OK, so I lied about talking about expectations today.
But it’s not really my fault… this time.
Nope, blaming it all on Tirael this time.
He has his own blog over at 1337BOHICA but claims to have one of those “life” things so his own blog is taking backseat to one of those “child” things. So he sent me his thoughts on the matter to share with all of you.
But first, I want to direct everyone over to Tales of a DK to read about an awesome experiment that Shyste pulled off with some guild members. And an excellent set of PUG Commandments by theerivs at A High Latency Life.
OK, now on to Tirael’s contribution:
…
FWIW, Arioch I am promoting you to PITA status as you always elicit responses from me. I will start with the most recent post in this series and work my way backwards (for dramatic effect, lol).
The WoW player base is as diverse as any community you would find in the real world. These people come from all walks of life. I myself am in the military. I play with people who work for large corporations, drug addicts (WoW addiction must come easy), children ranging in age from 5-18 (try having a 12 y/o mage own everyone in dps on an Ulduar 25m), and, hell, I even play with a financial analyst (don’t even get me started on how he works the AH like he created the damned thing).
From these different walks of life, people are bound to have different moral sets that guide them, different dedication levels to certain aspects of their life and even different ways of portraying who they are (internet vs face to face). I could go on a tangent about how WoW and many other things that socially detach us from others is destroying interhuman communication, but I digress. In WoW, just like life, expect the unexpected, and as is my motto, expect the worst from everyone until they prove otherwise.
WoW is simply a game. No more, no less. Player skill is of ill importance to me until it matters (raids). Heroics and such are just fodder for the masses, and I enjoy them, regardless of how others perform. The only time I truly care is when I am recruiting for raids. That is when I need to know achievements for boss kills or dps you do or the GS of your gear.
WoW players as a community have become more dependant on other people’s success in order to do well. Elitist Jerks, Satrina, Tankspot and the like have all been there and done that for many people. I never use them as my first source of inspiration for gearing/spec/gemming/enchants for my gear. I use my own intuition first, until I hit a brick wall (rare), then I will use them.
I do not measure the success of others in accordance with my own success. If I run a heroic with a fresh 80 in greens or the guy with ToGC 25 Insanity gear, I don’t measure the success of the run on how fast it was done, how much dps was done, or healing done. All I care about is A) Did we succeed? B) Will Skadi EVER DROP THAT DAMNED MOUNT? After that, anything else is icing on the cake.
Skill is of varying levels of importance when it comes to WoW. There are several areas in which a person can be skillful, and in their eyes, be a success. You have the PvPers, the RPers, the AHers. the Raiders, and the Heroic Grinders. We all know who these people are and what they do in terms of the game. If a PvPer gets to 2000 Team Rating, he feels he is a success in WoW. However, when he tries to PuG heroics and fails on pulls/boss strategy, the Heroic Grinders/Raiders are quick to scream “ZOMG5kGSNUBALERT”. Is this fair? No, it is not. This guy was trying a new aspect of the game to him, so there is going to be a steep learning curve. Measuring success in this game is all a matter of preception.
This gives me a segue into the attitude of the WoW community. You have so many people with different personalities but you can fit them into any of these categories: Trolls, Ninja looters, Casual, Raider, Elitist, World First. The first few are easy to identify, but I will explain the last two.
Elitist are people who may/may not be good at what they do, but have an unwarranted air of superiority about how/what they do. World Firsts are people like Ensidia, Might, Juggernaught, Stars, and etc that are the best of the best in the WORLD at what they do. Ever notice how these people are giving out boss strats, theorycrafting, and are generally (for the most part, some exceptions apply) good people? Want to know why? Hint: They were once just like all of us. Clueless.
People will be just that, people. There is no reason you should expect someone to be just like you. Ask yourself this in the end: If you just met someone in real life, would you expect them to be like/think like you in all aspects of life? Then why would expect that in an online, social game?
In all honesty, you hit the nail on the head with this post. You put it way better than I could (which isn’t that hard).
By definition (as proposed by this article) I am an elitist. Why? I think that everyone is CAPABLE (at my gear level) to perform as well if not better than me. However, I disagree with Dark/Soth on a lot of points. I will go through them here. As well as who I R, what I R did done.
