The Average Player is...

Terrible, lazy, mindless, stupid...

But my guild isn't so bad. They work together and are pretty decent at the game. They're not perfect, but given how unimaginably awful the community is, it's impressive that I managed to surround myself with so many non-terrible people.

I bet you have similar experiences. I'm sure that readers of this blog are mostly in guilds that, while not always great, will typically not be described as bad. Again, it's remarkable that this blog has managed to attract so many people who are surrounded by non-terrible people, given the endless sea of horrible people.

Just look at LFR. I just want to go run something without having to coordinate too much or worry too much about mechanics and what do I get stuck with? A bunch of mindless noobs who don't listen and keep standing in the fire.

Farewell, Brawler's Guild

Since The Great Betrayal soon after Cataclysm, I've been a bit spotty on the raiding front. My rogue did some in Cataclysm, but mostly LFR and I saw nothing outside of Dragon Soul beside a few wipes on whatever the first boss in the first raid was. Mists of Pandaria has mostly been LFR for me, because finding guilds is not my strong point and I'm not interested in PUG raids.

As a result, I've been missing on the challenge high, of failing over and over until I get it right, and then feeling amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't give the Brawler's Guild much attention. The best time to do it is first thing in the morning, which is also the best time for me to forget what I was planning to do.

Then I heard rumors that it would be gone. I misinterpreted this as gone gone, gone forever, Cataclysmed gone. So, with no time to lose, the Friday before patch day, I started Brawler's Guild. And then immediately wished I'd started sooner. It turns out that, despite my ranking as the number one level 90 paladin with a partial Justicar transmog on my server, I couldn't one-shot everything.

It all began with Hexos. In a way, that was a great boss, because it forced me to actually learn how to DPS without paying much attention. A momentary distraction from the pink of death was death. Over the many, many, many attempts, I reworked some keybindings, finally macroed my gloves, potions, and wings together, and stopped clicking rend. Then I died some more, until finally, I won, and then worried that I'd pass out because a pot of coffee does not constitute a complete breakfast. Good times.

 From there I learned that, those things which are fought least are also fixed least. The snake was awful, filled with either bugs or just bad behavior. It would stop for no clear reason and get a stack, one of which is enough to end the fight. It would drop poison directly in its path. I hated that fight, not for being a crazy gimmick like Hexos, but for being a badly-made fight. The fire elemental angered me almost as much, though it at least took fewer tries. The stun would fail and the elementals would seem to go out of their way to run into the fire. But I beat them, and it felt great because it had not been easy and because I'd gotten better in the process.

Then finally the paladin. While it took fewer tries, I think it was a more accurate skill check than Hexos. Adapting movement to a rapidly-changing situation, seeing small changes, identifying the goal, timing, and finally winning a harsh DPS race. That's almost everything someone would need for an actual raid, beside other people.

And yet, there were other people. It had some of the social elements of raiding. There was the begging for a res from the person who had gone AFK and blamed you for dying. There was the delay as other people failed in their own unique ways. There was the every-growing repair bill. And there was the congratulations, because when everyone is trying to get the achievements on the last available weekend, they tend to stick around and recognize each other. We'd offer advice, learn from them, and cheer and smile as they finally beat a boss. It was a temporary crowd, but somehow, this solo activity seemed to bring people together better than LFR.

So here's to you, Brawler's Guild!

Next time, please have more arenas; it's not fun waiting 15 minutes for a fight.

Shared Health

What if groups shared a health pool?

Incoming damage is calculated, and able to be seen, individually (no hiding that you were in the fire). It then feeds into a larger, combined health pool. Overall damage taken in unchanged. If the entire raid takes damage, then the proportional spike is as big as ever. If a particular player takes damage, just as much healing is needed. But, the spikes that hit individual players are proportionally smaller relative to the health pool, giving more time to deal with such things. More importantly, this cuts the number of health bars to deal with by 80%. Now the 25-man raid has as many health bars as a five-man instance.

