Busting the Top 9 Myths About the Cataclysm Raid Changes

Let me preface by saying that I’ve been a raider since back when BWL was the highest tier. My 40-man guild went deep into AQ40. I lived through it as that same guild transitioned to 25s. Then I ran a 25-man raiding guild for a year as the primary raid leader. Then I ran a 10-man strict guild for 2 years, and now I lead a 10-man guild that hosts a 25-man guild alliance run. I’m really, really familiar with every facet of this debate, having led both 10 and 25 man raids as well as having firsthand experience of the 40 to 25 transition.



Now let’s move on to shattering the myths about the new raid changes.


Myth 1: You have to roll against more people in 25s.

Yes, I know, it seems obvious that with 15 more people there, you’d have more competition for loot in 25s. But it’s a myth: Blizzard has stated clearly that 25s will drop more items per person. There is no room for misinterpretation: there is a 0% chance that 25s will only drop 3 or even 5 items if 10s drop 2. It seems most likely that if 10s drop 2 items per boss kill, 25s will drop 6-7. Now do some math: 6.5/25 is a BIGGER NUMBER than 2/10. Which means that even though there are more people in the 25, you will actually have a better chance at personally getting loot in the 25-man raid because so many more items drop (and there is absolutely no reason to assume we won’t see the same item more than once per kill in this case).


Myth 2: We lose too much content with the shared lockout.

All that will happen is you won’t be able to run the same instance twice a week on the same character. Do you really like rerunning the same instance over and over like you do now? Is it a good thing that 25-man raiders feel pressured to run 10 man to get double the emblems? Is it a good thing that 10-man raiders have little to no access to the 25-man run while the bigger groups can easily do both sizes in the same week?

If you have a small group of friends you like to raid 10s with outside your 25-man guild, or if you are a 10-man guild who enjoys a 25-man alliance, that’s easily solved with alts. And if you don’t have time to level an alt, then why are you asking to get to raid the same instance twice a week anyway?

Another easy solution would be to do the previous tier’s content with the other group. Hopefully Blizzard will set up the tiers so hard mode loot from the previous tier is still relevant (but not required), so you have a reason to do so.

If you just prefer to have the freedom to run the instance twice if you so choose, then you are really arguing against lockouts altogether. Why not get rid of every lockout, if having fewer lockouts is inherently better? Oh yeah, because it would break the game.


Myth 3: 10s will be too hard to balance and make class stacking a problem

This one is legitimate as a suspicion, but not a fair assumption to make with this little information. Blizzard design hasn’t been perfect, but they’ve done a pretty good job overall.

As for class stacking: we have no idea if there will be buff changes made to go along with the raid changes. There is no reason why you can’t get a good mix of buffs with any reasonable comp if they set it up right. They’ve already started spreading buffs out.

It’s OK to have reduced faith in Blizzard, but it’s too early to just assume they will blow it. And it’s especially silly to assume they haven’t thought of this yet.

Another thing to keep in mind: right now, everyone is focused on how much bigger a logistical challenge 25-mans are to organize. Well what if the unique challenge 10-man leaders face is in forming a comp that optimizes buffs, while 25-man leaders don’t have to worry about that because they will inevitably have every buff covered?


Myth 4: The devs want to kill 25s

Hah! If they did, they would have just removed them from the game, instead of going out of their way to make sure there are still incentives to do them. Would all of the work they will put into making 25-man versions of dungeons be worth it if their plan is to “stealth kill” all 25-man raids?


Myth 5: The devs will let 25s die (unintentionally)

I’ve often been cynical of Blizzard’s design choices. I can understand this impulse. But every indication is that they are committed to making whatever adjustments are necessary to make both raid sizes into viable choices that people will be interested in. There is no way they are so stupid that if they want 25s to stay alive (as we’ve already established) that they would accidentally totally fail at their goal. Blizzard makes many choices I don’t agree with, but it’s pretty rare for them to outright fail through incompetence.


Myth 6: I love 25s because they are more epic, but obviously no one else does so I’ll never get 24 others together for it after these changes

I have seen this one so many times that I could form a dozen 25-man raids out of the people who say it. It seems like tons of people just prefer the bigger raids. If anything, the response to the changes has proven that 25s will never actually die unless they are removed from the game. What surprises me is how all of these people assume that no one else feels the same way. The entire point is that you feel free to pick the format you prefer rather than having to "game the system" by doing 25s just to get worthwhile gear.

Here’s an example of this one from Dawn Moore at wow.com:

She opens her thoughts with:“I play in a high ranking 25-man guild because that is what I love to do. I don't do it for the glory, better gear, prettier mounts, or legendary items.”

