Be a useful jerk

| Thursday, October 4, 2012
My friends are playing Pandarenland (I clearly have terrible taste in friends).  They recently ran into a ret paladin who didn't seem to be clear on the concept of "ret doesn't use spirit".  They politely explained the general concepts of stats, such as how he shouldn't ever use spirit as ret and should use strength instead.  Some strength/stamina shoulders dropped and he rolled greed.  My friends asked about why he didn't need them and offered to trade the shoulders to him.  This was his response (with some cleaning up for easy of reading):










I used to, but always got [lulz friend uses profanity filter] at by people in the group, so I started to greed.

My guess is that he'd been rolling need on everything in sight, without a clue.  And then got yelled at and kicked.  I can't fault the groups that did so, but for one thing: They weren't useful.

When kicking people, say why you are, not just in the vote kick message, but in chat as well.  Don't just say ninja, but say why it is ninjaing.  Say that spirit is not a ret stat.  Say that needing on items you don't need is bad.  Maybe the person is a jerk, but maybe they're just clueless.

Have you ever yelled at your dog when you got home and found a mess?  It probably looked terrified and ashamed.  Maybe it peed on the floor and you yelled at it for that too.  That was stupid of you.  The dog has no clue what you're yelling at it about.  Now it's just confused, wondering why the person it looks up to and relies on is mad at it, and attempting to display submission.  It isn't going to eat the newspaper any less; there is no link between newspaper chewing and you being angry.

The ret paladin isn't so different.  Vague scolding with no clear information does no one any good.

3 comments:

Kring said...

Did you just compare an inexperienced WoW player to a puppy that pees on the carpet?

Klepsacovic said...

No.

Anonymous said...

I remember when I was that new. I was needing on stuff that looked useful. When a friend told me I should only be rolling need on upgrades, my first question was "how the hell do I know?" I hadn't discovered how to compare the stats on a drop to my current item and had no intention to memorize my character sheet. I wasn't quite a ret pally rolling on spirit gear but those things we take for granted were far from obvious to my newb self.

Post a Comment

Comments in posts older than 21 days will be moderated to prevent spam. Comments in posts younger than 21 days will be checked for ID.

Powered by Blogger.