Where the Community Really Begins in WoW

[Leucifer]

A friend of mine from my old guild posted this on Facebook this evening. It's a read that I really wanted to share with the TankSpot community, as I've made comments along these lines in the past.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/02/13/se...wow-community/

I'd like to think that our own communities can follow suit. I'd like to believe that all of you here, especially those who I know from the ShoutBox, can bring a little bit of this to your own communities.

That's all I'm going to say. To all of you here on TankSpot, I miss everyone, and hope that life is bringing good things to all of you.

[Tengenstein]

Yeah....No.

I've tried helping the people who think Growl is a DPS increase, who think Dark Apotheosis a great way to to DPS, or that popping AotD or stampede and spinning bosses is simple the best, or can't turn threatening presence off, I've tried telling tanks "weakened blows" really should be kept up, or that taunting on CD isn't really the right way of doing things. Hell i even wrote a guide to help warrior tanks, if you google "protection warrior guide" its right there on the first page of results. Most of my posts on Tankspot are answering Help threads. If someone asks for help i will gladly give it. However 99% of the time people don't want unsolicited advice, and handing it out will will earn you some abuse. Even if the advice your giving would mean world peace and orgasms for all.

And on the subject of elitism and server outcasts, that's straight up bullshit. If no one wants to raid with you because of low dps, you can either accept the situation as is or go away and fix it. That's life. If you want to sit around pining about how unfair the situation is but can't be arsed to fix it then fair enough, but don't complain if other people can't be arsed to fix it for you, or your own (in)action is responsible for your situation. There's nothing wrong with elitism, there is nothing wrong with rejecting mediocrity, to judge people according to their merits, to choose erudition over wilful ignorance.

I foy want my advice i will give it. If you want my help i will render it, but i draw the line at carrying you pro bono.

[Fetzie]

Yes... I brought him to ToES once, without knowing about him, and he did 30k DPS to the last boss. I could never forget him.
But, seeing him saying he was thankful, I suddenly felt bad and sorry.

30K dps as a 496 Warrior means you aren't doing much more than auto-attack. 30K dps is what a just-level-90-in-levelling-blues-and-greens can manage. In fact, my feral druid was doing 10k more when I dinged level 90.

I was like... !@#$... Was I one of the snobs who would calculate and bring only maniacs to make an easy raid...? I felt really bad, so I gave him a reply.

No, you weren't. You are a raid leader that feels responsible to the rest of the raid to not invite people you know won't be able to pull their own weight.

Look at these two quotes (Thread writer):

And I felt really really really bad. I inspected his gears. He was using Stam gems, wrong gems on red sockets, wrong enchants and everything... And the whole reforging was just totally wrong.

(the player):

Many people in my last guild explained how to DPS, great websites, forums, and guides, but I could not understand what they were saying. I was reading up all the posts in Inven community, but I could not get better. I didn't even know how to make macros.

Look, I've done more than my fair share of helping people. And if I were one of the people that tried to help him, and he didn't improve because of the excellent advice I had given, I'd (rightly) think he didn't care. You don't get a bad rep over night. If I had been doing 30k DPS in a raid I would have been mortified (I didn't look for a MGV raid until I could hold 70k DPS because I knew what a level 460-470 character is capable of doing). If "many people" had explained how to dps, how to gem, how to enchant and reforge, why were his gems, enchants and reforges still all over the place?

The Blizzard stock UI Spell Book tells you what to do. It tells you the 5-6 main abilities of your spec, and how and when to use them.

I'm all for second chances. I'll go further and give somebody a third chance. But a 4th chance really needs some special effort from the player. I'd want them to explain their class and their rotation to me.

Yes, it sucks to be the guy nobody wants to play ball with. I've been there, the last pick in school sports. And you either don't care enough about the sports to want to improve (I only cared about badminton, where I could slaughter everybody and was thus the last pick to go up against) or you improve. And you can't really blame the server for not wanting to play with a guy that doesn't get better, even after guidance. That isn't something that is recent. There were notoriously bad players on my old server back in Classic and TBC.

