Originally Posted by
RKenshin
Obviously there are exceptions to this, but typically if you are an advanced player you will equip yourself well and have a good amount of merits, in addition to all of the above. Your third sentence can easily describe a lot of players I wouldn't really call advanced... I'd call them reliable and trusting, but not necessarily advanced. A person with only RDM at 75 that is always at events, keeps their cool, but has no merits and one set of crappy gear would by no means be my definition of an advanced player.
Its hard to summarize whats an ideal "advanced" player but I just thought of the local RDM hooligan I'm stuck with. He gets around these forums pretty well *coughiceyhotrefreshazcough*. But typically he has way more gear than any normal person, a set for anything, has all his merits and is ready for anything and everything. I guess I just wouldn't trust or rely on anyone who isn't qualified to get the job done properly. Thats just one of the perks of leading your own shell, you get to choose who you play with and I try to keep the best closest. (But then again you get stuck w/ the ones with the "I have the gear, I must have the skill" attitude)
But I gotta say this since its probably the one thing about these forums that I dislike the most. The Omg Gimp/Confused/WTF thread pisses me off. Because like you said some people don't play this game to be the best of the best and they play this game to have fun, and all the players that post in that thread think (or most of them atleast) think they are hot stuff because they can laugh at someone else gear. I'll admit theres a lot of people who either don't know wtf they are doing with gear choices, because they don't want to listen to someone's advice or because they don't have the time/access to get the really good stuff, and out of those two the people who don't want to listen to advice deserve to be in that thread. Then again theres some quirky players like myself that might use a wtf item (loliceshield) because its a long running joke in my LS that I won't buy anything else until I finish my Aegis.
That second paragraph was kinda off topic but I guess what I'm trying to say is an advanced player is someone w/ all the qualities I listed before and also someone who doesn't give a shit about being elite because they are confident and certain about their playing abilities and don't need to belittle someone to prove it.