What hurts raiding?

Lately I get a sense that a lot of people aren’t satisfied with the way things are going in their raiding guilds. The WoW ladies livejournal always has posts about people not fitting in with their guild, feeling like the way they raid isn’t the right fit for them, and asking what they can do about it. I’ve bailed on guilds in the past, and there are times in BoO when raiding gets me pretty damn grumpy (my poor boyfriend had to deal with me bitching thunderously a few nights ago, and he doesn’t even play this game).

So what causes raid dissatisfaction?

Personally, I think the big culprit these days is not having everyone on the same page, goal-wise. In a raiding guild you’re all working together to accomplish a goal, but when some of you have a different goal in mind than others, there’s a pretty clear disconnect and some people aren’t going to be happy. I think that the introduction of achievements and hardmode raiding has really led to two distinctly different ways of approaching raiding – it used to be that you raided to progress, and that was the goal. Pretty much everyone who raided could say that they wanted to get further through the content with fewer wipes. These days you can have a group who are in that camp and want to see all the bosses downed and hooray, goal met! But then there are those who want to up the challenge and toggle on hardmodes, because for them that accomplishment is what the raiding game’s all about. And of course, there’s always been those who are just there for loot; a steady flow of purples is enough to keep them happy, and when it’s not coming any more, neither are they. If you have people from all mindsets in your guild, there’s going to be friction between them. People who want a challenge will feel that they’re being held back by those who don’t, because if they do get the opportunity to attempt hardmodes and fail, people who weren’t too keen on doing them in the first place will press for giving up and moving on. Those who just want to progress through normal levels of difficulty won’t understand why they’re expected to help the others who want to do hardmodes, and spend their time and gold on repairs after wiping. Things will go more smoothly and with less resentment when everyone makes it clear what their goals are, and finds a like-minded group of people to accomplish them with.

The other big issue is attitude. Sometimes you can tell when a guild member doesn’t want to be there for the raid – they might be very vocal about it, or their performance might subtly reflect that they’d rather be doing something else. When your heart’s not in it, you don’t give it your all; when I’m having a bad night and feel like I’m there out of obligation, I know I’m off my game. And while you might feel like you should be there out of obligation, the more you let us know that you wish you were doing anything but raiding, the more the morale is going to go down. We all hate wiping, but complaining about it and saying that you don’t want to stay through it doesn’t make it any less likely to keep happening. I’d go so far to say that complaining about the wipes makes them more likely to keep happening, because everyone else wants to get out of the raid just as much as the complainer, so they don’t have to listen to the whining any more.

The aspect of the attitude problem that gets me more than anything is how people approach criticism. I’m not saying that you should never criticize your raid members, because we all make mistakes and have room for improvement, but the way that you approach that makes a huge difference on the reception. Politely offering suggestions is cool, and usually will be well received by someone who is genuinely interested in their performance. We have had newer players who have improved a lot by talking with the more seasoned ones about the details of their classes, which wouldn’t have happened if we’d just yelled “why do you suck so much?” and replaced them every time. If someone were to give me tips on how to improve my healing (and by that, I do not mean telling me to beacon one target and heal another when I’m already doing it, because honestly, telling someone the core basics of how to play their class is just insulting) I would welcome it, because I’m not one of the guys at ElitestJerks, and I know that there’s probably more that I could do. If we’re struggling on a boss with wipe after wipe, politely suggesting a different strategy will go miles farther than “Guys, why can’t we do this, I know PuGs who can handle this shit, so why can’t we?”.

What will really hurt your raiding core? Forgetting that we are all a team, and that you have 9/24 other people relying on you. When you sign up for a raid and show up late or not at all, you’ve hurt your team. There will be bitter feelings about it, especially when you don’t give any excuses. When you rant about the fact that you’re not getting loot and you don’t know why you even bother any more, you’re hurting your team. When you take the negative route and call everyone morons instead of offering constructive criticism, you are hurting the team. When everyone doesn’t come together to make a team effort on a regular basis, it’s the surest way to have the whole thing crumble.

I Love the Whole World (of Warcraft)

Boomdeyada, boomdeyada!

It’s so easy to get bogged down by negativity when it comes to WoW, especially lately. Boredom and burnout are rearing their heads, and it seems like every other PuG that I step into leaves me wondering how people are smart enough to even function. Sometimes I forget about the things that keep me playing: little things that I enjoy about the game and that have kept me engaged for over a year now.