[theodisius]

I've had to reign myself in a little on WoW, as I find in LFR I am becoming "that guy" who rants at others for their failures or tries to kick them.

One of the most influential things I ever read on an internet forum was a post about the virtue of "charity in debate": taking the most charitable interpretation of what the other person is saying rather than assuming some bad motive or stupidity. It's probably a good principle to apply to online gaming too. If someone is doing awful dps (or healing or tanking), think why it might and be charitable.

They've probably got bad gear. They may be on an alt they are unfamiliar with. They probably don't know the rotation. They may be unfamiliar with the encounter mechanics. There may be some RL distraction. They may be very young (or old) or just not the brightest/most dextrous player. They may play WoW for a fraction of the time you do. They may have no knowledgeable friends to learn from. (I got to level 60 in a guild in which not a single player knew understood the concept of a tank - they all thought a 5 man party was one healer and four dps.) They may never read guides (or about the game on the internet at all).

Playing lots of alts, it's struck me how much spec-specific information and knowledge there is. I know my main pretty well but am a newbie on others. If you do want to say something, saying something specific can be very helpful. If it is specific to the player, it might be best done by whispers. If it is specific to the encounter, then talking to the raid is appropriate. "Healers stand in the breath!" I am supposed to heal Tsulong? Ooops.

[Theotherone]

orgasms for all.

Well, it is Valentine's Day.

[marklar]

One of the most influential things I ever read on an internet forum was a post about the virtue of "charity in debate": taking the most charitable interpretation of what the other person is saying rather than assuming some bad motive or stupidity. It's probably a good principle to apply to online gaming too. If someone is doing awful dps (or healing or tanking), think why it might and be charitable.

i agree with this, and i appreciate the OP. i am also pretty surprised by the hostile responses here.

understand that a WIDE variety of people play wow. many of them have never been gamers, have no idea about online resources, and are just having fun with the game. their so-called skill cap might be much lower than yours. no matter how much "excellent advice" you give, not everyone is going to be "great". i put great in quotes, because i don't accept great being defined as doing good dps (or hps, etc). what if great meant playing wow without being a dick to anyone? there would not be nearly as many great players if that was the accepted definition.

remember that part of the allure of wow is that the barrier to entry is almost zero, unlike jumping into, say, a new multiplayer FPS. so instead of being all, "OMGWTF why is stooooopid warrior using agility gear", realize that he or she might think it's a good piece of gear because agility means you can move around quickly. that healer you raged at because they only did 15k hps might be your mom.

sure, the 30k warrior doesn't earn a spot in your progression run, but there's no reason to be an asshole to the guy. throughout ICC and cataclysm, my guild had quite a few players who wouldn't be "allowed" to raid if everyone in wow took the attitude that if you're not good enough you must be too lazy to "fix it". but that wasn't the reason. they were mostly guys (and girls) in their 40's and 50's that were new to wow and gaming in general. some of them were even old-time (old-time, like original) D&D players.

you might say that's what LFR is for, but LFR is such a cesspool of humanity from the pits of hell that i can't imagine enjoying that environment for long. in our case, one of the officers decided to lead a once-a-week raid for less experienced raiders. i went along a few times on alts, and it was a lot of fun. yes, we wiped a lot. we hit enrage timers. people died from standing in stuff. people died from getting hit by stuff. the group was usually 1/2 tier behind, but progressing at their own pace.

a couple of things happened: one, everyone got better. not better as quickly or as much as the raging-haters would like, but better. in fact, some of them moved into our main raid team (surprise! they were actually fine players, just started out inexperienced). two, everyone had fun. i don't ever remember drama with the group, or anyone getting angry over a wipe.

maybe this kind of attitude just takes time. it's not something you're likely to understand at 17, or possibly even at 27. the drive to progress faster and further just takes over and it's easy to forget there's other kind of players in the game. personally, i like progression and i raid with a quality group that does just fine. but i try not to let my personal goals in the game affect how i treat another person else sitting behind their keyboard with a completely different experience.

on the other hand, if you queue for LFR as heals and all you do is pop tranq twice while watching family guy, OMG WTF I HATE U VOTE KICK.

