Lobby-likeness of WoW over time

A common refrain I hear is that WoW has degraded into a lobby-based game.  You wait for the queue, teleport to somewhere entirely unconnected to the world, and then bounce back at the end.  That sounds rather lobby-like to me.

But is it new?  Is it more lobby-like than it was in the past?

The teleportation and automatic queueing certainly makes it look like a lobby-based game.  Players may find themselves waiting around, passing time with a chat function.  What a bore!  Or that could be quite fun.  For me, it depends on my mood, and in general I think it is more a matter of preference than an objective better/worse.

Contrast this with the past.  Once upon a time you formed groups manually.  You got to the instance manually.  There was even a time when flight paths were not automatic: you'd land and have to pick the next destination.  That certainly doesn't look like a lobby-based game.

Yet I think people miss something important: the lobby.  Where are you waiting?  In the old scenario, with manual grouping tools and limited communication, you either had a guild/friends group or you were in a city to find it.  That last part is the key: the lobby in which you waited was a particular place, bounded, with limited activities.  You could do some crafting or auction house activities, but mostly it was chatting.  Waiting around chatting while you tried to form or find a group.

Contrast that with the present.  What is the lobby now?  Everything and everywhere!  You're not in Stormwind, Ironforge, or Orgrimmar staring at trade chat.  You're anywhere.  You're out questing, farming, exploring.  The entire game world is the lobby.  At some point I think that means it ceases to be a lobby.  It's not a waiting area anymore.

While the teleportation and automatic grouping features may make current WoW seem like a lobby-based non-MMO, that's merely a product of the mind.  Open it up a bit.  Remember that the world is still there, the entire world, not just the few cities where people gather to form groups.  That's the great irony of the teleportation: while it removes the sense of travel and location that once came from instance runs, it also means that you can travel to any location.  You're unshackled.  For some players (such as me) this may make the world seem smaller, since everywhere is equally accessible.  For those who weren't so willing to forgo grouping for exploration this removes the tradeoff, so that they to may see the world without wondering which groups they are missing.

When the lobby is the world, maybe we've got it backward, and it is the instances that are the lobby.  They are the generic places we stay while waiting to go out into the wide world beyond.

Gokuu's no noob

Picture yourself in Stormstout Brewery.  You're at the last boss.  First are the pair of big alementals.  Next are the dozen or so little ones with the ranged attacks.

Is your healer getting hit?  Is a DPS or three getting hit?  Does the tank have aggro on only a few mobs with the rest in a large ring around him, just out of range of his AoEs?


This is when line of sight pulling is a wonderful thing.  Aggro the mobs and run to the doorway that you entered through.  Hug the left wall and they'll run up close, all packed in for easy AoE and easy aggro.

My hunter finally got the gear for Pandaria instances, thanks to a vendor.  And so, off he went.  The first tank was a miserable failure of a fail.  The group collapsed.  Next came Gokuu the death knight.

In my drunken stupor I slurred, "Gokuu, if you shtand in the doorway during the boss, you can get all the little alementalsh to run in close."

Strangely, he replied that he'd do that that phase.

"here, if everyone hugsh the left wall, they come close"

He then proceeded to stand too far out.

"iun back more"
"back up"

And lo, did he back up, and drop death and decay right at the corner, so that all the little alementals ran in close and were easily killed with nary a drop of stray ale.

Afterward, perhaps noticing the contrast with the first time we'd done that boss, he typed, "ty for that"

I was happy.  In a random, not only had someone taken advice, he'd recognized that the advice worked.  And then thanked the advice giver.  There is hope!

A good group

I've a weird habit of wanting to complete dungeon quests, even in Blackrock Depths where they appear to have gone out of their way to make Heart of the Mountain hard to complete.  Getting enough keys requires pretty much killing every dwarf in lower and upper city and they despawn on zone-out, so no saving up.  That last part is new, and I don't know why Blizzard would add something to make it harder to complete a quest at the same time that they made it easier to get the quest (used to be out in the Burning Steppes).

I managed to do this on my paladin thanks to being a tank and therefore being able to drag the group anywhere I wanted.  Usually just explaining that the quest they all had needed it was enough.  Other times people just had no clue that I was taking them on the grand tour.  Strangely I never had problems with people just in it for the loot bag at the end.  My hunter did it with the help of two friends I was leveling with: a tank and a healer, so again, we could go anywhere we wanted and didn't need anyone else if they all wanted to leave.

My mage was not so lucky.  She has no tank and healer to queue with, so it takes a while just to get in.  First group had a special flower snowflake tank who wanted to rush to the end, acknowledging that he was skipping every quest and almost the entire instance, regardless of what anyone else needed.  Sadly, there is no "report for being a douchebag" option.  The second group was going well enough, with the tank seeming to want to do the quest.  Alas, I could sense trouble.  The two other DPS wanted a speed run.  That made it obvious that "we'll do the quest after the boss" was just a blatant scam.  I tried to explain that even if they weren't being deceptive liars it was still faster to get the keys before the end boss, but no, he was going to charge bravely ahead to no clue where he was going at all.

Finally, finally!  I got a group.  A group that responded to questions regarding a full clear for the keys with affirmations and references to experience points.  Oh, glorious.  Even better, the tank responded to directions, following me, seemingly recognizing that if someone in BRD knows where they are going, you go along with them, lest you find yourself lost in endless tunnels.  It all went marvelously, with so many keys that we had enough to rob the bank without even needing to loop back after the bar.  Normally I find that we need to do some looping to get enough keys, but nope, plenty.  So we robbed the bank and looped back to the main path to the bar.  Things went well, at least until the bar when the tank had to go after a terrible incident with the Dark Keeper.  As these things go, they went downhill, until I was the only one left.

I decided to stick around.  I had a wonderful present after all: an open bank.  Finally, a new group formed.  With a little bit of confusion on their part, we finished off the bar and the Dark Keeper boozing within.  Four people got the heart of the mountain without needing to spend an hour and a half in BRD slaughtering dwarfs, which I suppose could be seen as an unfortunate loss on their part.  Still, I'd seen how tricky it was to get the quest finished, what with people rushing and not reading, so I was very happy to have been able to help out four people like that (plus the previous four).  We move along smoothly, with people again following directions.  At the end I thanked the tank for that and he thanked me for the guiding and everyone else thanked the tank for tanking.  The healer joined me in queueing for Lower Blackrock Spire.

