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The Daily Grind: How patient are you with explanations?
I run a lot of random dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV. It's not uncommon to wind up grouped with someone who hasn't seen one of the newer dungeons, or even someone who just happened to forget the mechanics in a lower-level fight. That's fine, and I have no problem explaining the fight in detail to people. What gets my goat is trying to re-explain as someone either ignores the directions or does exactly the opposite time and again. Some people are far more patient than I am. I've watched players explain the same mechanics a dozen times without ever showing signs of irritation. And of course, there are people far less patient than I -- people who explain the fight only once in mangled shorthand or even outright refuse to explain anything. So what about you, dear reader? How patient are you with explanations about fights, areas, mechanics, or anything else in your game of choice? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
WoW Rookie: Being polite in game
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. It might seem like an odd notion, but not everyone understands what's polite in the World of Warcraft. This isn't because they are rude in real life or necessarily lack the social skills to properly order a cup of coffee. (I'll admit, though, after a few battlegrounds and seeing the behavior in BG chat, I wonder about that.) The most common reasons folks are inadvertently rude in game is because they're new to our subculture. They haven't been inculcated to the subtle niceties that come with pretending to be elves and trolls. Especially if this is their first MMORPG, they might only be dimly aware that other characters are also players and that any amount of human interaction might be expected. The goal here isn't to lay down some kind of draconian law of behavior. It's just an attempt to talk about being polite.
The Queue: Acronymification, FWIW
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.The last few editions of The Queue had a lot about tanking, and deciding which Heroic is the best Heroic to tank your first time around. Adam said Utgarde Pinnacle was a good training ground, and his opinion was thoroughly stomped upon for being wrong. I have to say, though... Utgarde Pinnacle was my first Wrath heroic as a tank and it worked pretty well. I did a lot of tanking in The Burning Crusade so maybe I'm a little different since I already knew what I was doing, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it's made out to be. Mobs in Utgarde Pinnacle hit really hard, and it taught me to get back into the habit of using my cooldowns properly and not relying completely on my healer to keep me standing.I won't say Adam was right, but I also won't say he was wrong. Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle and Heroic CoT: Stratholme are the two dungeons that taught me the most about tanking. Teaching myself to remember to use my own cooldowns and mitigation abilities, learning how to pace a group and keep them moving, relearning how to handle different types of mobs. They were a challenge, oh yes, but that's why I learned so much from them. Easier heroics like Violet Hold didn't teach me to do much because you basically nap through the thing. Then again, I am sort of a 'trial by fire' kind of guy. I need to die a few times to figure out whether I'm capable of something or not.CallMeIrd asked.."Are they going to change or remove the School of Hard Knocks achievements? It's pretty much impossible for a lot of players to achieve."
Breakfast Topic: How do you tag necropolis mobs?
It was an interesting time in Azeroth yesterday. Thousands of people on each server showed up to fight against the scourge invasion. The masses were tagging mobs left and right, all in hopes to get some elusive Necrotic Runes.All this open PvE fighting has brought up an interesting question, one that many people have some strong feelings on. What is the appropriate way to tag mobs? Is it okay to camp spawn points and AoE immediately in order to grab some scourge? Is it okay to take away another person's Shadow of Doom? What about if you accidently tag something you shouldn't have? Do you give them some gold in exchange?I have to admit, after trying for over two hours to summon a Shadow of Doom and tag it, my group decided to go a different route. We went to a new spawn point, summoned all four, and threw out as much AoE as possible. Our thought was that doing this would mean we'd at least be able to get one Shadow (we ended up getting them all). This of course upset everyone else that was there – but we had tried for a while before hand to get a single one. And we did summon all the Shadows ourselves.While this might be a questionable activity to some, it's what we did. But what would you do? How have you handled, and will you handle, tagging these mobs?