[Tengenstein]

Is it being an asshole to say no to guy becuase he is bad? as a raid leader i don't want to bring a guy whose a liability, I'm not going to indulge 1 persons sense of entitlement at the cost of pissing 9 other people off. If i did it would only make things worse, i'd have 9 people in the raid hating that guy becuase there having to carry his ass, all he's gonna get flak for being a burden; it's just going to reinforce and solidify his reputation as a bad.

The only way he's gonna get better is to pay attention to advice, and quite frankly if you're gonna ignore my advice, and still demand to be carried, you're going on ignore.

[marklar]

not sure you read what i wrote,

sure, the 30k warrior doesn't earn a spot in your progression run, but there's no reason to be an asshole to the guy.

or even the original story for that matter.

of course you don't gimp your raid team with someone who's way under performing; i RL, and everyone in my group has earned their spot. my point was, there's just no reason to be a jerk to people.

in no way did the guy in the original story say he was entitled. in fact, the story is about a raid in which the RL did NOT bring the warrior along because of his low DPS. but instead of putting him on ignore, he decided to spend a little time trying to help an inexperienced player get better. it ended up being so rewarding for him, that he posted about his experience. and this warrior was extremely grateful for the help. he absolutely never demanded to be carried. he was just an older guy who had zero experience with gaming. he had some problems in RL, and wow offered him an escape from that, at least for part of the day.

for those who cbf to read the story, here's what this "entitled bad" (as you call him) had to say about the experience:

Hello, I was reading the original thread and I thought I should post one myself to speak to all of you... I am that 'outcast warrior'.
I know that I wasted much of your time in many raids and dungeons, because I was bad.
In all the raids I joined, my DPS was below any tank, and I would really like to apologize to all players who had to suffer because of my poor play.
Many people have been posting encouraging words to me, and I wanted to say something here too, so here I am.

I am indeed a bad player, as you all know.
Many people in my last guild explained how to DPS, great websites, forums, and guides, but I could not understand what they were saying. I was reading up all the posts in Inven community, but I could not get better. I didn't even know how to make macros.
WoW is my first online game ever, and it was just so difficult for me to understand certain things.
And the raid leader, who posted the original thread, taught me how to DPS, how to install add-ons like DBM, how to reforge, and how to set up gears.
And it was totally my fault that I didn't get to learn those things all this time. And I deserve to be bullied.
All my friends in Zul'jin server, I know you all hate me, but when I log on and see any of you, I really feel like all of you are my friends... In fact, I see you more often than my friends in real life... I know many of you hate me and blocked me, but please forgive me once.
Again, this was my first online game... And I made your raids 'hell' because I didn't know anything about the encounters. I apologize for that.

Can you please give me one more chance to play with you again? If I make same mistakes again and again, without fixing anything, then I will only do quests and LFRs.
I know you don't even want to see my face, but I just like being in a community. I know you do not want to see me around, so I just hide myself around mountains or corners of big cities...
And I feel so thankful to raid leaders and raiders who brought me onboard time to time... But then I was only a burden to them. I am truly sorry. Please do not hate me so much...

I really want to play with you and have fun. I know this post is not enough to forgive me, but I really want to show you that I have changed and will keep changing.
Happy New Year, and if you forgive me, I will be a better player I promise.
And for the last time, thank you to all raid leaders who tried to work with me, and sorry...

[Aggathon]

There's a huge difference between being a jerk to someone and just not helping them. And I try to point people in right direction, you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

I've also tried to help people a lot and they've been combative jerks right back to me. "I didn't f***ing ask you for help!" or, my personal all-time favorite "I leveled this character all the way to max level, I know what I'm doing!!!" That was just... priceless.

The reason we seem hostile, especially those of us with green names, is because we've spent our WoW careers helping our own raiders and people on the internet, and we get fed up when people just refuse to listen to us and are combative. Look if someone comes to me and says "hey how can I be better" I'd probably give them some pointers if I had time or point them to tankspot.com if I didn't. But we shouldn't be expect to take scrubs to raids and pull every single person aside and explain to them how to play the game. Helping doesn't mean we have to hold hands and sing kum-bai-ya and burn insense and stay up all ours of the night talking about philosophy then cuddling together.