Our tank didn't know the way and told us to say if he was going the wrong way.  I asked if that was our cue to trick him into doing upper spire too.  The healer said yes and the tank went along.  So up we went.  There were some problems regarding the healer forgetting that if we're not 85 we're not invincible and then a DC.  Still, the boss died.  I then invited them to a rousing game of Jump From Upper Spire to Lower Spire and Hope We Don't Die From the Fall.  We all survived the fall and proceeded to replicate our previous orc-killing success with the addition of troll and ogre-killing.  Things were spiffingly great.  At leat until we were afflicted with Sudden Tank Dropping Group Syndrome.  That resulted in a bit of a game of Two Mages Showing Off Their Kiting Skills followed by Klepsacovic Demonstrating His Total Knowledge of Shortcuts in LBRS, which unfortunately descended into a game of Priest Dying from a Misplaced Jump Onto Hard Surfaces and then Lava.  We got a tank, we killed a boss, then another boss, and finally the last boss at the end.

Sometimes things are pretty good.

A weekend of tanks

I decided to actually record the tanks I run into in randoms for a weekend, to hopefully find that I've been focusing on the negative and things aren't so bad.  We'll see.  In this I'll keep a running tally of the tanks I am in groups with.  I won't just give "good tank" "bad tank", but what I thought was bad, or anything that stood out as good.

Zul'Farrak: Mage
First tank dced, so the feral DPS filled in and did well.  We eventually got a paladin, who also did well.  Pulled quickly, but correctly, and did not skip any quest bosses, even without prompting.

Zul'Drak: Paladin
DK tank was fine, and did not stop just because of little problems like the healer lagging, DCing, or dropping the group.  I mean that as a good thing; I was glad to see a tank who recognized that a ret paladin could do the job well enough and didn't need to sit around for a Blizzard-approved healer.

Zul'Farrak: Mage
Tank wandered off aimlessly, but slowly.  Despite not being able to handle it, pulled most of the stairs event.  He died.  Didn't reseal.  Kept overpulling for what he or the healer could handle.

Stratholme Dead Side: Mage
The warrior tank kept on top of the unending stream of adds.  I won't count this as a bad tank, but the ret paladin wouldn't remove righteous fury and when he died, refreshed righteous fury but not his seal.  We eventually kicked him for being perpetually bad.  I did feel a little bad though, the boss had dropped Banshee Finger and Banshee's Touch and it looked he'd rolled on the wand, not the plate gloves, so I pointed out that paladins cannot use wands.  He might have been kicked anyway, but now I'm afraid he might think he was kicked for a misread loot roll, rather than for being persistently stupid.

Sethekk Halls: Hunter
This was the Group of Endless Turnover.

Stratholme Live Side: Mage
Tank DCed, so a feral DPS filled in.  He didn't have much survivability, but didn't seem to do anything obviously stupid.  Still, it caused some wipes and near-wipes, so the group eventually broke up.

Sethekk Halls: Hunter
The DK tank moved along at a good pace and seemed to know the pulls.  He did not break my traps when I'd throw them onto the mob that fears.  However the healer wasn't very good, for some reason using righteous fury and wearing some strength gear, and seeming to be incapable of healing anyone who wasn't the tank.  But that's  not a tank, so this run is a "good tank" overall.

Gundrak: Paladin
The paladin tank pulled at a good pace, though he seemed to have low aggro generation.  I couldn't find anything wrong with his spec (I once ran into a prot paladin without hammer of the righteous) and he wasn't just running in and auto-attacking one target, so I'll attribute the aggro problems to a gear difference between us.

Actually, while flying around Sholazar for my last farming runs before I get to 80 and Hyjal, I noticed that I have righteous fury up.  That's why I was pulling aggro.  I'm surprised the tank didn't say anything, given my habit of pulling aggro.  I should have noticed, but why would I expect to have righteous fury up?  It drops off when switching specs.  It must be leftover from when I was running a friend through Old Hillsbrad.  I'm a retard.

Culling of Stratholme: Paladin
Bear tank didn't seem to get the concept of constantly moving to get to the next set of mobs.

Culling of Stratholme: Paladin
Warrior tank moved along quickly and efficiently, holding excellent aggro.

Culling of Stratholme: Paladin
Warrior tank moved along quickly and efficiently, holding good aggro.

Utgarde Keep: Hunter
DK tank seemed new and not entirely sure what he was doing in terms of how to hold aggro or how much to pull.  He overpulled right after the first pair of enemies, blaming the near-wipe (he died, druid filled in) on blood boil being on CD, rather than having way too many mobs.  The druid then yelled at him in xbox english.  Yadd yadda yadda, tank didn't pull very well, death gripping melee rather than casters, getting us and himself killed, arguing with any advice.

On a side note, during the run a green grossbow dropped which was a huge upgrade.  Alas, due to having spirit (and agility), I was unable to roll need on it.  At the end, the boss dropped a 2h axe with strength and hit, which I could roll need on.  It seems that Blizzard should tweak their rules so that hunters can roll on any ranged weapon, regardless of the stats, and put strength on our 'ban list'.

One of Those People

My second-most hated activity in groups is silence in response to questions.  Questions like "why did you roll need on that?" or "can we do the boss over here?"  That second question could be answered with body language (pulling the boss over there), so maybe it's a bad example.  The first, well there's where it all began...

*swirling graphic with that sound that I can't quite type, like doodloo doodloo doodloo*

Despite having had it repeatedly demonstrated that every single other tank in LFD is a huge asshole or at best, total noob*, I nevertheless decided to relax a bit and queue as a DPS.  This was, of course, stupid, since dealing with random tanks is not relaxing.  It makes about as much sense as deciding to have a relaxing day at work by assigning all your responsibilities to a two-year-old child.  But I did it anyway, because I am stupid (note to haters: this is a great thing to take out of context, maybe reword to get something like "have a relaxing day at work by assigning all your responsibilities to a two-year-old child.  I did it... because I am stupid.")

*except the one DPS DK who I convinced to tank when the tank dropped and who did well enough and seemed to enjoy it, so I felt good about that.  And the warrior in that ZD run who told someone to take stairs and generally did everything correctly.  There were probably a couple other tolerable ones.  Of course then there was the DK who'd been assigned DPS (no idea how he was queued) and who kept using death grip, responding in /say with "I AM" when we asked if he wanted to tank and who, after we gave permission, then proceeded to do nothing different, including remaining in frost presence.

