I know social pressure is tough, but fight back, be honest. This is mostly aimed at healers, but can be applied to anyone, just substitute the appropriate words to match your own situation.
How often are you offline because you don't want to heal? That's hiding. Maybe it's on an alt, maybe it's in another game, maybe it's in that strange place called Real Life. This doesn't apply to actually being called away. But why do you have to hide? Imagine a glorious world in which you can just say that you don't feel like healing.
Oh, people won't be happy. They're used to healers either healing when asked, or not being there at all. When you hide, you also hide your refusal, and therefore your choice.
So log in and say it: you don't feel like healing. At first it will be a shock. But give it time and someday, people won't feel entitled to your heals and you won't feel like hiding when you just want to do something else.
The rest of this is aimed at the people who are outraged. Except the part after that.
Dear assholes,
People don't always stay offline because they want to. Sometimes it's because logging in means being bombarded by urgent requests by you. Whether online or offline, that is their choice, to say yes or no. It's pointless to drive them offline, just because you think being online makes them your servant. That only encourages burnout, making it harder to find them in the future.
So when you see your healer friend on his alt and ask him to heal, take no for an answer, it's his right.
As you might have guessed, this was triggered by RealID and the ability to see friends on alts. It's coming. People will have to choose: do they want to refuse a friend invite or do they want to turn down requests for runs? I'm leaning toward the first, because while I regard it as hiding, it's also much more private, thanks to information chaining out to friends of friends. I already have my friends and we know our alts and can turn down whatever we don't want. We don't need to be tied into a friend friend with whom we don't share that understanding.
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8 comments:
You know what? You're right.
As someone who's played a DPS monkey for the last five years, I take tanks *and* healers for granted. After all, you're all there to help me grind damage meters, right?
Seriously though, it's because I didn't want people to always have to heal that I rolled my own. He's 80, got some reasonable gear, can hold his own in a raid etc. But do people ask me to heal? Nope.
People are only interested in doing their own challenging content (ICC progression usually), and for that they only want their seasoned healers. It doesn't matter if the healer wants to go shadow or ret or boomkin or whatever.
This is, as Gazimoff said, an epidemic with tanks as well. RealID makes me wonder if it will be worth playing on alts without getting hounded all the time. TBH, i am wondering if I will be able to play any battle.net game without getting hounded.
I blame random dungeons and an overall lack of healers and tanks of any quality. Many good tanks that would be available for raids are busy doing randoms, same for healers. Also, DPS are often waiting forever and a day for queues. I can't count the number of times I was expected to drop everything I was doing, on an alt or just online in steam not playing WoW, just to tank a few randoms for a friend.
-VG
@Gazimoff: are you suggesting we're all looking out for ourselves at the expense of the help we need from others, but refuse to give?
@VGP: Hopefully there won't be overwhelming pressure to join realID.
I will survive.. Hey hey..
I've failed at least one " Omg you have to add me"
I have oft felt obligated to do things I shouldn't, but come heal. * blah* for me I have perfected my contemptous tone. "I'm a shadow priest." ( even though i like healing now shhhhhh)
Since I have many alts (most of them are tanks or healers) I know about pressure. But every time a new toon dings 80 and needs some help to get through the gear-grind or if I really want an item that can be obtained by grinding a boss/dungeon I am being reminded that other people don't give a sh.. what I want. I don't need to hide on an alt - I simply say "No" if I want to do my own thing.
However, I wouldn't give my WoW-account-name to anybody, not even real-life-friends. I don't need WoW to chat with someone, that's what AIM/MSN/.. are for.
The whole RealID thing is pretty much pissing me off. If I don't want to play a game, then I shouldn't have to - it's not a job, remember? But with RealID people are going to be 'why are you not giving me your id? aren't we friends?' and if you have each other on friendslists, then it's 'come play this' and 'come do that'.
SC2 + facebook integration is the worst offender though and one of the reasons why I won't be buying SC2 - the game I was looking forward to for 10 years and created massive hype about in my circle of friends. The whole concept of 'social gaming' is frankly creepy and just goes to show that business understands net culture enough to profit off it, but not more.
I'm not hiding away, I'm leveling my 3rd and 4th healers because I like it :D
Helping people pays off. Call it karma or call it having good guildies/friends. I've always been in the kind of environment where help was offered all the time. I run someone through the daily, I boost someone's alt, and then I get boosted or taken along to ICC normals 2 hours after I ding. So, all you grumpyfaces, remember it's possible.
(Also remember that if someone pushes too hard for you to heal/tank, maybe they're not such a great guildie/friend.)
"Also remember that if someone pushes too hard for you to heal/tank, maybe they're not such a great guildie/friend"
I started writing a post about that yesterday, how people tend to confuse bad friends with friends in general, and then end up either getting leeched or overreacting and becoming antisocial.
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