I'd heal that.

Coming tomorrow, the post you've all been waiting for: Cobalt ore.

"I'm not afraid." "You should be."

The other day I got over my fear of meaningful roles in LFR. I tanked. Other players were generally helpful or at worst, indifferent. It was gloriously fun. In fact, the only bit that wasn't much fun was when I somehow got placed in the Gates of Retribution as... well as retribution.

Galakras made no sense. The Iron Juggernaut was a bit of fun thanks to the "step on the land mines on purpose" mechanic. The Dark Shaman was just awful. It's a chaotic mess of messes and chaos that never felt like we had the slightest bit of control of the situation. I'm all for a dynamic fight, but I don't like feeling like we're getting thrown around randomly. Maybe if I had been the tank it would have been different. Nazgrim was boring and I was annoyed that people kept attacking during defensive stance when there were still adds up.

Today I got in as a tank for The Underhold. Unfortunately, the queue popped as I was reading the fights, so I wasn't as prepared as I'd have liked, particularly since the first boss was already dead. Even worse, the Spoils of Pandaria fight sounds much different in text. I was much slower than I would have been had I seen the fight before; I'd thought the boxes opened on their own. People yelling at "tank" weren't much help, given that there were two tanks with much different situations and I couldn't be focusing on figuring out where the whiner was. Thok seemed to go okay, once started ignoring the jailers and letting the other tank figure out where they went. Again, a fight that didn't translate so well into text. We ended with me being yelled at to kite, so I kited, then I was told it was too fast, so I went slower. DPS died in the fire. He enraged. I left after someone started insulting both of us tanks. My ignore list grew. I have no time for people whose response to problems is senseless insults.

You might be thinking that I'm in the wrong for queueing without having watched a video first. To that I say, "fuck off." If I'd queued as DPS then my ignorance would be no issue. However, the queue times for me, and for all the other DPS, would be an issue. Furthermore, I'm not going to spend my time to please these sorts of assholes. Frankly, they should be grateful I queued as a tank at all to carry their mindless, abusive selves through the fights.

After a cooling off session involving a great deal of profanity I queued again. Again, I got a raid with the first boss dead. I jumped into the action and did a fine job of tanking the rest of the place with no issues. The tank switches were a glorious thing to see, if I say so myself.

I still find myself a little more reluctant to do LFR. I could run it as DPS for the visuals and then go again as a tank. Since I don't enjoy the DPS I might as well just watch some strat video and suffer through the awful explanations and accents that come from some part of the UK that is as indecipherable as the Welsh but without having the excuse of living inside a whale. Some part of me rebels at this idea. It seems contrary to the idea of LFR. Isn't it a place for less-geared, less-organized, less-prepared randomly formed groups to get some gear and learn a bit? Or is it just an awful alternative to real raiding? I intend to do some more LFR in order to get more gear and learn some more in anticipation of finding a guild. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Cowardice is the Killer of Fun

I'd been avoiding tanking in LFR. I didn't know the fights and didn't quite trust guides to get the ideas across. Obviously this was stupid. LFR is the training ground for raids. It's where people go to learn. Yet it all seemed so complex.

That's only because I'd been in as DPS and DPS are stupid. It's just something that happens when you switch role. Healers are smart. Tanks are smart. DPS are barely literate cave beasts. They run after a crowd hitting things. Sometimes they try to appear smart by quantifying their contribution with damage meters. It never works.

In actuality the fights only seemed complex because I was too stupid to see the basic patterns. Going in as a tank meant that I had to have some understanding of the fights. Stand here, keep aggro on these, interrupt that. Keep the holy power rolling and be ready with a CD in case there is a damage spike. A few mechanics are still over my head, but I don't play a draenei.

It turns out LFR can be rather fun to tank. It's a little more dynamic, a little more engaging, than DPS.