Then she ends them with: “ Blizzard's proposal removes the incentive to do 25-man raids, which will kill the majority of 25-man guilds, which in turn will kill the community I come to the game for. I hate to say it, but for the first time ever I have been served a very good reason to quit the game.”

Yeah, you read that right. She really did just say that she doesn’t raid 25s for the glory or the gear, but now that the glory and gear are gone she has no incentive to do them anymore. GG, Dawn.


Remember back in TBC when everyone was doing arena because losing 10 matches a week would get you a weapon that blew away what was available to most people in a raid? Remember how so many of those people hated arena and never would have done it if they hadn’t seen that it was by far the optimal way to progress their character? Ever notice how now that the rewards are more balanced, the only people in the arenas are those who love arena, and everyone is happier?

That’s exactly what happened to 25s in Wrath. They were the only legitimate PvE progression path (10s offered gear that was a tier behind) through this entire expansion. Tons of people who preferred 10s or other activities felt compelled to do 25s because they were the only avenue to “real” gear and achievements (because 25-man guilds could just cheese the 10-man achieves, rendering them irrelevant). Now that 10 vs 25 is a real choice, and both are legitimate progression paths, those people will leave 25s.

Let me rephrase that: those people will stop doing an activity they didn’t like as much in favor of one that is more fun for them.

Yes, that’s an awful thing to have happen! How dare they have more fun while still relevantly progressing their character!!! This isn’t some game, goddammit!

If you are in a 25-man guild and you think that losing the higher tier of gear over 10s is going to cause many people to leave your guild, that means they didn’t want to be there and were only there because you were bribing them. Are you really trying to tell me you prefer the system where you bribe/blackmail your friends into having less fun? Rather than the system where everyone chooses the activity they want, and gets rewarded either way?


Myth 7: Raid leaders won’t want to lead 25s anymore.

It’s undeniable that organizing a 25-man raid and guild is way more difficult and stressful than managing a 10-man guild. But what is the incentive right now to lead a 25-man raid? A higher tier of gear? That higher tier goes out to the entire raid, not just the leaders. How come the rest of the guild gets rewarded just because the leaders work harder?

The weirdest thing about this argument is that 25-man raiders and leaders aren’t losing anything. They are, in fact, gaining. They still get the top-of-the-line gear, only in Cataclysm they get a lot more of it per boss than they did in Wrath.

If it’s not the gear, then is it the prestige? Not only will 25-man raid leaders still be competing at the cutting edge just like they do now, but their raids will have an innate advantage over 10-man raids: they will gear up faster (including much faster emblem income). If you are hardcore and want to compete for server or world firsts, you will NEED to be a 25-man raid guild because the gear advantage will help propel you to the top. You simply won’t be truly competitive if you are a 10-man guild. So the prestige may be reduced, but it is still there for 25s.

Yes, the number of 25-man guilds will be reduced, and fewer people will want to lead 25s. But it will happen not because no one will want to do 25s anymore, but because people who didn’t want to be doing 25s in the first place will finally feel free to choose not to do them while still being able to advance their character.


Myth 8: The 10 best people in my 25 man guild will just ditch the ones who are “holding them back”.

GOOD. This one boggles my mind. The statement in itself admits that 15 people in your raid are being carried and don’t deserve their victories or spoils, and it implies that the top 10 resent having to do the carrying, but don’t think they have any choice because without the other 15 people they won’t have access to the current tier of gear. I mean, seriously? That's your argument?


Myth 9: First 10 people to hit level cap will not want to wait for the other 15 to catch up and will ditch us.

What? How is this situation ANY DIFFERENT from Wrath? The first 10 people got to 80 and started doing Naxx 10. Then the guild switched over to 25s as soon as enough people were max level. In both situations, the first 10 were ahead on gear. But with 10s and 25s sharing the same difficulty, that will actually be less of a problem in Cata than it was in Wrath.

Yes, I get that the idea is that those 10 will think that using their gear will allow them to progress faster than they would in the 25 with a lower average gearscore. That sort of makes sense…if you are willfully ignoring the fact that with more drops per person on each boss in 25s, they’d make up that deficit almost immediately, and would end up far better geared in the long run.


