The PuG defeated 6 bosses this week (Wednesday and Thursday) so far. Why is it interesting? Because I lead raid to 3 bosses (Halfus, Valiona, Ascended). Omnitron was killed on Wednesday late night by Frigunor's raid, Uranax organized a raid to ToFW for Thursday since he wanted to pull Al'akir (which was done), than Magmaw was killed by Gothie's raid. I healed Conclave, but wasn't even there for BWD bosses. So much for the "only I lead raids here"
Tobold wrote that "people don't stand in the fire because they are intellectually incapable of getting out of it, but because they simply don't care. There are no negative consequences of your actions. Repair cost are a joke, there is no xp loss, and the huge number of players combined with the option of changing your name and/or server means you can't be blacklisted. Especially as a DPS class, where there are always at least two other players fulfilling the same role as you in the group, you might even get away with playing horribly, standing in the fire, and *still* end up with a justice point reward for killing the boss. You can behave like a terrible jerk to other players, and make inane "anal" jokes in trade chat, and there simply are no negative consequences. It is a fool's paradise."
Tobold is wrong. The consequences of such situation are just as severe as they were in Everquest. Actually they are worse, as the EQ monster is unbiased. Here the consequences are less fair, and therefore punish some people too who did not deserve it. Actually Tobold sees and spoke up harshly against the consequence: one slips into the faceless group of "morons and slackers", becomes an "LFD filth", a "trade chat reject".
Let me start at pointing out that there is harsh punishment in WoW. Just because you don't lose levels if you fail, it doesn't mean you don't lose. WoW is a game of constant inflation. You killed the Lich King in heroic mode several times? So what, Arthasdklol who just finished his "fun" in Vashij'ir has better gear. In EQ if you failed, you lost levels. In WoW you lose levels just by not logging in. The "n" in "LF1M healer to X with n ilvl" elevates by the day. What was OK yesterday is "fail" today. You must keep up or fall behind.
The punishment for failing in WoW is not losing levels. It's losing the chance to keep up. You can farm starter gear alone, but the "cool" or "top" gear can only be achieved by group playing. If you don't raid, no ilvl 359 for you, besides the ones you farm in daily HC. 2200/70 = 31.4. A whole month for an item. Have fun!
There is worse than blacklisting: white-listing. In EQ it was "group with him until proven to be a jerk". In WoW it's "keep away from him like he were lepers until proven a great guy". Have you started playing alone and don't know a soul, so came to LFD? Not a chance pal to play with me, I don't commune with "LFD filth". You have just hit 85 and don't have gear? Good luck for acceptance in any guild that killed anything besides 5000 critters. You played the game, figured things out for yourself and it worked as you reached 85? You mean you don't know about EJ and boss strategies?! Gtfo retard!
Being able to get away with anal spam also means that I can get away with wrongfully rejecting good guys. There is always a next one who will be grateful just to get a chance.
Wowprogress says you are world #42K if you just killed your first boss. If we assume 20 raiders/guild (most guild has only 10-mans runing), it means 840K players killed something. Out of 5M. Yes, killing Halfus brings you to the top 20%. 80% of the players are below that. Even I don't think that these guys are all morons and slackers. Most of them are simple casual players who have both the gear and the skill to kill him. They just don't get a chance from any existing group. To form their own from scratch? That work would easily eclipse leveling up in EQ. I know, I'm doing it.
Not punishing the bads, allowing them to disappear in the middle class destroys the middle class. In WoW you are either in the elite, which often includes you based on "who you know" or knowledge of obscure internal info like EJ or blogs, instead of your skill. If you are not in the elite, you are nobody, you are a trade chat reject, you are an LFD filth and Blizzard has to put more and more severe penalty on vote kick because people hate to play with you that much!
There are always consequences. You can only save someone from the consequences of his actions by forcing someone else to bear it. In WoW, the casuals, the ones with less social skills, and the newbies suffer because of the actions of the M&S. I doubt it was a good trade.