I agree, there are people that are complete dicks, but that's on one end of the spectrum, on the other end is hand holding that just isn't worth it any more. You want help, come to me and I'll give you help, or give you the resources to get help. They do exist. Hell... GOOGLE exists. Does it not occur to these people that there might be some random thing on the internet somewhere that if you GOOGLE it there might be pointers for a game that has over 9 million people playing it?

The other reason we probably appear hostile is because the entire assumption appears to us as if we're supposed to bare this burden and be all care-bear-y towards everyone. We do help, we have helped establish community, and to come to TS and be like "zomg it should start here!" I tend to go... "what the what?" It makes it seem like we HAVEN'T tried to help when we've taken tons of hours out of our lives to help complete strangers.

[sifuedition]

Additionally, sometimes helping...doesn't help.

One of my old guilds had a mage. This mage...was hopeless. I would estimate that in the year or so I was in that guild, I "helped" that mage about five times. When I say helped here, I don't mean I spent 15, 30, 60 minutes helping. Those were innumerable. I mean four and six hour blocks of time. So, those alone account for about 25 HOURS of help. Adding in the quick 15-60 minute helps, I have no doubt I put an absolute minimum of 50 hours teaching this mage everything. UI, check. Rotation, check. Keybinds, check. Addons, check. Positioning, check. Maximizing dps while moving, check. Utility, check. Awareness, check. All of it was bad. All of it received intense focus at one time or another. NONE OF IT EVER GOT BETTER.

We can SAY anything we want to other players. We can't press buttons for them. At some point, it becomes insulting to be asked again.

I am EXTREMELY helpful. I have helped friends, guildies, new guild members who stayed, new guild members who left soon after, and strangers. One time I politely asked a hunter to turn off his taunts and told him how. His father took over the keyboard and thanked me for not being impolite about it and asked me to help him. Apparently, he was 14 and getting kicked from groups. I suspect there was more than that wrong because his comprehension for a 14 year old was pretty bad. However, I spent 2 hours doing my best to help him. I am all for the sentiment.

However...
There is a fair amount of indication in this article that this guy had many opportunities and a fair amount of help to improve prior to this incident. He distinctly mentions that his guild tried to help him. There were other references as well. I suspect, this warrior is very like the mage in my old guild. I doubt he has improved much in the aftermath of this story. I waited this long to even post this because I don't want to be the buzz-kill. I definitely don't promote the elitism. Being fair, however, there is a definite distinction between helping someone to improve and throwing away your time on someone who only wants sympathy.

[Bovinity]

http://imgur.com/93ALO4D

Helping people is important. So is having a positive attitude!

[marklar]

There's a huge difference between being a jerk to someone and just not helping them...

...

good points by both, and i agree with a lot of it (especially the quote i left in). most of the people posting here have been helpful to others in some way; that's not being debated. however, i do disagree with this statement:

the entire assumption appears to us as if we're supposed to bare this burden and be all care-bear-y towards everyone.

why do you feel that way? from what i've seen, tankspot is a well-known, respected resource in the wow community. most people appreciate all the work and time that has gone into it. of course, you have to ignore the few jerkoffs that make any community worse.

there's absolutely nothing wrong with not helping someone. in fact, it could be helpful to take a break from helping others if it's making you fell hostile. i don't mean that as a smartass comment, either. having to deal with people on the internet too much can be tiresome.

having contributed on the interwebs and even written a guide myself, i think it's mostly (not always) a positive experience. my standard answer to the "U IDIUT DONT NO HOW TO DPS, MY WAY IS BETTER!!!" poster is simply this: "show your logs of how you do it better so we can compare and see what works." those are the people who don't deserve your time or effort.

