There's an American sports term that's frequently applied to players who take the time to learn the nuances of their particular sport: "a student of the game". The term basically means that the player understands all aspects of a particular sport, and uses it to their advantage.* The hidden implication, however, is that the particular player in question succeeds because of their applied knowledge rather than their raw physical skills.
I was thinking of this when I was in yet another Scarlet Monastery run on Cardwyn the other day. For myself --and likely a lot of other people-- WoW Classic is familiar and comfortable. You don't have to have top flight physical skills to do a passable job as DPS in a dungeon, and due to how the data structures were configured for Vanilla (and now Classic), the abilities of bosses in both dungeons and raids were somewhat limited compared to, say, Wrath onward. For a person like me, who now qualifies for membership in the AARP**, this is a good thing.
Dungeons such as the Scarlet Monastery instances reward tactical skill and not strictly physical skill. You don't have to rely upon an MMO mouse such as the Razer Naga and then attempting to master it.*** to do well in SM; you need to know which baddie to kill first in a pack, how to perform LOS pulls, and the order in which you kill Whitemane and Mograine. (For the record, it's Him -> Her -> Her -> Him.) None of that stresses your physical skills. And for that, I'm eternally grateful.
Given that I've been wearing bifocals for most of the past decade and that I now require a magnifying glass for soldering electronics, I've been acutely aware of the gradual decline in my physical skills. Games that require tons and tons of button mashing in rapid fire fashion, such as MOBAs**** or an action RPG such as Diablo III, make my fingers and wrist ache after a short time. Inadvertent screw-ups, such as being late to an interrupt, plague me more than before. But a game such as Classic is more forgiving of physical limitations, especially given that I picked up the game at 40.
From that perspective, less is more, and I can focus less on the mechanics and more of the game itself.
*This isn't to be confused with university classes such as "Coaching Basketball". For those who are skeptical, yes, this is a thing, particularly if your university major is in something such as "Physical Education" or "Sports Management". Charlie Coles, the late basketball coach at Miami University in Oxford, OH, loved to teach that class. And because Charlie was a morning person, he had that class scheduled as the first one of the day.
**American Association of Retired Persons. To be a member, you have to be age 50+. You get some discounts at certain places, but the AARP is most well known as a lobby for senior citizens' issues. It doesn't have the clout it did 20 years ago, but it still does have some political power.
***I'd love to have a Naga, but my wife would not be able to cope with all the buttons. We have a Steel Series Sensei Raw, and while I love the mouse my wife forced me to lock most of the mouse buttons because she would constantly bump the buttons while using the PC and screw up her screen. Before you point out there are different profiles for mice, I frequently play games with browers and whatnot running in the background --because there are plenty of times when I'm on the PC and she comes over and decides she wants to use it at a moment's notice-- so I discovered those profiles were pretty useless. So if I wanted to use a gaming mouse to the fullest, I'd need an entirely new PC, which is a LOT more than the cost of a mouse.
****An ex-coworker of mine is the father of a well known elite LoL player, and he told me once that his son figured he had only a few years to be at the top of his game due to the demand on the body, and that he'd likely be gone from playing competitively at the highest level by age 28. Even discounting the fact that his son was playing at the highest level in competitive LoL play, you'd figure that most of the top raiding guilds in MMOs such as WoW constantly tweak their raid lineups and "retire" people whose physical skills start to drop off in their 30s and 40s.
I was thinking of this when I was in yet another Scarlet Monastery run on Cardwyn the other day. For myself --and likely a lot of other people-- WoW Classic is familiar and comfortable. You don't have to have top flight physical skills to do a passable job as DPS in a dungeon, and due to how the data structures were configured for Vanilla (and now Classic), the abilities of bosses in both dungeons and raids were somewhat limited compared to, say, Wrath onward. For a person like me, who now qualifies for membership in the AARP**, this is a good thing.
Dungeons such as the Scarlet Monastery instances reward tactical skill and not strictly physical skill. You don't have to rely upon an MMO mouse such as the Razer Naga and then attempting to master it.*** to do well in SM; you need to know which baddie to kill first in a pack, how to perform LOS pulls, and the order in which you kill Whitemane and Mograine. (For the record, it's Him -> Her -> Her -> Him.) None of that stresses your physical skills. And for that, I'm eternally grateful.
Given that I've been wearing bifocals for most of the past decade and that I now require a magnifying glass for soldering electronics, I've been acutely aware of the gradual decline in my physical skills. Games that require tons and tons of button mashing in rapid fire fashion, such as MOBAs**** or an action RPG such as Diablo III, make my fingers and wrist ache after a short time. Inadvertent screw-ups, such as being late to an interrupt, plague me more than before. But a game such as Classic is more forgiving of physical limitations, especially given that I picked up the game at 40.
From that perspective, less is more, and I can focus less on the mechanics and more of the game itself.
*This isn't to be confused with university classes such as "Coaching Basketball". For those who are skeptical, yes, this is a thing, particularly if your university major is in something such as "Physical Education" or "Sports Management". Charlie Coles, the late basketball coach at Miami University in Oxford, OH, loved to teach that class. And because Charlie was a morning person, he had that class scheduled as the first one of the day.
**American Association of Retired Persons. To be a member, you have to be age 50+. You get some discounts at certain places, but the AARP is most well known as a lobby for senior citizens' issues. It doesn't have the clout it did 20 years ago, but it still does have some political power.
***I'd love to have a Naga, but my wife would not be able to cope with all the buttons. We have a Steel Series Sensei Raw, and while I love the mouse my wife forced me to lock most of the mouse buttons because she would constantly bump the buttons while using the PC and screw up her screen. Before you point out there are different profiles for mice, I frequently play games with browers and whatnot running in the background --because there are plenty of times when I'm on the PC and she comes over and decides she wants to use it at a moment's notice-- so I discovered those profiles were pretty useless. So if I wanted to use a gaming mouse to the fullest, I'd need an entirely new PC, which is a LOT more than the cost of a mouse.
****An ex-coworker of mine is the father of a well known elite LoL player, and he told me once that his son figured he had only a few years to be at the top of his game due to the demand on the body, and that he'd likely be gone from playing competitively at the highest level by age 28. Even discounting the fact that his son was playing at the highest level in competitive LoL play, you'd figure that most of the top raiding guilds in MMOs such as WoW constantly tweak their raid lineups and "retire" people whose physical skills start to drop off in their 30s and 40s.
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