PS: The success of The PuG (240 members, 8/12) comes exactly from the unfairness of the white-listing. I designed a screening tool (able to chat decently, don't beg for help, has decent name) that effectively separates casuals, ones with less social skills, and newbies from the M&S. But of course to use it, you must read this blog or be on Agamaggan-EU-ally by blind luck.
Tobold wrote that "people don't stand in the fire because they are intellectually incapable of getting out of it, but because they simply don't care. There are no negative consequences of your actions. Repair cost are a joke, there is no xp loss, and the huge number of players combined with the option of changing your name and/or server means you can't be blacklisted. Especially as a DPS class, where there are always at least two other players fulfilling the same role as you in the group, you might even get away with playing horribly, standing in the fire, and *still* end up with a justice point reward for killing the boss. You can behave like a terrible jerk to other players, and make inane "anal" jokes in trade chat, and there simply are no negative consequences. It is a fool's paradise."
Tobold is wrong. The consequences of such situation are just as severe as they were in Everquest. Actually they are worse, as the EQ monster is unbiased. Here the consequences are less fair, and therefore punish some people too who did not deserve it. Actually Tobold sees and spoke up harshly against the consequence: one slips into the faceless group of "morons and slackers", becomes an "LFD filth", a "trade chat reject".
Let me start at pointing out that there is harsh punishment in WoW. Just because you don't lose levels if you fail, it doesn't mean you don't lose. WoW is a game of constant inflation. You killed the Lich King in heroic mode several times? So what, Arthasdklol who just finished his "fun" in Vashij'ir has better gear. In EQ if you failed, you lost levels. In WoW you lose levels just by not logging in. The "n" in "LF1M healer to X with n ilvl" elevates by the day. What was OK yesterday is "fail" today. You must keep up or fall behind.
The punishment for failing in WoW is not losing levels. It's losing the chance to keep up. You can farm starter gear alone, but the "cool" or "top" gear can only be achieved by group playing. If you don't raid, no ilvl 359 for you, besides the ones you farm in daily HC. 2200/70 = 31.4. A whole month for an item. Have fun!
There is worse than blacklisting: white-listing. In EQ it was "group with him until proven to be a jerk". In WoW it's "keep away from him like he were lepers until proven a great guy". Have you started playing alone and don't know a soul, so came to LFD? Not a chance pal to play with me, I don't commune with "LFD filth". You have just hit 85 and don't have gear? Good luck for acceptance in any guild that killed anything besides 5000 critters. You played the game, figured things out for yourself and it worked as you reached 85? You mean you don't know about EJ and boss strategies?! Gtfo retard!
Being able to get away with anal spam also means that I can get away with wrongfully rejecting good guys. There is always a next one who will be grateful just to get a chance.
Wowprogress says you are world #42K if you just killed your first boss. If we assume 20 raiders/guild (most guild has only 10-mans runing), it means 840K players killed something. Out of 5M. Yes, killing Halfus brings you to the top 20%. 80% of the players are below that. Even I don't think that these guys are all morons and slackers. Most of them are simple casual players who have both the gear and the skill to kill him. They just don't get a chance from any existing group. To form their own from scratch? That work would easily eclipse leveling up in EQ. I know, I'm doing it.
Not punishing the bads, allowing them to disappear in the middle class destroys the middle class. In WoW you are either in the elite, which often includes you based on "who you know" or knowledge of obscure internal info like EJ or blogs, instead of your skill. If you are not in the elite, you are nobody, you are a trade chat reject, you are an LFD filth and Blizzard has to put more and more severe penalty on vote kick because people hate to play with you that much!
There are always consequences. You can only save someone from the consequences of his actions by forcing someone else to bear it. In WoW, the casuals, the ones with less social skills, and the newbies suffer because of the actions of the M&S. I doubt it was a good trade.
