Monthly Archives: May 2010

You know you have them. We all do. I think they become the most apparent when I’m doing Heroics with random people. While the LFD tool is definitely a useful tool – sometimes I wonder if it also makes people forget how to play. Either that, or you just see a lot more of it because you do more of it – meeting more people while doing it.

I’ve been doing quite a few random heroics the lately – since I wanted to gear up a couple of characters. You really do meet all kinds of people in those heroics. Everything from people that are actually nice to people that don’t say a word to people who become rude the moment something doesn’t go right.

Here are some of my pet peeves.

Things that annoy me when running heroics:

• People that say “gogogo”.
• DPS who thinks they should pull (not talking about rogues with ToT or hunters with MD here).
• Healers who think dpsing is more important than healing (dps if you want to, but I get annoyed when I sit at 20% health for the majority of the dungeon).
• Rude people.
• Tanks who think they’re better than they are (I honestly don’t care if you wanna start tanking with 25k health – I did too! But you have to realise that you can’t pull a whole room and expect to live).
• People that say “gogogo”.
• Buffers who won’t buff. (I know it’s just a heroic – but still…)
• Players that could help out and dispel/decurse/remove poison to help the healer out but won’t. (They rather let someone die, despite the fact the healer a) was too busy spam healing everyone to cleanse or b) can’t cleanse that particular thing – and you can!)
• People who die from standing in the stupid and then blame the healer for them dying.
• Rude people.
• Tanks who keep going without checking the healer’s mana – or even worse, pulling despite the healer saying they need mana.

Did you just say gogogo????

Then of course there are things that aren’t exactly pet peeves of mine, but things that quite simply amaze me.

Like melee classes who are intent on standing in front of mobs when attacking. Ignoring cleave as well. I had a warrior in a heroic that kept running around the mob in a circle. I wonder sometimes if he thought he did more dps by doing that?

Or aoe classes who see a second group being pulled – they’re coming running – but they don’t stop to aoe for a couple of seconds to let the tank gain aggro. They keep aoeing as if there’s no tomorrow and then yell when they get aggro (and possibly die). AoE taunt works once.. the next pack like that it will be on cd. I’ve been there. I know.

My personal Hall of Fame for odd/silly things to do in a heroic:

• The paladin who died in Old Kingdom during insanity since he couldn’t kill his own adds. Seriously? Why didn’t you heal yourself? (He really didn’t in case you’re wondering.)
• The moonkin who nearly died in the very same Old Kingdom because he wouldn’t heal himself. Interestingly enough he popped out of moonkin-form and healed himself AFTER the adds were dead (and he was at 3% health).
• The DK that tried to tank in blood presence. Or maybe the DK that tried to dps in frost presence. Or all DKs who don’t check their presence
• Hunters who don’t feign death and Mages who don’t ice block.

What are your pet peeves? Do you have your own little Hall of Fame?

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

A Guild in Trouble

As I’ve been alluding to before my guild is in trouble. Big trouble. Due to people not commiting, not having time, being abducted by real life… or any other possible reason  – we are not managing to raid.

We used to be a 25 man guild, but about halfway through Ulduar we lost our current Main Tank and it just kind of snowballed from where. In the end, we were fairly okay switching to 10 man – but now suddenly we can’t even get enough people for that.

Which makes me sad. And annoyed. And a lot of other things.

I can understand people having a real life and other things to do. But then you should be in a casual guild. My guild is like a forced casual guild at the moment because we can’t actually get the raids going.

This is just the backstory though. In an attempt to fix things we’ve been playing together with another 10 man guild who also don’t have enough people any given night and we’ve been doing so for two raid resets now.

New Blood

The first week we had mainly people from my guild, with a few from theirs. On some nights we even had to take in random people from neither guild (how sad is that?) and we did okay. We cleared everything up to Lich King.

Then the second week, for some reason, we’re doing AWFUL. Yes, awful with capital letters. We’re doing that horribly bad. We wiped on trash. We wiped on Blood Princes. We wiped on Rotface. Oh and we wiped on Professor.

We didn’t even get to raid the last raid night because we didn’t get enough people. So during that reset we didn’t make it past Blood Queen.

I don’t want to say straight out that the other guild is shit. Because they’re nice people, but I think some of them haven’t been there as much as the guys in my guild have. So when we had some new people from the other guild with us this week – things didn’t go too well.

Admit that you don’t know tactics! I think this is important. I can understand if you’ve not been to a boss, but I want to know that so I can explain the tactics for you. I asked when we were standing in front of Blood Queen if there was anyone not sure about the tactics. No one said anything. So I went on and said.. X bites Y and then Y bites Z and….

