Raiding - Why I really should think twice about random PuGs in Flex
It might be because of the patch, as people try to get valour again, or it might be people trying out their new gear to see what numbers they can pump out - or it might be because those Legendary drops in Diablo 3 are no longer a temporary thing but a permanent fixture - but for whatever reason, we had an amazing turnout for Flex on Saturday.
This late in the expansion I don't expect to see the higher end players dragging their alts through flex anymore - they're all PuGging normals now so Flex is not something they need. And I expected that. However, having some of our own higher end players coming is a much better tradeoff and with Exray's two friends from Dath'remar (Mariette and Zulishi), as well as Luxy's friend Putress, we always seem to scrape in with enough. However, we had a solid 20 people turn up to raid on Saturday which was fantastic, and for the first time I got Faith to come in and do Garrosh, and she was a bit nervous but I reassured her it would be ok.
I did have one regret in that raid. As I was sitting around in the Vale waiting to start the raid, a random warrior started talking to me. He asked what I was doing, and I said I was queueing a Flex. He asked if he could come, and I asked him the usual questions of whether we had done it before, and that if he joins our flex I expect respectful behaviour to the other raiders, and he said ok. So I took him along.
But I might have forgotten to say to him that he should listen to our raid leaders (though actually, in Flex we don't really have any because it's a bit clockwork now) because he was being really irritating. He kept saying "go" or even pulling mobs because he used to tank and now he was DPS. I said to him in with a smile "Dude, settle down, we're getting there!" and he was all "???", as if he didn't know what I meant. He also said that he had done Flex 4 but he'll come along to help out. He was 15th on DPS. I don't think I really needed him to "help out". Having Aza, Luxy, Sev, Nath, Aimei, Snowcaller on their mains was what I thought of as helping out! I said to him, nicely, that he was being a bit impatient and to relax - after all, we HAD done this before. He said it was all cool, he liked doing YOLO Flex runs. YOLO flex runs??? Geez, if I wasn't irritated before, I was now! We are a casual heroic raiding guild thank you very much, not some disorganised bunch of randoms!
Another thing that I noticed that meant he must have been annoying was when Exray was telling "the warrior" to stop pulling. Exray must either have been really grumpy OR he was annoyed he wasn't getting his vengeance, because the warrior was pulling the trash before Garrosh and we actually nearly wiped on that bit, with two thirds of the raid dying with uncontrolled adds. Exray usually doesn't get grouchy about anything.
I think the last straw for me was when I was quickly explaining how the Garrosh fight went (because Faith had never done it with us before and I knew she would be nervous, so I made the instructions as simple as I could and emphasised the importance of not dying in the dream phase) and then the warrior started saying how the first time he tanked Flex Garrosh it was a one shot, and was pretty easy. Oh my god, you could almost hear the steam hissing from my ears, as I bit my tongue and plastered a smile on my face, and thought "Happy thoughts, happy thoughts," as I sweetly said that I was explaining the fight because we have a particular way of doing it. The fight went great, it was smooth and Faith managed to live through most of it and get her achievement, which was pretty cool!
Morz got his second heirloom (he got his first one last week) which means I must be the one of the few left with only one heirloom!
Fortunately server restarts happened and there was a forced disband of the raid. The warrior sent me a battletag request, and there was no way in hell I wanted to see him ever again, so I politely said that he could friend my toon (Luxy's brilliant solution!) as I had no other toons. "Well, that's pretty stupid," he said to me. "Why would you only want to play one toon?" I rolled my eyes. COULD THIS GUY BE ANY MORE IRRITATING? DEFINITELY no BTag for you!
I'm sure he wasn't trying to be malicious. Maybe he was very young or inappropriate. But by now I was in no mood to educate and it's so much easier to just NOT invite him to the raid. So when we started up Flex 3 after the restarts, guess who didn't get an invite.
I was pleased to see Kyxyn back in Flex since he had been obsessed by Diablo lately. I did have a giggle - because one of Kyxyn's reasons for cutting back his WoW was to get fit and spend more time exercising, but Sevrus pointed out that Kyxyn had merely turned his time in WoW to time in D3 staying up those super late hours for long periods of the evening, so where was he finding time for this so-called exercise?
It was a great run. And I hope we can do that again next week - well, without the non toilet trained strays that I managed to bring home with me.