So there I was, in AN, which might stand for Azjol'nerub, which sounds spidery, so I bet that's it.  Things started off well, with me successfully recognizing that the bear was a druid and therefore I should do might instead of kings.  Then a one-handed mace with agility dropped, causing me to facepalm and wonder why they didn't make it an axe, seeing as agility is a shaman/rogue/hunter stat and all three classes could use an axe.  Also druids, apparently, since the druid tank then rolled need on it.  I told him that it wasn't a druid weapon.  And then asked for mark of the wild, since I'd noticed that my list of buffs wasn't sufficiently diverse (affirmative action gone mad).

This was when I got the no response.  I hate the no response.  Is it a bot?  A child ordered to never ever talk to the pedophiles lurking around every internet corner?  Are they incapable of typing and tanking?  Or are they just an asshole who doesn't think the legitimate point that one-handed maces are not good druid weapons is worth responding to?  Correct responses would have included :"oops, misread that", "transmog", and "sorry, thought I was on my shaman".  Note that the mace lacked any stamina and was lower DPS than his current green 2h.

My first-most hated activity in groups is unnecessary hostility in response to reasonable questions and comments. I interrupt this post to link Big Bear Butt and the remarkable example which he presented to us, seemingly while I was writing this post.

For example, a warrior the other day was at about 12% of damage done (in a 5-man, with other DPS in the 20s) and was disappointed about it, but got mad when we pointed out that intellect is useless to warriors and that his talents weren't chosen well (we said it nicely).  He insisted he needed better gear, which made no sense, since he had at least some quest items (agility ring?  strength? intellect!), meaning that he wasn't undergeared, he was stupidgeared.

Eventually a response comes, something like "no one cares" from the tank and "shut the fuck up" from the healer (in the same guild).  That wasn't on the list of correct responses, which while not an exhaustive list, does cover the general concepts of mistakes and transmog.  I pointed out that it was worse, yielding "duel wield" as a response.  That's when I suggested that maybe he'd mixed himself up with an enhancement shaman, prompting more profanity from the priest.  I should note that despite my searching, the druid appeared not to have used any profanity and may have ultimately just been someone who misread, but was overshadowed by a total asshole of a priest in his guild.

We jumped down the long long hole to the water.  The druid died.  Someone asked how.  I replied "karma".  In the meantime one of the DPS whispered me to stop arguing because they were trying to kick me.  Why?  Why is it that the person who points out that someone is a dick is the one who gets blamed, rather than the dick?  So the druid made a mistake, that's fine!  Say it was a mistake and tell your friend to chill out about the profanity.  I won't say problem solved, but maybe problem sedated.

Who am I kidding?  I really am just stupid, thinking that there is any point to pointing out dickish or stupid behavior.  For every "oops" there are a dozen replies of "shut the fuck up".  It's all just a bunch of randoms in randoms, who don't give a damn where they are or who they play with, beyond bringing along a guildy or two to provide an r-rating for the run.

I started writing this post thinking that I would single out the druid or priest as "one of those people" and complain about the jerks who sneak in to ruin the game for everyone else.  But that would be wrong.  I am "one of those people", the person who won't shut up, keep his head down, and ignore the widespread anti-social activity, ruining the facerolling reward parade for everyone else.  Sorry.

Every benefit has a cost

Imagine that I said something like "I think groups were better, meaning more polite and patient, before cross-realm randoms."  Someone will inevitably respond by claiming that I am an elitist who doesn't care about casual players and fifteen hour wait times for dungeons.  And then I'll delete their comment for being worthless crap.

Having single-server groups had a cost in terms of time.  It also had benefits.  Similarly, random groups are faster, but have a social cost.  Some people value one more than the other or may have diminishing returns on one.  For example, I'd gladly trade my instant queues for 15 minute queues (in the form of yelling in trade chat) if it meant that my groups weren't filled with jerks.  Going from group of jerks to not group of jerks is a big upgrade, whereas adding 15 minutes to the wait time isn't a very big deal to me.  If it is to you, then fine, encourage the system that encourages jerks, if that's what you think will maximize your fun.  I will, of course, argue with you.  After all, I am paying the same $15 a month (I've always wanted to be able to say that right back to the "you're elitist and I pay $15 a month" crowd).

We've had the grand experiment with anonymity.  We've seen the proliferation of unrestrained jerkery.  We know have the information to make an informed decision, based on our own personal values, on how much we value one aspect over another.  We know the time gain from the cross realm randoms and we know the social cost of that time gain.  Was it worth it?

Not every cost has a benefit.

Should LFR form 10-man raids?

Currently, LFR forms 25-man raids. This has benefits and costs. Let's look at those.

Speed of raid formation
We know from random heroics that there is a relative shortage of tanks and healers. In a perfectly balanced system everyone would see approximately the same queue times, slightly above zero and varying with time, due to random variation in the number of tanks, healers, and DPS online at a given time. The average wait time of any role would be the same as any other. Obviously this is not the case.

25-man raids shift the required ratio of tanks, healers, and DPS. While only one or two more tanks may be needed, as well as more healers, the majority of the increase in raid size is from DPS. The overall ratio swings away from tanks+healers toward DPS, which may more closely match the overall population ratio. In contrast, 10-man raiding can simply double the requirements, leaving the general balance approximately the same. This means that we can expect 25-man raids to form more quickly than 10-man raids.

Or can we?

Let's imagine that players queue in at random times, and also randomly fail to accept the created raid (the dreaded red check mark followed by another few minutes of waiting). If two tanks, two healers, and six DPS are queued up, that's a 10-man right there. If we add more DPS, they don't have a group until we've added so many that a 25-man forms. That means waiting, which means more time for people to get bored and drop out, meaning a longer wait to form the raid.

The critical factor here is the size of the queued population. If it is small, then the 10-man raid will form more quickly, while a large queued population will make 25-man raids quicker on average by bringing in more of the overflow of DPS. Note that this does not mean the population that wants to use LFR. Players already in a raid are not queued and are therefore not available to form additional raids.  I'll come back to the logic, or lack thereof, of this later.

 Quality of Experience
I think I might enjoy LFR more if it formed ten-man raids.  With the current 25 it becomes a giant mess of players, crammed into small spaces, lagging out anyone with a low-end computer, and feeling like a zerg-fest rather than a raid.  Switching to a ten-man format could alleviate this problem.  Individuals could feel slightly more accountable and important, but with heavy nerfing they would have to try just as hard to wipe the raid.

On the other hand, that was some terrible math that I didn't do
If the overall population trying to raid is out-of-proportion with the 10-man raid size, there are going to be longer queues, even if each group forms faster, because each group is smaller.  It would be faster movement through a narrower pipe, and a pipe that for some reason blocks half the DPS from entering.