First off, my name is Tirael. At least this is my internet alias. I play an Unholy Dps/Frost Tank DK of the same name on Mal’ganis. I also play a Prot/Fury warrior by the name of Paleteal on the same server. I have experience in raiding from Karazhan (my first raid ever) to ToGC 25 (4/5) and ICC 25 (3/4). You can armory these toons and as Dark/Soth said, I doubt you will be impressed. I am not on the bleeding edge like the US/World Top 100 guilds, but I feel I know my stuff after 3+ years of playing.
Moving on. I may be an elitist (they say that is the first step). I expect people to perform at their gear level or higher. If they can’t, I expect them to seek out ways to improve. If they don’t know how, I can show them. If they won’t do either of these, they are not worth my time.
A fresh 80 in quest blues/greens who does 2k dps is stellar, not the norm. He/she is outperforming his gear by large margins and is a threat once they get some top notch gear. However, this does not mean that people doing less are bad. You have to realize the environment you are in before you jump the gun. These guys are running heroics to get gear. Maybe this is their first 80, maybe it is their 7th 80. Either way, we all started somewhere and there is no need to worry yourself over someone in quest/blues in greens. They are still learning their class. They probably haven’t started researching their class. They probably don’t even know. If you do, you should point them in the right direction.
All of us loved it at the beginning of Wrath (as with each Xpac) we were all struggling to make it through dungeons. This isn’t the case anymore with the xpac being out for over a year. A good portion of us have our welfare gear/ICC gear on ourself. Why does it upset us so when we see a fresh 80 step into our H UK doing 1k dps? To be honest, it shouldn’t. I guarantee you when you were a freshly minted 80, you weren’t doing much more than 1k dps in heroics. If you were, you were god. If you weren’t you were with the rest of the pack.
I think all this player hate comes from carrying people. This isn’t ICC. Carrying people through heroics happens all the time. People just get mad when it isn’t their friends. The person you scorn now could be the person who blows you away in dps/tanking/healing later on down the line. You never know. Before this cross server dungeon finder, scorning someone could mean that you could piss off friends in another guild. Now, it doesn’t matter. In all my Dungeon Finder instances, I have never ran with the same person twice. This goes back to human nature more than anything else.
All I can say in the end is that we were all once scrubs. Yes, even the top notch guilds were scrubs. Even if you are a savant at class skill, your knowledge of heroics/raids would hold you back. The WoW player isn’t just about X gear means Y dps. It’s about the knowledge that player holds. Here is a case and point, using the newly pre-reformed (x3) Occulus (you can gets epic gems and possibly a mount now, GG Blizz):
Group Comp:
Tank
Prot Paladin (5100 Gearscore)
DPS
Unholy DK – Me (5244 Gearscore)
Mutilate Rogue – (5500 Gearscore)
Affliction Lock – (4500 Gearscore)
Healer
Resto Shaman – (4900 Gearscore)
Group pops in and no one leaves (SURPRISE) We buff up and such. Pulls up to the first boss goes smooth. Boss melts. Combat rogue is smoking me in dps. The three NPCs spawn. I pick up an amber drake and start to summon him. I am looking around at 4 confused people standing where the boss died….so party chat pipes up:
Tankadin: I never did this before
Rogue: Me either. My friends say it sucks
Lock: WTF? Where did you get that AWESOME drake?
Shammie: WoW. This place is so cool.
Me: (Explains the instance/vehicle combat/what each drake does) (Thank God they had all done Malygos before)
I pick up the red drake and we make our way through the instance, with ease. Now? Who was the best player in this group? Was it me because I knew the instance? Was it the rogue because he was top dps? Was it the tank who lost agro? Was it the Lock pulling sub 4k dps? Was it the shaman bustin out those chain heals like a pro?
The correct answer is F: All the above. WTF, Tir? ARE YOU CEREAL?
