Yes, it is intensely selfish to want to enforce the way you enjoy the game on everyone else. You think it's wrong by some arbitrary measure of right that not everyone adheres to. A measure of right that doesn't even have any objective basis beyond what the developers intended. I would suppose you're not a fan of the Iron Man competition or speed running if you're only going for what the developers intended.
But I'll set aside your arbitrary measurement of right and wrong for the time being. I'll even set aside your selfishness.
Q u o t e: Its a competive game, its all about levels and trying to be better than the guy next to you.
What's funny is that I've never once thought of this game as competitive. And I've certainly never thought of the levels as being part of the competition. Perhaps because before 1.1, leveling was incredibly easy and (in my opinion) fun. After 1.1, leveling became incredibly difficult and after level 80, mostly pointless except to say that you did. Most people just get to 80 or so and just stop.
But let's say I am competitively leveling (because I can certainly see that a measure of competition is in the game), do you think it's fair that I enforce my standard of competitive leveling even on people who don't want to? If you get to level 80 and stop, why would I care about you if I'm a competitive guy? You're not playing by the competition and thus, by definition, not something I have to worry about.
But setting aside competitive leveling, because the game has a very distinct limit on leveling, you are left with items. And you know what? That's a playing field that being rushed has absolutely no bearing on. Are you also against muling? Saving items on one character to be used on another at a later time? Do each of your characters live in a vacuum? If they do, that's a damned shame. But that's your prerogative. Muling is not an exploit by any means, and yet it does defeat a certain sense of competitive magic finding.
And even then, once you've acquired all of your lovely, glorious items, how do you show them off to people? You kill monsters? Well, after a certain point, everyone can kill monsters pretty easily. The only true way to show off your items and abilities in this game is PVP. And I would definitely agree that this game needs a bit of work in the PVP area, but what about those of us who just don't care about PVP. You want to infringe on my fun just so that your fun isn't infringed? I'm sincerely sorry, but there are methods of fixing things that don't involve infringing on my fun.
Q u o t e: Its insane hard to find people online wanting to do quests.
The existence of rushing has absolutely no bearing on this. What effects this is the state of the community. People do not want to do things in public games to avoid spam bots, to avoid PKers, to avoid the general dreck that populates the servers. I get rushed. When I'm strong enough, I also do every single quest in every single difficulty. You may not see me because I am in private games. And this is true of everyone I know who plays the game. My brother does it all in private games, my best friend does it all in private games, and if we're not doing it together, we're doing it solo.
Q u o t e: If during a Baal run they have to wait for more than a minute in town for a safe TP to show up.... they leave the game
Doing a Baal run at all is not the way this game was meant to be played. It is, in effect, "rushing" you through your levels. So you're also against Baal runs? They defeat the competition aspect of this game. Baal runs reduce the game to standing around for hours killing the same group of monsters over and over. This has nothing to do with rushing. But I assume you speak through experience. I don't want to add hypocrisy to selfishness, but I can certainly get a few whiffs of it in the air around you.
There are solutions to the problems you have that aren't just "get rid of rushing." The only problem you have is your arbitrary measure of right and wrong about this game. That measure is opinion. And I'm trying not to sound like I'm attacking you or anything. I'm not attacking you. I'm merely trying to get you to understand that opinions can be wrong. I am not saying your opinion about how the game should be played is wrong. That is the type of opinion that has no right or wrong answer. But your selfish opinion about what Blizzard should do to enforce your and their arbitrary definition of fun is wrong by simple virtue of it being selfish and self-serving.
Most of the spam bots on the servers don't bother me in the slightest. Even when I'm in a game and they appear and spam me. I don't care. I just press N, squelch them, and move on. But they bother other people, and that's why I want to get rid of them. There are ways to desire the improvement of the state of this game without infringing on the fun of others. You should really look to finding one. And maybe think about why it's so "wrong" that we have fun in a different way you do.
P.S. This whole discussion is pointless because I'm fairly certain Blizzard is not going to do anything to change the current state of rushing beyond what it is right now.
P.P.S. You do not need the staff in Act 2 to complete the act. You only need the staff to get into the Arcane Sanctuary and you need the Summoner quest in order to get into the tomb. You can very easily rush yourself past Act 2 without ever getting the staff.