For this, I suggest a hybrid model: Form 10-man raids by default, but if the DPS backlog grows too large, form 25-man raids until it has been reduced.  This would put the average raid size and composition somewhere between 10 and 25, allowing it to more closely match the overall ratio of players.  If there are a lot of DPS one night, it will skew toward 25 to let in more, while if the DPS are lower, it will create 10-man raids.  This wouldn't help much with any imbalance between tanks and healers.

The hybrid model should result in faster queue times for everyone, better matching the requirements of the raids to the available population.  As an added bonus, it could give Blizzard a way to measure how many people actually want to raid in each role.  If the queue times between roles are more similar, then players will be more likely to play the role which is most fun, with less distortion from queue times.  In the future  Blizzard could use that information to form better raid sizes and ratios of tanks, healers, and DPS.  Imagine that, having data on what people want to play based on what they do, rather than what they say they want to do, or what they do when we provide a distorted incentive system.  It's like science!  But sadly, with fewer lasers.

Giving LFR Another Chance, to yet again shock me with the conduct of other players

We all know the pattern too well, something drops and anyone who can roll need does. I got into a conversation with someone in the raid about this, through whispers (which is why I am not mentioning legions of trolls). They explained that they so often see items ninjaed for vendor or self-DE that they roll need on everything they can, to use as bargaining chips. It's pretty obvious what this leads to: everyone rolls need so they have the bargaining they need to get what they actually need, along with a significant number of people who are just being exceptionally greedy.

What triggered the conversation was the person winning the roll on the rogue helm token in Dragon Soul. Then it was capped off by them again winning the dagger at the end. The dagger which would have been a significant upgrade for me, though I did at least have the pair from ZG, so I wasn't exactly destroyed by it. The helm though, I was still running with a 333 blue. They had a far better helm and far better weapon than what they won.

Pretty bad, isn't it?

If I tell you facts, but leave out other facts which would dramatically alter your perception of the situation, is that lying? I think so. But let's call it dramatic effect since I'm giving the rest now.

The other rogue opened trade and gave me the token. No bargaining, just a line about how I needed it a lot more than them. This was something they said they did, rolling need not just for bargaining, but so people who actually needed the items got an extra shot at them. I was stunned at the selflessness of it. But, it also made me a bit sad, that players have to go out of their way, inspecting others to see who truly needs, and using the mechanics of the ninjas, to accomplish this.

They also traded the dagger to me.

Sometimes, human decency and altruism can overcome the flaws of a system and the flaws of people. Sometimes people are good, even when we expect the absolute opposite.

LFD needs more options for group formation

What are you trying to do when you use the LFD tool?

"Find a group" is the simple, useless answer. It only leads to the question, "What is the group for?" So let's ask that, what is the group for?

I'm not the first person to suggest that LFD have style options, such as "quick badges" or "reputation". But I'm suggesting those again. I don't think they go far enough. For players running BC content, they may want a group with only level 70s, in order to get justice points from bosses. Add a "level 70 only" option. A similar option may be useful for players who want to stay at 80.

Another option could be "incomplete groups", meaning that if there is a shortage of DPS, which I've seen at some levels, a group may be formed with only two DPS rather than the usual three. The group would be able to start the instance but would stay in the queue, exactly like if you had formed a group and a player left. This would allow groups to form much more quickly in low-population levels and content, such as in the level 70 and 80 heroics. Usually it is a healer which is missing, but I have seen groups with a healer, tank, and two DPS, but unable to start because of a third, despite being fully capable of completing the instance.

Since this could result in many DPS being dropped into partial instances which they might not want, add an option for "no bosses dead", so that players are not dropped into incomplete instances and then possibly saved to a failing group. Or dropped into an instance where they boss they needed is already dead. However, add a slight bonus if players join an instance in progress, so that partially-cleared instances do not become impossible to complete due to lack of players.

Unfortunately, this may end up adding so many new features and options that the tool becomes unwieldy or fails to form groups. If I pick "speed run" and "no bosses dead" am I going to be stuck waiting forever? What if I pick "only level 70" but not "partial groups"? Is that an option? The way Blizzard displays this options and features would matter, whether we can see all our options and have some sense of how they will affect the speed of forming a group, as well as how they might interact. Having a long checklist of options may result in too many players segmented off, which may mean that Blizzard has to make some mutually exclusive or inclusive, so that "level 70 only" mandates "partial groups" while "speed run" is not an option.

In the ideal situation, there would be such a perfect ratio of tanks, healers, and DPS, and in a sufficient total population, that no options would be needed beyond picking a role and picking a location. If we don't like the group we get, we can drop and try again, with little time lost for anyone. Sadly, we play in a world of shortages, which reduce our flexibility, so we need tools to compensate. We're left picking between a lot of imperfect fixes.

LFR: It's like LFD with 20 trash-talking bots

Part of why I started up WoW again was for science, and by science I mean so I could evaluate WoW with firsthand information. Actually my original goal was more of the "let's get facts to justify what I'm already saying", but then I went and had a good bit of fun at the start. That just ruined everything.

I actually found myself having decent experiences in the random groups. At this point players seem to be overgeared enough that things feel approximately as trivialized as they did in late LK (post-LFD). But the players aren't acting the same.

Oh sure, there have been those sort of people. You know the sort: the DK who drops group after saying everyone else sucks or the person who is really insistent that we skip the extra boss, which makes no sense at all for a DPS who isn't maxed on justice gear. What are you in a rush to do, wait around for another long queue? Stick around and get more points; it's as if you got a quarter of an instance with no queue. And leveling instances resulted in a few bad apples.

Beside that though, people have been pretty chill. Sometimes quiet, sometimes with a hello, though rarely with any actual conversation. Still, it seems a lot better than what I remember from LK, with very little "go go go", gear-bashing, or whining in general. I've seen some wipes and people tended to just run back and try again, sometimes with a bit of chatter about what to fix, sometimes with whoever made the mistake seeming to recognize and fix it without any more issues. I can't really say it's any better than bots, but it is at least not any worse, which is a huge step up from what I experienced in early Cata and post-LFD LK.

For a casual player I can see that being a good bit of fun. Do a few of these a week and max out valor, get some bits of gear, kill some stuff, get honor points for no apparent reason. Maybe run a few of the less-boring dailies. I can see that being worth $15 a month for a lot of people.

I don't know quite what changed to fix LFD. Maybe all the idiots quit after early Cata heroics killed them a few too many times. But I don't think they quit. Instead, they just found a new place to ruin:

Random raids!

