I have now been playing this game for three years, sans for a 4 month break between august and december this year.
I have witnessed the game's up's and down's. I have raided, I have PvP'd, I have quested, farmed, grinded, soloed, duoed, trioed et cetera.
I have been unguilded, guilded, jumping in and out of guilds, attending guild raids without being in a guild, and been in a guild without attending raids.
I have visited Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms, Draenor, the top of Orgrimmar, the empty area behind Burning Steppes, the empty area between ZG and Blasted Lands, the small island way south of Tanaris and many more.
I have worn greys, whites, greens, blues, epics and dreamed of legendarys and artifacts. I have killed alliance, horde, mobs, civillians and critters.
I would say that I, as a player, has a pretty good understanding of this game.
I speak and write English sufficiently good.
I behave politely, I follow orders and I respect leader desicions.
I am never rude or misbehaving against my fellow party members, even when they call me n00b, fag etc. just because they can.
I have played with @#%^s, morons, idiots, retards, pricks and a few jerks.
But recently, a whole new type of - for me - unwanted player has seen the daylight.
The superior-geared player.
In my experience, if a player is geared better than you, he instantly has all the right in the world to spit on you (not literally), call you names, or ignore you.
I will use last night as an example. It was 02:15, not many people on.
A group was looking for random dps for heroic Steamvaults.
I, a 70 hunter, who has seen a great deal of pre-tbc raiding, answered the guy advertising their need for random dps.
I told him that I had the key, which I linked him, and that I could come.
The very first thing he asked me was "how are your gear?".
I replied "mostly 68-70 blues."
There. That was the magic point.
Suddently, this player would no longer take his time to communicate with me.
I became a lesser being to him. I was inferior, and he did not need to spend the energy required to tell me to gtfo.
He was not afk - I saw him looking for random dps in the trade channel while he was ignoring me. Not /ignore, just not replying.
Now, this is not a one-time event. I have been part of, or witnessed, this multiple times. I have been outright denied entry into a group based on my gear - by otherwise polite players - with the comments "noob", "@#%^ off" and "go away with your sh*tty items".
I have been in groups where people have questioned eachothers sexuality because one of them were not in full blues, but still had a green ring, shoulder etc.
Now, I understand how gear can affect the performance of a group. Obviously, a group in full greens will perform worse than a group in full blues, which in turn will perform worse than a group decked in full epics.
But how does minute differences affect group performance? In most of these instances, I was the possible fifth member. If I had had, let's say, full blues and one or two epics, how much better would this be than if I had had two greens (2h-axe and shoulder) and the rest blues?
In my experience, playing skill and the ability to follow orders and work together with others in a team mean much more than a few tens of stamina or agility.
It's like people do not know that 30 stamina and 10 dps on one member will probably not make the difference between the smooth clearing of an instance, and numerous wipe.
Because honestly - If my 30 stamina is going to save this group, then I do not want to be part of it to begin with.