It makes it seem like we HAVEN'T tried to help when we've taken tons of hours out of our lives to help complete strangers.

nah, i don't read the OP like that at all. it doesn't seem like he's saying he's the only one who helps out in wow. in fact, i think many of us can relate to the story because we already do things like that. it's just about one guy's experience helping someone; from what the article said, the community in korea had gotten so bad that nobody really did that anymore. i don't think the community in the US is like that. we still have plenty of helpful people, well-written guides, etc, etc.

the example of sifu's hopeless mage is perfect because we all know people like that. no matter what you do, he's not going to get much better. the big question then becomes this: is there a place in wow for bad players? is so, what is it?

we had a mage in our guild who was pretty bad. no matter his gear, he was last in dps. he died first. on some encounters where screwing up was disastrous, we either sat him or had him stand outside the room. when we worked on safety dance, he was not allowed inside. same with thaddius. i'm not sure why we took him except that he was a really nice guy, THE most reliable raider, and helped out a lot with raiding mats, etc. we felt like we could afford one spot in our 25 man raids because we're not a server-first type of guild. if it was a 10-man, or we were a heroic progression 25-man, it would have been a different story.

he also had a warrior, and i spent a TON of time trying to help him get better. he did, but only a little (one bloodthirst every 30 seconds instead of once per fight kind of better). so did i waste my time? i dunno, it was my time to waste i guess. i'm not saying everyone should spend time on the hopeless; most of the time, i don't either. eventually, i realized we were at his skill-cap and it was kind of pointless. but we still got along fine and he never bugged me about more help (i have a feeling he thought he was doing ok). sometime during ICC he left our guild to follow some other people that he hung out with.

then a few months back, someone posted on our guild website that he had died. he got a blood clot in his leg, and then he was dead. i found out his real name and looked up his facebook page. he was in his 30's, worked at walmart, was single, and was a bit heavy; the two things he liked most were heavy metal and wow. have you ever looked at a dead guy's facebook page? i never had before. i can't really explain it. one day he's posting about something and then no more posts.

everything seems a little different when i can put a face and a life to that toon or that voice on mumble. i'm sure this guy got a lot of grief in wow. people probably called him a "bad", and railed on him because his rotation sucked. i'm glad i didn't add to that.

anyway, sorry about the rambling. if you decide to help someone, that's your choice; it's not expected and it's usually much appreciated. if you don't, that's fine too. there's absolutely nothing wrong with focusing on your own game. if you only want to help certain people and not others, that works too. if you want to bring someone to your raid, then do it. if you don't, then don't. i guess my point is just this: don't be a jerk about it. there's far too much of that in the game already.

[sifuedition]

Marklar,

I get your point. I still am helpful to other people. I didn't let the experience of that mage turn me off from that. In fact, I kept that mage in the guild numerous times with extended Mumble conversations when she wanted to leave. It sometimes felt painful talking someone into staying in the guild when they are that much effort, but I did it.

I did it, because she was a good person. She provided TONS of support to the guild through crafted stuff, gathering, gold, anything. Would literally give you the trinket off of her neck (she gave me several trinkets that she had crafted for her alts just because I mentioned I was farming gold to get one). Generally always had nice things to say and was always willing to help or just talk. We were a social guild with raiding aspirations rather than a raiding guild with nice people. That meant, we wanted personalities like her in the guild...but not so much in our progression group. That group was there to keep the more ambitious and capable players happy in a social guild.

The dissonance comes in when they don't recognize their own limits. That guild was full of alto-holics. We ran old content. We ran multiple raid groups which were frequently 50% or more alts. We could have happily kept her busy with any kind of content she wanted to do. However...she wanted to be in our progression group. Literal tears would flow if she was not. It's ok to want to aspire to that. It's ok to want help to get there. It's not ok to not be able to pull your weight, not improve and still expect a 10 man to carry you through or let the emotional guilt trip begin. That's where I start to have a problem with hand holding.

[marklar]

It's not ok to not be able to pull your weight, not improve and still expect a 10 man to carry you through or let the emotional guilt trip begin. That's where I start to have a problem with hand holding.

for sure, i'm in agreement with that part. over the years, i've had to kick a few people from my raid group. i hate doing it, but if one person is clearly out of place, the group will not survive.

the funny thing is, i've had to kick more "good" players for personality conflicts, than i have "bad" players whose performance wasn't up to par.

