so many memories coming back of what it was like to be new and inexperienced in games and all the help i received.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7864486403

tot his day i help out new players and don't kick people from groups due to errors and lack of experience. i can remember countless times someone helped me out in Asheron's Call way back in the day and that is what made me able to stick with it and become a great palyer myself. 

Originally posted by phantomghost
Thing is WoW is not a group game.  Players who started here will always suck.  They will roll a healer and never heal a group. They will roll tanks and never tank.  They will roll as crowd control and not even know what crowd control stands for.

Do not punish them for not knowing better. If it was a better game, it would train them to do their jobs properly and allow them opportunities to act as such without such drastic consequences. They have lost sight of what "new users" are. Their market has been saturated for some time now. The trees are blocking the light for the saplings to grow just as big and strong.

Oh I agree, unfortunately the players themselves do not see an issue with being bad.  There is no downside to being a bad player. 

Players who started their MMo gaming in this type of environment need to push themselves to be better and not rely on the group to do everything for them. 

But it is hard to do when afking and trivial tasks such as talking to somebody next to the quest giver reward you with xp and good gear.  They do not have a strive to become better.

Now if it was a game where you needed other players to advance, they would change their ways.  They would not go on the game and ruin their reputation.  They would either learn to play or just realize they will never get a group.  If they choose to play a healer they better learn how to heal if they want to advance in levels and gear.

Lovely story. I still reject anyone who doesn't meet some sort of standard. Being sorry doesn't make me feel bad for you, it just confirms to me how bad you are. 

I'm not that kind of nice lovey dovey player. I played to kill bosses first and have a good time second.

Originally posted by Phynn
This story is exactly why i refuse to raid in ANY game. Too many elitist people out there who think you should build your character a certainway, meet a certain dps requirement, heal a certain amount etc...This isnt their fault its the game companies putting in content that requires a certain health check, amount of mitigation, whatever, to be effective. Also the leveling experience has been made almost entirely soloable so most players do not get the necessary training before hitting max level. I am not saying that coordination and execution of raid dynamics should be easy but the jest of the encounters should be more execution of the mechanic.dynamic, then how much dps you can do in a certain amount of time. Make the encounters more engaging, challeneging but that doesnt mean we have to make it so that only elitist supreme gear'd players will be able to have success. I mean really if this is what mmos are coming to...elitist mentality...f' it I am going to just play orpg.

The raiding mentality is no different from organized school sports. Coop play to overcome challenges with finite resources and opportunity. its a competitive environment.

In sports if you screw up you can expect your coach to yell at you. Some will/might belittle you and humiliate you. Its an inferior motivation method, but it is a motivational method.

If you combine any standard of excellence with teamwork you will encounter these issues. There are better ways to handle failure, not belittling, but then if you reject raiders for sucking at healthy motivation, arent YOU being the elitist?

You reject ppl who are scrubs at motivating properly. hmm.

Personally I avoid them but its for toxic human interaction, not "elitism". Demanding excellence of yourself or others is not something to despise.

I think what you are failing to understand, when you say its the devs fault for making gear checks so hard, is that raiders WANT it to be that hard. A lesser challenge means they would find a new game out of boredom. Competent focused ppl looking for challenge are not compatible with the "outcast warrior" in the story. They cant meet their own personal goals for playing their best and they cant meet their goals for coop play with him on their team. You cant time things perfectly in coop play all by yourself. Thats why its coop. Thats the point. If you could "win" all by yourself it wouldnt by a group/raid.

Would you find a group dungeon worth entering if you could drag a group of 4 year olds thru it? While you are asking them to use a synergizing ability...they are looking out the window. You lose out on synergy they should have created and your own synergizing attempts fall flat on their face cuz  4 year olds cant harness it.

The reason you think things are so hard is because you set your sights on rewards for hardcore raiders. Lower your gear expectations and timeline for killing content. Maybe you should play 1 expansion behind while utilitizing current abilities.

Casual greed is just as much to blame as "hardcore making game too hard" when it comes to bastardizing the game.

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You do know that the worst of the players always migrate to the Zerg Clans, protection in numbers, really works.

And I have no problem with that, there is room for all.

This was a very good read. I feel completely for him, and people that were mean to him are the reason I quit raiding after being a raid officer in WoW for 3 years.

I haven't really touched any raids since except in casual guilds with groups of friendly people here and there, I can count the number of raids on 1 hand in 3 years, because I got tired of people thinking they were better than others.

People need to step back and remember what it's like to be a new player. I remember starting EQ I was totally clueless and didn't know much about computers in general. If it wasn't for the first guild I found on Emarr, I never would of gotten into MMOs just because it was so confusing to me at the time.

This story actually made me giddy a little, I haven't seen that level of kindness in any game since EQ, good for the players in Korea, I hope the trend continues :)

Gaming has become very competitive, even when it isn't a competitive game.

In LoL people get yelled at all the time because all that matters to others is winning and if a person isn't up to par then others hate on them. Nevermind the fact that the strongest players are in guilds with the strongest players to be competitive, but yet there's always that guy in a pug game who thinks he's awesome and all should kneel before him.

For most gamers it seems MMOs, and all games, have become nothing but a goal to get the next/more rewards as fast as humanly possible. It isn't about playing, exploring, just plain having fun, and yes, failing now and then. It is about how quickly can we get more rewards, more dings.