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As you can see, pretty much every argument I’ve seen claiming this is a disaster, or a bad change overall, has giant, gaping holes in it. I was trying to figure out why it seemed to be “gutting” the fun for some people, then I read this statement by Jerome Phillips, and it all fell into place [emphasis mine]:

“The competitive raiding scene is what drove me to play WoW. I started in a casual guild in Vanilla and as I discovered and grasped the concept of a 'top' guild I worked hard to become better at the game so that I could join one. I wanted to play the best and be the best and I worked for it and I still do. It is by far the primary reason I and the majority of players in my guild play this game. When I'm not playing WoW, I play MW2, COD4, and MvC2. Highly competitive games that force you to exert relentless dominance over your competitors and instill a sense of superiority and accomplishment in achieving a win and/or goal. This same feeling is why I and people in guilds such as mine play this game…why would anybody run 25-mans in Cataclysm? The hardcore players like myself have no sense of accomplishment and no discernable way to establish who is best.”

It became clear to me: these arguments that break down under scrutiny are actually smokescreens. The reality is: a lot of 25-man raiders were doing it because they liked feeling superior to 10-man raiders.*

The saddest part is that they don’t realize how artificial that superiority was. The only people who work harder in a 25 are the leaders. Period. The average joe in those guilds does nothing more than any 10-man raider does. In fact, 10-mans are tuned similarly to 25s for their own tier of gear (go look up the health and damage numbers yourself if you don’t believe me).

Right now, 25-man raiders can pretend they are better than any given 10-man raider, but the reality is that they don’t really know who’s better. After getting screwed over for years on end, please forgive me for not feeling sorry for the people who spent those years benefitting from the system that was screwing me now that they have to face - gasp! - the prospect of a more level playing field!

If you are a competitive person, wouldn’t you rather the playing field be evened so you can find out who’s really best, rather than getting a false sense of superiority from a rigged system?

There were tons of great players who chose 10-man, but never got any respect or recognition for their skill. With the artificial signal of superiority gone, that type of 25er is in for a rude awakening: you aren’t as superior as you thought, unless you yourself were organizing the raids.

Now we have a way to really establish who is best. And guess what – some of those 10-man raiders are going to be better than you.






OK, that would have been a great way to end the post. But I just can’t do it. As Larisa reminded me with this post, everyone in this argument has feelings, and many people are reacting more out of fear that their own raid group that they have grown to call home will be torn apart. In fact, I bet the vast majority of people arguing against the change are well-meaning and simply reacting to what they perceive as a threat to their current raiding group.

Of course no one likes that, and it’s understandable that perfectly reasonable people would be unhappy about it and be searching for way to convince others that it is a bad change when really they just don’t want to see their group broken up. In the end, I still hold the opinion that the old system was inherently broken and unfair and that the new system is a massive improvement to the game overall that must be done. But I extend my truly heartfelt condolences to anyone who loves the guild that they built under the broken system and might now see their friends torn apart by an improvement to the game.




*I said “a lot” I did not say “every” or even “most”. Please don’t assume I was talking about you unless you actually suspect you are that type of person.

I'm on Twitter now, and the "controversy" of Spitfires' guest post on Matticus

So yeah, now that I got a new smartphone that I brag about at every opportunity, I've joined the 2008 and started twatting. You can follow me on Twitter:

@EscHatch

I always poo-poo'd Twitter, but I'm discovering that you miss out on a lot of the interwebs conversation if you aren't there. For instance, I saw an intriguing twoot by prominent WoW blogger Matticus this morning:

matticus I sealed off that "controversial" guest post on my blog. Tired of moderating shit and tired of being accused I do stuff "for the hits".

The guest post he is referring to was by We Fly Spitfires, and it was indeed controversial. It was titled: "Tanks and Healers Should Get the Biggest Rewards". And boy, am I sad that there is controversy over that statement. Of course they should get some extra reward, because when compared to DPS, they are in higher demand, have more responsibility and harder jobs, and are really the crux of the group. Which is basically what Spitfires said.

I say this as a DPS who will top anyone but Jong on the meters while not pulling aggro or breaking CC or standing in bad shit, while leading the raid. When it comes down to it, I am the first to admit that no matter how leet my superstar dps is, I'm just a piece of interchangeable meat compared to the tank.

And sadly, speaking that truth is where Spitfires' post went wrong. Instead of the comments section becoming a reasonable debate about the differences between the roles and how we can incentivize the less popular roles, it became an angry flamefest in response to a few choice phrases he used to (coughaccuratelycough) describe DPS in most situations:

“But the DPS? They’re just meat in the room.”

“DPS are a dime a dozen.”

“DPS can just be picked up randomly as required.”

“I’ve got nothing against DPS. It’s fun and there’s nothing wrong with that but they simply don’t deserve the equality of rewards.”