Crusty Bob – Every single one of my characters takes a screenshot with this turtle who hangs out with the hunter trainer outside of The Exodar. Guys, HE SMILES. A TURTLE WHO SMILES.

Azshara – by far my favorite zone, I’ve always like that it feels deserted and ruinous. The autumn setting is gorgeous, and the lack of quests and people in the zone just adds to that atmosphere of emptiness. If you’ve ever done laps of the zone for herbs or mining, you know it’s a huge place, and there’s something peaceful about having it all to yourself (a few naga aside). The night elf ruins with the toppled Ravencrest Monument are a wonderful illustration of what the elves lost in the Sundering. Since Up (my favorite movie, words just cannot express) came out, I’ve started associating Azshara with the scene when Ellie and Carl lie under the tree watching the clouds – it just has that feeling for me.

Sheddle Glossgleam – Head upstairs in The Threads of Fate, plop yourself down in the Shoeshine Seat, and if you’re as in love with sparkly things as I am, prepare to be thrilled.

Windle Sparkshine – When it gets dark in Dalaran, he turns on the streetlamps, then sells Wendle’s Lighter, which lets you turn on any that he’s missed. :3 Dalaran in general is just a dynamic zone, and it was amazing to explore when Wrath hit and people were slowly trickling into the city.

Naxx doodad – the door in the arachnid quarter doesn’t say this any more, but it used to send me into thralls of glee, making it the only part of Naxx to do so. Doodad nerf ’09, never forget!

Karazhan – I’m a BC baby and this was my first raid. I’ll always remember it fondly for that alone, but the lore and the way that a manor full of sinister spirits speaks to me are what make Karazhan special. The encounters were interesting in ways that other raids have yet to top for me. How freaking amazing was the Opera event? In a similar vein, Duskwood is my favorite Azerothian questing zone. I love spooky undead!

Dorfus Alphamage – I didn’t play in vanilla WoW, but that doesn’t stop me from loving this shout out in Dalaran to a time when dwarves could be mages. How awesome is that spinny braid female dwarf animation going to be on mages in Cataclysm?

Flame Leviathan choppers – I squeal like a little girl when I get to ride around beeping my horn. BEEP BEEP. \o/

Lady Sylvanas Windrunner – Her story and the Lament of the Highborne are hauntingly beautiful. She is by far my favorite faction leader, and I miss being Horde because it means that I’ll never be doing my auctioning and hear her begin to sing. The only appropriate response to her song is to rush to the Royal Quarter and bow in reverence at her feet. People who don’t stay to listen to her sing are heathens!

Downing a boss for the first time – It feels amazing. Congratulations to everyone in Brotherhood of Oblivion for our first Anub’arak 25 kill! I logged off feeling giddy and remembering why I love raiding, that feeling of finally coming together and besting a boss who’s given you trouble in the past is nothing short of euphoric.

That’s just a few things that I can think of, and I know there’s more that I’m missing. My poor boyfriend can attest to the fact that every now and then I just start flapping my hands and squealing over some little exciting thing. The details are part of what makes the game enjoyable for me, and Blizzard does not skimp. So tell me, what do you love about World of Warcraft?

Crickets

Sorry that it’s been quiet on the blog this week. I’m home for the holidays, which means I’m playing on the laptop that I had when I first got started with WoW. Funny thing, it seemed much more up to the task when all I was doing was questing in Tarren Mill. Now it gets 7 fps or so in ToC25, which means raiding is not something I’m up for this week. I tried on Monday night and died to every boss fight, so no more for me until I’m back on the desktop.

I hope all of you Americans had a nice Thanksgiving yesterday!

Burn Out

I think most of my guildies have reached this point, which saddens me a bit, because I’m trying to keep on enjoying this game, and it is a little difficult when everyone else is having trouble too. I keep getting frustrated because there’s a lot of goofing around and stupid wipes that could be easily prevented, but I don’t feel like I really have a place to complain about it – I’m not perfect either, after all. For reference: ToC last week when I kept moving while trying to cast Mass Dispel.