Oddly, people aren't as horrible as I thought. A more experienced tank gave me some pointers on a fight and things went well. A tank of my experience (lol, nub) hoped I could do the same, which I tried, and it worked fairly well. I stood in slightly the wrong spot, someone pointed it out, I moved, and they thanked me. Afterward I thanked them for their patience. I suspect I have a magical power to make people like my tanking, regardless of the quality of it. Perhaps they appreciate a quality transmog. I got a neat 2h sword and some vendor trash along with the opportunity to do more LFR.

During my daily shopping at the PvP vendor I was invited to do some arenas. I haven't done those since sometime in mid-Cata. They didn't go well or last long then. They never were my forte. I accepted, on the condition that they not mind that I am terrible.

Perhaps the matchmaking tool has gotten better. Maybe at this point in the season the arenas are filled with bad players. Whatever the reason, we won a bit more than we lost and I walked out with some conquest points, which I spent on a cloak. That then got me killed because a shaman knocked me off the lumber mill before I'd remembered to add a parachute to it. I don't blame arenas for that. In fact, they turned out to be a good bit of fun. Even losing isn't so bad when it doesn't take long. Lose, think about it, then get ready for the next fight. It's not like a BG where you can clearly see that your team is losing and yet it won't have officially lost for a few more minutes. Then you find yourself wishing the Horde would cap a fourth so you could get to another, less-losing match.

I'm going to find more arenas. I don't expect much winning, but the payout for a win is pretty generous, so I can't complain too much. Coupled with BGs and converted justice points I anticipate that my PvP set will steadily become less awful. In fact, I've even reached the point where my PvP and tanking sets are not identical.

Pay attention to something other than your gear, such as yourself

Once I learned anything at all about gear there was never a time that I was not making fun of what people wear. I was provided endless amusement by the rogues in spirit gear, the non-troll warriors in spirit gear (back in the day a troll warrior who stacked spirit literally never needed healing). Sometimes I'd offer very basic advice on what to generally look for. Most of the time I'd just laugh to myself. But I did not insult them about it, unless they had revealed themselves to be worthy of insult, because I don't believe in being a useless jerk.

When it all comes down to it, it's their character.

Of course once they try to join a group with me then it is in my best interests to be sure that they aren't poorly geared, or worse, poorly played. I'll overlook a gem or a clearly outdated reforging, since I sometimes try to not be a hypocrite and those things are minor oversights, not fundamental problems. And what are a few ilevels between complete strangers?

It was a long time before I looked at a character and cared not just how they had geared, but also how much they had geared. I knew about better and worse gear, of course, but I also knew that content was designed for a particular level of gear and that level tended to be lower than what people had, particularly early in progression. I knew that player ability and attentiveness mattered more to the group. I was that person who would yell at people for watching TV while raiding.

In part, this may have been because gear could only go so far. If someone couldn't beat content level X, then they could not gear much higher than tier X. There were always ways to get ahead a little bit, but you couldn't get very far ahead of what your next boss dropped. I knew that gear wasn't the fundamental problem: the player's behavior was. Not the player; I don't like to separate players into good and bad. Of course there is variance in reaction times and visual perception, but I think the game is generally tuned such that those are rarely an issue. It is behavior that matters; checking out a fight ahead of time, paying attention to the fight, being mindful of how everything fits together.

Focusing too much on gear, demanding a particular gear level, runs counter to this. When people fail they blame gear, rather than behavior. One of those can change before the next attempt, the other cannot. In the short term, worrying about gear is pointless. While neither of these commands are diplomatic, surely "Pay attention!" is more useful in the long term than "Gear up!" After all, gear eventually comes just from playing, but paying attention to one's surroundings is a conscious decision. Gear will sort itself out, but only players can fix themselves.

The purpose of badges

When I say badges I am referring to the ongoing system that began with badges of justice in Burning Crusade and now exists as justice and valor points. Honor and conquest points are a similar system, but I do not directly address them here. One could reasonably draw comparisons to the multi-class gear tokens of Ahn'Qiraj as well.