PS: The success of The PuG (240 members, 8/12) comes exactly from the unfairness of the white-listing. I designed a screening tool (able to chat decently, don't beg for help, has decent name) that effectively separates casuals, ones with less social skills, and newbies from the M&S. But of course to use it, you must read this blog or be on Agamaggan-EU-ally by blind luck.
21 comments:
I have to disagree with you here Gevlon.
M&S are actually much worse then that. What you are about to read will most likely disgust you.
They wont keep up with the elitist... ok fine... and thats it. One's warped mind can easily turn society's taboo into "meh! all screaming for nothing" with their mighty weapon "ignorance".
You do not allow them to your plain of greater existance. All they have to do is simply label it as "elitist" and there you go... you dont count anymore. They go back to their daily routine of doing dailies and heroic and they are fulfilled.
They wont keep up with you? OK I'll give you that but if they dont recognize your existance because they dont want to then Its like you never existed to begin with and can easily label your arguments as "some elitist spam" and your action as "no life".
Yes... M&S are that pathethic, You cant reason with them. You would do only good if you simply slaughtered them on sight with your methods.
Gevlon: "The PuG defeated 6 bosses this week (Wednesday and Thursday) so far. Why is it interesting? Because I lead raid to 3 bosses (Halfus, Valiona, Ascended)."
This is exactly what we wanted to see. Congratulations. Rinse, repeat. Let's see it keep happening.
That doesn't mean that there are no M&S in your guild though, as described by you in your post on Tuesday. Can you advise what the raid rules for the other kills were? Were they based on your post from last Saturday?
@Gevlon
"Blizzard has to put more and more severe penalty on vote kick because people hate to play with you that much!"
By the way, they actually hotfixing some more restrictions right about now and promise to enable them next reset.
@Squishalot
I was going with the fail and newbie fee. I don't know how the others did but I whould assume it is something similar.
Now this sort of post is why I was attracted to the blog to begin with.
Absolutely agree on all parts. Although Blizzard did implement some catch-up mechanisms such as being able to chain-run heroics and old tier (eventually) being bought with JP, the catch-up requires friends or ability to tank. If you only do JC daily 3 times a week, you have 60% less patterns as someone who does it every day.
The funny side-effect is what we saw with the Ulduar drake situation: even the raiding upper-class was miffed that they couldn't "retire with my high score." Taking a break or slacking off puts you further and further behind, and rarely do people actually care what you accomplished 2-3 months ago.
Actually, Ive found that achievements from the past have hekped me greatly when applying to guilds. It makes your app stand out if you still know indepth tacs from old encounters. My current char is not raiding, but I would not have trouble getting into a decent guild. Of course I would have to get my gear up to speed. Guilds do recognise non m&s in applications and ingame interviews, which is why they are done
Chopsui
I remember the start of the TBC when it was almost impossible for newbies without friends to obtain good gear. Heroics were insanely hard and KZ was like hard modes today. Most of the people were stuck in normal 5 man or played PvP.
I remember later when arenas were the only reliable source of purples how many applications were rejected for player having PvP gear.
This was really harsh and often lead to unfair situations. Good players were unable join the raids while bad player who were just lucky to have friends were wearing purples.
Cataclysm is not so bad in this area, though WotLK was much more easy. There is a chance to advance. LFD is really help for newbies. In TBC you was stuck with trade channel for normal 5 man.
Seems to me from what I hear about original EQ that the environment preferred players with lot of time and did not care about their skill level.
Just two words:
Daily Quests.
I hate them, avoid them and want to throw up every time I do some. Actually I do them with my paladin. The best paladin tanktrinket is in there, maybe the best combination of two trinkets (yes I AM a mastery fanboy). Well yes Blizzard catched me again doing shit for pixles. And yes I did not comlete both yet since I pushed it away saying "still raid vacations" this saturday our second raidweek starts.
What keeps me playing right now?
Completing my healequiment to be more flexible, make gold, improve my tankequipment, 2 vs 2 raiting-farming, 70 points per day (I actually passed that yesterday) and of course two raid days weekly. Well that's my paladin.