I ran Dragon Soul. It felt like a bunch of people running around aimlessly, with no consequence for their failures, trash-talking everyone else. I ran as DPS, but of course was I watching the tanks and I didn't see them dealing with anything particularly interesting. It was a perfectly awful combination of boring and chaotic. I felt like I was in a casino with no money, so all I could do was wander around and see how the RNG was treating other people, with no actual impact on anything.

At the end I got a cool new trinket. I'm not sure of the point. What is this gear meant to do? Am I supposed to be gearing up for guild raids? In that case, why the hell am I running this gimped mess pretending to be a raid? It's not as if there is anything to learn when the mechanics do nothing and the raid is uncoordinated. It felt like a vertical scroller, except I never lost and never won, I just got pushed past everything regardless of what I did. Then I got a trinket and an achievement. I skipped the last cutscene because I'd seen it before. Maybe that was the problem, that I'd already watched the final cutscene, because in the end, I realized that that was the only worthwhile thing in the entire run.

Three months ago I said "If you want to see content, go to YouTube." I thought I was exaggerating a little, being a elitist a little, but generally being right. Turns out I was 100% correct. I would have been better off watching a YouTube video stringing together the cutscenes with a few clips of actual raiders doing bits of the fights so I could hear Deathwing yell about the end of the world. There was nothing gained by actually 'being there', because in effect, I wasn't there. I was just one of a bunch of pointless jackasses running around pretending to be good at something that was so heavily nerfed that it is hard to be bad.

I don't think LFR was poorly-implemented. Good raiding is incompatible with quickly-formed random groups of people with no connection. Good raiding requires overcoming a challenge with cooperation. These groups aren't very good at that and have little incentive to try. It's not that random groups cannot coordinate, I failed to mention an extremely good Blackrock Caverns group I had, but increasing the scale, in terms of players, complexity, and time, makes it exponentially harder to coordinate and to identify mistakes. If we had wiped, I think that would have been a failure on the part of the devs, because such a setback has no place in that setting. LFR is the best it can be.

I'm grateful for LFR. If it cleaned out LFD, then it saved me a whole lot of annoyance and made my couple weeks so far a lot more fun than I expected. It successfully sorted players out, removing the swarms of loot-whores and noobs from LFD, leaving that mainstay of the soloist and newb as a safer place. As a newb, based on my gear and all the stuff that changed, I needed that. If LFD had been the same thing it was in early Cata, I might have stopped a week ago. Now they just need to make an even higher level of trivial, over-rewarded content to filter out LFR for when new players start going in there too...

People who want to be where they are

Why would a level 70 be in a BC heroic? Or a 74? Yesterday I decided to try something different on my mage and queued for a BC random heroic.

Surprisingly, I not only found a group, but found it pretty quickly. But that wasn't the best part. The people were.

I didn't run into a single rude or "go go go" type person. No one complained about gear except for one brief mention of a tank's gear, who had a grey belt, but no drama come from it.

We had mistakes and bad pulls. People died. But no one whined or raged. Why?

They were all people who wanted to be where they were. They could get more xp and better loot in LK instances. BC randoms don't even give points, just a bit of gold and bonus xp. They would only go there if they actually wanted to run BC heroics. Maybe it was for achievements or to see what they hadn't seen before. Maybe it was nostalgia. Maybe it was for something other than the same three or four LK randoms. Whatever it was, the basic fact remained that they were not in places for some quick external reward, but for something in the instance itself.

I'd never tried this before. I didn't even know it was possible. And that may be the problem. People will run lower-reward, higher-fun (subjective, of course) content, if they know it is possible.

Maybe the most important thing I learned from this experience is that even with the anonymous cross-server grouping, putting like-minded people in the same place is possible and yields a better experience. But I already knew this!

My mage is now level 63* and has never been to Outland... He's found a handful of groups, most of which were populated by players above level 58. That means that players who could be running Outland for bags of useful items, higher xp, and short queues, are instead specifically queuing for older instances. There are players specifically choosing older content with fewer tangible rewards (in a virtual sense)... Players are specifically choosing to run these instances and are exhibiting unusually high levels of patience for pulling speed and tolerance for wiping... I have to give some credit to the cross-server group-making tool. Without it I'm not sure there would be the population needed to form groups at all.

-The Death of Vanilla has been very extremely overexaggerated to a high degree

This was the mage who, well here's the start of an earlier post

In the past I've complained about people skipping content with the obsolescence of every raid that isn't ICC and heirlooms to speed through leveling. I decided to go a step further and do that to an entire expansion of content.

My mage is now level 68. He has never been to Outland.

-Being a hypocrite in my own special way: Octonde of Azeroth

I think I might do this again on my next mage (she's the one I talk about earlier in the post). I don't like Seahorse Land much, so if Hyjal doesn't tick, that could be my plan: run BC randoms until they run out, then run LK heroics until they run out.

bbad healer

This run started off with me on the tank's side. There had been a warrior who, as I saw it, ran in and aggroed way too many mobs, then died because the tank didn't grab them soon enough. He tried to kick the tank, I voted against, and then he left (or maybe was kicked; I'd have voted for it). So poor tank, the guy has to deal with idiots like that. Well, he then proceeded to be terribly slow at getting any aggro at all on mobs that weren't his primary target. But whatever, new tanks can have that problem, particularly DKs, who are start late.

Then this happened.


Full story: He runs all over the place rounding up the back half of that room. At some point during it I lose internet for a couple minutes. I come back dead, not a surprise given what he'd done and the lack of my DPS (not bragging, just that if you do a big pull, it doesn't help to lose a major source of AoE ten seconds in). So I release and run back. When I said my first two lines, neither the tank nor the healer had released.

I wasn't sure why he'd want to kick the healer. Did he not heal well? Maybe not, but let's face it, expecting to survive that pull was asking a lot (it's not as if these were a bunch of ICC-geared people in a random heroic when we'd not even need the healer, or the DPS).

I explained that it was standard practice and basic politeness to run back if all the rezers were dead, that it is faster. The hunter (his guild member) called me a fag, because well, duh.

We moved along and the tank continued to try to kick with "bbad healer" as the reason. Considering we'd not wiped without he or the warrior acted stupidly, I just wasn't seeing the case for it. Maybe he was bad. I just wasn't seeing any tangible evidence for it. I did die on the second boss pair, but that's what happens when the warrior one is raised and the tank ignores it, regardless of what the healer does. Mages just are not good at tanking dual-wielding bosses.