No. good sir, I am not. Let’s start off. Tankadins are easy mode tanking. Consecrate/judge/auto attack afk=win. Shaman healing in heroics is like changing the channel on the TV, you press 1 button and win. Affliction Locks have a long ramp up time for highest dps (2 minutes or greater) so his sub 4k dps was pretty good considering spec/gear. Mutilate for rogues is the best dps spec hands down with the right gear (and trust me, this rogue knew his class). Unholy DKs take upwards of 4 minutes for peak dps output. So why were we all such good people? I knew the instance and shared my knowledge. The other 4 that didn’t took my knowledge and made it their own (that shaman healed Eregos by himself). We succeeded. That makes us all worthy of praise.
Let me give you an example of a good group in a raid. I think back story is warranted here. Mal’Ganis is one of the top servers for progression in the US. With the good there is also the bad. If you think I/Soth are elitists, come to MG for a day and look at trade chat. Join a raid/heroic. We aren’t even near the top of the elitist hierarchy. Moving on.
I was in a PuG TotGC 25 (yes, Trial of the GRAND Crusader 25 man/TotC 25 Heroic) on my Unholy DK. We get inside, get buffed up, and got to work. I was the lowest person on the totem pole as far as GS was concerned (my 5100 at the time was 200 points lower than the next person above me). Gormok comes out and we go to town. About 3/4 of the way into Gormok, I am topping the DPS/Damage Done meters. In TotGC (either version 10/25), you do not get a speed buff when Icehowl charges. No one died to charge. We one shot NR Beasts. Loot gets handed out, we move on. We one shot every boss up to Anub (which is currently considered one of the hardest fights in the game). Do you think after each fight we were linking healing meters? Or Dps meters? Do you think we cared when someone died to something stupid? No. Why? We just one shot every boss up to Anub in Trial of the FUCKING Grand Crusader 25. In short, in my eyes, a good player cares about two things:
1) Getting better
2) Raid/Group Success
The rest is, as they say, icing on the cake (white with chocolate frosting…OMNOMNOMNOMNOM).
…
He also updated my chart and pushed me higher on the skill side, but I think he was just buttering me up. /hug
And it’s totally chocolate frosting on yellow cake.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll get around to expectations.
clearcasting 
Thanks for covering a lot of my own concerns about people’s reactions to pug members in heroics–at least when evaluating their “performance” based on their overall dps.
If the bosses’ die I assume everyone contributed. If someone is doing over 1k dps, unless their gear is just totally awesome, guess what? they’re probably doing more than auto-attacking which is all I’m willing to demand of a new player.
Frankly, assuming everyone I meet in a pug is a brand new player has helped my own stress levels immensely, and helped me give an actual helping hand to a player or two, because I treated them as I treat anyone new to their class.
LikeLike
If he truly <3 you, he would bring pie.
I think Elitist carries this bad connotation, but it doesn't have to. I think this post displays how one can expect a lot out of people, and not be the jerk.
I have no idea what my hunter's gear score is. He still has 2 blue items, the shoulders from Ebon Blade Rep and the helm from a Heroic Drop. Sadly, I haven't played him a lot, and I am still learning the right "rotations" for him. I dual specced him due to survival at my ilevel being better than BM, but I still remain BM because I've been a BM hunter for a long time and I love the spec.
I think the goal in the whole thing is, did the boss die…if so, move on. Sure the boss could die faster, but meh…
LikeLike
Good points. It is a PUG. A semi-random grouping of players. I can understand the top raiding guilds needing well-geared players especially for the harder instances. A good guild will help their members to get better geared.
Found a great guild when my DK was lvl 79. I go into guild chat/vent and ask if anyone is willing to run “x” instance with me to help me gear up. They have taken me into heroic 5-man instances without complaint. The group leader also gives me notes on the various bosses as we progress. This beats a random PUG any day IMO.
LikeLike
CAKE LOVERS!!!!!
LikeLike
“I guarantee you when you were a freshly minted 80, you weren’t doing much more than 1k dps in heroics.”
I was doing 1200 dps at level 70, in T4, as frost mage spec. No, I wasn’t God. I was routinely beaten in dps. I farmed heroics. Got better. People actually “requested” 1k dps or better back then, because heroics were actually hard. My guild was small, we weren’t raiding anything back then. The ceiling for me as a player was heroics. I figured out what I needed to do to excel and that level, and I did it. When I hit level 80 in Wotlk, I was still frost spec (super noob), but I was pulling over 2k dps. Maybe I over-prepared by running normal dungeons and working on reputation. I really wanted those awesome cloth boots. I did my dailies everyday to gain rep. I finished all the available quest chains.