It really does make the anger bubble up when you feel like you’re doing just the right thing, but the group keeps wiping anyway. Last night we attempted Freya, where we got stuck last week, and we hit a wall. We even wiped on trash several times. There was one pull that involved me getting one shot after I bubbled the tank, which is just … what the hell. We weren’t on the ball and I was grumpy about it, especially because I switched to shadow, and having failures in a role that isn’t my main one makes me very defensive. Being lumped into the dps group with comments about how the dps is not performing makes me RAWR when I know that I’m doing my part.

Oh, and I discovered that it’s a little difficult to play without lag when your better half (who came up with that phrase anyway? /cough) is downloading torrents at “lightening speed” and hogging up all the internet. I’d press a button and approximately 10 seconds later, casting would begin! Except … sometimes not because by the time my screen caught up, the silencing trees were rampaging about and I wasn’t under a mushroom. /shakes a fist (… Also, that kind of sounds like someone’s bad acid trip.)

Burnout has even made me want to get my paladin up to speed and bring her to our runs instead of Celaeno, because we have a lack of holy paladins lately, and because jokes about how many priests we have used to be funny, but now rub me the wrong way.

At least I’ll be taking a little break over the next week. With any luck, the patch will be up and running within a week or two, which I can only hope will cause some changes.

YES

The fact that a background downloader for Patch 3.3 is going up, and the information about the way that the raid instances will be unlocked, has me very excited about the coming weeks. \o/ Even though I will probably be missing two 25 man raiding nights due to going home for the holidays and my laptop’s lack of graphics power, boo.

In other news, I’m trying to re-educate myself in holy paladining. I picked up the 51/20/0 bubble/divine sac spec that was supposed to be all the rage, but I find myself unimpressed, and I think that the information I was working with was outdated anyway. So I’ll keep poking about and see how things go.

Screenshot Tuesday: Conversations

Just a small update, because I didn’t manage to finish my extra special surprise theme post finished this week due to laze.

I’ve been told that picking on one of our officers, Hunt, has been a guild pastime for a long time. It makes me laugh when people who aren’t even in our guild are in on it. He was on an alt in this raid, so it was obviously someone who knew him.

Picking on hunters in general is hilarious to me.

We do a lot of joking in g and raid channels while we’re raiding, and I think that really takes some of the pressure off and makes things fun. I have a blast with people who have a great sense of humor. Most of what I screenshot ends up being dirty jokes, like the time Amber asked before Northrend Beasts, “Which worm do I grab?” and was answered “Mine.” by one of the guys. Or Frostscourge letting us know that he has a searing totem (the new demote ranking) in his pants. Here’s a clean one.

And this post wouldn’t be complete if there weren’t something that I’m angry and want to bitch about. Are you someone who likes to tell everyone how to play their class and give them unsolicited, completely basic advice any time that something goes slightly wrong? Then you can DIAF.

Really? That’s how you’re supposed to play a holy paladin? I guess only having been one for months and having kept you up through the other heroics so far, I just wouldn’t know. This shit is right up there with saying “heal me!” I can understand trying to help out someone who’s absolutely floundering (I will sometimes whisper paladins or priests and politely offer help if they’re interested – I’ve only done it a few times and each time they have accepted and thanked me), but when you tell someone to do things that they were already doing, you’re not helping at all.

I also ran into this problem yesterday when I tried to heal a tank with 26k HP buffed through heroic ToC. I hate discriminating against tanks solely on HP, because I know that everyone has to start somewhere, but without a buffer for me to give attention to the other people as needed, the Black Knight is just extremely difficult to heal as a paladin, and especially when the tank has aggro issues and I’m covered in ghouls. Everyone started giving me pointers like “just focus on keeping the tank topped off all the time”, which is kind of insulting, because HELLO, that is my job, I know that’s what I need to do. Eventually after about 5 wipes, the tank disconnected, we found a new one, and completed with no problems.

I need to start thinking about things in WoW that make me happy, because PuG crap and all the other things I’ve complained about lately are making me very grumpy.

Pardon me while I grump

Between general boredom and reminiscing, I’ve decided to start focusing a little more on my paladin, specifically building a tanking set again. I really miss the thrill that I get when a group of mobs want to spank me. Her healing set needs work too, since I haven’t raided seriously on her since Naxx was progression and she’s wearing nothing higher than 213, but I do alright. I’ve managed to fair very well in VoA and Onyxia, so I think that if I can get lucky with an Ulduar pug or maybe squeeze her into a ToC, she’ll get caught up.