I think he's absolutely right, (especially in the dungeon finder) except when it comes to the most high-end of raids, or in the case of absolutely terrible dps. But the bottom line is: your raid or group can handle one bad dps. Your raid or group is going nowhere with a bad tank or healer. Unless you are in complete denial of reality, the fact that there is a difference in the value of tanks and healers compared to dps, no matter how good the dps, is indisputable.

But petty little egos must be fed, so the the fragile, defensive dps players must come out and express how insulted they are. Bad dps! Bad! Back to the LFG Q with you!

Spitfires asked the right question, but tragically in the wrong way (not that I would do any different). Tanking and healing are more important than dps while requiring more responsibility and skill. And there is a shortage of both. DPS, it is in your best interest to encourage people to play tanks and healers at every turn. Kiss their feet. Massage their aching shoulders. Buy them presents. Take off your robe and wizard hat if you have to.

Just stop pretending like you matter as much as they do.


Signed,

Your fellow dps who never has to wait for a tank or healer because he knows how to treat them.



PS: Just saw Rohan's thoughtful post on this issue. In light of it, I'd like to clarify that I don't think there is any "moral superiority" to tanking or healing, which is probably the perception that rubbed dps the wrong way. I am referring only to their higher value due to scarcity, and the increased personal responsibility of those roles.

Rohan makes a good point that at high level play, dps matter more and more. For instance, my guild runs two ICC 10 runs a week (one of them contains some geared alts and friends of the guild). The only real difference between the groups is the gear and experience level of the dps. Group 1, full of our best dps, pushes progression content while our second group has to actually try Saurfang twice before he goes down, can't beat Festergut, etc. And those dps aren't bad by any stretch, they just aren't the extraordinary deliverers of beatdowns that the other group is.

BUT - and that's a capital but for those of you paying attention - I'd argue that a tank or healer still has more personal individual responsibility, even in the highest-end raids, simply based on numbers. We as DPS are less important because there are 17-19 of us. There are 2-3 tanks and 5-8 healers (in my case in 10-mans its 5 vs. 2 and 3, a similar ratio). No matter how much great dps can "carry" a tank at the high end, it still won't fully make up for the responsibility of being part of a smaller group.

Plus, they are still rarer - but I would never argue that they are morally superior. I do argue that they should be pampered and incentivized so they become less rare.

Be Special, and Proud of It!

WARNING: I am about to swear a lot. You have been warned.

You've never seen my angry. I hope you never do. What you are about to see is not me angry; I've calmed down quite a bit since reading the post in question. Let's just say I'm glad this guy wasn't physically in the same room as me while spouting this bullshit. Because, seriously? Them's fightin' words.

To summarize his post:

"My name is Euripedes, and I'm very insecure. It makes me very angry when other people think they are better than me. This is because I'm so afraid that I don't measure up, that I have to adopt a life philosophy that says everyone is equal. I never saw The Incredibles or read Ayn Rand, so I never realized that if 'everyone is special, then no one is.' I think that I, Euripedes, am so special that I have to tear down anyone else who thinks they might be special. I am so special that I am the only one who gets to be special! Also, I blow goats."

First off, the very idea of specialness being a bad thing that needs to be stomped out makes me physically ill. I'm a Humanist, and humanity shines its brightest when you let it shine. We advance as a species because of special people, not because of the writhing mass of consumption and conformity that they emerge from, the mass that Euripedes thinks they should be mashed back down into without hesitation.

Secondly, let's look at two quotes from his post side by side:

"Let’s get this straight here, Ulduar raiders. You worked hard for your epics. You raided long hours, painfully wiped, had triumphant wins and bitter defeats. You dropped Yogg-Saron before the nerfs, beat Hard Mode X before Y was nerfed. People being able to get the same level of loot from much easier content in no way diminishes that. "

and

"You can try to say you are, act like you are, but you aren’t. You may be better than the majority of other players, be able to clear the hard content better and faster than 90% of the guilds out there. How does that warrant your skills being worshiped? How does that warrant keeping the peasants in-line and the grand overlords (namely, you) in positions of, essentially, royalty?"

Euri, you fucking hypocrite. So which is it? You can't say "stop caring about loot, it's just perception, it's not important" out of one side of your mouth, while the other side says "loot is so important that it makes you ROYALTY IN MY EYES, and the only way to rectify that is to give me the same loot for free!"

Again, for emphasis: you fucking hypocrite.

And how about this quote:

"An elitist attitude means you want to deny the lesser mortals stuff on sole merit that you are better than they are. Frankly, this disgusts me on a level I didn’t even know was possible."

