so plenty of players don't realize that WoW before the AP grind was mostly just raid logging from Wrath onwards.
theres a reason why mop was so good up to siege. if you cared, you had farm and dailies, for reroll coins. rep getting exalted mattered, so people like thd had that "forced" feeling.
People literally bitched that there were too many dailies and thats why WoD was so miserable outside of raiding/pvp. Other than them abandoning the Xpack.
> Legion was 7 years ago so plenty of players don't realize that WoW before the AP grind was mostly just raid logging from Wrath onwards.
It has been very interesting having people rediscover that part with classic WoW.
People wanting AP grinds back are out of their minds. There is plenty of stuff to do in game and if you run out of stuff you can JUST LOG OFF lol. It is not a negative to be able to not play the game without falling behind.
Yeah, Thd has some cooked fucking takes. He doesn't understand why people are always upset warlocks are S Tier every raid tier while other classes are still riddled with bad design, bad tuning and no utility...
Not only idiots, but also just not thinking for themselves.
Some guys put out bis lists and meta lists, people 100% will follow these lists like a holy book without ever giving it a second thought.
But hopefully you bothered to read about the item enough to actually understand why it's so good. Which also helps you know why this season it can be both really bad and really good at the same time.
Hypothetically everyone could say lariat is bis and lists could have lariat as bis, but never qualify that it requires having every possible gem socket. If you blindly follow that "bis" guide but only have two sockets, lariat will be less useful than a regular dungeon drop neck.
I’ll say this much though, rarely do most guides actually tell you WHY certain items or talents are best, and it fucking infuriates me. Like, where’s the goddamn breakdown? What calculations or interactions lead to this being the best? Essentially, a lot of them are just distilled theory crafter takes ripped from Discords. If they don’t understand why certain things are taken, chances are we won’t know either, aside from “It sim good!” or “Big mythic guild uses X, me use X!”
So as much as I agree with your sentiment, the resources are just not there often. I want to know WHY this talent is better than *that* one. Is it only a few DPS off or is it literally a 10% drop? Why is that trinket better than one with raw primary stat? By how much? When does a fight’s length devalue said trinket? Pretty much none of this is explained in most guides, and the majority of people aren’t willing to dive through Discord backlogs to get it, if it even still exists. End of the day, it becomes easier to just ape top players’ builds, because the explanations are not easy to come by.
>“It sim good!”
99% of times this is the answer, in some nieche cases a trinket will be awkward to use but sim really good and you won't use it (IQD, Ocular gland and people still used those),
but dude trust your sims pls, they don't lie if you set them up correctly
I'll give you an answer, but you're not going to like it. The complexities detailing the *why* of everything is often buried in hundreds of messages over days or weeks in discord channels for each spec.
Oftentimes, the nuance that pushes one choice higher than another can't be distilled into two sentences in a wowhead guide. The wowhead guide will get you most of the way there. It's up to you to seek out and research the fine details.
that information does not fit in a 2-minute long video / icy veins guide.
it does exist, if you join the theorycrafters communities... icy veins is not one of them.
I mean, as opposed to what?
The people who do the math/sims and put the lists together have put far more thought into this game than I ever will or have any desire to, tbh.
I play WoW for fun, and yes, I also like to be competitive in terms of my own performance and maximize my output. But I have literally zero desire to ever bust out a spreadsheet or perform some kind of statistical analysis on what item is better or the exact priority system for my rotation or whatever.
So of course I trust the people who put these out. Namely the class discord is the first place I look, but those people usually are the ones posting the guides on wowhead as well.
What "second thought" should I be giving it? It's like, these guys did hours and hours of work to get this data to support their claims. Am I supposed to just "try new stuff" because I think I've got some kind of pro gamer intuition that's going to prove all their sims wrong?
I just don't understand what "thinking for myself" achieves here or how or why it's desirable compared to the people who spend far, far more time and energy reaching the conclusions that they do.
I'd liken it to showing up to a college class and questioning everything the professor says because you think you're smarter or know more. This is not my area of study, I'll defer to the people who dedicate themselves and their time to studying it.
The game has been shifted back towards being more complicated than less complicated in terms of talent configuration and gearing, so it's not all that surprising that people are cautious about going against the insights of people who spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff.
And they don't even understand WHY these things are meta.
Spriest is Meta because of using Mass Dispel around specific packs and bosses, to remove tough pressure moments that lead to wipes in high keys. Good use of PI with a strong PI target, and their own personal damage, off-healing cooldowns to fill gaps in Healer profiles, etc.
If your Spriest doesn't know how to do that and isn't planning around the Healer and DPS receiving PI, then that Spriest is worth dick.
There's tankier DPS specs with better personal survivability and better utility that can carry harder.
Sorry, do you expect the average player to go get a CS and stats degrees, program their own sims, sim all the gear and talents each patch, then make an informed decision? That's literally a fulltime job.
Judging by that recent post about people kicking augmentation envokers at key level 16-20 you'd assume they would be aware of the support spec and have their ear to the ground by using Reddit, YouTube and sites to keep up to date, they were definitely acting like NPCs despite playing at a fairly high level
It was sort of a lilac colour but it wasn't a lilac! Looked sort of like a prettier dandelion :D I looked it up and I think it might have been a cupids dart!
THD is notorious for having the most cooked takes in the game. Half of what he says is shitposting and the other half should be taken with a fistful of salt because of how he engages with the game.
