Quote Originally Posted by Noira View Post
Not a special privilege but let you ask you something.

Would you listen to someone who actually studied open heart surgery and has experience in it ? Or would you listen to someone who just has a feeling of what to do but has no experience in it ?
That's a bit of a jump, since you're literally trying to compare a game to a potential life and death situation. Yes, with higher risk there tends to be a higher priority of verifying sources.

But I think you're neglecting the potential impact of uninformed opinions. Let's stick to the medical theme to start. Currently, we're in a bit of a crisis with vaccinations and the control of certain disease. Some people got it in their head a few years ago that vaccines can cause side effects like autism. Now, you have a movement that's sprouted up that's promoting the idea that these vaccines are bad and are not immunizing their children. Because of bad information, people developed an uninformed opinion on vaccines, and as a result we're seeing some terrible consequences, like certain diseases making a resurgence and those who rely on herd immunity being at greater risk to contracting these diseases at no fault of their own.

Now, let's jump back to the gaming side. Remember back to a few weeks ago before the AST buffs. We started seeing threads pop up from people saying they we're being barred from content like the extreme primals. In many respects, a portion of the community was excluding the AST job likely because of general perceptions of "weakness" and the fact that AST had a known, limited presence in savage content. However, the fact is AST was more than capable of handling the content prior to, and arguably through, savage mode. The community at large was acting on an uninformed opinion about AST's capabilities and people we're experiencing diminished play experiences as a result. Alternatively, remember when that video of the AST solo healing Ravana extreme appeared? A lot of people took that as a sign that AST needed no adjustments, even though that case made no attempt to demonstrate how the other healing classes would also perform in that situation. That uninformed opinion led to a lot of frustrated back and forth on this subforum.

To take it back to your point, you have to consider the penalties/risk of bad information in these situations. Where one's health is concerned, people on average tend to seek out the advice of experts, but as the vaccine example shows, even there uninformed opinions can create problems. When you look at it in a game since, bad information posses little to no risk. So it's far easier for bad information to persist and people to act on it. In my opinion, I'd rather all opinions, informed or otherwise, come to the surface so they can be faced and discussed/disproved rationally (though that's the part forums tend to fail at).