This late in the expansion I don't expect to see the higher end players dragging their alts through flex anymore - they're all PuGging normals now so Flex is not something they need. And I expected that. However, having some of our own higher end players coming is a much better tradeoff and with Exray's two friends from Dath'remar (Mariette and Zulishi), as well as Luxy's friend Putress, we always seem to scrape in with enough. However, we had a solid 20 people turn up to raid on Saturday which was fantastic, and for the first time I got Faith to come in and do Garrosh, and she was a bit nervous but I reassured her it would be ok.
I did have one regret in that raid. As I was sitting around in the Vale waiting to start the raid, a random warrior started talking to me. He asked what I was doing, and I said I was queueing a Flex. He asked if he could come, and I asked him the usual questions of whether we had done it before, and that if he joins our flex I expect respectful behaviour to the other raiders, and he said ok. So I took him along.
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| I say this to my daughter, but somehow I don't practice what I preach... |
Another thing that I noticed that meant he must have been annoying was when Exray was telling "the warrior" to stop pulling. Exray must either have been really grumpy OR he was annoyed he wasn't getting his vengeance, because the warrior was pulling the trash before Garrosh and we actually nearly wiped on that bit, with two thirds of the raid dying with uncontrolled adds. Exray usually doesn't get grouchy about anything.
I think the last straw for me was when I was quickly explaining how the Garrosh fight went (because Faith had never done it with us before and I knew she would be nervous, so I made the instructions as simple as I could and emphasised the importance of not dying in the dream phase) and then the warrior started saying how the first time he tanked Flex Garrosh it was a one shot, and was pretty easy. Oh my god, you could almost hear the steam hissing from my ears, as I bit my tongue and plastered a smile on my face, and thought "Happy thoughts, happy thoughts," as I sweetly said that I was explaining the fight because we have a particular way of doing it. The fight went great, it was smooth and Faith managed to live through most of it and get her achievement, which was pretty cool!
Morz got his second heirloom (he got his first one last week) which means I must be the one of the few left with only one heirloom!
Fortunately server restarts happened and there was a forced disband of the raid. The warrior sent me a battletag request, and there was no way in hell I wanted to see him ever again, so I politely said that he could friend my toon (Luxy's brilliant solution!) as I had no other toons. "Well, that's pretty stupid," he said to me. "Why would you only want to play one toon?" I rolled my eyes. COULD THIS GUY BE ANY MORE IRRITATING? DEFINITELY no BTag for you!
I'm sure he wasn't trying to be malicious. Maybe he was very young or inappropriate. But by now I was in no mood to educate and it's so much easier to just NOT invite him to the raid. So when we started up Flex 3 after the restarts, guess who didn't get an invite.
I was pleased to see Kyxyn back in Flex since he had been obsessed by Diablo lately. I did have a giggle - because one of Kyxyn's reasons for cutting back his WoW was to get fit and spend more time exercising, but Sevrus pointed out that Kyxyn had merely turned his time in WoW to time in D3 staying up those super late hours for long periods of the evening, so where was he finding time for this so-called exercise?
It was a great run. And I hope we can do that again next week - well, without the non toilet trained strays that I managed to bring home with me.
Frankly, I would have simply kicked him at this point:
ReplyDelete"He said it was all cool, he liked doing YOLO Flex runs."
He gave no indication he was worth spending any time on and was being an idiot and a jerk.
Balkoth you know me. I don't kick anyone unless they were truly offensive. He could have just been socially awkward, have a mental condition, or just plain clueless. He really did seem surprised when i told him to chill out - and I hate to admit it but he was clearly below my playing level and I disliked that he seemed to think he was better somehow. Rest assured I have no qualms kicking really offensive people, this guy just seemed plain stupid.
DeleteYeah, he was a incompetent but superior-acting know it all that made your run more difficult, annoyed the people in it, and apparently nearly wiped you due to doing incredibly moronic things (not things like misunderstanding a boss mechanic -- things like pulling trash). I suppose to me it boils down to one of two situations:
Delete1, he's annoying/clueless/etc but for whatever reason (friend, new to the game, etc) you want to try to help him so you put up with him.
2, he's annoying/clueless/etc, you have no desire to help him, so you get rid of him.