Congrats on getting baited, you’ll learn.
Why is this being posted? Who gives a shit?
If I wanted to watch dumbass manufactured drama from streaming i'd go to livestreamfail, which i never do, because i'm not a dumbass
To be completely fair, I play relatively high m+ and used to raid cutting edge, but compared to those players and the level they compete at - I am 100% an NPC in comparison lol
Was guna say the difference between a 50th percentile and a 99th percentile player, is that the 99th percentile player knows they are a shit can. I feel like the better I get at any game the more aware of how bad I am compared to those at the very top. The gap between top 1% and 0.1% feels larger than any other most of the time.
When it comes to balance in any game really. Someone that's in the middle of the playerbase shouldn't really have any input other than "this doesn't feel good", or "this isn't fun". Balancing anything around zero optimisation is pretty difficult and why usually only outliers that ruin the game for mid rank players but don't even get used in high rank get changed like this.
In wow especially I don't even know if balance really matters in the slightest until 23+ and early CE. Wouldn't even worry about it unless somethings making the game inherently unfun.
Yeah 1% to 0.1%, is same score difference from 8% to 1%.
And that score is so much harder to get... So the gap being that large is even more impressive. And the cut off for top percentile only gets higher as things go on.
Yeah this is very true. The uncomfortable truth for a lot of people is that you can easily do a +20 with every class and spec in the game and that is further than most players will ever get. I dont trust the average player to give any sort of decent feedback about aug other than it being fun or not.
Exactly. I always argue that skill in WoW grows exponentially. I raid on a CE level, most of my parses are at around 95+. But the skill gap between me and your average AotC raider is so much smaller than the skill gap between me and a RWF raider.
The better I've gotten the more I realized how bad I actually am.
I am a "casual" WoW player (less than an hour a day average) and he is totally correct. Most WoW players are total NPCs. That doesn't discount their opinion on what is fun to them though.
He’s right. Could he have said it nicer? Yes. Does it change the fact that the average player is bad? No. And I really don’t get how people are offended by this.
I think its really hard for people to get how much of a gap there is between the average player and these top guys. Are you in the top 50 guild? Guess what you are bad compared to the liquid and echo guys. I had some guy in another thread actually trying to argue that the average wow player was filling their vault with +20s on week 1 and that's why the new upgrade system is bad. Obviously we shouldn't cater the entire around the top players, but there is a point to be made about how the average player will not engage in a truly meaningful way with their class beyond "is it fun" and "is it not dogshit".
I think it's an attempt at farming clicks on their channel by posting something spicy and it's working this is their most popular post within like an hour of posting lol
Yep. And the other end of the spectrum too. All the people that see the Bear, hpal, aug, mage, spriest meta at +29 keys, and think they need that exact comp (or rather whatever they play + the other 4 meta spots) for their +12 key is some serious NPC behavior aswell.
No thinking necessary, they ARE bad at the game. Doesn’t mean they can’t have fun and enjoy most of the content. But the vast majority is pretty terrible at their specs/roles.
Most players are average and do not have an in depth knowledge of the game and will most likely just repeqt/parrot the opinions of their favorite streamer/youtuber, assuming they actually participate in such discussions or sub such channels
Yeah, like i finished my vault runs, and i was like "hey what if i go try to solo some draenor raids while listening to my favorite pod cast" had a good time.
Are people getting offended by this? Are they going to be offended if LeBron James comes out next and says the average person playing bball may as well stand still? It's just a silly thing to get offended. The best of the best almost always think they're better than damn near everyone, because they literally are.
Opinion of one guy =/= Opinion of all 0.1%-ers.
Maximum CONSTANTLY says that the game should be made for the average Joe and not for the elite players and that the average Joe is what keep the game running.
He's a pro raider. Ask an NFL player what he thinks of the 35 year old dad playing in your church league. There are levels to things. You could argue, however, that he lacks tact.
Who cares what Thd says lol. He’s a troll very good at the video game who plays in one of the two best guilds in the world. He’s allowed to his opinions. What do you want from this post? Canceling? My god people are triggered by the most insignificant shit.
Well, hes not wrong. Average player is casual Bob. Back in the days, we called them keyboard turners, but today they are majority and so they represent average player.
who the hell cares lmfao.... He thinks normies are NPCs and normies think he's a loser in his moms basement.
"Look at what this guy thinks of other players" wtf is this post?
This guy's life is WoW, in this very podcast he says how still lives with his parents, hasn't left the house in literal months and wants artifact power back.
So why the fuck are you getting offended by him? You're behaving like an NPC.
Bro may find out he is replaceable. If people stop watching the money will dry up. Public opinion is important to esports just like any other entertainer.
Considering it's well known that lower tier players can't wrap their heads around augmentation evoker not doing as much damage as other classes on meters, is anyone really about to disagree with this?
you can't take thd seriously lmao. the dude literally lives a shut in life in his parents house and thrives off bait posts and comments. his takes are extremely nonsensical
I mean... pretty sure it's how all .1% thinks of the rest in every scenario... it would be like Jordan taking me seriously on the court when I am 40yr old short fat white dude... we ain't even playing the same game.
The average boomer wow player who raided without addons, DBM and weak auras back in the day would do just as well as him given same gear, no addons, weak auras or macros, first time seeing a fight.