You can't possibly mean this, Euri. You're saying baseball pros are elitist assholes because they expect to be allowed to play on the Red Sox while you are stuck in your work softball league. You're saying that Donald Trump is a douche (ok, he IS a douche, but for other reasons) for daring to think that he deserves his millions while you don't. Why doesn't he just hand all his money to you!? I just. Can't. Figure. Out. Why. Can you? Why don't we hand out Olympic medals to everyone who watches the Olympics on TV, and give trophies to all the NASCAR spectators while tsk-tsking the drivers for being big enough assholes to think they deserved something for actually running the race?

What Euri is actually saying is that he thinks he is entitled to everything nice no matter how little he works, and seeing other people have things he wants makes him jealous. The jealousy is exacerbated when others believe they have actually earned what they have. He is so insecure about himself that he can't handle other people having anything he doesn't have, but can't reconcile this fact with his own self-image. He must make himself believe that cutting others down is noble, because otherwise he has to face the fact that he's being a bitter, petty douche.

So everyone: ignore bitter, petty douchebags like this and let your fucking freak flag fly. Be special. If it makes you happy to have the most minipets, then take pride in that! Do not, under any circumstances, take Euripedes's advice and actually feel ashamed that you dared think you might have some quality that is rare in others.


Update 1: Larisa has a very thoughtful post up on this subject, where she espouses a more healthy attitude: "You [geared-out 'elitist' raiders] weren’t very much noticed in the first place. At least not by me. You were faceless before the next patch and you’ll stay faceless after the next one, unless you do something about it." I'm very cool with that. I just don't like it when people go out of their way to care about it while claiming others shouldn't care. If Euri actually doesn't think gear matters that much, then I encourage him to stop caring so much about it.

Larisa also talks about how, if you want to be really special and "sparkle", you can do something original and unusual for your server's community, like organize a cool event. Or even just wear items for their looks rather than stats. Or, best of all, just be such an all-around-cool-person that everyone knows your name. Sounds great to me. If you do something to earn your specialness, then you deserve it. :)


UPDATE 2: In case there is any doubt about Euri's intent, or that I misinterpreted him, here's his clarification in the comments of his own post:

"I take issue with those thousands of raiders who are against this change solely because they think they should be the only ones with access to gear of this quality.

If you’re against it because it ruins progression, or this or that or the other thing, that’s fine, that at least makes sense.

But being against it only because it grants gear to those less skilled than you are?

It’s that attitude this post was directed against."

So his "clarification" is to say, flat-out, that he thinks gear should be distributed with a complete disregard for skill. It's a major stretch to interpret it any other way. He doesn't seem interested in leaving us room to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And just for the record, I do think that skill should be a factor when rewards are given out. I do think that only the best players should have exclusive access to the top quality gear.

So am I an asshole for that?

I do think that allowing someone to grind faceroll heroics and receive exactly the same reward as a raider got through skill, practice, effort, and other expenses is offensive. I am NOT purely against the idea that 5-man players or time-limited players should be able to advance their characters. I like the idea of being able to get higher tier tokens in 5-mans. I just have a quibble with the way the execution of the change rewards purely time spent grinding a mundane and trivial task, when it should be rewarding an effortful application of skill.

UPDATE 3: Aaaaand things get more confusing! Quoting Euripedes' follow-up post on his blog:

"This… doesn’t make sense to me.

Awarding “last season” raiding gear for easy stuff makes sense. I’ve iterated why this post and last.

But awarding current season raiding gear for the same (relatively) easy content?

That, to me, is fundamentally wrong."

So why is it fundamentally wrong? How is this consistent with your other statements?

In the same post, he also tries to clarify who he was aiming the post at. Here's a summary:

"The post was directed at a specific set of people who have an issue with the change, an attitude that was summarized best by occam99:

Funnily enough, the people who have that attitude ARE the ones who feel that they should be worshipped for their gear…and that’s what this is all about. “Hey, I have T8.5. Obviously I’m a better person than you, which means that you don’t deserve what I have”.

It is ass-backwards, and supported by the fact that in WoW, we are all anonymous. If someone says to me, “I have a Jaguar and you don’t, therefore I am better than you, thus you don’t deserve the same things as me”, I’m gonna punch him in the throat.

It’s THAT kind of raider the last post was leveled at.

If you are NOT that kind of person, then that last post wasn’t directed at you.

Is that clearer now?"

