Nothing makes a juicier read wow gold than a good, old-fashioned Hardcores vs. Casuals throw-down. This week's iteration was marching along nicely until killjoy (we kid, we kid) David Kotsonis swooped in with a downright rational perspective: "I would classify myself as hardcore. ... What infuriates me aren't casuals. My closest WoW friend is very much a casual. She specs in a way that she enjoys rather than what's optimal, she doesn't put any time into researching the game, etc., etc. She just plays to play, whereas I get my rocks off with math and modeling and optimization.

"What does infuriate me are people who contradict the hardcore ethos idea of personal responsibility. People who stand in fire, wipe the raid, and say 'Whatever' and then do it again. People who, instead of spending three minutes on Google, badger others to explain an optimal spec point by point. People who get frustrated and log off when we wipe twice due to a dc or a new encounter.

"What some people don't understand is that when a hardcore player wants the base instance to be harder, it's not because they want to lock someone out. I'm fairly sure that every top raider I know would agree that a world where everyone had the skill to do pre-nerf Sunwell would be a better world. But I like being challenged, like being held to a higher standard of play.

"We don't want to have the door shut on other people. We want the door to be shut on us, and for all our skill to be needed to get it open."