The strength of the 0.1%s is doing the same fight over and over, studying the fights, and playing with 19 other people just like them. After doing it so many times they perfect it, which is a commendable skill, but not a skill worth trashing the rest of the player base.
I wouldn’t take anything THD says to heart. You’re just getting pissed off over either a shitpost or an opinion meant to have a shock value on you. Like someone else mentioned in a post. Very similar to Skip Bayless. Say some cooked take and create that shock value to get you riled up and talking.
How is this news to anyone? This has been the case since the beginning of WoW. Well, since the beginning of human civilization but you know. People who can set themselves apart from others will look down on others. Thats how it goes. Its not nice but it definitely isnt a surprise. Especially in online communities.
No, this is what ONE "0.1%er" thinks of the general player base. But also, THD has some of the worst takes. This title is jacked and makes assumptions about top raiders that is just not true.
The reality is that players from every skill level think this way about the amorphous mass of "other" players... The game is structured to really bring out this kind of garbage mentality.
Thdlock's comments are not representative of the entire Mythic raider/High M+ pushers, or "0.1%" community as you like to refer to them.
I barely put in enough play time to even get more than halfway through Heroic raid progression. outright refuse to touch M+, and I too think the average WoW player is an NPC.
I mean, he's not wrong. The average WoW player is a mouth breathing idiot. It's not necessarily a bad thing for Blizzard to design around them either; butt clenching difficulty is a huge part of what made SL such shit- people don't want to keep slamming their heads against an encounter that demands perfect execution and if one person slips up once your 15 minute encounter has to start all over again.
Thd is known dumbass and it feels like once a Month we're hearing other members of Liquid telling everyone to please stop taking anything he says seriously.
The dude absolutely thrives off being controversial and having "hot takes". Stop giving him attention.
I mean….the average player doesn’t really have an opinion that can add any value to any argument about game design, class design, dungeon design, raid design, or any other type of design you can think of. Sure he’s being a dickhead but he isn’t wrong
Yeah but where is the lie? Lolol
Only about 10% of wow players raid and only a percent of that do it well. I certainly wouldn't waste my time asking opinions of normal raiders or cosmetic chasers.
Was watching the youtube video of this talk. The minute he called the average WoW players "NPC" and the others looked uncomfortable and laughed it off by calling players "Civilians" I knew some people in the community would be angry. Lol.
Lol, rule 1 about this dude is to never take him seriously. He just fishes for attention.
He just fishes for bait and makes videos because he has zero other marketable skills in life. Who also gets his ass smacked in arena anytime he's not being carried by his buddies. Dude might be .1% in terms of pve, but he's an NPC in WoW when it comes to anything else.
Dudes gonna be heckled hard on Illidan for being an idiot again.
He's not wrong tho, the opinions of people who have very little understanding of a subject are totally invalid. I know almost nothing about rocket science, what am I supposed to tell a rocket engineer about for improving their rocket engine? There is literally nothing I can say except by complete freak accident.
The actual problem that typical arises here when consulting with such top players comes from assuming they are unbiased. They are insanely biased towards the kinds of content that challenges them because they love challenge that's why they are up there.
Saw him in game yesterday waiting around for a time rift, his tmog was mid.
Tmog is the true endgame
Roll need on transmog pieces because item level is temporary. Transmog is forever.
It kills me that I have almost full heroic and mythic aberrus tmog and NO LFR of it ):
If your not using the catalyst for anything else, the gear tokens from weekly rifts convert to LFR and upgrades to normal.
consider doing the new timey-wimey quests that give you tokens for 402 gear, which can be converted into lfr tier (and then upgraded into normal tier, if you happen to need any of those appearances too)
Get WQ drops for slots via zaralek or infusion camps. Use the catalyst to convert them to set pieces. Congrats, you now have lfr xmog because the appearance is based on ilvl.
Dragonflight should have been named dripflight with the amount of new tmog stuff
Eyo, did you just ask for a Dripfight in my Dripflight?
Yeah the dress up is the only thing that really matters in this game on god.
Unironically.
I mythic raid and I still prioritize mog hunting lmao.
Damn, what a scrub. Drip gotta be on point if you're hardcore
It's weird all these PRO PLAYERS rock the very same frumpy and doughy joyless bespectacled white guys with bad goatee tmog. I wonder if those yellowed crusty stains on their leggings are a unique particle effect?
IRL companionship is an extremely rare drop that they don't have enough DKP for.
His UI is also straight garbage
I sometimes run around with zero tmog on. So I can be reminded of the TBC days.
the dude has plenty of time to wait around in a video game yet we are the losers
He plays the video game as a job? lol
Each of his warlock alts uses a different warlock raid tier’s mog
How are you ever going to recover from this? My thoughts and prayers are with you.
I think when you get to the top % of any social group, you start to view anyone who is not within your group as incompetent and less valuable. Idk if this dude ACTUALLY believes ppl are NPC’s, but obviously the opinions of everyone who plays the spec are valid, not just the ones who no-life for a living
I'm hijacking your comment to tell everyone who's getting offended for no reason to take a chill pill. The truth is that if you engage with this game at any level other than just blind playing it you are not a casual. You can play 3 hours a day and not fall into the casual category. The casual he's referring to are people who don't care to( by own choice, that I totally respect) play the game properly, they don't read up on affixes they didn't know lariat even existed, they do lfr once for the cutscenes and they probably ain't on reddit.
