An Alternative? to parsers..

[Penthea]

If gear was truly the distinction as you say, why is it that my i297 PLD in full time tank stance can out DPS i330+ tanks. Why is it that my brother's ilvl 305 SAM did more damage than an entire party of roughly i320-325 players, by OVER double the second highest person in the group.

Great, bad and everything in between is always going to be in every mmo because every human is different. That is why this happens. Just because you can do something doesn't mean everyone else is in a position to or even wants to.

And no it's not due to the absence of parsers. I met plenty of bad players in WoW who had parsers. They didn't feel magically inspired to do their best, they just did the bare minimum that gave them a quiet life. Which sometimes wasn't enough in top tier content, and obviously it caused problems.

There is no mystical cure-all when it comes to lazy or bad players. They will always be around no matter how sophisticated and freely available parsing becomes. WoW is a prime example of this fact.

Gear matters for sure, but let's not be naive here and pretend that the average player is either mindbogglingly ignorant of MMO fundamentals, or lazy.

Well no, they're not. Average players play just fine. I mean, this is why they're called average. Not amazing but certainly acceptable.