Another problem of the stigma attached to being a noob is encouraging players who ARE new to pretend that they aren't. I've been playing a lot on alts lately, mostly in the 20-50 level range, and I've been seeing this a lot: a tank trys to run circles around a mob "so they can't hit me", an RFC group with 2 paladins and 2 shamans "needs to find a priest so we have a healer", a rogue Needs an int cloak "for better poisons", the inevitable melee hunter, and all for the same reason: "I'm not a noob".

Compounding this are players who HAVE been playing for a while but either don't understand the game or understand it in a very arbitrary way. This ranges from "you must be Prot to tank SFK" to the one person in your WC group who insists that every pull be CC'd down to one with full target marks (and leaves when the group does rolling pulls because they're "noobs"). These are the players who are a font of advice for the "noob" because they're the quickest to use the word. From spec advice, loot rules ("every group passes on BoP, noob") to group mechanics, they're quick to tell a new player the ONE TRUE ANSWER (tm) which is, as often as not, wrong.

The current WoW culture seems choked with unfounded confidence in ones opinions (the experienced, but inexpert, player) and a desire on the part of the new player to not be identified as new. Many MMO's have gotten around this issue by having some sort of formal flagging system where a player could identify themselves as a "Newbie Helper", someone who accepts questions from new players to help them get their feet wet. I wish WoW went the same route.

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