The problem with building tanking sets is that frequently, no one wants the healers to roll on tank gear, but they also don’t want to have a tank in blues with less than 35k health, even in heroics. I’m hoping that biding my time until 3.3 drops, then running so many heroics it hurts, will be the solution to that. It’s also really frustrating to see other people get extremely lucky with drops in VoA and similar places – I’ve never seen something that I can even use drop there, much less have I won anything.

There’s also the issue of no one wanting to run old content – heroics have mostly stalled these days, and T7 level content runs are few and far between, and most are unsuccessful. The last few Naxx pugs that I’ve ended up in (on various characters) haven’t even downed a single boss – one group wiped three times on the trash at the start of the Construct Quarter. Yeah, really. Ulduar groups seem even more rare, because it’s an instance that requires knowledge of the fights and coordination – it seems much harder to steamroll through.

So I guess this post is really just a complaint about the lull that exists between patches. Right after one comes out, there’s a flurry of activity with mass heroic running and tons of people getting ready for and participating in the new content, and then things just die down. The repetition gets boring to a point, and I haven’t quite figured out a way to make it more fun for me. Outside of signing on for raids, I don’t find myself wanting to play as much as I have in the past. I especially am guilty of thinking “this is worthless because 3.3 is just around the corner”, because I feel like the changes to LFG and getting Triumph badges from everything will make everything easier.

Which brings me to one little complaint to tack on to the end. Am I the only one who thinks that details of Cataclysm were released too soon? I see so many people saying that they’re planning for Cataclysm, saving up materials, hoarding gold, and other plans, and a lot of people saying things like “well, this will be useless in Cataclysm” or “that will be changing in Cataclysm”, but the expansion is an unspecified amount of time down the line. It seems so pointless for me to make all of these preparations for something that can be 6 months or more away, and it bothers me to see that information impact how people play the game now.

Getting used to the other side

In the past I’ve always played on RP servers, even though I’ve never been one to jump right in and engage in WoW role play, just because years of email and forum rp make me uncomfortable with the format. Despite not really doing much with them, I always develop a personality and a back story for my characters. The Horde races feel so familiar to me and they lend themselves to interesting back stories with ease, especially the blood elves and Forsaken, the two races that I tend to play the most. Now that I’ve transferred to the Alliance side, I feel a little lost.

For one thing, there’s no way to directly transfer their back stories with them – things that work for one race just don’t quite work for another. For instance, my first character, Alhena (now known as Mortaleia, named after a very good friend that I played with on Moon Guard), had a basic reason for becoming a warlock: the death of her family and the fall of the society that she loved so much in the face of the Scourge, coupled with her newly crippling addiction to magic, drove her insane, and she turned to fel energies for the power and strength she felt that she no longer had. It’s probably a cliche for people playing blood elf warlocks, but I had a lot of fun with her insanity, and used it my approach to playing her (she was totally the type to run in and fear bomb in pvp situations, with no regard to personal safety) and her interactions with other players. But because human society doesn’t work quite the same way that blood elf society does, I don’t feel that her reasons for taking up the life of the warlock can be the same, and I’m procrastinating the reworking of her story, because I’m so attached to the old one. Considering that I don’t even RP her, I might just keep her in my head the way that she is.

Celaeno never really had a back story, though, just a general personality and idea that she wasn’t meant to be as haughty as most other blood elves, and perhaps a bit meek. Now that she’s a draenei, that’s not really an interesting personality angle, because it seems to me that “sweet” is the default personality trait of such a pleasant, Light-loving race. I don’t feel that I understand the draenei the way that I understand blood elves. They both have experienced so much pain and upheaval in their ancient and recent histories, but there’s an undercurrent of … not nice, I guess, that I really enjoy about blood elves. I think it’s the same with all of the Horde races – I initially started playing with the idea of the Horde as bad guys of sorts, which is honestly what drew me to them. I’m the girl who cheers for villains in movies, because I think they’re generally complex and interesting characters. I’m having trouble latching onto the Alliance, particularly the draenei, in the same way.

I really do want to get a feeling for my new affiliation, so I think that sometime soon I might dust off my characters on Earthen Ring, or maybe make a new one on Feathermoon, which I’ve been hearing a lot about recently. Maybe just jumping in there and watching other RPers will help me to figure out what I want to do with my character. And of course there’s Arrens’ forums, which should be a good place to bounce ideas around. When I first mentioned not having a grasp on the draenei over twitter, it was pointed out that there’s a section of the boards that would be perfect for that. So developing a character idea for Celaeno, and maybe another, different character just for rp on a server where it actually takes place, has worked its way into my WoW goals.

