Image courtesy of Willrad. This is a SYTYCB submission from Rusco who made it into the top 7.
Hey everyone, Rusco here.
There are only a few things in this game that bother me; super long flight paths, druids inability to crowd control inside most instances while npcs use similar spells without issue, and a warlocks fear. But on the top of the list sits something that doesn’t have to due with coding.
It’s the players. I feel like there are so many ignorant, stupid people that play this game.
It makes me feel elitist, to say the least, when I think of it and I hate it but it’s true. I tend to get frustrated when I’m grouped with other people I didn’t pick and chose to group with. Usually in battlegrounds, I can ignore the people yelling at everyone to give up or making stupid remarks. Unfortunately, it’s a bit harder in raids that I ask to join because I have to keep my ears peeled and my eyes on the screen.
Even in 5-man’s I still come across people that can get to me without actually trying to. Just the other day, I was in a partial pug run through slave pens and make a joke about one of my friends getting himself killed before we met at the entrance when our mage drops group because he didn’t like my attitude. I can almost understand, I’m generally sarcastic in my humor and if you’re coming from the point of view that all people are out to hurt one another then yea, I could have come off a wicked jerk. But this guy knows me in real life, we’ve played tabletop rpgs for two years. We’re not close, but it was a shock to see him react that way to something he should recognize as playful not harmful.
Slightly less specific, a good friend of mine has a podcast about world of warcraft and one of their usual features is “Real Noobs of Warcraft†and I badgered him until he included an idea of mine called the “back-seat raid leader.†Now that’s something that really gets me in raids. When someone other than the raid leader starts spouting off commands or details, especially when someone asks a question directed to the RL, I throw my head back and groan. It’s like, “Yea, we all know you’ve been around since beta or whenever. We know you’ve got experience in this game. But you’re not the boss. Stfu. Srsly.â€Â
Speaking of raids, is it too much to ask to have people arrive in a timely fashion and packing all the heat they can bring? I don’t think it’s too hard to find out what elixirs, food, reagents, potions, scrolls, weapon buffs, or whatever else you can use during combat that can benefit the raid as a whole. Sure, that may seem like a lot of stuff to remember but it doesn’t take much effort to check to see if you have what you need and if not to go get it. Not enough gold? One run through the Sunwell dailies and you’re good to go. What’s the problem there?
Now, I come from a casual guild, so it’s not required of anyone to be über prepared but I just don’t see why anyone wouldn’t want to make sure the raid does it’s utmost best. I’m taking my time, but I plan on having what every class/spec needs for raiding because I’m sick of complaining and maybe then no one will have an excuse to skimp out. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy doing the research and work, but I hate hate hate that I come across so few that will actually do it for themselves.
Don’t get me started on people who don’t know how to play their class. I’ve heard a horror story from a good friend of mine coming across a shaman that didn’t know what a totem was.
World of Warcraft brings in so many different walks of life and luckily there are really cool, smart people that play this game. I just wish I could play with them, rather than just read their blog. Maybe I’m just being overly pessimistic but I think I’m either getting the short end of the stick or I’m just crazy.
This feels like a forced rant, where the author is just complaining about everything they can think of to fill the space.
I understand what you mean, I seem to notice this more with alts than anything. Players will have all their lvl 70 friends powerlevel them as quickly as possible that by the time they get in upper-level instance pugs they don’t really know how to play their class.
As far as the sarcasm thing goes, I’m crazy sarcastic that a lot of times if I don’t know someone I’m playing with I make sure to fill them in on my sarcastic witty personality 😉
It did feel a little rantish.
“Not enough gold? One run through the Sunwell dailies and you’re good to go. What’s the problem there?” – So true. It really annoys me when people complain about not having gold and then just sit in guild chat and talk for like 2 hours or have time to play an alt. I understand if you don’t want to spend part of your time doing dailies, but you lose the right to complain.
“is it too much to ask to have people arrive in a timely fashion” – I read somewhere that the classic sign of an adult is that they don’t like to have their time wasted. I get that stuff comes up, either in game or out, but if you say you are going to show up at 9pm, show up at 9pm. Doing otherwise is rude. And please, please, if someone says something about it, don’t reply with “It’s just a game.” That’s no excuse.
