I really like this post.
It might be more honest to say that players who prefer the WoW style of play aren't "dumb", "wrong", or "don't like having fun". They just have fun a different way than CoH players do.
It could just be that we, as a group, are a bit of an outlier in the gaming world. When we are all together talking about gaming, we of course feel that people who like other types of games are somehow doing it wrong...but they say the same about us. "Fun" is subjective.
Which is a great way of illustrating why CoH needs to exist. We might be a small group, but we exist and other games don't do "it" for us. I've tried other games and nothing else works for me. I'm only a "gamer" when CoH exists. Otherwise I don't play games. There is a real place in this world for the unique thing that is CoH.
Like others said, I'm a bit of a mix. I had a bunch of "mains". 16 lvl 50s...all of which I played over the course of a month. (some more than others) I would say I spent 70-80% of my time playing them. So I had some "WoW" attitude there. When I leveled a new character, my mind was always on the "finish line". I didn't really like not having all my powers. But there was that part of me that did love trying new powersets so I had the "alting" bug too....just not as much as some others. I still get the itch to try some new combinations. I mean...Ice/Storm isn't the same as Ill/Storm!
Thats true of gaming in general. It's often very difficult to see why x group of gamers likes Y game when Y game is certainly not a good game to z group of gamers. I could use oblivion is a good example. Oblivion, it's not a game I dislike, in fact I played it a lot. I play skyrim more, because I like it more, but I did play oblivion before. It has it's own nuances, just the characters are somewhat robotic, the game is, unlike skyrim, extremely hard to immerse oneself in. But some people did like it, in fact I even liked that enemies leveled up with the player, because one thing I never liked was games just getting easier and easier on me just because I gained some levels. An overly static world to me gets very boring, and oblivion wasn't so static, in a way. The npc behavior in towns kind of were, but outside of the towns you'd find the enemies getting better weapons/armor and whatnot. Now, alot of people HATED that, I didn't mind it so much.
They hated it for a few reasons. Power-be-all-end-all players hated that they couldn't just level up and rule the world sololy on high level, power leveling had to be done very carefully, just getting level 50 meant nothing if you had low attributes as your enemies would be MORE powerful than you for it. Roleplayers who played other elder scrolls games understandably dispised it because glass armor and daedric armor, both very rare and very expensive armor, became especially common place, as if marauders had access to huge amounts of daedric hearts, ebony ore and some super smith working for them while bandits had tons and tons of malachite and elven metals.
It was, rather lore breaking in a way. I could understand that. But I still enjoyed the game inspite that because at least the game didn't automatically become super easy mode for me right away. I had to learn how to do that still. I didn't stay in character go figure, though. I also avoided doing some side quests at high levels, particularly ones involving the protection of suicidal morons who'd as soon as jump into lava chasing that high health enemy that fell off a bridge.
Moving to fallout 3, I can say that the game, it's lifespan was somewhat limited. Things would remain unchanged as you leveled up heavily enough, with only some areas scaling with you. But it was done badly in that, sure they leveled up with you but they just became easier and easier to kill. In fact, playing on very hard was almost easier than playing on very easy in some ways, because sure the damage was higher and enemies were tougher, but you got so much more experience that enemies started showing up with the good stuff right away. You ended up with top quality equipment in very little time, even less so than oblivion, merely by setting the game on very hard. But a lot of people thought fallout 3 did a much better job. Then of course, new vegas removed the experience gain from that, cut perk rate in half and upped the level cap.
Skyrim on the other hand, handled the leveling system in a far more practical way. Enemies STILL leveled up with you, but their equipment would cap out, getting equipment that was practical for them to obtain. Bandit chiefs would wear steel armor/steel plate/nordic carved armor, the last of those three actually being very tough and on part with ebony armor, but was a more steel-based armor, it was made of far more common materials. Only flaw I could think of was the necessity of smithing and enchanting to get the good stuff, but that I felt was perhaps for the better imo, as you couldn't just automatically get the good stuff by getting a high level.
Course, every one of them had people who disliked these games. Some people hated smithing and enchanting in skyrim alot, feeling that making your own stuff should never even be allowed OR that only the best stuff should be found(I personally rather a balance, I hate games where if you have a crafting system, it's useless anyways because you just find better stuff, why include crafting then?). Some people hated that fallout 3 was very easy even on very hard(honestly I was on the fence about it's difficulty, but I don't play skyrim or new vegas on anything higher than normal/adept, especially not skyrim with skyre which makes it utter suicide to play on anything higher than adept).
I already mentioned oblivion, likewise. Fallout 3? Well, plasma guns became common just by doing the main quest far enough in.