The thing is, the things I did were not hard. Everyone is capable of them. There is not one player who is not capable of matching or exceeding my meager accomplishments. It just takes a little work and dedication. Therein lies the rub though. Blizzard has taken all the work and dedication out of the game, unless you want to raid.
I remember doing Heroic MgT. That was hard. You had to use CC or your tank would get his ass handed to him. If I pulled aggro, the trash mobs could literally one shot me as a clothy.
For some reason, I just expect more out of people. More determination, more dedication, a stronger desire to improve. Everyone complains how Blizzard made the game too easy in Wrath, yet I routinely group with people at level 80 in heroics who can’t do as much dps as I did back at level 70 in T4.
LikeLike
But you keep forgetting how much research it took you to get to that point. You really wanted those awesome cloth boots because you went searching for upgrades.
You and I are in the hobby level, think back to what it would have been like if you had no outside information. Then take your skill level and cut it in half – you’ve had the benefit of at least two other MMORPGs prior to this one. That’s years of experience in how to progress in this type of game environment.
You might not be god, but you are further up the ladder than you realize. =P
LikeLike
You expect too much from people, and as such, set yourself up to be let down more often than not.
That being said, you took my comment to a personal level. The “you” referred to in that comment was directed at all people who think like you. You also took it out of context. Did I say, “A freshly minted 80 with t5 gear pulling 1k dps” or did I say “A freshly minted 80 in quest blues/greens pulling 1k dps”. I am for certain my comment was the second one.
I rarely personally take on anyone, not because I am afraid of confrontation, but I do not feel personal jabs at a person are warranted in a very public and open forum. Since you decided to poke that monster, I will “join them” rather than “beat them”.
I want to preface this with this statement: I like Dark/Soth. He is a great guy and a great player. However, we disagree on a fundamental aspect of our lives. This will be fun.
You talk about your 1.4k dps as a frost mage. IIRC, frost was still viable in BC for dps, and was preferred for several raids (SSC/TK come to mind) for it’s ability to CC/AoE dps. I, as a fury warrior, was doing the same dps in the same gear. This to me is not an accomplishment. It is a product of my (caps because I can’t bold in comments) RESEARCH/SPEC/GEMMING/ENCHANTS/ROTATION. You automatically assume that everyone played during BC. I can almost assure you that most toons leveled to 80 now where not even around during BC and if they were, they were not max level.
I have a priest that has sat at level 27 since effing vanilla who is now 67. That means I have zero raiding/end level instance experience with my priest. Am I supposed to understand the in’s and out’s of my class because I was able to comprehend some vastly outdated and poorly editted thread over at EJ? If I made a mistake in one of your instances at 80, would leave the party because I made mistakes? To me, this is what it sounds like.
You automatically put every player on this high ass pedastool that they do not belong on. Not everyone is like you/me/Arioch/anyone else who raids. You are walking into a 5 man group and treating it like it is a raid. If you grind heroics for fun in WoW, you could give a crap less about max dps spec/gear/rotation as all you care about is downing a boss and getting your emblems.
If you applied your way of thinking to RAIDS, then yeah, I agree with you. Bring your A game, read up on the most current information on your class and etc etc. This is the core difference. Raids are not 5 man instances. They require a lot more of a player than just “pewpew cachoo”.
I remember doing ZA 4 chest timed runs. I remember doing SSC/TK. I remember bashing my head against BloodBoil/RoS/Council. I remember what a mage/lock tank is. I remember how hard those were. I remember how much of a faceroll H Mgt became. I would take my prot/fury warrior in there and AoE tank with the best of them (it’s like being a one man band, 29 instruments, 1 mallet).
Do you see me sweating over someone who pulls 1.2k dps in WotLK heroics? No. Why? Because heroics are not end game content. They are a means to an end, but are in no way a reason to get your tighty whites in a wad over.
As I have said before, your AVERAGE player isn’t researching the in’s and out’s of everything. They just play what they like and have fun. If you don’t like your BG/server, come play with the big boys, because you need a slice of humble pie (or cake), good sir.