[Krinsta]

I'm not playing WoW anymore I got a bit burnt out. I also found the trolling pretty bad. I was focused on by a group of kids. It was pretty awful. I probably won't play again.

[Fetzie]

I'm not playing WoW anymore I got a bit burnt out. I also found the trolling pretty bad. I was focused on by a group of kids. It was pretty awful. I probably won't play again.

If you ever play League of Legends, you'll never complain about WoW kids ever again. The worst WoW players are angels compared to LoL players.

[starcruncher]

This thread caught my eye and the story left a lump in my throat. For a guy who got berated as much as he did and still wanted to be a part of a group.

This game has a full spectrum of good and not-so-good players.

The initial attraction of WOW is the entrance to the world of sword and sorcery, like leaping into a fantasy novel. I actually was swayed into coming back to WOW (tried it in 2007, I have played Starcraft since 2000), by watching the series Game of Thrones.

What keeps people playing is the community.

I am sure this is why Blizzard promotes the guilds and raiding is formed through guilds. In searching for a guild fit I looked and joined many places. I think there should be a place for everyone to get the chance to join a group and raid. For instance, that guy who did 30k dps as a warrior. There may be a number a legit reasons for it. Comp lag, slow reaction time, the inability to type without looking at the keyboard. That last reason is a problem I have, but I make up for it with fast clicking, except for the tab button. Trying to target with a mouse in a raid is an effort in futility.

All this to say, I think even hardcore raiding guilds should look for possible avenues for the less-than-stellar player.

Maybe form sub-heroic 5 man raiding teams. Have them tackle the dungeons on vent. Going on a raid with others, while on voice chat, is one of the most rewarding aspects of the game. It should not be limited to the elite raiders. You can have your 10 man hardcore team, but if want a truly great guild, you should design it so even the low DPS players can have a good time. Lore mentioned about the problem of recruiting across realms, well in this manner it is possible you could "grow your own" raiders.

Also I have to agree with the last poster. Kids can be a real pain. I think it is important to keep them in line for everyones sake. I always report bad behavior and language in game.

[Tengenstein]

There may be a number a legit reasons for it.

and each one is a legit reason to not bring him to a raid.

[Fetzie]

and each one is a legit reason to not bring him to a raid.

That. if you have proven yourself to be incompetent at raiding then it is on you to get better. i, as a raid leader, have a responsibility to the rest of the raid who are pulling their weight and are getting frustrated that someone that isn't even doing half of what they could be doing. if you have a computer that is less powerful than a toaster them it is your responsibility to buy a new one. if you can't do that them maybe you need a new guild.

if you can't touch-type then learn. you'll need to be able to when you go to work anyway.

Those legit reasons are easily fixable. Just takes a bit of effort. And if you arent prepared to do that maybe you are playing the wrong game.

[Aggathon]

That. if you have proven yourself to be incompetent at raiding then it is on you to get better. i, as a raid leader, have a responsibility to the rest of the raid who are pulling their weight and are getting frustrated that someone that isn't even doing half of what they could be doing. if you have a computer that is less powerful than a toaster them it is your responsibility to buy a new one. if you can't do that them maybe you need a new guild.

if you can't touch-type then learn. you'll need to be able to when you go to work anyway.

Those legit reasons are easily fixable. Just takes a bit of effort. And if you arent prepared to do that maybe you are playing the wrong game.

This ^

If you can't type without looking then get one of these:


Force yourself to adapt. If you're a clicker, hide your buttons except for important cooldowns and make weakauras work for your ability cooldowns or something.

If you have bad reaction time play some twitch game like this to make you have better reactions: http://www.kongregate.com/games/mofu...-get-nervous-2

If you refuse to learn or say "I can't" and have that kind of defeatist attitude, then that's NOT a legit reason.

To quote my debate coach, "I DON'T WANT EXCUSES DAMMIT, I WANT RESULTS!"

I'm sure that's in a movie too or something.