The M&S have a greater impact. They demotivate the other members. HE gets to be the one beeing dead doing nothing, while the rest downs the boss. M&S are not raidmembers they are more mobs than players.
Good luck to everyone trying to gather their own raid group (read: making a guild), when most guilds will already be level 25.
And it is just naive for someone to even try to argue that all 24 perks together added are really just 'perks', but not an imbalanced advantage comparing to a level 1 guild.
Unless Blizzard introduces some kind of guild leveling catch up mechanism, it will be close to impossible to make and level a new guild after even half a year.
@ Squishalot
On Frig's and Gothie's raids the newbie and fail fee's where set up to be used.
There is one thing that you did not mention: the reset. Very little that can be acquired now will be desired by April/May/4.1. And you can start 4.1 with your 4000 JP to buy 359 epics. So if you were to take off a couple of months, or a year, it just takes some grinding to be, not caught up but close enough. Everyone knows that anything that drops off Deathwing will be inferior to level 87 greens. When Tier 14 is being sold for valor and T13 for JP, it takes a couple of intense weeks of grinding to be in T13, whether you are replacing T12 or T6. In a couple of months when the raiding expectation is T12, will anyone care if/when you got T11?
Sic transit gloria mundi
For Goblins, "if you don't raid, no 359 for you" is not completely true.
My mage alt was most recent: you get 2 trinks from Alchemy/Inscription/TB, 2 epics from tailoring, and three from rep rewards. You can get BoA epic ring and staff from Archaeology, and you can buy epic BoE weapon, bracers, wand and cape. Cataclysm allows the solo player to be in majority epic gear with the rest 346 without ever entering a raid or even entering a heroic. With a bit of planning, you might could even be majority 359, rest 346 on your first day at 85.
Blizzard is renting you the opportunity to be on their treadmill.
@ Uranax and Cyrel - thanks for your feedback. Did you/they also impose a "three strikes and out" policy, as Gevlon does?
You guys go on about Gav being elitist? I never thought I'd do this, but I'm going to jump in here and cry "bullshit" - and here's why.
I left the game between Vanilla and (almost) the end of Wrath. When I returned, the Trial was just picking up, and my highest level character was a level 47 hunter. A month (or a bit more) later, I had a pair of 85s - a hunter (not the same one) and a tank. Another few weeks and I had full T10 on my tank in two sets (DPS too!). I was ready to try this raiding thing.
I was, however, shut down at every turn. I never got the opportunity to prove I didn't stand in the fire - the people who raided told me that they weren't interested in anybody that didn't have the gear from the bosses they were going in to take down! They suggested I form my own raids for Trial, or 'go grind more badges for better gear' at the abysmally slow rate of two a day, 19/week. You don't have a seven thousand GearScore (or whatever it was)! Too bad for you. I don't care about your DPS, or your almost mystical ability to not stand in bad things, or even the fact that I just complimented you on handling that stupidly bad pull I did when you were tanking for us.
Wrath had some of the best ideas ever implemented - those 'welfare epics' raiders grouse about enabled me, as a latecomer, to be ready for the content they were in, to have a shot at raiding. Only.. the raiders themselves weren't interested in opening the doors.
In the PuG, I'd have been welcome. I'd pay with the rest, play with the rest, I'd have seen the content and quickly proved I wasn't one of the "M&S" lot. I think it's safe to say that Gav's 'elitism' is a step or two more egalitarian than the usual crap raiders pull in their incessant pursuit of easy e-peen.
... I'm a little bitter.
Anyway - /Gav/ isn't elitist, for those that think he is. The same cannot be said of the rest of the community, which does have that problem on occasion.
Gevlon, I'm not sure which time frame you played EQ in but i'm pretty sure the elitism was worse than you think.
First of all you usually needed raiding gear from the previous expansion to be able to survive anything but the most basic single group content of a new expansion.
