F.U.N!

The following post is mostly true.

I was hoping it wouldn’t get here. I was really hoping I didn’t get to this point. The possibility of having to actually – GASP, write, something again so soon was just too much for me to bear. Well no, not really. I was just being a bit lazy, enjoying a minor lull in school activity thanks to some help from Mother Nature. Snow (approx. 6+ inches of it) mixed with sleet on top of that, has a tendency to stop things here in the southeast. And by that, I mean, everything, just, stops. Of course this follows the typical “spaz shopping” I see so often anytime a weather report even mentions snow, even if it’s just, at most, a slight dusting. People panic buy things that they think they’ll need. For example, MILK! Oh, good heavens! Let’s not forget to purchase at least two gallon containers of milk. Even though it’s entirely possible that we might not be capable of drinking that much milk before it spoils, we have to have two gallons of it. God forbid, we might actually have to drink water! Ah yes, let’s include another loaf of bread, along with some lunch meat. We simply must have additional bread for sandwiches. That’s probably all we’ll be able to make anyways. Never mind the fact that we may already have a loaf and probably can get by without having to purchase another one. No-no! More bread! And more lunch meat! NOW! Let’s all hop in the family car and go out to flood the grocery stores with panic shoppers and wipe out their stock of milk, bread, and lunch meat! Alright well that was me raging a bit. I guess that’s just one of life’s little ironies; living in the southeast, every time we get snow, despite the fact that it probably won’t hang around for very long (a few days – maybe?), people will spaz shop for nearly a month’s worth of groceries.

But, back to being lazy, I played a lot of wow during the break. Hit a few of my other, neglected toons to inch (more like millimeter) their leveling up a bit more. During that time, I had the opportunity to hit the random daily instances a lot. Also, during that time, I had the opportunity to hit my head against a brick wall a lot. Guess which one was more appealing? Ahh pugs. Can’t live with ‘em, and you want to kill ‘em. Ok, well maybe that’s not the best idiomatic phrase to represent my experiences with pugs, but it does express my frustration and sometimes just outright anger at having to deal with some of them. Not all pugs are bad, obviously. But the ones that are a real pain to deal with turn out to be really bad. And those pugs that clearly know what they’re doing and don’t have to be told to watch their threat level are usually really good. That’s it. There is no “in-between.” There’s no happy medium. Maybe it’s just me. With a tank as my secondary spec, I don’t have the irritating wait times that others have to deal with. Folks always need a tank and a healer. Dps, just have to stand in line and the amount of time waiting can be frustrating. But, pugs lately have been either very efficient or very excruciating.

Consider the arms spec warrior I recently met in a regular Utguarde Keep. His character was arms spec, and he was dual-wielding…two one-handed weapons…with a spec that has 5 talent points in axe specialization and 5 more talent points in mace specialization…and to top all of that, he wasn’t even using weapons that he had dumped a whopping 10 talent points into, he was using swords. Sometimes a pug isn’t necessarily bad due to inexperience with the game or just low skill, or to a lack of understanding with class/game mechanics. Sometimes, a pug is bad just because he/she is a total ass.

Another “gem” to consider is a recent pug I did with a buddy of mine – Nash. I believe we also had two others from our guild. We were hitting a random heroic and came upon Gun Drak. This particular instance can be challenging for under-geared groups. But it’s usually a quick and easy run with multiple opportunities for decent gear and a lot of emblems. We only had 4 so we pugged the last dps spot, which led us to a DK of epic fail. Let’s just refer to him as Dopey. So Dopey is helping us through the instance and it becomes immediately obvious, this person is either an adult high on something illegal, or this person is probably under 13 years old and really high on sugar and/or something illegal. Dopey’s comments were bizarre, to say the least, and they became more frequent as the instance rolled on – even during a boss fight. Now, I’m not too strict when it comes to party chat. But typing in party chat during a boss fight only means that the player isn’t performing during the fight. After repeated attempts to inform Dopey to focus or risk being kicked out of the group, he finally started to calm down. After the second boss he then decided to pull an elite, deliberately, and with no healer around. Brilliant. Of course, his character died, and my character nearly died with him. Dopey eventually started back up his rants (possibly looking to get kicked?), which led to the ultimate fail statements from immature players. Those, HILARIOUS (sarcasm) statements that start out with “your” and end in “mom.” Yeah. There’s a real mature player for you folks. The final straw came when he said something to the effect of raping someone’s mom. And if you think I just mistyped that last statement, let me assure you that you read it right. “That’s it! I’ve had enough!” I said out loud, and quickly typed “F*#k it. Kick ‘em!” in party chat. I clicked on the vote-to-kick option, and less than a split-second later, he was gone. I didn’t even have the chance to blink. We were going to continue on and 4-man the rest of the instance but, fortunately, a shaman decided to allow himself/herself to be saved to the instance and only collect loot and emblems from the final boss. Bless him/her whoever that person was.

Am I too demanding? Do I have expectations too high to meet? Am I irrational to expect others that I run instances with to, at the very least, try to act mature? Should I hire a nanny every time I go looking for pug instances? Is it unreasonable to expect my fellow evolved beings to be capable of doing more than simply breathing out carbon dioxide and spamming one, maybe two buttons? Or, for those individuals that truly have difficulty doing just that simple task, am I to be expected to remind them to breathe every few minutes? I’m just curious. If that’s true then I have no problem with that and I’ll eagerly accept my new responsibilities. I would just like to know ahead of time.

Also, do people play this game as if whatever they say won’t affect anything? It seems to me as if so many players (most are probably young and immature) behave this way and that those people view their actions as consequence-free. Maybe that’s true, but there are people that operate those other characters in the pug. People that the read party chat. People that can be offended just like anyone else at ridiculous comments. People that have used some of their own personal time to play a game with total strangers (pugs) and attempt to clear an instance with that team. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t take that too lightly. Someone else has decided to try to run an instance with me and is giving me a bit of their time, and I with them. Yeah, it’s only a video game. But a video game doesn’t make statements that could hurt someone’s feelings. Players do. Is that being overly sensitive? Could be. In any case, I feel that this game could really use more well-mannered people. Sometimes I feel like the only people worth playing with are my guildies. I realize that's a generalization and I sincerely hope that I don't appear to be an elitist. Fortunately, it's not all just one endless terrible experience. In another one of life’s little ironies, Dopey had to gall to whisper a message to me just after we kicked him from party and said, “That’s harsh man.” Maybe this game isn’t just a “say anything, do anything and expect no consequences” kind of game after all. Maybe there is just a wee bit of karma here. Just before I ignored him he tried to tell me that he was just having some fun. I resisted the urged to reply back, “There’s always an F – U in fun!”

Well…I might have said something like that back to him.


BB