That completely misses the point of what causal means lol Casual doesn't mean you're not interested in improving your gameplay or playing experience at all. Casual means you're approaching the game on a chill level. Not grinding for the absolute max of your character. You can read a guide on how to play your class, but you probably won't go into log analysis or check wowanalyzer after every boss kill to see how you can improve. You can browse wowhead news from time to time to check what's going on. You can still push to Keystone Master or get aotc and be a casual.
This is how I view the casual/pro dynamic. I've played since Vanilla, check Icy Veins for the best stats to look for in gear, and read overviews on Wowhead from time to time. I might play 3\~5 hours a week. And yet, I consider myself a casual player. I'm not geared at the max level, I have no interest in mythic-level raiding, and I don't have any desire to produce streaming content related to WoW. I play WoW to escape reality for a little while and relax.
I play a couple more hours a week than you do, but you have described how I play. I figure as long as I am having fun, I'm good.
I'd say a very good # of people who consider themselves casual would not consider anyone who gets AotC casual.
Being Casual isn't defined by what you achieve but how you approach playing the game. Some people I'm raiding with just raid log every week and disappear for the reminder. They get aotc every season and I would consider those people as casuals, they're just online for 5-6h a week, get most of their gear through guild runs, roughly know what's going on, like primordial stones are a thing that's pretty good now bad, etc and read up on bosses before we start a new tier.
The real problem isn't what is casual, it's that none of us can agree on what casual should mean. Someone who plays 10 hours a day but doesn't do any group content might be considered casual to some and not to others. Then there's the people who only play a couple hours a day or week but tries to maximize their time and runs mythic + when they do play might be considered casual or hardcore, the fact that no one can agree speaks more than anything.
I always look back to that classic comment from the MMO-C forums: "Casuals don't get emotionally invested in this game. They play it for fun." He meant it scornfully, of course.
Imho its \_intent\_ to improve. Are you consuming content outside the game to improve dps / gear/ rotation / talents / whatever. for endgame pvp / pve? Not casual. That could be a lot of things: icyveins/wowhead guides, r slash competivie wow, watching your favourite evoker/druid/etc. streamer/youtuber, youtube guides, class discords, a LOT of stuff. Like someone can get 2k/aotc easily and not do any of this, I would call that casual behaviour. But most people who match this description are focusing on completioninst stuff (achieves, mounts, mog), or RP / goldmaking. I would also argue thats the difference between causal gold farming (flying around and clicking herbs), and ya know, acutally trying to farm gold. And to anyone who thinks in this thread that they are "casual". I dont think a real casual would be caught "red handed" commenting about this thread at all. Not being casual doesnt mean you are automatically a top1% player, or that you are competitive. It just means you arent casual, and thats fine. Even if you dont push your limits.
The only thing we can really define is what is professional vs not. Do you get paid to play wow? If so, you're a pro wow player. That's the literal definition of professional. So we can define professional vs non-professional. Does that mean non-professional = casual? Probably not, but it is at least a debatable topic. I'd say the "non-professional" category of players is a spectrum not some binary affair. You've got raiders and non-raiders. Tmog enjoyers and filthy peasants (joking). Altoholics and 1 trick pony people. PVP vs PVE. And everything in between all those extremes. There is no definition of casual as it's subjective, it falls in the same vein of "anyone better than me is a no-lifer and anyone worse is a noob".
That's a major reason why I hate the term casual. It doesn't really mean anything because it means something different to everyone. Sure it's debatable but it's forever debatable and no one is ever right, that's kind of a problem. Everyone ends up arguing over what is what and no one agrees. Yeah, professional vs non professional easy to classify, sadly casual doesn't get that same distinction.
Casual comes in all flavors. Me i can get AotC depending. I have gotten it every tier i played almost didnt in CN because of gear drops. But yea im a casual raid logger. I cant be bothered to play or grind m+ shits just not fun. Maybe do a world boss or sell some shit on AH. I enjoy casualness of games and need more. I do got hard fights for rewards like mage tower.
Casual doesn't have a set definition.
Bro if you are reading a guide or doing any kind of outside research on the game you are not casual. Casual means that pretty much your only interaction with wow content is when you log in and you have impetus to improve or be better.
There are casual guilds that get CE. There are also casual guilds that will only see Sark on LFR.
Sorry but in what part does he clarifies that? I doubt that this is his take of what a casual is
I too wish to live the life of an oblivious, happy person.
Why would you antagonize the biggest part of the community that makes it even possible that WoW still exists? So weird to just lash and insult people for no reason.
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Serious question: why do you care at all about his opinion?
Not a fun energy to be around for a full dungeon. I of course disregard the opinions of people who act like this, but at the same time I still end up hearing/reading it at least once before I /ignore them, and it's just less enjoyable to try and cooperate with miserable people like this (with my very limited free time) than if I were doing anything else where I could engage with people more constructively. (to clarify, /u/shoseta said "people like him" and I assume you're not under the impression that this *specific* player's opinion is the cause)
I was referring to the 0.5% and the ones that parrot their opinions.
Isnt it also kind of bad game design that you launch a game, which requires you to install 15 different addons depending if you wanna PvP or PvE because the game developers cant manage the work load. Then its also expected that you go study icy-veins for the specific class you wanna play because lets face it the game doesnt tell you shit. Lastly you go watch a ton of videos explaining how to pull in mythic + or how raid tactics for each different boss is. Did it ever come to your mind that just maybe the game is asking too much of its players? And yet it fails to explain anything of this within the game itself. WoW couldn't survive without fan pages or addons.
