"Be excellent to each other." -Bill S. Preston, Esq.

The hype leading up to the release of The Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to the MMORPG WoW (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game World of Warcraft), is almost guaranteed to result in the best-selling expansion to any video game ever released; no small feat. For every one of the 11 million gamers that are excited about the forthcoming content, however, there appears to be many gamers disparaging the title and its gamers.

The polarized view on what is arguably one of - if not the - most popular game of all time is difficult to understand because of its broad appeal.* Take a look at the comments in the Gamespot Wrath of the Lich King Launch Center and you will quickly realize that users are going out of their way to voice their distaste for the title and its patrons.

The most popular reasons given for hating the game tend to fall into any one of the following categories:

1. - "It makes some people into friendless and fat nerds, who have no social life," "11 million people with no lives very sad"
2. - It's addictive
3. - It's old and its graphics are terrible
4. - Blizzard is milking its patrons with recycled content
5. - It just sucks; sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks!

If you believe there are counterarguments coming for the aforementioned, prepare to be disappointed. The real issue is not the comments themselves, but the desire of users to voice that negativity to the people that actually enjoy the game when there is no material benefit for any of the parties.

"E-L-E: Everybody love everybody." -Jackie Moon

Hating any game is a waste of time on the part of the user and has zero benefits. It makes no sense to intentionally belittle or berate a game, a platform, or those that enjoy them either online or off. It is juvenile, a waste of space on the server, and serves only to spread negativity or retaliation from others. Unfortunately, these are also some of the very reasons many users post such inflammatory threads and comments in the first place. Flamers, trolls, and griefers exist because, for many people, hate and vandalism is fun, and the internet makes this type of behavior easy and relatively without consequence.

To those internet vandals the topic begs the question, "Why not go and enjoy another game? You are obviously someone that enjoys video games, or would not be registered and commenting on a video game site like Gamespot. If you do not like World of Warcraft, why not go play Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Little Big Planet, Dead Space, Bioshock, Spore, or any one of thousands of great titles that have been released over the past several decades rather than wasting the time of other people that are just here to have a good time and chat about their favorite titles?"

Let your fellow gamers get excited about their respective loves; be they Warcraft, Halo, Smash Brothers, or any other title.

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*Personally, the author believes either Tetris or Pac-Man have the most universal appeal due to their accessibility and ease of play; but that is another editorial.