This isn’t something I’d have chosen as my competing post – the author comes across as one of those people *I* would be ignoring in chat. By the end of the post, all I could think of was … well you’re right, it is you. I look at these posts as introductions to each author – and an introduction should represent writing style and general attitude.
That’s not to say I don’t agree with some of the gripes that were presented, because I do. I simply prefer them presented differently. Even throwing in some humor would have lessened the rantish aspects of this post.
As much as I can sympathise with some of the sentiments, I agree with george that this rant was not up to the quality of the previous two we’ve seen.
It is too unfocused, there are many parts and they are only vaguely held together so don’t really form a coherent whole.
I also have a personal aversion to having to read text-speak (stfu, srsly), but that’s probably just me. 😉
Looking forward to the next entry though, this might just have been an off-day for the writer – this is all very exciting. 🙂
Everyone’s late sometimes, that’s why summoning stones are awesome things. But I’ll agree, it’s aggravating to always be the one doing the summoning, or doing the rezzing, just because that one person is always too lazy to run.
Man, I’ll tell you, that consumables thing gets me every time. Some nights I don’t even look at my fellow healers, so I don’t get annoyed. 😉
Our guild excepts everyone to show up with at least appropriate 2-minute potions, oils/counterweights, foods, and flasks/elixirs. Welcome to Tier 6 folks, bring your stuff.
So it annoys me when people don’t bring such things for progression raids. >_<
I recently wrote a large post on our guild’s boards about the importance of consumables… here’s hoping they read it. ^_^
@ george: thanks for describing my post, however I really would have appreciated helpful criticism. What made it seem forced to you? I see I had attention issues, but outside of the original idea nothing I wrote was forced. Anything more you can add?
@ Jen: If power leveling helped cause so many noobs, I can’t see the recruit-a-friend going well in the least.
@ ObiChad: It’s not just a game. It’s a social community. Not everyone gets that part of an MMO, but just because you don’t have to see these people out of game doesn’t make it any less important to follow up on your commitments.
@ Halite: Did I miss something? I thought this was supposed to be a rant. Like Matticus said, you can’t judge someone by one entry. I appreciate your comment though. I’ll try harder to make my humor clearer and because it happens every so often I’ll work harder to keep myself from getting on a tangent.
@ Tufva: There goes my attempt at humor. Text-speak is a joke to me, but I guess it does work all the time.
@ Joveta: How about needing 5 tells, 2 people in vent, and 3 in raid chat asking for a paladin buff right before a boss? Things come up, but it sucks to see it happen all the time.
@ Crutch: I’m a wanna-be end game raider. I’ve had some experience with a further progressed guild, but I missed all the friends I had and now I’m stuck hoping there’s enough for Gruuls. I’ve posted plenty of stuff to my guilds forums but only a few actually go to the site, let alone the forums. I keep telling myself I need to seriously look around for a new crowd to play with, maybe I’m finally getting to the point where I will and all that I wrote will be just a past annoyance.
I have better topic ideas for the rest of the competition if I’m still around, but coming up with a rant off the get go without being in the mood is tough. I guess I could have pugged Karazhan or something if I *really* wanted to be, though.
In all seriousness, thanks for the feedback. It’s nice to hear people’s opinions of my work, good and bad. The best way to grow is to be challenged.
I suppose I should have used bitchy vs rantish? I recognized it was a rant, but it was … well it’s hard to explain. I myself, am not a writer, I’m a reader!
I found your comment response to be much more enjoyable to read than the entry itself – as a person you came off more human and less like someone I’d try to get out of a group with asap!
I sympathize with your response that it’s hard to come up with a rant w/o feeling an urge to do so. I’m interested to see your next entry and will definitely watch for it. =)
While a rant type of post was an option, this feels more like a brain-dump than a rant, especially without focus to the piece. Additionally, I found a few grammatical errors and TXT-speak makes me cringe.
“I have better topic ideas for the rest of the competition if I’m still around, but coming up with a rant off the get go without being in the mood is tough. I guess I could have pugged Karazhan or something if I *really* wanted to be, though.”
This I think pretty much sums it up. It felt like there was not a clear focus and that you pretty much just covered everything that bugs you in game. I know I would have a hard time writing a rant on demand, so I am still interested to see the rest of your entries. But from reading this and knowing nothing else about you, my first impression of you was that you would be one of those people who sit in AV and make sure everyone knows they are doing it all wrong, or post on the forums complaining just for the sake of complaining.