“Bite? What’s bite?” a hunter from the other guild asks. Apparently he’d watched a video of the fight, but never done it, so when I asked if he knew tactics he figured he knew them. I do wonder what kind of video shows you Blood Queen and doesn’t go through the ‘bite’ part.. but okay..

In the end, I guess they just need some more training. I just don’t know that I – or the guys in my guild – want to train more people.

They’re guys can pull good dps, but we have a warlock who needs to learn game-awareness. Not standing in the bad stuff, LoSing the orbs on Sindragosa.. you know, those things.

There’s a DK who is adamant about dpsing things standing in front of the boss – even if the boss does a cleave. Oh and did you know death grip can be used to dps? *cough*

There’s a hunter that for some reason keeps running into melee range and dying from cleave. (Really? A hunter dying from cleave, you ask.. and yes.. yes he does.)

Conclusion

So where am I going with this? You know, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe I’m just venting my frustration.

I think what I’m trying to figure out is where to go from here. I have – you see – had an offer from some old friends I played with in TBC, to join their guild on another server (as horde). They’re a 10 man guild as well, but they’re doing well and they’re people I know are good players.

So what do I do in the end? Do I take my remaining active players (whom I can’t promise all a spot in the other 10 man guild except for the weekly 25 man they do) or do we try to teach these “new” people from the other guild and keep smashing our heads against the wall (until it breaks)?

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

I wanted to name the post Girl+Girl, but I decided against it because I didn’t want to see what kind of search results brought people here. What I want to write about is when you have more than one girl in a guild/group. I think in most cases this is not a problem – but there are times when you can notice some friction.

In the end it all comes down to the simple fact that while WoW definitely has a rather large player base of females – the majority is still male. Establishing yourself as a competent player as a female is sometimes challenging. Sometimes not. But sometimes it definitely is. While we may want to think that it isn’t so – being a girl in WoW does bring with it a certain stigma. While you may not be obviously treated differently in your guild (like getting loot prio or anything – something I find wrong in any instance for any reason, girl or not) there are differences. Want to bet people talk to you just a little bit more than they would have if you were a guy? Maybe are a tiny bit more encouraging of the new female player than they would have been if you were a guy?

In short – as a female player you will get more attention. Not necessarily insane amounts. But compared to a guy you will get more.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because despite what we say – girls generally do enjoy attention. Positive attention mind you. We just like chatting and being friendly – and we enjoy it when people are chatting and being friendly back.

So, what happens then when you’ve been the only female in a guild – getting all this attention – and a new girl joins?

Growl!?!?

A friend of mine had this situation – she had been the only girl for a long time and then suddenly a new girl joined and she somehow feared that people would stop talking to her and just talk to the new girl. Flavour of the month if you will. I don’t know if this is a valid fear – but I can imagine it being something that goes through our minds. Guys don’t have this problem I think – because there are usually new male players joining guilds every so often.

Qieth over at Qieth’s Quips told me about an instance in his guild where they had two girls in the guild already. One that was really chatty and friendly on vent – another that only ever came online for raids and did her thing. This worked out nicely. But then a new girl joined the guild, and she was really chatty and friendly too. Shortly after the first girl started acting out and eventually left. It does make you wonder. Was it pure co-incidence or female rivalry? Obviously not rivalry in the sense of a cat fight or hating each other – just someone being used to having the spotlight alone now sharing it with someone else.

I had something similar happen to me when I joined a guild. To this day I can’t tell whether it was me imagining things or if it was really the case. There was just one other girl in the guild when I joined – she was an officer and the main tank. The star of the show if you will. From what I could tell she talked to and teased the guys, but after I’d joined and being my usual overly-chatty self it felt like she pulled back. A lot of times she would be in the Officer channel on vent and only talking to the Officers. She didn’t talk much during raids. (I should probably talk less during raids myself.)

For all I know I just imagined this, but it’s something I do think about sometimes.

Now, don’t think that I’m saying that girls can’t play nice together – cause we definitely can. In my guild we are now 3 active females and we all get along splendidly. If that’s because I’m the one that talks the most – I don’t know   I have an alt in another guild and there seems to be several girls there that all get along really well too. I think in the end – as with most things – it depends on your personalities and if you match or not.

What are your experiences with multiple girls in guilds? Have you been the new girl/old girl and felt threatened or unwelcome? Have you been a guy standing by and seeing old guildies suddenly act differently when the “new girl” arrived?

Friends <3

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

Been lying down most of the last couple of days with a bad headache and bad back (awesomely fun, you bet!) so not gotten around to another proper post yet. In the meanwhile I figured I’d show you what I’ve been doing when I’ve not been lying down – I’ve been making signatures! For forums, that is.

I got photo shop this weekend so I’ve been playing around. Not done many yet, and I’m still learning of course. But below you can see some I did for some friends.

I will come back with a “real” post soon, I promise!

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike