Quote Originally Posted by Jpec07 View Post
There's a skill gap and there's an experience gap. I think a lot of people tend to confuse the two (especially here), and that the skill gap isn't nearly as wide as most people think.**snip** People see others fail to mechanics they failed to explain (but that were explained to them only after they themselves failed), and assume the person who failed is bad--when in fact, they just didn't know what to look for. Many people also forget that raid awareness is a learned and practiced skill, and that we were all n00bz at one point.
Indeed.

I think the problem with these gaps are community based. It is the community that deems it OK to demand that all players view online videos prior to actually playing the game, and then castigates those who do not. For me, at least 90% of learning mechanics and boss fights in general happens during play, and at best 10% comes from reading about it or watching a video.

If more people learned mechanics by doing them, instead of memorizing the content of a how to video, we'd have better players in general. But the prevailing attitude in the community goes against that, calling you a 'bad' if you fail to watch some video or another.