| Current fashion at my birth |
While I'm older than most of the players I've met, I don't consider myself old. I'm getting closer and closer to 40, which makes me approximately twice if not even three times as old as many of the players I've interacted with. While there is certainly no scientific statistical analysis behind this next opinion, I'd say that those players older than 33 make up less than a quarter of the players I've met. I may be wrong here -- it's just been my experiences.
See -- I don't consider myself "old". In my life, when people address me as "Mr.", I still immediately assume they are referring to my father. Sure, I'm married (for 13 years now!), I'm a father to 4 children, and I work full time. But... I still make time to play a video game. Gamers can't be "old", can we?
So what sparked this?
Well... we had a great run as a guild 5m for the random heroic, and we pulled Deadmines. Now I've only done that one once before, and I did not have a great experience. The whole Nightmare is just not fun for me, and honestly I struggle with it. I handled the falling icicles in the Pit of Saron just fine. I handled the frogger slimes in Naxxramas without incident. I handled the Icehowl charge in ToC without causing an enrage, and I dispelled that enrage when others weren't so nimble.
See, I can move out of the way and avoid the poop in most cases. But I can't seem to avoid the fires or dodge the electrified limbo sticks in heroic Deadmines! The only way I've been able to navigate in there is by stacking on top of another player as they run through and not looking at anything else but them so that I step where they step. If they fail, I'm dead too. But I can't seem to do it without a visual reference.
See, I can move out of the way and avoid the poop in most cases. But I can't seem to avoid the fires or dodge the electrified limbo sticks in heroic Deadmines! The only way I've been able to navigate in there is by stacking on top of another player as they run through and not looking at anything else but them so that I step where they step. If they fail, I'm dead too. But I can't seem to do it without a visual reference.
How does this tie back into the age thing?
Two of us in the group struggled with dodging the poop in our run. We were the older players. The three twenty-somethings had no issues. To prove how easy it was, two of them ran up and back and up and back to show how it worked, which was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek way of saying "Come ON Gramps!" It was friendly, but honestly there was a difference in our performance -- but ONLY with the dodging and only in the fire pools and lightning limbo.
I have to wonder: Have I finally hit something where I'm 'weaker' than a younger player? Is it my reaction time that's slower? My eyesight (please hold the cataract comments!)? Hand-eye coordination? Or, as I want to think -- just too much crap going on in a confined space?
Don't hold back on your comments -- please give me both barrels if it's as simple as "Just friggin' dodge it, dude". Obviously, I'm a big boy. I can take constructive criticism!
Logging you in...
Janyaa · 737 weeks ago
That part always reminds me of Super Mario Brothers during the dungeon levels with the fire sticks. I spent countless hours playing that game growing up, so this didn't seem much different.
Did you play that game, by chance? It may just be you didn't play the same practice games...
bossypally 17p · 737 weeks ago
I've played with a lot of players of all ages and it does seem like players over 40 *generally* struggle more with situational awareness and reaction time. That said, I've known an excellent, versatile 42 year player and I've met plenty of slow young players.
My recent post My Take on the 10-25 Thing
Carolan · 737 weeks ago
Paul · 737 weeks ago
Entrails_770 · 737 weeks ago
Elzebeth · 737 weeks ago
fizziksman 1p · 737 weeks ago
Could it be that the younger kids have better computers with faster framerates? Perhaps they have better keybinds than you so that they can watch the screen and move/attack more readily. Maybe that particular skill reminds them of some other games they played that you may not have.
In any case, I'm sure that with a little practice you'll figure it out.
Rades · 737 weeks ago
My recent post The insidius secret of Incineratus
Carcin · 736 weeks ago
Guest · 736 weeks ago
Sindre · 736 weeks ago
At the moment, I'm in a guild that has just started working on Cataclysm raids. I fill my spot well enough, and I'd wager that I'm one of the faster players in most regards - I tend to call phase shifts etc. so that the less aware players can focus on doing their jobs instead.
But, for the life of me, I suck at dodging whirlwind effects. Whether it's Lady Naz'jar in Throne of the Tides, Altairus in The Vortex Pinnacle or any other enemy that makes use of moving, swirly cones of doom, I just. Can't. Dodge. The. Whirlwinds.
Obviously, I'm not representative of the player base in its entirety, young or old. But I do think there is a tendency for people to be bad at very, very specific categories of tasks in this game. It stands to reason, as each type of encounter mechanic demands a very specific response; whirlwind effects are different from reflective shields are different from void zones and so on and so forth. As such, the skills needed to master each one are likely to differ as well.
Why are people very bad at specific types of gameplay? I have no idea, but I don't think age is in any way a determining factor. Response times and cognitive processing speed tend to deteriorate with age, yes, but I don't see how bad reflexes could be crippling in dodging rotating lines of lightning, but not in, say, timing interrupts.
Giselle · 736 weeks ago
Case in point: This really made an impression on me for some reason. I pugged DM and had a shadow priest in my group who was, with no reservations, simply amazing. His DPS was absurdly high pre-4.0.6 buff, his situational awareness was faultless, and whenever he was asked to MC, he would do it perfectly (down to the experts-recommended Pyschic Horror when MC is at its end, then refresh). When the mage was thrown off the pier into the water by a cannon blast and started to swim for shore, the priest lifegripped him back to solid ground. It was just a lot of little things like this that I saw, showing he knew his class inside out and performed all facets of them well.
But. When we got to the electric wire things, he died. Over, and over, and over, until we rezzed him from the other side.