Being the Big Fish in the small pond does not make you top of the pack. That is the way people are perceiving you. I know how good you are, however, your air of superiority is undeserved. Your comments contradict themselves. You say “well I do this that and this” and that makes me better than those who don’t do the same. Really? You are better than this.
LikeLike
“I remember doing ZA 4 chest timed runs. I remember doing SSC/TK. I remember bashing my head against BloodBoil/RoS/Council. I remember what a mage/lock tank is. I remember how hard those were.”
Now you gone and made me all nostalgic, ahhhhh, the fun that was the mage tank, downing Illidari Council after what felt like months figuring out how not to get me (the mage tank) gibbed on the pull is one of my favorite memories of BC raiding.
“Everyone complains how Blizzard made the game too easy in Wrath, yet I routinely group with people at level 80 in heroics who can’t do as much dps as I did back at level 70 in T4.”
I think that part of the problem is that people perceive the game as being so easy now and therefore can’t justify putting time into researching their toons. I personally wont put up with it, it’s the one thing that drives me nuts, I’ve seen people in full ilvl 232 gear do less dps than I did in BC and that’s just not acceptable in my opinion, even if it is just a heroic.
LikeLike
Imoh:
Again your also assuming that this person has the correct spec/gems/rotations in his or her gear, and that he or she is not a brand new or newer player. A “BRAND” new player can easily get ilvl 232 gear and have no clue about the latter 3 things I just mentioned above. These are the players that can easily be made better ones with a little help and patience from players like YOURSELF instead of criticizing them and calling them bad players. If they don’t understand the concept of the game on the SAME level as you do, how on earth would they realize what they are doing is wrong? Or at the very least not what “should” be expected for their gear level.
And yes I’ve heard the arguements that if you play a game like this you should just “know” these things, or magically know all the correct websites to pull this information off of, sorry I have to call Bull$hit to that line of thinking.
Now I was around myself in BC and I did do some raiding with our guild back then when my Mage was my main. In a mix of mostly crafted epics (tailoring ones), and a couple of VERY lucky runs into Kara I had her pretty well decked out. I don’t think she was hit capped at the time, but I was able to do around 1.2k dps overall for her gear level. It wasn’t until Lich King came out and I started gearing each toon in heroics that I myself began researching each class I was playing to maximize each toons performance. By this point I had been playing and raiding for over a year and I learned so much more in that short period of research time then in all the time previous I had been playing. I’m also an alt-a-holic , having 10 toons on my main server I play on, 7 of which are now 80.
Just learning the simple concepts of the game took a while, i.e where to quest, which dungeons would yield the best gear for that toon, learning my way around in old world vanilla, etc. So for the most part even when I was raiding back then I had one person (Kurisutian) that took me under his wing and helped me out with things like spec, rotations, gearing and gemming choices, not to mention introducing me to raiding.
Now that being said, I posted this on another blog and I’m gonna post it here too: I don’t care if it’s heroics a year ago, or one ya ran today, you STILL only need 4.5-5k dps (counting ONLY the 3 dps spots) to successfully complete all of the ORIGINAL LK heroics, which puts you in the bracket of around 1.5k+ dps. I guarantee that if you have a group with this kind of dps make-up you will still complete the heroic successfully, just not in the 15-20 minutes or shorter people EXPECT them to be completed now.
Not all WoW players are made from the same mold, applying your standards to someone else’s without a clear understanding of their playing knowledge and ability, well that’s just silly.. and not realistic. To be honest had it not been for my guidie taking me under his wing and pass on his wisdom, I to this very day might not be the player I have become.
Just food for thought…
LikeLike
Then you go on to say that you “are not that great”. That really just makes zero sense to me in the same paragraph. Saying you are better, but not? Is this a “I can’t believe it’s not butter” commercial? (this last part was cut off for some reason)
LikeLike
“You expect too much from people, and as such, set yourself up to be let down more often than not.”
I am beginning to realize this.
“That being said, you took my comment to a personal level.”
It appeared to be directed at me, since I authored the post.
“You also took it out of context. Did I say, “A freshly minted 80 with t5 gear pulling 1k dps” or did I say “A freshly minted 80 in quest blues/greens pulling 1k dps”. ”
I don’t believe I took it out of context. I had replaced all of my T4 by level 80 with dungeon drops and quest rewards. Quest blues and greens are better than T4 by level 73-75.
“He is a great guy and a great player.”
Thanks, Ty. Coming from a more accomplished player as yourself, I appreciate that.
“If you applied your way of thinking to RAIDS, then yeah, I agree with you. Bring your A game, read up on the most current information on your class and etc etc. This is the core difference. Raids are not 5 man instances.”
Bring your A game, absolutely. You should always bring your A-game. Is there something wrong with the mindset that people should always try their best at what they do, even if its only game related?
“I remember doing ZA 4 chest timed runs. I remember doing SSC/TK. I remember bashing my head against BloodBoil/RoS/Council.”
“Being the Big Fish in the small pond does not make you top of the pack. That is the way people are perceiving you. I know how good you are, however, your air of superiority is undeserved.”
I did none of these things. I dinged 70 late in the BC expansion. I raided Kara in the last 2 weeks of BC. And if you would of asked me if I was ready to do any of those raids, I almost certainly would of told you that I was not ready. The way I value my accomplishments is significantly different from how you think I view them. I think what I’ve accomplished is very mediocre, and I think I am a very mediocre player. I’m not proud of my average ilvl 232 or my barely breaking 5k gearscore. I havent done TOGC 25, hell I haven’t cleared ToTC 25. I’ve only done 3 bosses in ToGC 10 a single time (with you). I just want to get the most out of what I’ve got, which is not so different from what you said.
When I say that an average player at level 80 should be doing 2k dps, what I mean is, “I’m am pretty mediocre and I pulled 2k dps at level 80 with a little bit of work, why can’t you? Why won’t you try?”
What I’m learning is the performance I’ve been able to show is farther above the norm than I thought. Which in itself, is still a bit odd to me.
A better writer would of flushed these thoughts out better the first time. I’ll chalk it up to a learning experience in blogging. =p
LikeLike
“When I say that an average player at level 80 should be doing 2k dps, what I mean is, “I’m am pretty mediocre and I pulled 2k dps at level 80 with a little bit of work, why can’t you? Why won’t you try?””
If that person was aware of the same resource material as you, then yes he probably would take more heed in his gearing/gemming/spec/rotation choices. But not every player that this game produces wants to follow the crowd, they play the way the want, no convincing them otherwise.
The difference is the bad players don’t care (at all) they want to be carried to the best gear, the perceived bad players lack the research material to make themselves better player (or even the knowledge of it’s existence). Guidance and patience with this people usually yields a much better player. A good example would be the Holy Pally I ran H UK with the other day, he was in a mix of every type of gear (cloth, leather, mail, etc), the most disturbing things were his gemming and enchanting choices, ALL spirit for the most part. After about a 10 minute conversation at the end of the run to which I pointed out his bad gear and gemming choices and WHY they were bad for his class, I pointed him to several sites including EJ to read up on.
Guess what? He had NO idea these sites existed, he was a newer player(less then 6 months), older (mid 20’s) and played a few days a week when he didn’t have husband or children duties. I’m willing to bet that gave him the help he needed to make him a much better player (and healer).
And that’s usually all it takes, not just “YOU SUCK, L2P LOSER!”
LikeLike
[…] koalabear21 @ 1:35 pm Tags: alts Arioch has a fantastic guest post today. You should go read it if you haven’t […]
LikeLike
Face it dude, you>me skill wise. WIth my progression/gear, you would blow me away.
LikeLike
Thanks Ty, but there’s no way you are going to convince me of that.
LikeLike
[…] We’ve looked at the comments that started it all, the Apparent Elitist POV, the Game, the Community, Another Voice… […]
LikeLike
[…] Arioch then began a series of very well written posts here, here, and here, along with a guest post with another voice from Tyrael. […]
LikeLike
[…] Another Voice […]
LikeLike
[…] interrupted my series with his guest post, Another Voice, where I think the only thing we disagreed on was the flavor of the cake being frosted (yellow cake […]
LikeLike