Well on we went and somehow, the vote to kick passed right before the last boss. I can't figure out why the other DK went along with it. And that's the bullshit we have these days. Anonymous assholes fucking over anonymous nobodies who did nothing wrong, with no means for retribution or feedback. Oh sure, you could go to their server and yell at them, but I'm imagining that ending with a harassment report, and not in the correct direction.

On the upside, fire is really fun in instances!

The Libertarian LFD Plot to Murder You

Nation, we all know that this nation was founded based on a recognition of equality, namely, fuck that, why would we give the vote to poor people and women? We called it liberty and it was great. But, ever since that Big Government anti-liberty Jew* named Abraham Lincoln came in, I've lost my right to private property, by which I of course mean Negros.

* He had a beard and was named Abraham, so I'm pretty sure he was Jewish. Not that there's anything wrong with them. I have no problem with shadowy empires of wealth controlling the world.

But I wanted to talk to you about Looking for Groups, Dungeons, Raids, and how I get to murder you if I feel like it. So let's get right to that.

As we all know, I am the only one that matters. I know this because I said it's true and I'm the one that matters. Or maybe I read it in a book by some Russian Hollywood type, and you know how they are, and have been mindlessly parroting it ever since. Anyway, I matter and you don't. So when I go into groups, I look out for me, as number one, and everyone else can worry about themselves, though frankly I can't decide if they're too pitiful to worry about or too pitiful to be worth being worried about by. It's sort of like the question of whether God can make a rock so heavy he cannot lift it, except it's more like whether the rest of you scum are so scummy as to not even be worth your own existence. Because you're not me.

My point is this: Cheating you is not wrong, because it benefits me, and as we all know, the ideal is for everyone to look out for themselves. This is the foundation of capitalism, which has brought prosperity that those backward people of the past could never imagine, because they were too busy imagining silly concepts like whether anyone else matters. You see, it is just basic economics that if everyone looks out for themselves, a term known as rational self-interest, everyone them makes mutually beneficial transaction that make everyone better off.

Obviously that's a stupid idea. Why would I, looking out for myself, worry about whether we are better off overall? That's the job of socialists. I'm concerned about myself. So, with this in mind, I am going to take all I can for myself and if I'm feeling generous, hire someone to shoot you if you get uppity, rather than doing it myself. See, I'm a job creator. The deal is simple, help me keep down the rest of the rabble and I'll let you live. That sort of free enterprise entrepreneurship is the foundation of a healty economy. Note that I said a healthy economy, not a healthy you, so quit whining about the carcinogens.

Speaking of carcinogens: I get to poison you. It's very simple. First, I open a factory that emits toxic fumes and dumps whatever is left over in the water. I can do this because I employ a few people, which makes it job creation, and therefore okay. Then I realize that my scheme was flawed, so I sell it off to a firm that can cut costs and turn a profit. Being a job creator, I start my own firm and bring in investors. By investors I of course mean the money from the pension that I'd promised to workers of my factory. I use that money to buy my factory from myself, making me rich, and giving the workers' pension a worthless asset, which I then buy from them cheaply when the company is liquidated. Of course to cut costs I laid off those workers and with all the paperwork they'd have been unable to collect the pension anyway, so it's not like they lost anything. Now I have a giant building that puts toxic waste into the air and water, slowly poisoning you to death. You can't do anything about it because I am, theoretically, a job creator.

Or I could just cut out the middle man and start burning bricks of sulfur on my front lawn while children are walking to their socialist public school. If you complain by ringing my doorbell, I will take that as a sign of aggressive trespassing, a clear violation of my few remaining rights to property and privacy, and get to shoot you. That's the beauty of libertarianism, it gives me the right to poison children and murder you if you say anything about it.

You may wonder how this is relevant to LFD. That's because you haven't been paying attention.

What we're seeing here is a concept known as an externality, which is, roughly speaking, when an interaction has effects on individuals beyond those directly involved in the interaction. Think of it like if I am in a gunfight with a Negro and he misses, because they hold their guns weird, so the bullet that was supposed to hit me instead hits an innocent bystander. Notice how despite both of us aiming at each other, a third party was still hurt. Now we could point out that the problem is that a Negro has a gun, a set of perfectly acceptable state-level laws which should have never been repealed, but that's just the limit of the analogy. The problem is that everything has effects beyond the one single interaction, such sulfur dioxide or flammable drinking water.

If people focus solely on their own well-being, then they will fail to account for externalities. I obviously won't, because being able to pollute makes my operations cheaper. You won't because I've lied to you for years about how the unregulated market is perfect and thanks to a terrible education system mixed with just enough racism, you believe it and think that getting strange forms of cancer at age 35 is either normal or caused by gay people, depending on whether we're having our two minute hate, also known as a Santorum rally.

Within the context of LFD or LFR, this means that, contrary to the supposed goals of individualism, no one will take any personal responsibility, but will instead look out for themselves by heaping as much blame and pain on others as is possible. That's the great irony of hyper-individualism, by promoting total disregard for others, it ignores any personal responsibility. Why would I take the blame for my own problems when I can blame you and put the cost on you? I will ninja all I want and it will be your problem, not mine. I will wipe us and blame you. I will ditch the group if I perceive the slightest possible upset and won't care, because all the cost of that action is borne by you, not me. With no system to hold me accountable, I certainly won't, and you won't be able to.

And that's why I'm a libertarian in LFD.

I can hear you now, screaming that I'm just a strawman libertarian, that real libertarians would never poison children for personal gain, that they take responsibility for what they say and do. And I laugh. Please, tell me, if we're all going to be free, who can tell me to do anything else? Not government, of course, that would be excessive regulation, which which I mean any regulation. Not society, because you're all just a bunch of rabble who, of you had any actual power, would be here with me, defending it.

I want to share with you what I call the Flower of Liberty.

No, you're not the flower. You're in the middle and the petals are all my private property, which you don't get to cross. You are, of course, free from any government rules, taxes, or regulation. But don't cross my property lines.

Be free, little one. And hold your breath if the wind shifts; the southern flowers have the sulfur burners.

Because it's easier to target an ultralisk than eleven million zerglings

Green Armadillo over at Player vs. Developer has a post up that you should read. Short version: Klepsacovic is wrong because he blames cross-server when the real problem is the lack of focus (by the devs and therefore players) on anything beside loot. Certainly a legitimate point.

Cross-server groups are not the cause of forced integration. Nor are they the cause of people wanting to hurry through instances. But they are the cause of other problems: social problems, or more accurately, the loss of social factors which helped to moderate some of the loot-caused problems.

What did same-server groups ever do for us, anyway? Beside aqueducts.