I am not a writer by any means, but it seems like it would have been better to just focus on your initial point of stupid people in pugs and groups. If you could have expanded on this idea in some way, rather then switching to back seat raid leaders, then people coming unprepared, then kind of back to your original topic I think it would have been better.
“Players will have all their lvl 70 friends powerlevel them as quickly as possible that by the time they get in upper-level instance pugs they don’t really know how to play their class.”
I’ve had some discussions about this with some coworkers who also play. One signed up his girlfriend for the “recruit-a-friend” drive, and had her Mage up to L30 in about a day with that triple-xp ‘bonus.’ It was interesting… he was L4 after only two quests… but an unintended consequence was that she was constantly broke, since she was growing so fast but not doing nearly as many quests as a ‘normal’ player would, nor killing as many mobs, etc. (And because hers was a trial account, he couldn’t give her any gold, mail her any, etc).
I compared this to me grinding my wee Warlock alt in the mid-20’s in the Hillsbrad Foothills, which feels like it can take some time. But still, in using that time, I am really learning the class. How skilled could a L30 Mage be after one day of play, particularly one new to the game? I concluded then that as tempting as the RaF program might be, if I was going to ‘superlevel’ any new alt, it would be another Priest (since I already have one at L70).
I’m going to be very skeptical of DK’s after Wrath who are ‘tanks’ for much the same reason (in fact, knowing I want to roll a DK, I’m levelling up a Warrior alt to learn the mechanics of tanking itself, having always been a healer.
Every time Blizz dumbs something down or makes it easier, I wonder how much of a disadvantage that seeming advantage really is for those players taking advantage of it.
Hmmm… maybe *I* should have submitted a rant for the SYTYCB. *grin*
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@ Halite: Sorry for picking on you, I didn’t mean to come off like you were the only one I was calling out on the “rant” thing. But you’re right, it was more like a bitch and moan post than a real rant and I’m regretting it. Glad I’m more human than I was before. ;P
@ Plaidmam: Sorry for my less than perfect grammar, I can proof read as many times I want but I’ll still miss stuff. And like I said, txt speak was a failed attempt at humor.
@ george: I am *so* glad you responded again, however I feel awful I came off like one of the people that I despise.
Less scatter-brained and more on topic. Thanks everyone!
Rusco,
I feel your pain on the rant thing. That was my nightmare assignment! I’ve gotten a lot of practice focusing on the positive in this game and ignoring or explaining away the negative stuff. A lot of us do that in order to hold together our guilds/raids/etc.
One thing I really sympathize with from your post is the idea that the community aspect of WoW is more difficult to negotiate than the gameplay. I always feel that any guild who can beat the Organization Boss can take down Illy, Archie, and Kil’Jaeden, no problem.
I’d certainly agree that the community aspect of WoW is one of it’s trickiest aspects. I think it’s probably the same in many MMO’s. I know in a game I used to play (Yohoho Puzzle Pirates) it was referred to as the ‘social puzzle’ and called the most difficult of all.
I couldn’t agree more on the ‘back seat raid leader’ thing. It’s one of my pet gripes. On a similar tangent we have one guy in our current raid who no doubt means well but just has to repeatedly state the obvious over vent, It’s SO ANNOYING. I just yell at my computer (after making sure my push to talk key isn’t depressed) hehe.
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Here’s my critique. I started reading this topic and initially thought it would be interesting, but quickly became disappointed.
IMO what the poster did, was touch upon a bunch of rants that would have made great individual topics by themselves.
IMO what he/she should have done was stick with one topic and support the topic with stories/descriptions of experiences, statistics, etc. that reinforce that specific rant, ending it with a suggestion(s) on how it could be avoided/prevented/fixed. Also concluding the topic with a question (preferably thought provoking) to spark discussion and feedback.
What we ended up getting was a mess of rant topics and with each new paragraph I expected/hoped the writer would latch onto one of those rants and address it completely with information and perhaps a story. Instead with the turn of each paragraph, another completely different rant was expressed until by the end of the post I was completely disappointed.
It came across like the author thought he/she only had one chance to write about something, and instead of focusing on a juicy topic, just listed everything that they ever wanted to write about on a blog.