Quote Originally Posted by Lunavi View Post
The reason behind that for me is due to the simple fact that the MMO community have changed. It is no longer people who look for a fun time with other people, it is people who want to show of their e-peen. And how do they do that? Well, by excluding other whose e-peens are not as long as theirs. It would be one thing not having SCoB gear if it did not mean that I would get locked out from doing any kind of content but sadly with the modern MMO community it does. Look at WoW for example: To run the raid mode where the highest end loot drop you almost already have to have the loot in question to get into the groups. That is the issue. I have no problem with people having to fight for gear, but when not having it means being excluded from doing the content in itself something is really wrong.

I am not saying that this game is that bad yet, but I want to empatize the YET in that statement.
Was there a time when it was different? It's been that way for a really long time... Elitism in games is nothing new, people did that when WoW was first released really. The only MMO game I played where no one cared about gear was City of Heroes but that was because there was no gear to get.