Let's go through a scenario of a really awful, miserable PUG. Zone in and, oh look, that guy has terrible gear. These days that means he's going to slow you down. But what if instead that meant a potential guild recruit? Invite him, throw him some otherwise disenchanted scraps, and maybe you've gained a member. Not guaranteed, but there is that little mitigating factor, so maybe we're just that much less annoyed by his gear.

Someone has screwed up and now you're all dead. Frustrating, isn't it? But look, some people have stayed. Hm. Perhaps the person who doesn't ditch an instance on the first wipe might do the same in a raid. Worth seeing if they need a guild. Again, not a guaranteed gain, but a slight possible benefit from what would currently be a purely bad situation.

Did that other guy just ninja all the loot? What an ass. Thankfully, since he's on our server, we can at least flame him in trade chat. I've seen people get gkicked for that sort of behavior. Of course now there's zero ability to retaliate. That lack of ability to retaliate, that lack of consequences, encourages future bad behavior.

What is going on here? Are players forgetting about loot? No. Never. But what is happening is that there is some degree to which future loot is dependent on behavior now. Reputations can matter when we're not all perpetual strangers.

Social factors are not a cure-all. They will not perfectly fix related problems and will have no benefit at all for unrelated problems. But they can have a positive effect. A limited effect, perhaps, but it would be folly to simply ignore them because they are not the entire problem.

Of course the big problem remains the loot-obsession, but I don't see that getting fixed ever in WoW. It's the foundation of the game at this point. Maybe it's not even a problem except in the eyes of a vocal and whiny minority.

Let's pretend we get to fix one big thing. What are we going to do? Beside loot, there is the problem of what to do to give raiders something to do if they aren't raiding. Apparently not logging in isn't a solution.

But whatever the solution is, I'm going to be looking at the developers to fix it, not the players, since it's easier to target an ultralisk than eleven million zerglings.

Hello, person I met in the middle of nowhere

So there I was, in the Silithus desert...

I want to talk about solo-friendly MMO gaming. What is it? Why? How? Marshmallows.

Why would anyone want a solo-friendly MMO?
I see two reasons. First, it keeps scheduling flexibility. If I log on before my friends and guildies (but not so long before that we're in "get a different guild" territory) I won't want to sit around bored. Give me something to do while I wait for my friends.

Second, a person may simply desire to be alone at the moment. Maybe they want to kill some foozles without needing someone around. They're just not feeling social. This may seem like a strange situation to accommodate for a game type based on multi-player play, but everyone has their lonely moods and it is potentially profitable to be able to keep people playing in your (dev/comapny's) world, rather than going somewhere else and learning something awful like "they don't need you."

How do we make a solo-friendly MMO?
I see two general methods. One is the obvious one: make quests and content easy enough to be done alone by most or all classes and specs. Most gathering and crafting fits this model, with relatively few recipes needing materials that don't come from the corresponding gathering profession. Except engineering. Most quests also fit this model. Note that this model fits will with either reason for soloing: unavailability of friends and desire to be alone.

There is the opposite approach as well: make groups easy enough and quick enough to find using in-game tools and social aspects that a player does not need to be with their guild to participate in group content. This can come in two forms: tools and location.

Tools are things like LFG channel (I miss thee), the early LFG tool (LFG three heroics, plus all the other ones that I cannot select because apparently no one actually tested this for anything but bugs), and the current LFD tool (LFG anything, just don't talk to me). Oh and the elite quest grouping tool. Lol. Or was that part of the LFG tool that no one used for anything beside instances? These served the function of putting people with common goals in contact with each other when they might not have otherwise (especially cross-server). They're really great at what they do.

Location means putting them in the same place. If I'm struggling to kill elite bugs here and you're struggling to kill elite bugs there, maybe we could work together and not struggle. What a crazy idea. This works well when we're both in Silithus. If I'm in Silithis and you're in Blasted Lands, not so much. The idea here is that players will naturally congregate in certain areas for similar goals and the challenges in those areas will be such that they can play alone, but will notice a significant benefit from working together. You might have noticed that I am using Silithus as an example, probably because it's a good one: hives filled with elite bugs and multiple boss-level mobs that could be summoned, one type even requiring a small raid to beat. Note that this has changed a lot since then: at 85 you can solo all of it and the bugs are no longer elites anyway.

Solo-friendly does not have to mean trivial
Like the bold words say: solo-friendly does not have to mean trivial. The previously mentioned bugs were not easy to solo. They could be, so you don't need friends, or anyone at all, to quest there. For me they're a convincing piece of evidence for the location method of solo-friendly play. You can play alone. You can play on a random schedule and play with whoever you happen to run into, which you are likely to do because a meaningful, useful location is going to be a popular spot.

In other words, a game can be solo-friendly without discouraging grouping or encouraging sociopathic behavior. However rigid quest structures and the anonymous, reward-driven LFD system, each do at least one of those.

Bias LFD in favor of same-server

Cross realm dungeons are a very good thing. If you've ever logged in at times when no one is on, such as as I'm writing this (10:40 CST), you might have noticed that things are quiet. Too quiet. That's the sound caused by 90% of the player population being at work, school, or unemployed and already too drunk to remember what a computer is. The remaining 10% are 90% bots and 10% sick people, 'sick' people, and unemployed who can no longer afford alcohol.

This makes it very hard to form a group based on only the population of a single realm. To make it worse, a low population or highly imbalanced realm can be like this all the time. So clearly forming groups across servers will help get things rolling.

But there is a problem: It's on all the time. When it's 8PM and approximately the population of Greece is online at the same time, it is not hard to form groups from a single realm. At that time he cross-realm ability is unnecessary and serves only one function: to group up people who will never meet again and therefore have zero interest in each other or their reputation. Cue ninjas, assholes, ninja-justifiers, and more assholes.

Add a few seconds to queues. Use this time to delay group formation to see if players from the same realm will appear. As players come on, shuffle the order slightly to group up players of the same realm. On average queues would be unchanged, pushed up sometimes, pushed down sometimes. On average groups would have more players from the same realm.

This system should have three goals. First, use the cross-server element when needed for rapid group formation. Second, keep the group formation tool for convenience and speed. Third, bring together players of the same server more frequently without removing or ignoring the previous two goals. In other words, telling people to use trade chat isn't the solution.

P.S. If you read my blog obsessively like I do you might have noticed that most of this is copied from an older post. I did that because starting a post with a Godwin's Law attack on subatomic particles often distracts from the actual point of the post.

