The only game I hear brought up about how "logs" broke other games is World of Warcraft, and I really cannot seem to make a fast google search for any general analysis of how parsing destroys the community/games.

And by the way, World of Warcraft still is the most popular MMO...It was hit a lot by mechanic changes with some of its expansions from what I heard (never actually played it, nor will I). However those apparently were sudden and came shortly after each expansion, not something particularly gradual as a community-based issue would do.

I am entirely conscious of the fact that people will grieve over stuff like numbers. One of my early experiences in this game when I was just leveling my first class, was a tank that died (the two DPS with me as the healer, had no issue finishing off the mobs the tank left when dying), that didn't want to revive and come back cause I didn't have swiftcast and as a result didn't revive them mid-combat. He/she spent 3-4 minutes admonishing me, lvl43 or so at highest job (having 21 or so at the second highest), that I should have went for swiftcast before ever leveling a healer, even though this was the first time I actually would have use for it...


However, when deciding implementation of ANYTHING, one would need to consider the gains versus the losses. The gains?! Obvious. People would get objective means of getting better at whatever job they are, without having to depend on outside sources (guides, websites, other people) that are most certainly not objective. This would decrease the amount of people that are just plain terrible, even if they show high level and high gear, in a low-mid level dungeon. The bad?! Harassment over numbers done would have its place. However, let's not forget that harassment always was and always will be bannable.

Right now, the fact that using parsers would lead to a ban if that knowledge was used for harassment is enough of a deterrent for people to not harass others to any significant degree (I have never seen anyone ever mention any numbers, and the only times someone "talked down" on another persons performance was against healer/tank). That makes me believe that the scope of harassment that would occur is grossly exaggerated by the anti-parsers people.

In reality, a dedicated customer support to act against harassment and enforce that rule which is already there will minimize the issue severely all on its own, as less vigilant state we have now is still doing enough of a job at that. This game is subscription-based and requires some noticeable amount of time to get to the end-game. It's not something that people will easily throw away to vent at a random passerby in the run that they will probably never meet again. People DO care about being banned, and they don't want that to happen. It's a load of money and time to get to where they were at.