A little bitch about ToC

When I quit raiding back in April, it was partially because the concept of Ulduar wasn’t interesting to me. Machines = BORING. Who cares if there’s an Old God at the end? I came to Northrend to fight some martha focking ZOMBIES. Now that I’m actually running Ulduar, I’m enjoying it and the lore there, but back then, I didn’t think that you could come up with something less interesting to me.

Oh how I’m eating those words with Trial of the Crusader. So uh. There’s this Lich King, but because we’re not supposed to meet up with him until the end of the expansion cycle, we’ll beat up on some giant beasts that the Argent Tournament organizers have captured for us. Sure, it gets more awesome towards the end of the raid, when the Lich King personally shows up to tell everyone what idiots we are for holding our tournament right at his feet, but on the whole, the concept is just boring. Which might be contributing to the fact that running it week after week is really not making me that excited about WoW.

Even worse than being boring is the fact that players are still falling to the gimmicks every time. It’s one thing to accidentally let an orb smack you in the ass during the Twin Valkyr encounter, because those things actually extend beyond their visible forms, so that they can sometimes get you even when they look like they’re far enough away. But … standing in one place? The whole time? C’mon.

And then there’s the Faction Champions. For most of Wrath, Blizzard has been championing “bring the player, not the class”, but here they have a fight where a less-than ideal composition can be a complete road block. I do 10-man ToC on Tuesday nights, which is our less popular raiding night, just judging by sign ups, but it’s the night that works better for me, and we need to spread the healers around anyway. But because it’s a less popular night, sometimes we end up with groups like last night’s, where we have three mages and two priests, which is just a clothy squish fest that is bound to have trouble with the Faction Champs. Between our tanks and other dps, we didn’t have enough interrupts to make it through, and we had to give up for the night after a few tries. It really bothers me that there’s a fight where this is the case – we never have trouble with it in the 25 man version, because there’s a larger mix of classes, making CC and interrupts more viable. It irritates me to no end that about every other week we end up stuck on this fight because we don’t have the right mix of classes.

I’m still having fun because the people that I raid with are fun, but it’s really frustrating at this point.

(Also, that About tab up at the top actually has content now!)

Screenshot Tuesday, again

So this past week introduced microtransactions, and tons of user reactions to go along with them. Personally, I think that the people who assume that this will lead to being able to purchase things that actually impact PVE and PVP game play might be overreacting a bit, but maybe I’ll eat my words some day. Anyhow, I bought Lil’KT, because … it’s Lil’KT. C’mon. The sad thing is that as soon as my boyfriend heard about them, we had this conversation: “You’re not going to buy one of those are you?” “… No?” “You already did.” Guilty as charged!

The letter that you get from KT makes it worth it.

And now, a tale of jerkiness. I ran OS 25 on my warlock, for badges and hopefully an upgrade. The T7 glove token dropped, myself, two priests, and a DK rolled on it. It was looted to the DK, which had a bunch of us going LOL WHAT, BAD. The DK apologized, and passed it to a priest who was the next highest roll (I was third). I left not caring about loot, because whatever, it’s T7, and the laughs from a death knight getting a warlock/priest/paladin token were worth it. Then I got this whisper a few minutes later.

No matter what, you can always count on a certain percentage of players to be the kind who think that everyone else is just a little robot in the computer and they don’t owe them anything.

This is what happens when you use Dispersion while mounted on a Mechanostrider:

And this moment pretty much set the tone of the raid for me last night.

“YAY, FUN. Wait, I don’t have a dismount button, wtf UI. I CAN’T GET OFFFFFF!” Yeah. A kind warlock summoned me off the tiger. Later, I moved out of one fire bomb and into another, subsequently dying in the fire. On faction champs I didn’t stand still while trying to cast mass dispel, and wondered why it wasn’t working, because I didn’t see any error messages. That’s definitely one line of .lua that I’m going to have to tinker with.

In my defense, I had canceled for the raid because I knew I wasn’t going to be on top of my game, but decided to give it a shot any way. And hey, we made it through most of ToC even with mini-patch related disconnects and delays!