Cross Realm LFD is for Nazi Neutrons

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Neutrons are greedy bastards. They pretend they're so essential for buffering the repulsing effects of too many protons in an atom, but we all know that's just a lot of made-up BS. I mean, they're just protons who decided to hoard not just an electron, which you notice all the other protons don't mind sharing, but also a neutrino which they claim is maseless but we all know that's just them pretending "Oh this neutrino? This old thing? I mean, it barely weighs a thing! You wouldn't want one of these."

My point is this: Cross realm dungeon finder needs some tweaking because in the current implementation it is the favored tool of Neutrons who are directly responsible for nuclear explosions, which are highly sought after by terrorists. Yes, there is a link between cross-realm LFD and terrorism, you just read it.

Cross realm dungeons are a very good thing. If you've ever logged in at times when no one is on, such as as I'm writing this (2:30 CST), you might have noticed that things are quiet. Too quiet. That's the sound caused by 90% of the player population being at work, school, or unemployed and already too drunk to remember what a computer is. The remaining 10% are 90% bots and 10% sick people, 'sick' people, and unemployed who can no longer afford alcohol.

This makes it very hard to form a group based on only the population of a single realm. To make it worse, a low population or highly imbalanced realm can be like this all the time. So clearly forming groups across servers will help get things rolling. But there is a problem: these groups are formed primarily from sick people, lazy people, and unemployed people who desperately wish to be drunk.

Okay the real problem: It's on all the time. When it's 8PM and approximately the population of Greece is online at the same time, it is not hard to form groups from a single realm. At that time he cross-realm ability is unnecessary and serves only one function: to group up people who will never meet again and therefore have zero interest in each other or their reputation. Cue ninjas, assholes, ninja-justifiers, and more assholes.

At this point there tend to be two responses. The first is that I can still make groups the old fashioned way, at which point I call them stupid for saying something stupid and pointless. The second is someone asks why I want to delete cross realms and should we go back to needing to wait at summoning stones to form groups while typing over Chuck Norris jokes in Barrens chat? Same reaction as before.

I propose literally doubling the tank queue time. Yes, add an entire second. Use this second to delay group formation to see if players from the same realm will appear. As players come on, shuffle the order slightly to group up players of the same realm. On average queues would be unchanged, pushed up sometimes, pushed down sometimes, but never by very far. But on average groups would have more players from the same realm.

Technology cannot fix social problems, but it can cause them and if we are conscious of that, we can design technology to be less disruptive or disruptive in positive ways.

Guilds, Servers, Communities

Community used to be based on servers. We had our server and that was where we were, so all our actions were in our own back yard. Or to better fit my next analogy, our servers were our homes. Only a desperate, or awfully trained, dog will shit in the house.

Before battlegrounds PvP was based on the actual open realm. Then we had battlegrounds which put the same population in a box of some sort, which pushed out some of the world PvP types, but in general did not radically alter the composition of the group by excluding large parts or adding outsiders. People knew the other people on their server, including in the battlegrounds. Then came cross-realm BGs and areas which diluted the population and shifted a lot of focus away from battlegrounds. Battlegrounds ceased to be *ahem*, serious business.

PvE was still based on the server. Then came cross-realm LFD which pushed heroics and regular instances off the server. As with BGs, one can still make server-only groups, but they come at a significant cost of time and the loss of the 5% damage/healing/health buff.

The importance of the server as a foundation for community has been further eroded by easier and easier server transfers, name changes, and faction changes. Location and identity mean less.

In essence we're all in the public part and dogs are shitting all over the place. There are no owners with old newspaper bags in their pockets, so it just gets left there. The community stinks.

Blizzard seems to be trying to fix this by expanding guilds. With guild levels and reputation we are encouraged to stay in guilds. Nice thought, but nonsense.

With this change guilds cease to be a convenience for the sake of communication with a selected group. Once upon a time being unguilded wasn't a stupid idea. It was a choice with no major incentive one way or another. Now guilds are reputation, experience, and gold boosters. Now being guildless is stupid.

Is this going to improve the community? I doubt it. Utilitarian structures, which is what guilds are now, do not improve community. Instead they put players in a bad position: join a guild, any guild, just get in a guild, or you're hurting yourself. Oh and if you don't like the guild, you'd better find a new one before you leave, but that's okay, you can easily find a guild that just wants bodies to help cap their daily rep.

Notice how in this scenario no one cares about who is in the guild or who you are? They don't even care if you're skilled, just if you're playing.

This is not a way to build a strong community.

But let's be optimistic and pretend that we will all care for our guild and its members. We all huddle in and shut the door and stay in there. Why would we ever leave? PUGs are just a source of frustration. Thanks to cross-realm LFD they aren't a place to find new members. We're definitely not going to try making a server-only group, since it's probably just filled with people who can't get their own guild runs, and who wants those sort of people?

So we put up our walls and fences and keep the riff-raff out. It'll be like our own virtual Brazil, complete with segregation and unusually sexualized women.

Nothing is free. All the convenience we demanded of shorter queues and automated group formation, they came at a price. As I will suggest tomorrow, this price can be reduced, but we cannot rely on automatic anonymous groups and expect to have any server community and with no server community things will only get progressively worse.

I can't help wonder how many new players were tricked. Did they join WoW expecting to find a world to explore and a community to join? Or did they join expecting a hamster wheel of loot and a whole lot of dog shit?

After I write posts like this I ask myself why I still play. It's the friends. A very few of us who have been together for years. Does that contradict my entire post? No. Not at all. I think it confirms it. It confirms that people need social ties. But a handful of friends are not a community; it's a clique. Is that the future of WoW, a giant mass of cliques who cannot bear to interact with others?

Leave the group!

If you have to go in the middle of a PUG, leave the group and alt-f4. That way they don't have to waste a vote to kick you.

Taking speed makes us not want to be around you

I know you like to go fast and furious and just bam bam bam, fast lane fast life bam bam bam, but it pushes us away. You weren't always like this. We used to have fun without it. We used to have fun. Now you're just...

You've changed. We can't keep up with you when you're like this. You're obsessive and pushy and rude. It's as if you cannot bear to keep still.

I liked it when we just drank. You know, fill up and keep it flowing and have some water so we don't crash. Good times.

We could meet people back then. Talk a bit. Sure it wasn't always coherent, but I feel like you can't even string a sentence together anymore. No one wants to be around you when you're like this. So we're all just rushing around trying to be done with it but it's never fast enough for you.

We all like to move, but you're just so damn twitchy. And if you see a gap you just, just go in, like you can't stand to be near us either. Like we can't even stick together.

Speed is messing you up and I can't stand it anymore.