Secondly, your example of "LFM for X minimum of n ilvl" could be easily replaced with a guild application requiring a minimum of n AA points.
I'd also venture to say that your reputation as a player was far more important. When SoE implemented a LFG tool, I first filtered players by guild, then by name when forming groups. If a player was not from a strong guild or was not someone I knew to be good, I wouldn't invite them.
I've also been in groups that conspired via /tell to pretend to have to leave to get rid of lesser geared/AAed players even when those players were more than sufficiently geared/AAed for the content.
There were other players who had such a bad reputation that they were forced to solo or play an alt because literally everybody on the server despised them.
@Squish: I went with 300g failure fee and 2k newbie fee.
In addition I introduced a 200g per attempt fee for raiders not having +90 stat food and Cataclysm flasks.
Gevlon wrote: " Yes, killing Halfus brings you to the top 20%. 80% of the players are below that. Even I don't think that these guys are all morons and slackers. Most of them are simple casual players who have both the gear and the skill to kill him. They just don't get a chance from any existing group."
It's nice to see someone actually acknowledge this. Finding a raiding guild that is actually a good fit for you is definitely a PvP activity that has only a little to do with PvE skill. Finding a guild to let you prove your skills (or lack thereof) can be exceedingly difficult. Not having downed a cataclysm raid does not necessarily mean you suck. It could also mean you haven't found nine other people to go with you.
I wish knew of a successful Gevlon-style PUG guild in the US. However, lacking that, there are options for a competent causal raider.
I'm on a large server with several fairly progressed HC guilds. Even when they're raiding 4 or 5 nights a week, a few of them form alt runs on off-nights (I recognize them by their guild tags). Sometimes they have to pug a spots, and that's my chance.
My greatest leverage is that I'm a tank. Secondly, I have about every 359 piece I can get outside of a raid (VP, professions, rep, gold). I can't always link a required achievement, but after I've seen the spam in Trade a dozen times, they may be willing to take a chance. Now, I'm getting the achievements, too.
Am I getting carried? That's debatable, but this strategy has been working for me since Wrath. I study the fights ahead of time and I am willing to tolerate the HC screaming at me-- because I am acquiring experience to help me with the next time I face that boss.
Obviously, there are pitfalls to this "mercenary" or "raiding consultant" method. The HC-alt pugs may not form or need me. I'll never be on the bleeding edge of progression, but at least half a tier behind. And this won't work for everybody-- competition for dps spots is always fierce. However, I'm getting to see a lot more than most people on a casual schedule can at this point in the game.
As A fairly Casual Player and A extremely Casual Guild(Family/RLF) I have no hope of Entering the Raiding game till 4.1. On my Server All raids want an ilvl of 350+. No chance to prove ourselves for Those that started Late, We clearly are No good because We aren't as dedicated to being first as everyone else. Could I possibly start my own raid, yes but PuG raiding is bad enough with out having to do the recruitment.
TL:DR Hey I Started Late So I SUCK. Current Mentality of raiding on my server.
The phrase Milton Friedman populized comes to mind: "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Just as a "free" lunch's costs come from elsewhere, the cost of the M&S is also ditributed to others.
That this obvious principle is overlooked by so many people is quite disconcerting. The world has scarcity; of course there isn't enough for everyone at the price of "free".
Unfortunately, even if I want to recruit the non-M&S casual, I have to do a lot of work verifying he actually doesn't suck; I could use GS or some other generalization to cut my work load significantly. Not many like to work harder than they have to, and that includes Guild Leaders.
Klurg said...
I wish knew of a successful Gevlon-style PUG guild in the US. However, lacking that, there are options for a competent causal raider.
There is, http://pugsquad.blogspot.com/
come check us out
Good job on The Pug progress.
I have to say though I am a casual player who used to raid hardcore; I have the skill and gear (honestly, you can do most of the raids in simply justice/valor gear), but I choose not to due to time constraints.
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