Disagree. Sirlin's point is that SF is skill-based, WoW is not. I don't know what the hell you're ranting on about college degrees, but try getting a real degree in the hardcore sciences, like in physics or math, from a good university. Any dumb student will be filtered out by the second year.
The dumbest girl I ever knew became a doctor. Do you know how dumb she was? You could say "I'm just pulling your leg" and she would go "what?" blink at you and then check her leg. And not even as a joke. And she's a doctor. No no. You are wrong on that, Lobo is right and she is the living proof. Do you know what she did when we had this assignment about how to build a phonograph from a pile of junk? She bought a bunch of the materials, rushed home, stayed up all night with her mom, she didn't go to bed at all and she built it. She was the only one. But it wasn't even an important experiment. It was supposed to be about what happens when you don't communicate clearly. The idea behind this school-board approved material was that nobody could build it. She wasn't smart at all. She always bombed her tests. But she was a trier. She knew how to put her nose to the grindstone. And that counts more than anything when it comes to getting a degree. I never liked doing homework, I had an IQ in the 150's and I would just coast along acing my tests not really getting the point of homework at all if I was learning. I thought it was pointless busy work. But now I get it. Of course it was busy work, it was training for the grindstone.
As for sirlin and this rant, I saw it years ago. I think Sirlin's wrong about the game teaching the wrong things. What he would be right in saying however is that as game mechanics, these things suck. I always wanted the game to be more like a fighter too, but not by imagining I was more skilled than anyone else. I wanted class balance. In a good fighter anyone can have a reasonable chance of beating anyone else. But not in wow. I mean rogues? Seriously. A class that can negate spells, go invisible at will, stun lock infinite, teleport, snare, aoe, silence, counterspell, self-heal, remove DOTs, blind their enemies, run faster than a mount, remove snares on themselves at will, make a smoke cloud that ranged attacks can't penetrate and disarm their melee enemies and somehow this is okay? Their only purpose is to fuck up everybody. If this were a fighting game rogues would be unplayable boss characters that would make SNK bosses weep.
And then you have class match ups that are just bad. Warrior vs frost mage? Talk about ice-skating uphill. If you never played wow imagine this. You are a warrior, you have to get close to someone to hurt them with your weapon, let's say you have an axe. There is this guy in a bathrobe half a football field away throwing balls of ice at you that freeze your feet in place so he can throw more ice at you. You get to take three steps before he freezes you again. You finally get up to him somehow. Then he teleports behind you and is once again a football field away. Maybe you managed to hit him with your axe somehow, stunning him. Now's your chance right? But he'll be okay because his teleport breaks stun at will. Can you break his ice at will? No. I hope you like the cold because that's how you're going to die. So anyhow, I quit that game. Perfect solution. Don't complain, take your money away.