Not much. He still doesn't come out and say what he means. From what I can gather, he's mad at people who are assholes. I can get behind that. But he keeps saying it wrong. He keeps attacking people who think they deserve things for being better at something. Apparently, he means to attack people who are rude enough to rub it in others' faces. Not once does he say this explicitly, though. Which just makes me think that he's actually mad that other people have nice things and dare to think they deserve them and he doesn't, and he's just looking for some rational way to couch his anger so he doesn't look petty. This is supported by how inconsistent his other views are. He needs to clearly parse out that he's mad at the "asshole-superiority" part, and not the "deserving" part.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone thinking they deserve better rewards for doing better. Now if you meant "better person overall because I have epics" rather than "better at the game and therefore I have epics" then that's a different story. He does quote the phrase "better person", so I can only assume that it's THAT idea that he is so mad about. When other people have something nice and think that therefore they must be better people overall than you? That makes them an asshole. I'm with him on that. You just have different priorities or skills, and put them to use in different ways. Doesn't make either of you "better people".

BUT

There's nothing wrong with them thinking they deserve the reward and you don't. Why attack that idea when supposedly all your mad about is the fact that they think having something nice makes them a better person? Separate the two ideas instead of mashing them uncerimoniously together, and it would get rid of the confusion. Make a post attacking assholes specifically, instead of adding in the junk about who deserves what. That's where the confusion came from, and why my criticism still stands.

Nasty Explody Guild Drama of Doom

I'm preoccupied with some massive guild drama (yes, it only takes 10 to Dramatize, apparently), so I don't think I'll be able to write anything about games that doesn't end up being an angry, un-fun rant. So posting will be a bit sparse here until it clears up. If you don't like it, feel free to take it up with the National Association of Girls Who Can't Play But Whine To Be Carried, and their sibling association, the White Knighting Alliance of Guys with Terrible Judgement.

Assholes Make Themselves Hard to Ignore

There are a couple of different schools of thought for dealing with trolls. One popular one is to ignore them. This is much like the advice mothers give to their children about bullies.

This may have been an effective tactic in the 70's, when American culture was a much different place, ruled by a different type of social norms.

Nowadays, if you ignore a bully, there's a decent chance you will get knifed, which is quite difficult to ignore. Back in my day, ignoring a bully didn't work. We weren't quite into the "bring guns and weapons to school" and "bomb threats every few weeks, whenever the bad kids need to skip a day to go get drunk" days, those didn't come until I was in high school. But we were close to those days. In middle school, ignoring bullies just got me into a lot of fistfights. It was far from a slum, but I didn't grow up in the best neighborhood. I never got beat up, robbed, or knifed, but I chalk that up partly to luck, partly to an unwillingness to act afraid, and partly to having a few good friends. It was bad enough that my mom took a job so she could put me and my sisters in private school, which was a monumentally safe environment. I was actually one of the more "bad kid" types there, which was really weird. Compared to middle school, high school was a picnic of nurturing for me, which was nice because it let me come into my own a lot more easily. Thanks, Mom.

As I got older, I found that bullies got even harder to ignore. In the real world outside of school, bullies are usually armed or in large groups, or both. You can ignore the guy who tries to goad you into a fight by calling you a name as you walk by. You can't ignore the guy with a knife, and you can't ignore the 3 drunk guys who start messing with you when you are alone on a dark street at night, either. Once someone crosses a certain line, trying to ignore them just isn't going to work.

But enough autobiographing, my point is that without social niceties or metal detectors to restrain them, bullies will not let you ignore them if they can help it. As an armchair psychologist (well not really, I actually have a Masters degree in psych. Would that make me a "deskchair psychologist?"), it seems that they learned from their caregivers that negative behaviors were the way to get attention and learned from example that attacking others was a way to build up oneself. Unless the likelihood of getting caught and put in jail is approaching 100%, there's no reason for them not to constantly escalate until they get the attention they crave.

So while on the surface ignoring them seems to be an obvious way of denying them the thing they want most, it forgets that our capacity to ignore them is not limitless. In fact, our ability to ignore them likely does not go as far as they are willing to go to get our attention. It' s hard to ignore fists, knives, theft of property, or even defamation. And I maintain that those things shouldn't be ignored, even if it reinforces the bully's desire to do those things to get attention.

And that brings us back to what sparked these thoughts: these two wowblogosphere posts taking different stances on their own varieties of trolls/bullies/sanctimonious asses.

First, Tobold responds to the mob of pseudo-religious zealots who love Darkfall (or what it represents to them, more likely) so much that they'd rather harass anyone who speaks ill of it rather than play the game itself. He advocates ignoring them completely, deleting their comments and pretending Darkfall doesn't even exist, thus locking them in a metaphorical "padded cell".

In this case, ignoring them is a great idea. Don't link to them, don't talk about them, and don't even let them use your space to comment and get attention that way. Just shut them out. There is little they can do to force you to pay attention, aside from the occassional death threat, which so far has only been leveled at the eurogamer reviewer who gave it a 2/10. They can't get close enough to knife you, and you don't have to deal with them from day to day.