I stop playing in guilds many years ago because there was always drama about who sucked, who messed up, who didn't do what they should. This was both in MMOs, and FPS games. No, the person was typically not me, but I hate drama even when it is between two other people. So I started going solo.

One thing I found fun though is to play an MMO, level up and then go back to lower zones and help random strangers get through dungeons that I knew were tough to get a pug for. It didn't gain me anything as the rewards were nothing to my level guy, but I enjoyed helping people through the parts I struggled with.

I still do that in games. However, with each passing year it seems more people are only focused in the end result and not the journey. That in turn is making more people request MMOs be soloable through the whole thing, which in turn is destroying what an MMO is in the first place, a social experience.

I find myself saying the phrase "It is just a game" or "it is only pixels" to angry people fairly often in video games, but those people never see it that way.

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

I find myself saying the phrase "It is just a game" or "it is only pixels" to angry people fairly often in video games, but those people never see it that way.

"What? I was told this would replace my life for a small monthly fee."

Originally posted by Magnetia

Lovely story. I still reject anyone who doesn't meet some sort of standard. Being sorry doesn't make me feel bad for you, it just confirms to me how bad you are. 

I'm not that kind of nice lovey dovey player. I played to kill bosses first and have a good time second.

O_o.....Soooooooo, raiding is about killing bosses, not about fun? Doesn't sound like a very good game to me.

For most people winning is fun...when you lose because of someone who is lazy or incompetent it is incredibly frustrating...For me whether I will help someone get better or not is totally dependent on them and their attitude. If they just don't have the capacity to learn what they are being taught...well not really my problem..I won't be mean or anything but im not gonna go out of my way to teach someone things I know they won't retain.  If this attitude makes me an elitist then so be it..but frankly I prefer a more relaxed attitude to raiding, thats why I only use LFR in wow...I don't have the time or motivation for hard raids anymore....I'm able to usually stir up the LFR group with comments in /instance...it's not the same as people on vent but it's still fun...

reminds me of my days leading raids in WoW.

i remember we had a married couple who were retired in our guild.  mage and priest.  one a retired nurse and one a retired teacher.  they lived in one of those 50 and older communities in FLA but instead of playing old-folks tennis or fishing all day they played wow.

it took me a LONG time to get them to understand the basics of the game.  (partly, this is wow's fault because in Wow, you can max-level without being good at the game.  in EQ1 for examply you're forced to improve as you level) however it was time well spent for me.  I had fun teaching them and they had fun learning.  i got to know them and when i had to have an operation on my ankle the retired nurse kept better track of me than the folks at the actual hospital did.

they learned where to go to learn the boss fights because they hadnt grown up playing games like we all did.  so they watched the fights intently and learned.

sometimes, if we needed to fill out a final raid spot with a pug or a new guild applicant , if it was a new fight the retired couple would screw it once or twice, then get the hang of it, then the next one they'd be great.  it never ceased to have an effect on the applicants.  most folks thought it was so great that these two played wow together (and i know some got their folks to play too!  hehe)  some thought it was lame to help them (those didnt make it in our guild).  but the most overwhelming response was that it was so cool of US to be the ones helping the older couple along.  these folks soon learned that helping others to "get it" benefits the helper as much as the helpee.  (the dirty secret of doing nice things)

now, i dont play Wow but i still contact the pair every now and then.

PEOPLE > PIXELS.

important lesson many of us need to learn.

itch.

(and grey and voleema if you're reading this hi :) )

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Originally posted by Venomizer2
The raiding mentality is no different from organized school sports. Coop play to overcome challenges with finite resources and opportunity. its a competitive environment.

In sports if you screw up you can expect your coach to yell at you. Some will/might belittle you and humiliate you. Its an inferior motivation method, but it is a motivational method.

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Coaches in team sports try to help their players improve. Elitist raiders have no desire to help those who hinder their raids. They just boot them off of the raid. Many times, there is no yelling involved. Just a kick off of the team.

Huge difference.

i remember my first days in WoW.  running around on my warrior in my "Robes of Arugal" hitting monsters with my staff,  getting lost in UC,   asking people for help only to get abusive text written back.  after playing mmo's for a few years now people take for granted and seem to forget how complex they can be.  they seem simpler now but,  when you first start it's a lot to take in. 

i feel for the guy but not becuase he wasn't accepted to any groups.  i feel for him becuase no one took the time to try to help him. 

I am in a 15 year old guild that crosses many games that will disagree with the very idea that people should be turned away because of skill and still have the ability to get enough people with skill together to steamroll most other guilds.

But that would be because we are a guild of FRIENDS and not just people we USE in games and we have the leadership to know you need to appoint heads of groups. We may be A guild, but we are A guild with GROUPS. A Hardcore PvP group, a hardcore PvE group, a mild PvP group, a mild PvE group and a group of part-time/casuals. Each has 3 captians to report to, they report either to the commanders or the leader...all support each other. almost 500 of our members date back to SWG/DaoC and almost 100 of them go all the way back to UO when we were founded.

We stayed this strong over the years for a reason, the guild is based on FRIENDSHIP, not advancement. We know a player will become better just by playing with friends that know how to play, know how to teach, and base all of that on fun. Fun is OUR driving force, advancement comes with it and so can be tossed aside.