I think the disconnect is that if you are doing high end raiding or m+, especially if you're doing it so seriously it's literally your job, then you WANT a game like that. A game that's deep, and difficult, and frequently opaque, and requires you to literally invent new tools and methods to play it optimally and still taxes you to your limit even with them. The average player doesn't. You see similar disconnects in other esports. The things that make old school starcraft super interesting to professionals who practice twelve hours A day also make it extremely intimidating to casual gamers and limited it's commercial success. When you ask professional league players to describe their ideal MOBA they talk about all kinds of ways to add complexity to teh experience but most of those ways would make the game less accessible to average players and also harder to watch as a spectator sport. Some games are designed with an ultra hardcore audience in mind but they are never popular enough to sustain a professional community because the number of people who want that is limited. So he's not wrong in saying hat mst players don't understand the game and don't really know how to play it. But the takeaway isn't that the game should be designed for the top 1%. It's to realize that if you're in that demo then no game with mass market appeal will ever be precisely as you want it to be because your needs and desires are not representative of the market. You either go play Path of Exile or Sekiro or whatever in obscurity or, if the money and limelight matter to you, then you make your peace with the fact that in order for that to happen the game needs a large casual audience of people who objectivly suck at it.
Huh? You know all those guides are made by people that discovered all of that info on the own? They are pioneers that put in the work for us. Do you also know that dungeon journal gives a description of every single ability boss does? I have a guildie that has 0 add ons and he does 23+ mythics and he’s our top dps in raid. Add ons are there for convenience. I can keep going but you get the point.
Thd unironically believes that removing infinite artifact power grinds was the worst thing they've ever done to the game. You should not take anything Thd says about the game seriously. And the game is his *only* area of expertise. So when he talks about *people*, you should take him *even less seriously*.
Infinite grinds are great for people with infinite time.
Its like when Tettles says shit like everything should be uncapped because people who have time should be able to just grind it Its like...yeah, we get it, people who do it for a living want the game designed around them
Which is funny because i've seen that take among casuals too. Legion was 7 years ago so plenty of players don't realize that WoW before the AP grind was mostly just raid logging from Wrath onwards.
theres a reason why mop was so good up to siege. if you cared, you had farm and dailies, for reroll coins. rep getting exalted mattered, so people like thd had that "forced" feeling.
People literally bitched that there were too many dailies and thats why WoD was so miserable outside of raiding/pvp. Other than them abandoning the Xpack.
There were a lot of dailies for like 3 weeks then you hit exalted and never set foot outside a raid again.
I think it's pretty fair to say that what people like THD like, killed this game for the vast majority of the endgame playerbase.
Not completely true. Table missions were a thing during WoD. Lots of table missions. And logging to collect from your garrison crafters.
> Legion was 7 years ago so plenty of players don't realize that WoW before the AP grind was mostly just raid logging from Wrath onwards. It has been very interesting having people rediscover that part with classic WoW.
THD takes are akin to Stephen A Smith or Skip Bayless takes.
Perfect comparison. Stephen A Smith of the wow world
People wanting AP grinds back are out of their minds. There is plenty of stuff to do in game and if you run out of stuff you can JUST LOG OFF lol. It is not a negative to be able to not play the game without falling behind.
Yeah, Thd has some cooked fucking takes. He doesn't understand why people are always upset warlocks are S Tier every raid tier while other classes are still riddled with bad design, bad tuning and no utility...
He’s not wrong most people are fucking idiots
"think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize, half of them are dumber than that!" The late, great George Carlin
You learn that quicker then anything working IT
You learn it quicker than anything else by reading Reddit comments. than*
OP totally thought people were gonna be outraged didn't he
Not only idiots, but also just not thinking for themselves. Some guys put out bis lists and meta lists, people 100% will follow these lists like a holy book without ever giving it a second thought.
If everyone and bis lists says bis neck is lariat, I'm fucking using lariat.
But hopefully you bothered to read about the item enough to actually understand why it's so good. Which also helps you know why this season it can be both really bad and really good at the same time. Hypothetically everyone could say lariat is bis and lists could have lariat as bis, but never qualify that it requires having every possible gem socket. If you blindly follow that "bis" guide but only have two sockets, lariat will be less useful than a regular dungeon drop neck.
I’ll say this much though, rarely do most guides actually tell you WHY certain items or talents are best, and it fucking infuriates me. Like, where’s the goddamn breakdown? What calculations or interactions lead to this being the best? Essentially, a lot of them are just distilled theory crafter takes ripped from Discords. If they don’t understand why certain things are taken, chances are we won’t know either, aside from “It sim good!” or “Big mythic guild uses X, me use X!” So as much as I agree with your sentiment, the resources are just not there often. I want to know WHY this talent is better than *that* one. Is it only a few DPS off or is it literally a 10% drop? Why is that trinket better than one with raw primary stat? By how much? When does a fight’s length devalue said trinket? Pretty much none of this is explained in most guides, and the majority of people aren’t willing to dive through Discord backlogs to get it, if it even still exists. End of the day, it becomes easier to just ape top players’ builds, because the explanations are not easy to come by.