But even in those situations, the thing that bothers me is that those people deserve to get hit back. If all I was concerned with was my own feelings, those people would be easy to ignore. They aren't hurting me, so they can't goad me into responding out of emotions. The thing that makes me respond is the desire to bat them on the nose with a newspaper like a bad puppy. What they deserve is to get smacked and told "no" until they stop acting like assholes. They deserve to get disciplined. They deserve not just an absence of reward, but an active punishment for their behavior. So it's inherently unjust to ignore them. It may be the best response available, but the idea of allowing them to cause an injustice to occur sticks in my craw.

On the web, they can't hurt you physically or steal your property. But if no one responds to their wrong ideas then they look like they are right, or we look like we don't have a response. Sometimes we need to stand up to them just to keep other people from getting bad ideas from them, and sometimes we need to save face. On the web, the only thing they can really do to you is pull your name through the mud and spread shitty ideas.

Which brings me to post #2, Ixo's response to an anonymous preachy douche. I really can't do it justice here, please read his post for a good bit of entertainment. The quick summary is that Ixo mentioned, hyperbolically and in passing, that he stayed up late getting drunk and raiding Ulduar, and this Anonymous commentor on his blog started telling him how to live his life in the most sanctimonious and self-satisfiedly assholish way imaginable, telling Ixo that he should be doing something "productive" instead of playing WoW.

Says the guy commenting extensively on a WoW blog. Sheesh.

But Anonymous Preachy Douche doesn't stop there, he goes on to talk about Ixo's family, his fathering, and what his in-laws think of him. Ixo quite righteously (and hilariously) lashes out at APD in retaliation.

Some of Ixo's commentors advise him (Yes, people try to tell him what to do under a post where he eviscerates someone for telling him what to do. Don't ask me what they are thinking.) not to give APD so much attention by making an entire post about him. I think the evisceration was so thoroughly deserved and effectively delivered that it was much better than just letting things be. Besides, it was just. Maybe he got some attention, but he also got to look like a complete idiot, which was well deserved.

Can we generalize these situations to other types of trolls? It depends on the situation. I propose that instead of using a blanket rule of "ignore" or "engage" for trolls, we instead go situation by situation. I plan to consider how ignorable the troll is, and give 'em hell when they go to far. Far more important than ignoring them is never giving them the satisfaction of hurting you. Don't believe anything they say. Don't let them shake your self-confidence. But fight back when it seems like the right thing to do.

In my real life example, you can't ignore someone physically attacking you. But you can do the next best thing: let them know that you aren't afraid. Bullies don't push you because they want a fight, they push you because they want to scare you. Show confidence and fight back, and you don't seem like a very appealing target to them anymore. It worked for me. Sort of a combo of both ideas. It won't always save you from getting your wallet stolen or a rib broken (thought it sometimes will), but you get to keep your dignity and they don't get the satisfaction of getting into your head.

I realize that I've gone in a dozen different directions here, and a lot of this doesn't really gel together. This is more of a first-draft riff on bullying in both the real and virtual realms. I would clean it up and make a better pieces, but in the end I can't spend as much time on this blog as I'd like, and I'm sorry for that.

Jurty Duty Finally Over, Drama, Raider 101 Wiki

After a week of trial, 2 weeks of deliberation, and a 2 week vacation in the middle, jury duty is finally over and I can return to my normal job, which means I again have access to a computer over my lunch break and on other breaks, allowing me to return to my original every-weekday schedule here at Escape Hatch.

Right now I have a lot of catching up to do at work and am dealing with some serious guild drama in-game (I recently left a very successful guild in which I was a founder, main recruiter, primary officer, and raid leader), so forgive me if content is a little on the light side for this week. The drama has been saddening, but it does seem that things will turn out just fine for me in the end. At least the split wasn't over loot or anything silly like that. It was just a personal thing.

I've always found drama to be riveting, and enjoy reading Wowinsider's Guildwatch and the now-defunct AFKGamer blog, which entertainingly described the most spectacular guild drama I've ever heard of.

But I'm not going to talk in detail about my personal guild drama here. Partly because it's more personal than a simple loot issue or something. Partly because there's just enough information out there for someone in my guild to figure out that I'm the one writing this blog. But mostly because it's not fair of me to present my naturally biased side of the story to a public audience without giving the other side an opportunity to respond. As much as I find other people's drama entertaining and would love to juice up the soap opera factor of my own blog, I just can't bring myself to sucker punch people that I know so personally.