All the World's a Stage: Delicate subjects, handle with care
When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. Michael Gray fills in this week for David Bowers to talk about how you can handle delicate subjects while achieving your roleplay goals.I can't speak for anyone else, but one thing Momma always warned me about is that there are a few topics you just don't talk about over dinner or in polite company. Sex, drugs, money, politics. If you're like me, your sweetheart gives you that look if certain subjects are brought up. "Don't even get started," that look warns me. I admit, I can be a powderkeg about feminism, racial equality, and general "do the right thing" subjects. But these issues do come up during the course of roleplay. There are more than a few victims among WoW's characters, and there are certainly some bad guys who'd do despicable things.If you're going to play with hot-topic issues, there some things you can do to help keep everyone's sensitivities in mind.
Switching out for a replacement in instances
Last weekend, my guild was heroically wiping our way through Gruul's Lair, when a friend called to go see Transformers. I did want to go, but I didn't want to leave my guild without a healer. So I did exactly what you should do when leaving a group-- I dropped a /tell to a priest in the battlegrounds and asked him if he could replace me. He could, I told the raidleader I had to go, helped him summon the priest, and I was off to see Optimus Prime fighting Megatron. Horrible story and acting, by the way, but amazing action with awesome robots.So that's exactly what you should do when leaving a group unexpectedly (find a replacement), but unfortunately, it's not always what everyone does. Sometimes it's a matter of availability-- just last night, our tank in Shattered Halls said he had to log out, and we just weren't able to find any warriors to replace him-- but the point is that the responsibility for filling the evacuated role should be that of the person leaving, not the group. Saying "bye" and logging is definitely one way to do it, but it's not the best way-- what you should be doing is finding a replacement.And how's that done? First, check your guild to see if there are others of your own class around to join up. Even if not, keep in mind that you can change things around if necessary (as a Shaman, I can switch prettty easily between DPS and healing, so if our priest leaves, we're fine adding either another priest or a replacement DPS). If no one in the guild is available, then it's time to go for your own Friends list-- I've met quite a few other players in PUGs that I usually hit up for group members when necessary, and sometimes I'll even ask them to check their own guilds for replacements. And if you have to, it is possible to simply do a "/who 70 priest" query-- you run the risk of getting someone who doesn't know what they're doing, but as my grandmother always said, beggars can't be choosers.Of course, throughout all of it, you've got to be patient-- it's fine to send someone a /tell asking if they want to join up, but if they say no or don't answer, leave them alone after that. And if a replacement can't be found, both the group and the person leaving should understand (although for Transformers, I might have delayed the movie rather than letting the 25 man raid go without). But most people play this game to actually run the instances-- with a little effort, switching out a replacement can keep an instance run rolling right along.
An open letter against a dysphemism
Elizabeth's post about getting the word "gay" out of the game got tons of feedback from you all (some comments more intelligent than others), and now a poster on WoW Ladies has another language sensitivity that I agree with. The word "rape" is used by some players in game for all kinds of things, and most of the time it's used without thought to what the word really means.Personally I don't use it (not because I have a specific abhorrence of the word, although the act itself is pretty abhorrent), but every once in a while you'll hear things like "boy, our guild raped Hakkar last night," or "stupid elite Son of Arugal just came out of nowhere and raped me." The word for this kind of usage is actually "dysphemism," the opposite of euphemism, in which you specifically use a harsh word in the place of a more polite one.And that's the problem-- just like "gay," it's not polite to use, not least of all because you may hardly know the person that reads it or their situation. In some cases, the word can be downright offensive. Fortunately, I don't know anyone (that I know of) who's experienced real-life rape or abuse, but especially in an MMO situation, there's no reason to use the harsher word, especially if, as Elizabeth said about "gay," it costs you respect (and possibly your account).As the WoW Ladies contributor says, "realize there are a lot of women in guild, as well as a lot of married members and members with children. Realize that 1 in 6 women are raped in the US. Realize that each person in the guild is either female themselves, and/or has multiple loved ones and friends that are female. Realize that rape is a deeply traumatic experience, for the victim and their loved ones." Even if you're joking, or even if you didn't mean it that way, it's just not worth saying.