Serious question: how is removing him from the group when it's clear he's a problem and bothering people any worse than refusing to bring him along to the next Flex section? Either way you're getting rid of him. And it's not a situation where he's "locked" to something that messes his week up.
I do understand that to you it probably feels more confrontational, but do you see any difference in principle?
As a bonus, removing him when it's clear he's a problem also improves the morale of your friends and the atmosphere of the raid -- you specifically mention how it was clear one of the tanks was annoyed, for example. Personally, I'm going to value the time/mood of the 18 other raiding friends/guildmates/etc over some "non-toilet trained stray" who's given me zero reason to WANT to keep him.
And I'm not trying to brow-beat you or something, honestly curious about your thought process. Trying to understand it.
DeleteNo I think you are probably asking the same question a lot of people are thinking. I think that besides our DK tank the only person annoyed was me. None of the officers said anything (one was off tanking) and the others were quiet - and trust me we are not quiet people when we are annoyed. So I thought maybe it was just me. In general the flex itself went well because of our mains being there but I think what I expected was a bit more gratitude, obedience and a little bit of meekness which is what I normally expect from non guildies and this was clearly not what I got. Not reinviting him for the other wing was easy - he did not send me a tell and if he had I would have been a lot more explicit about expected behaviour and then he would have either acquiesced or told me to shove it. Either way the next wing would have worked out.
DeleteOur reputation as a friendly and understanding guild means I really should try to believe the best in people and try to correct aberrant behaviour before I kick. Hope that makes sense! Gosh I wonder how many people will read this and think what a soft.... rooster I am lol
"I think that besides our DK tank the only person annoyed was me."
DeleteFair enough.
"Our reputation as a friendly and understanding guild means I really should try to believe the best in people and try to correct aberrant behaviour before I kick. Hope that makes sense!"
Oh, absolutely. It's just that from my perspective it seems you tried to correct the aberrant behavior like 10 times :P
But no harm, no foul in the long run. Just will avoid him in the future.
I was just told by my guildies that they were trying to tell me he was annoying but thought maybe he was a friend of mine so they put up with it. LMAO! OK, maybe I WASN'T the only one but - I think I have a very nice patient group of guildies :D
DeleteSo they all thought he was
Delete"1, he's annoying/clueless/etc but for whatever reason (friend, new to the game, etc) you want to try to help him so you put up with him."
but surprise plot twist! He wasn't!
>.>
Bahaha I can just imagine your expression at "Well that's pretty stupid, why would only play one toon?" Oh my LORD.
ReplyDeleteDo you know that when I wrote this I thought.... I wonder what Dah would say. Probably he would say that I should be more forthright from the start which I usually am. I hardly have to give the "we might have to drop you" talk because it goes so smoothly! But that's probably gear.
DeleteAnd yes my expression was exactly what you imagined. Pvp potty mouth MAY also have made an appearance...
DeletePvP potty mouth! Busted, Navi :P
DeletePush to talk exists for a reason! :D Imagine if open mic was the only option - I think everyone would have a very different opinion of innocent li'l ol' me...
DeleteNow you need to get the Insane title to go with the /twitch you're developing! :P
DeleteI still only have one heirloom, but we'll keep at it! For Fun & Friendship!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure more will come! We are doing it every week after all :)
DeleteYES! Exactly! Random PuGs should NOT be tolerated!! We had one who had his mic set to turn on when sound came from his mouth. Cough cough cough cough cough cough. Clear throat. Cough. Clear throat. OMG! And another one, a girl, her voice was SO high-pitched, and her chatter was incessant. You kinda want to use your vent-boss privileges and boot them then change the PW real quick!
ReplyDeleteBut there may be a diamond in the rough out there! What if I find it??
DeleteThats one of the fascinating things about WoW; the personalities you come across. It always interests me how people act and interact with each other. I never know how to react when faced with someone who behaves so differently to what I think is appropriate but isn't actually overly rude etc, so I can understand prefering to wait to hit that kick button.
ReplyDeleteSome strangers are awesome, others are just creepy. But people are people and maybe those weird ones just need a nice person to push them along into the right path! Hugely optimistic and altruistic but I'd like to think that if I was wandering around in an MMO friendless and being a tryhard that someone would take pity on me and lead me along in the right direction and I'd learn something.
Delete