The Greedy Goblin

Yes, I know he's down there on the Recommended Reading List. And yes, I know he sits on a pile of gold so tall Thunder Bluff gets a Napoleon complex. Nevertheless, Gevlon is almost always wrong.

Now time for some ferocious backpedal. Firstly, Gevlon isn't wrong when it comes to economic tomfoolery. I come from the Marko school of ebb and flow, he's the Goblin school of domination. One is Jiu-Jitsu, the other is Karate. Neither of them are wrong, despite their differences. This is provable because both stomp ass and take names, and both these gents are Rockafellers of WoW. So on that end, I read him for insight into his economic strategies (posts for which are woefully rare nowadays).

But what of his other angles, chiefly his derision of social gamers? Well, yeah, mostly wrong. Even if his conclusions are right-on sometimes, his reasons are dubious at best. I agree that you should leave a guild you're not happy with, but not simply because you will no longer boost the Morons and Slackers* through content. Because the whole point is to enjoy the game, and there IS a guild out there that will suit every individual. He believes in this objectivist utopia, where the foolish and the lazy are driven forth from the land, and the strong and cunning laugh dripping in their spoils. They made that game, it's called EVE.

So then why have him on the List? Because if he's wrong, he's wrong in very interesting ways. No one else is going to ever suggest you threaten to afk during a heroic unless the worst DPS gets kicked, in order to get a better player in, or to only own blues to avoid having to boost anyone in a PuG (LFG typically puts one low-geared player per group; if you ARE that man, your odds for encountering scrubbery reduce). That takes a mad kind of courage, mixed with a splash of sociopathy, and that makes Greedy Goblin some good reading.

I post this just to make sure people know, I do not agree with a whole lot of what he says. Yes, he has powerful secrets of gold-making to divulge. Yes, he is right on when he says bad gear is no excuse for bad performance. He says some smart stuff when he isn't foaming at the mouth from his latest munging session with the corpse of Ayn Rand. And when it isn't right, it's still interesting, thought-provoking stuff, and that is in many ways better than just a list of facts.

*M&S official trademark of the Greedy Goblin