More than a couple of posts out there about the…hmmm social? … impacts of the new LFG tool.
One of them which is standing out is the whole giving other players advice when random grouping. The stories rolling out from the blogsphere are everything from “I offered friendly advice was this wrong?” to “I was chewed out on my dps/gear score rating”. When is it good, when is it bad etc etc.
Wow there’s a bit of controversy on the topic.
And it really is going around all the way down to the bottom. No really – see I have this one incident of bizarre backseat driving that really stands out in my mind from when I first started using the new LFG.
We were doing Gnomeregan.
Oh hell yes we were that low (and incidentally I rather think I despise Gnomeregan O_O.)
So yep pugging our way through the mechanical gnome version of hell in the earth and one of the other DPS peeps starts making off-hand comments at the healer. “Why you got rock biter on your weapon?”
I experience a slight *huh shamans don’t really have anything but Rockbiter and Flametongue at this level if I remember do they?* moment and shrug it off because what I had on my weapon didn’t really help me do anything at lvl 20 when I was a shaman so why would anybody care.
But this DPS is now following our healer and I guess the healer is feeling harassed, or he hates Gnomeregan as much as I do because the tank has an unfortunate accident with an overzealous pull, his healer dies and the healer decided to drop group. He just packed up his rockbiter and moved on. And I really wonder if Mr DPS had been making sly one-on-one comments on the side.
We get a priest replacement.
And I watch a couple of pulls on as this Mr DPS sidles up to him and then comments in party chat “We have a priest that’s specced shadow.”
But I’m onto him now.
The priest has been healing and everything has been going smooth. We really have nothing to complain about, and for fucks sake WE ARE ONLY LEVEL TWENTY. (Well 20 something :p ) And he’d made that remark to the shaman earlier which had gotten me twitchy. What did he expect baby shammy to have earth-living at level 20 or something?
So I knock back with “I don’t have a problem with that, no one has died he has been healing fine.”
Mr DPS wants to push the point and makes some comment about sub-par gaming or some crap, and I fling back a line about how he will just have to play at the top of HIS game to make up for it if he is worried. Taking that tone of response got a few group chuckles, and Mr DPS let up on poor itty-bitty shadow priest. And we clear the dungeon no more dramas.
But honestly I agreed with the little priest’s comment; he made a remark in his own defense that 10 or so points really weren’t hampering his ability to heal Gnomer. The bottom of the talent trees don’t really fill you with epic shiny heroism.
Hell The Pally when leveling an alt will go so far as to horde his talent points until he has five of them and only then will he spend them. I asked him why he was being such a loony and he replied “They don’t have a very big impact at this level so I like to plug all five in so I can feel a real difference to my game play” O_O
Yeah boggles the mind doesn’t it. To me that would be kinda like not opening your Christmas presents for five years so you can over indulge – but hey it’s his game.
Sure leveling shadow isn’t considered the most effective method of priest advancement but maybe the guy was testing out that terrible priesting guide everyone is bagging on the wow forums to see if it was as bad as everyone is so sure it is (link compliments of Greedy Goblin… links in actual post considered “fishy” by the wow community so don’t click em lol) But neither the priest nor the shaman had given the group any reason to worry about their performance so why sidle up to them to inspect everything from gear to talent spec and make passive-aggressive comments in party chat.
Mr DPS = what a toss.
So he wasn’t openly rude – I still feel like he was a toss for making his thoughts super public… it almost felt like forum trolling. I mean couldn’t he have just whispered the parties involved if he was so super concerned? I felt like he was playing “the big man” in the little instance or something. Maybe he heals on an alt.
Now let’s put this story back into context:
We were only level 20. And someone was already telling the healer everything they could think about that the healer may be doing wrong… when there had been no real issue to complain about. He wasn’t grabbing aggro, nobody was dying (or even low on health)… where was the problem?
So it wasn’t top of the game?
He is only in the twenties bracket ffs. Maybe if he had been trying to heal naked O_O I would have had an issue … or hell if he had thought he was a tank… oooh or if he ran into battle and hit things with his little healer stick instead of healing the dude looking after us. Sure then we can pull the baby heals aside for a heart to heart.
You know what I find really disturbing about this picture, if this nit pickery is happening even at the lowest of low level brackets to little peeps who are just doing their role… then when do the healers and the tanks get the slack to be allowed to learn how to heal and tank an instance? I mean if it’s not even at level 20 then where do they get to cut their teeth? in the battle grounds like my hunter? Cause you know that could lead to some erratic heart stopping habits O_o
Man I feel super sorry for the peeps who swap or dual spec at 70, specially the new tanks, since its the tanks who seem to be running the LFG PUG shows at the moment.
sad tree