Surely, my Cynics Society of America card is about to be revoked.

On a different note, I've decided to contribute a bit to Rohan's (Blessing of Kings blog) Raiding 101 Wiki, so far to the Combat Rogue and Unholy DK dps sections. So go check it out, I think it will shape up to be a major asset to people new to raiding with their class, or to anyone who enjoys raiding casually and doesn't want to spend hours poring over Elitist Jerks or sites like mine. It's also a good opportunity for me to really work on my concision.


EDIT: Sometimes, I say how I feel about my own situation, and only later realize it can be taken as a criticism of someone else's actions. To be clear: I have no problem with other people talking about their guild drama, in fact I LOVE to read about it. In my specific situation it wasn't the right choice for me (the drama itself was barely even related to WoW anyway), but it's often the right choice for others.

So yeah, don't get mad at me. :)

Mouthful of Medulla

For a crazy few days, the entire World (of Warcraft) was shaken by a plague that sparked a zombie invasion. No corner of Azeroth was safe, and by the end Shattrath and Orgrimmar were littered with corpses. In fact, you were 100 times more likely to die in a formerly-safe major city than you were to die out in the wild.

Sure, this could be annoying if you were just trying to quest. It could also be awesome if you have enough sense of humor to think vomiting on someone then exploding into a dozen zombie chunks would be fun.

I have a lot of respect for people who can be mature about not liking the event.

I personally found the end results of the event annoying. My bank alt died every time I tried to use him. My lowbies couldn't hand in their quests. Shattrath was nearly unusable this weekend.

Despite the fact that the event was annoying, and despite the fact that a few times I had to put myself in check from getting angry about a corpse run, I'm really glad the event happened.

Early on, I had a lot of fun being a zombie and converting players, though by the end of it I had suffered so much that I couldn't bear to bring it on other people and would just explode in some out-of-the-way corner. I'm happy for everyone who had fun with it. I don't blame anyone, since they were playing in the spirit of the game and within the rules of the event.

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However, there were some for whom a 2-minute delay for the flight master, or a brief corpse walk back to their bank alt WOULD NOT STAND. The Cesspool (aka WoW General Forums) was . . . heh heh, plagued . . . with posts from people demanding that the event end NOW and threatening to cancel their accounts. They are free to have their opinion, and I understand why they feel that way even though I see it as an overreaction. When people express displeasure over the event in chat, I'm not that guy who tells them to stop QQing.

Until one member of my guild monopolized guild chat for an entire day doing nothing but complaining about the event. And he wasn't just complaining. He was violently spewing haterade all over our shoes. He could not stand that other players could force him to become a part of the event. That loss of control didn't just drive him crazy, it drove him to a level of nerd rage I've never seen before in my life. He just kept yammering angrily about it, in long paragraphs, making guild chat unusable for hour after hour. He was typing so much I found it hard to believe he had time to do all of the things he was complaining about. At first, those who loved the event would give polite counterarguments. But after a few hours, they started alternating between arguing with him and teasing him. Nerds who get that upset are always the best targets for griefing, after all. Eventually, this escalated to a point where he was having an open, cursing, screaming argument in guild chat with a few of the event's proponents, accusing THEM of forcing him to be part of the event, labeling them as griefers for daring to disagree with him. He got so full of G.N.E.R.D.S. that he /gquit over it.

He was the type that always needed to be right. He was known for picking unconventional specs and claiming they were better than the cookie-cutter specs, despite reams of theorycraft and real-world data proving him wrong. He'd specialize as an avoidance tank (terrible idea for raids...you wanted to stack stam and armor), or a Healing Touch balance/resto druid hybrid (vastly inferior to full resto for healing...unless you asked him and listened to his cherry-picked theorycrafting). He just needed to be special and right all the time. I imagine that's probably a common trait among people who vocally HATE the event.



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What I LOVE about the event is the way it disrupted the status quo. It changed things. It broke up the routine of even the most insular control freak. YOU COULD NOT IGNORE IT. That's why it was awesome. I'm pissed as hell at the Lich King for messing with our shit, and I'm looking forward to charging the frozen throne shoulder to shoulder with the rest of my guild.


It could not have done it without the annoyances. It wouldn't have worked otherwise. That's why I'm also not mad at blizz for doing it. I'm actually impressed. They, for the first time, found a truly effective way to change things in an MMO without breaking the game.

Though I think they stopped it at the right time, I'm very disappointed that there was no immediate follow-up. Blizzard has really dropped the ball. The plague had reached a climax, and instead of capitalizing on that excitement with the next step of the Lich King's assault, they just let the event...fizzle.