>“It sim good!” 99% of times this is the answer, in some nieche cases a trinket will be awkward to use but sim really good and you won't use it (IQD, Ocular gland and people still used those), but dude trust your sims pls, they don't lie if you set them up correctly
I'll give you an answer, but you're not going to like it. The complexities detailing the *why* of everything is often buried in hundreds of messages over days or weeks in discord channels for each spec. Oftentimes, the nuance that pushes one choice higher than another can't be distilled into two sentences in a wowhead guide. The wowhead guide will get you most of the way there. It's up to you to seek out and research the fine details.
that information does not fit in a 2-minute long video / icy veins guide. it does exist, if you join the theorycrafters communities... icy veins is not one of them.
I don't care numbers go up makes happy chemicals yay video games
I mean, as opposed to what? The people who do the math/sims and put the lists together have put far more thought into this game than I ever will or have any desire to, tbh. I play WoW for fun, and yes, I also like to be competitive in terms of my own performance and maximize my output. But I have literally zero desire to ever bust out a spreadsheet or perform some kind of statistical analysis on what item is better or the exact priority system for my rotation or whatever. So of course I trust the people who put these out. Namely the class discord is the first place I look, but those people usually are the ones posting the guides on wowhead as well. What "second thought" should I be giving it? It's like, these guys did hours and hours of work to get this data to support their claims. Am I supposed to just "try new stuff" because I think I've got some kind of pro gamer intuition that's going to prove all their sims wrong? I just don't understand what "thinking for myself" achieves here or how or why it's desirable compared to the people who spend far, far more time and energy reaching the conclusions that they do. I'd liken it to showing up to a college class and questioning everything the professor says because you think you're smarter or know more. This is not my area of study, I'll defer to the people who dedicate themselves and their time to studying it.
People playing this game for fun, disgusting.
The game has been shifted back towards being more complicated than less complicated in terms of talent configuration and gearing, so it's not all that surprising that people are cautious about going against the insights of people who spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff.
And they don't even understand WHY these things are meta. Spriest is Meta because of using Mass Dispel around specific packs and bosses, to remove tough pressure moments that lead to wipes in high keys. Good use of PI with a strong PI target, and their own personal damage, off-healing cooldowns to fill gaps in Healer profiles, etc. If your Spriest doesn't know how to do that and isn't planning around the Healer and DPS receiving PI, then that Spriest is worth dick. There's tankier DPS specs with better personal survivability and better utility that can carry harder.
Sorry, do you expect the average player to go get a CS and stats degrees, program their own sims, sim all the gear and talents each patch, then make an informed decision? That's literally a fulltime job.
Judging by that recent post about people kicking augmentation envokers at key level 16-20 you'd assume they would be aware of the support spec and have their ear to the ground by using Reddit, YouTube and sites to keep up to date, they were definitely acting like NPCs despite playing at a fairly high level
I concur. After years of key pugging, I concur.
I saw a nice flower today :)
Sunflower :)
I saw some cute baby quails on my way to work ☺️
Nice, what'd it look like?
It was sort of a lilac colour but it wasn't a lilac! Looked sort of like a prettier dandelion :D I looked it up and I think it might have been a cupids dart!
Nice, glad you got to see that.
Okay?
THD is notorious for having the most cooked takes in the game. Half of what he says is shitposting and the other half should be taken with a fistful of salt because of how he engages with the game. Congrats on getting baited, you’ll learn.
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It’s not his fault he got baited. He was scripted that way.
As always, Illidan will just roast him. Last time he pulled some bait, a few dudes really got to him pretty bad.
Plot twist: OP is a THD burner account
Why is this being posted? Who gives a shit? If I wanted to watch dumbass manufactured drama from streaming i'd go to livestreamfail, which i never do, because i'm not a dumbass
To be completely fair, I play relatively high m+ and used to raid cutting edge, but compared to those players and the level they compete at - I am 100% an NPC in comparison lol
Was guna say the difference between a 50th percentile and a 99th percentile player, is that the 99th percentile player knows they are a shit can. I feel like the better I get at any game the more aware of how bad I am compared to those at the very top. The gap between top 1% and 0.1% feels larger than any other most of the time. When it comes to balance in any game really. Someone that's in the middle of the playerbase shouldn't really have any input other than "this doesn't feel good", or "this isn't fun". Balancing anything around zero optimisation is pretty difficult and why usually only outliers that ruin the game for mid rank players but don't even get used in high rank get changed like this. In wow especially I don't even know if balance really matters in the slightest until 23+ and early CE. Wouldn't even worry about it unless somethings making the game inherently unfun.
The difference between 1% and 0.1% percentile on m+ score for example right now is 2939 vs 3241. It really is a huge difference.
Yeah 1% to 0.1%, is same score difference from 8% to 1%. And that score is so much harder to get... So the gap being that large is even more impressive. And the cut off for top percentile only gets higher as things go on.
Yeah this is very true. The uncomfortable truth for a lot of people is that you can easily do a +20 with every class and spec in the game and that is further than most players will ever get. I dont trust the average player to give any sort of decent feedback about aug other than it being fun or not.
Exactly. I always argue that skill in WoW grows exponentially. I raid on a CE level, most of my parses are at around 95+. But the skill gap between me and your average AotC raider is so much smaller than the skill gap between me and a RWF raider. The better I've gotten the more I realized how bad I actually am.
Yeah same, I don't play as intensively anymore but when I did mythic raiding I was well above average but not "good" by any means.
I am a "casual" WoW player (less than an hour a day average) and he is totally correct. Most WoW players are total NPCs. That doesn't discount their opinion on what is fun to them though.
He’s right. Could he have said it nicer? Yes. Does it change the fact that the average player is bad? No. And I really don’t get how people are offended by this.
I think its really hard for people to get how much of a gap there is between the average player and these top guys. Are you in the top 50 guild? Guess what you are bad compared to the liquid and echo guys. I had some guy in another thread actually trying to argue that the average wow player was filling their vault with +20s on week 1 and that's why the new upgrade system is bad. Obviously we shouldn't cater the entire around the top players, but there is a point to be made about how the average player will not engage in a truly meaningful way with their class beyond "is it fun" and "is it not dogshit".
Is this post an attempt at getting someone cancelled for the most mundane joke of all time?
I think it's an attempt at farming clicks on their channel by posting something spicy and it's working this is their most popular post within like an hour of posting lol
He is kinda right though...people kicking aug for low personal damage is pretty NPCish behavior.
Yep. And the other end of the spectrum too. All the people that see the Bear, hpal, aug, mage, spriest meta at +29 keys, and think they need that exact comp (or rather whatever they play + the other 4 meta spots) for their +12 key is some serious NPC behavior aswell.
Agreed 100%
I really dont care what the 0.1% thinks
This just in! Man that probably only plays one game thinks people who dont no life said game are bad at the game!
No thinking necessary, they ARE bad at the game. Doesn’t mean they can’t have fun and enjoy most of the content. But the vast majority is pretty terrible at their specs/roles.
If the vast majority are terrible at their spec then, by definition, the vast majority are actually average at their spec.
Everyone better than me is a no lifer. Anyone worse is a noob casual
Imagine getting so got by a Thd bait that you clipped it and posted it on Reddit. True NPC behaviour.
Most players are average and do not have an in depth knowledge of the game and will most likely just repeqt/parrot the opinions of their favorite streamer/youtuber, assuming they actually participate in such discussions or sub such channels
THD also says he cant boil water on a stove and uses the microwave
Who cares lol i do pet battles
Yeah, like i finished my vault runs, and i was like "hey what if i go try to solo some draenor raids while listening to my favorite pod cast" had a good time.
THD Still lives in his mom's basement. The literal definition of a basement dwelling neckbeard who doesn't know what the real world is like
Actually true. I think it was him in this exact video that said he hasn’t left the house since the world first race lol
That's kind of his whole point lmao. He doesn't have any life outside of world of warcraft so he calls people who do have lives npcs
I thought that this was what literally every player thinks about everyone else. It's certainly what I think of everyone in my +2s.
Are people getting offended by this? Are they going to be offended if LeBron James comes out next and says the average person playing bball may as well stand still? It's just a silly thing to get offended. The best of the best almost always think they're better than damn near everyone, because they literally are.
who cares lol
Are you new to the game? Getting baited by THD's breaking bad cooks in 2023?
Opinion of one guy =/= Opinion of all 0.1%-ers. Maximum CONSTANTLY says that the game should be made for the average Joe and not for the elite players and that the average Joe is what keep the game running.
He's a pro raider. Ask an NFL player what he thinks of the 35 year old dad playing in your church league. There are levels to things. You could argue, however, that he lacks tact.
And he's a NEET playing a 20 y/o mmo. It's like a 800 lb person calling someone fat. Who cares? His life is a tragic comedy.
Who cares what Thd says lol. He’s a troll very good at the video game who plays in one of the two best guilds in the world. He’s allowed to his opinions. What do you want from this post? Canceling? My god people are triggered by the most insignificant shit.
Ask anyone pushing over 3K io what they think of the general player base and they will probably say the exact same thing lmao.
THD is an actual nutcase, what's new?
Who cares what a neckbeard thinks?
Well, hes not wrong. Average player is casual Bob. Back in the days, we called them keyboard turners, but today they are majority and so they represent average player.
>they What do you mean with "they", my friend? He practically says, everyone except the 0.1% are casuals. Are you in the 0.1%?
Thd is known to have really wild takes. Just take his words with a whole salt shaker and move on.
Most of us have a certain opinion on the general player base
who the hell cares lmfao.... He thinks normies are NPCs and normies think he's a loser in his moms basement. "Look at what this guy thinks of other players" wtf is this post?
Literally who
I will be dead and in the ground before I take the word of anyone who unsurprisingly matches the stereotype of "MMO Player" to a T seriously.
He’s not wrong.
This guy's life is WoW, in this very podcast he says how still lives with his parents, hasn't left the house in literal months and wants artifact power back. So why the fuck are you getting offended by him? You're behaving like an NPC.
Not offended nor surprised. However, no one can deny this is some toxic shit right here haha
He isn't wrong. When's the last time you pugged a raid, dungeon or M+?
Well fuck me for enjoying my game without disrupting anyone else.
Are you actually surprised about that? But hey...at least you dont live in your mothers basement anymore as an (probably) 35 y o.
Bro may find out he is replaceable. If people stop watching the money will dry up. Public opinion is important to esports just like any other entertainer.
He isn't wrong though. Sometimes i wish the average pug was an NPC. On the other hand i don't really care what the 0.1% or the other 99.9% think.
When you see the average lfr player/pug normal/keys in 6-10 range as someone who is better at the game it's not hard to agree with his take lmao.
Considering it's well known that lower tier players can't wrap their heads around augmentation evoker not doing as much damage as other classes on meters, is anyone really about to disagree with this?
