I was reading a response to GeeCee's post about how to deal with a guildmate/raider who is consistently not pulling his or her weight in a raid situation. The player had been a member of an elite raiding guild running Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas. He bemoaned the current "ease" of raiding in WoW, looking back on the days of Vanilla WoW when men were Men and women were Healers. (OK too much sarcasm, I couldn't resist.) Back then, being a Raider meant something, Raiding was for dedicated, elite players who "put in their dues."
Meanwhile, for the players, raids were taking upwards of 20 hours a week for a pittance of rewards. Most players were paying full monthly subscriptions for content they would never see because they didn't have the time to commit to what amounted to a second job, much of which was spent waiting for others to get organized, anyway.
Even well into BC and WotLK, I have sat around accomplishing little or nothing, because I am stuck in a raid group waiting for people to join/get organized. And I can't finish that extra daily or whatever. And don't say I should already be at the instance location, because that would be just as big a waste of time, waiting around for people. Not my idea of a relaxing evening playing a game after I've been working all day.
I was in a guild where they would sub people in and out depending on the boss fight, because they needed gear or just as often because the raid couldn't make it past a boss without some particular class and spec. Luckily for me I wasn't anywhere near rading at the time. All the same, it irritated me. IMHO, the reason for raiding should be what is happening in relation to the story/lore of Warcraft, not the meta-game rewards of gear or achievements. The raid composition should be interchangeable within designated roles. Even then, I think it would be awesome to have a class system full of true hybrids, rather than having a few classes be "pure" DPS, or Tank or Healer.
When I first started, I wasn't very hot on the lore aspect. Not that I actively avoided it, I just never realized how deep it went and how intertwined the storylines were with the questlines. Now that I've got 4 or 5 of the books under my belt, I can honestly say the game is more fun for me. In some ways, it's almost easier...it's almost like if you read "X" book you'll have a better idea of what might go down in "X" instance, because you know the backstory. While that's not entirely true, nor am I trying to imply that the books could be used as strategy guides, I am saying a little backstory, at least in my opinion, adds a lot of life to the game.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the raiding drama is concerned, if you bill your guild as a "family-fun/casual" type, you have no room to get pissed if someone isn't "pulling their weight". I can dig being frustrated from time to time, but getting all bent out of shape over someone not being there for every raid or showing up at the bottom of the meters is unsat. Perhaps one way to deal with the lack of raid-ready toons in a casual guild would be to form an alliance with a similar guild. Have the GMs talk it over and see if a schedule/sign-up can be set up, then go from there. My guild did this pre-WOTLK when running Gruul and Kara, and it worked like a charm.
Bottom line is to never forget that it's only a game, and everyone will always have real-life things to deal with...and real life SHOULD take priority over WoW. If it doesn't...then you've got some issues of your own to work out.
I loved the lore from the beginning. Even just the "go do this, go kill that" quests in the starting areas had stories. ANd the was history online, on the WOW community site and WoWWiki. I didn't pick up a book for at least a year, then several of the novels in short order. Of Blood and Honor is my favorite. I really like the character of Ronin, as well, though I heard a lot of grumbling when he turned up as the leader of the Kirin Tor in WotLK.
ReplyDeleteEric said: "As far as the raiding drama is concerned, if you bill your guild as a "family-fun/casual" type, you have no room to get pissed if someone isn't "pulling their weight"."
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with this. This was part of the reason why I never came down too hard on people when I was leading raids. It's one thing if you don't know your class or aren't prepared by not bringing pots or reagents (in that case, I WILL rip on you) but I would never single out someone or take them off the raid roster if they couldn't make all our raid times or didn't have the most cutting edge gear. We were exactly one of those "family-fun/casual" guilds and it wouldn't be fair to demand more of our members with real life responsibilities who could only give so much.
Drama still ensued though, because in the end, a bunch of our raiders wanted more than what a family-fun/casual guild could give them and they chose the gear over their community. A mass exodus happened in the end when they left to find others who could give that to them, and our guild fell apart.
In my new guild we found a solution to that problem...we're still a family-fun/casual guild, but our "hardcore" raiders among us found an outlet by creating several raiding co-ops with other guilds who were also experiencing the same situation as us. Worked like a charm. I think we could have pulled something like that off in my old guild, but the problem was that our old guild leader was very mistrusting and hence was very insular when it came to our guild's raids and activities. Couldn't really blame her though, the server my old guild was on is full of jerks and nitwits.