After that I didn't feel bad anymore if I ever messed up on the electric wires. You can fail on the wires but still be completely awesome. :)
Ergates · 736 weeks ago
Needless to say I died, I just couldn't seem to do it, and it was as if my character had suddenly developed leaden boots. The others in the group appeared to navigate it without incident. (I'm 44 BTW)
I got ressed, told that I was a retard (which seemed to be done jokingly), but then kicked three minutes later. The reason given was 'RETARD FAILS!!'.
I suppose that if I do the encounter a few more times I might get better; but the truth is.. I'm kind-of scared to run it now.
I was wondering if it was my age? Whether my reactions simply are not quick enough for this encounter?
Shamon · 736 weeks ago
You mentioned earlier that you never played any of the classic platformers and herded towards Madden and the like. For all those who find this area of Deadmines a walk in the park I think you will find they have all played a lot of platforming or similiar style games.
Swirling fire has been in games since the first Super Mario on the NES and probably before. Granted that it was in 2D back then but the premise is simple and getting used to walking at the same speed of the fire whilst not touching it is all you need to do.
My advice for that section would be several things:
-Use your mouse to turn
-Adjust your camera so that it is above your character at an angle
-Make sure your are walking/running at the correct speed to be just behind or ahead of the flames
---last of all, taken from a great Douglas Adams' book and as you have mentioned yourself, "Don't Panic!" Unless you are going for the achievement (which you should be doing in the future to prove you can) then you have nearly all the time in the world. Just slowly make your way down and before you start running look at the "safe spots" ahead where you can stop and not get hit by the fire. #
Just so you know my girlfriend who has been in top EU progression guilds during BC and Wrath cannot do this and gets me to run it for her every time. When we did the achievement I ran my guy down and then hers :) She is the same age but cannot play platformers for the life of her :)
Hope that helps and sorry for waffling!
Gary Argent Dawn · 736 weeks ago
Frankencarey · 736 weeks ago
scottadamsrelic · 736 weeks ago
Today, as a fully employed husband and father, I simply have less time. In addition, my drive for knowledge and perfect performance is satisfied in other fields and - of course - success at a video game is something I just won't place as high on my personal priorities list as when I was an adolescent.
So, I guess it has to do with age, but more with the attitude that comes with it.
Hahni · 736 weeks ago
I am, however, pretty bad at dealing with rogues sapping me in pvp. Is that an age thing, or are rogues just really really mean?
@TelmahQ · 736 weeks ago
antonio · 736 weeks ago
Oldguy · 736 weeks ago
We have a lot of anecdotes here that don't mean much. Person X has better situational awareness or better keybindings or a better understanding of how to move or use macros or how to dodge the wires I had a hard time with in Deadmines because they grew up playing game Y. Yes, there are many factors other than age that affect gameplay. (Though I'd like to argue later that it's possible that age predisposes us to be better or worse at some of those factors).
But all things being equal, age matters. Reaction times do get slower for each of us - even if some of us at 60 have faster reaction times than others at 20, on average we are slower, and we're all slower than we were in our youth. Even if we don't need twitchy fingers to react in time, if we aren't using our keyboards and mice optimally and haven't practiced the fight or read about it and are not lifelong gamers who are used to certain types of movement - that split second is going to make a difference sometimes. Scientifically, we want to look at one variable at a time, and if all we look at is reaction time as a function of age, normalizing everything else, that has to affect some things. It may not require twitchy fingers to perform most WoW tasks, but on the occasions we are 0.1 second too late rather than 0.5 second too late, well - we'd have been OK 30 years ago. I think it sometimes matters.
But there may be more to it. If we stop being scientific. Just anecdotally myself, I do notice that the people having a harder time with movement fights and with situational awareness tend to be my fellow old folks. First time in heroic BRC with a father and son, it was me and the father being old and slow and first-timers. Others messed up, but it was me being slow on the chain-targeting macro first time and causing a wipe with reaction time. Who's the one person I know who never learned the Heigan dance? A woman in her 60s. Is there anything that challenges me more than having all my healing mana taken away? Yes - getting out of bad stuff in time when I have a hard time visualizing it because my computer is slow or I am weak at moving my camera and at strafing and at mouse-moving. And those wires in heroic Deadmines - I've only been once and that will take practice for me.
Age can be a plus. There are many factors hurting performance that aren't strictly age-related. But age always matters in life. We old folks can do things we aren't expected to, some of those May-December romances may be great, and the internet taught many of us 20 years ago that we could relate to people of all ages to some extent. Maybe much of what slows down my friends who pay WoW and are 50 or 60 is that we never played other similar games, or that we haven't developed particular skills with keyboards and mice. Maybe part of what speeds us old folks up is that we can more often afford, compared to a student or someone in their first job, a computer that will give us high fps at max settings if we want.
But age has matter in more than reaction time. If I had to guess, I would guess that in the same way a teenager picks up a new cell phone or iPad and instantly figures out how everything works, while an old person has to read the manual, perhaps a young person picks up all those keyboard and mouse tricks for movement and camera movement quickly while the old folks either have to study tutorials on situational awareness - and mostly don't - or we wind up plodding along moving with the arrow keys, doing low dps or dying in the fire because we can't strafe, or dying in waves of fire or ice coming from the ceilling because we can't pan our cameras back and forth fast enough - or aren't even trying. I'm guessing a teenager assimilates all the spatial aspects of the typical raid boss faster than a senior. But I'm just guessing
Tariail · 735 weeks ago
hawkwing · 734 weeks ago
I love the game, but at my age, my peers would think me totally nuts for playing an MMORPG for hours per day. My wife of 40 years tolerates pretty well, but I mostly play before she gets up. I would like to have a local player that I could sit down with and talk about UI setup and how to best get the highest dps or healing out of my toon.
Thanks for an interesting post.