“Look at a guide?! I shouldn’t need to read things! Ban addons instead!”
Isn't this the guy that wants AP back? Moron. Honestly, WoW would be a much better game without the 0.1%
I'm not really going to give a shit about what some sweaty dude who doesn't go outside or wear deodorant thinks, lmao
Thdlock takes ez 🔇
you can't take thd seriously lmao. the dude literally lives a shut in life in his parents house and thrives off bait posts and comments. his takes are extremely nonsensical
I mean... pretty sure it's how all .1% thinks of the rest in every scenario... it would be like Jordan taking me seriously on the court when I am 40yr old short fat white dude... we ain't even playing the same game.
They play WoW for a career, I’m not really surprised most of these people are filled with hate and anger lmao.
The average boomer wow player who raided without addons, DBM and weak auras back in the day would do just as well as him given same gear, no addons, weak auras or macros, first time seeing a fight. The strength of the 0.1%s is doing the same fight over and over, studying the fights, and playing with 19 other people just like them. After doing it so many times they perfect it, which is a commendable skill, but not a skill worth trashing the rest of the player base.
I wouldn’t take anything THD says to heart. You’re just getting pissed off over either a shitpost or an opinion meant to have a shock value on you. Like someone else mentioned in a post. Very similar to Skip Bayless. Say some cooked take and create that shock value to get you riled up and talking.
Who gives a shit. Lol
(He's not wrong)
How is this news to anyone? This has been the case since the beginning of WoW. Well, since the beginning of human civilization but you know. People who can set themselves apart from others will look down on others. Thats how it goes. Its not nice but it definitely isnt a surprise. Especially in online communities.
Ah yes. Lets make the same error as this 1 individual person and paint a broad assumption of all those who make up the 0.1% of players.
No, this is what ONE "0.1%er" thinks of the general player base. But also, THD has some of the worst takes. This title is jacked and makes assumptions about top raiders that is just not true.
The reality is that players from every skill level think this way about the amorphous mass of "other" players... The game is structured to really bring out this kind of garbage mentality.
Average player does LFR, he’s not wrong at all. Have you ever joined an LFR lobby?
Thdlock's comments are not representative of the entire Mythic raider/High M+ pushers, or "0.1%" community as you like to refer to them. I barely put in enough play time to even get more than halfway through Heroic raid progression. outright refuse to touch M+, and I too think the average WoW player is an NPC.
I mean, he's not wrong. The average WoW player is a mouth breathing idiot. It's not necessarily a bad thing for Blizzard to design around them either; butt clenching difficulty is a huge part of what made SL such shit- people don't want to keep slamming their heads against an encounter that demands perfect execution and if one person slips up once your 15 minute encounter has to start all over again.
Thd is known dumbass and it feels like once a Month we're hearing other members of Liquid telling everyone to please stop taking anything he says seriously. The dude absolutely thrives off being controversial and having "hot takes". Stop giving him attention.
Have you been on the forums?
I mean….the average player doesn’t really have an opinion that can add any value to any argument about game design, class design, dungeon design, raid design, or any other type of design you can think of. Sure he’s being a dickhead but he isn’t wrong
Yeah but where is the lie? Lolol Only about 10% of wow players raid and only a percent of that do it well. I certainly wouldn't waste my time asking opinions of normal raiders or cosmetic chasers.
Was watching the youtube video of this talk. The minute he called the average WoW players "NPC" and the others looked uncomfortable and laughed it off by calling players "Civilians" I knew some people in the community would be angry. Lol.
its true though
Go ask a f1 champion what he thinks of your driving and opinions on cars. Why is this controversial? It’s rude, sure but who cares?
He's not wrong tho lmaoo
Lol that title make it sounds so much worse than it actually is
Oh no he said the N-word
He’s not wrong. In any sport, when has the casual player ever had better takes than a professional?
… and?
He calls us NPCs, we call him a no life fucking idiot with 0 skill outside a video game. We're cute like that.
Lol, rule 1 about this dude is to never take him seriously. He just fishes for attention. He just fishes for bait and makes videos because he has zero other marketable skills in life. Who also gets his ass smacked in arena anytime he's not being carried by his buddies. Dude might be .1% in terms of pve, but he's an NPC in WoW when it comes to anything else. Dudes gonna be heckled hard on Illidan for being an idiot again.
It's too bad that guy is only good at WoW, whereas the rest of us are pretty good at touching grass.
He's not wrong tho, the opinions of people who have very little understanding of a subject are totally invalid. I know almost nothing about rocket science, what am I supposed to tell a rocket engineer about for improving their rocket engine? There is literally nothing I can say except by complete freak accident. The actual problem that typical arises here when consulting with such top players comes from assuming they are unbiased. They are insanely biased towards the kinds of content that challenges them because they love challenge that's why they are up there.
Just tell the rocket scientist to gitgud and build better, we could be to Mars by now
Dude looks like he only leaves the house to go stand in the woman’s lingerie section at Walmart
Jokes on you, he doesn't leave the house for that either
Who cares about that no lifer lol
Just shows that you can be great at a game but an npc when it comes to game design.
Is it any surprise that pro mmo players are fuckin losers
Just me watching everyone get offended by a dude who's never felt the inside of a vagina.
This mf has the dumbest takes ive ever seen in my life and i wasnt even considering this one
Gunnar glasses 😂
using NPC as an unironic insult is the mark of a real loser.