What is the purpose of this mechanic? That's the key question for everything in a game. Presumably a mechanic with no purpose at all would get thrown out. What if the answer isn't clear because it is meant to accomplish many things at once?

Clockwork may be the appropriate analogy here. A part that is used frequently will wear out faster than one that is used rarely. A constantly-spinning gear for a minute hand will wear out sooner than the track along which the cuckoo travels once an hour. Yet a part that is used constantly may also be simple and therefore easy to replace. Swap out the gears and it returns to operation. The clockmaker may have even anticipated this and designed the clock so that those parts that wear out soonest are also the most accessible. A part with multiple roles, that is pulled in many directions, will wear out faster. But with many duties, it is interconnected, and therefore harder to replace.

Consider mounts; they increase player speed and they serve as a conspicuous status symbol. These were once intertwined, when mounts were so expensive that simply having one at all was a status symbol. Blizzard eventually made the riding skill costly and basic mounts inexpensive. Fancier mounts are much more expensive or in some other way hard to acquire. The Mount part had been redesigned into two pieces: a simple Riding piece that just makes us go faster and a simple Show-Off piece that makes us look cool. These can now be easily changed as they wear out; Blizzard can produce an endless stream of expensive and exclusive mounts without needing to remake the entire mounting mechanic.

Then there are badges. What is their purpose?

In BC they started off as a way to fill in for missing gear; they helped insulate players from the cruelty of the RNG. At this, they failed. The badge gear was inferior. Worse, it created a cruel choice. Do you spend your badges to fill in for a missing slot, which may then be filled the very next raid? Which slot? The RNG could not only torment you by withholding loot, it could do the same by giving it and making the badge purchase seem foolish. Badge gear fell behind raid drops, so another tier of badge gear was released, without any restrictions. This meant that players could use it to gear past their raid experience. Were badges meant to be an RNG fixer, an alternative progression path, or a way for players to overgear in order to reach otherwise inaccessible content? Or all three at once? Doing multiple things with a single mechanic is dangerous, as any change creates that many more ripples.

Wrath of the Lich King seemed to carry on this system, until badges became necessary for buying tier tokens. They became a gating mechanism. Or a way to fill up heroic groups, by pushing high-end raiders into trivial content. They were used for five purposes (or more, I may have missed some), doing none of them well, and causing all manner of other social problems.

Now Blizzard has simplified things. Badges can give some early gear for a bit of a boost to get into LFR, because in contrast with Wrath and Cataclysm, running LFD is now apparently a terrifying thing that the developers want players to avoid. This badge-based gear skip is redundant now that the Timeless Isle exists, but that's not causing any problems.

Badges can be used for very expensive and very tiny gear upgrades. I find this terribly unexciting, and yet, brilliant. Your fruitless RNG attempts still yield the badges that can upgrade gear. As long as you have an item that isn't going to be instantly replaced by the RNG (surely you've gotten something) and it isn't maxed out (good thing the upgrades are so expensive), then you can keep getting something from those wasted kills. It isn't the loot you wanted, but it is some advancement, some sense that you're getting somewhere, however slowly.

Badges have been simplified, trimmed down to a nice, compact, extremely slow treadmill. What more could a developer want from an MMO mechanic?

Revolution 9

For years, the zero has reigned supreme over WoW. 60, 70, 80, 90, all part of Club Zero. 85 snuck in, but that was the worst expansion in WoW, so that somehow supports my point if you squint a lot. All the raids were tied to the zeros. Starting at 60, you hit a zero and you got a raid. Without that zero you got nothing but hints and suggestions of something to come.

Shintar raised a good point the other day:

Oh, and I really wish they'd make the Shattrath cooking and fishing dailies available at level sixty. That "must be level seventy" restriction is very out of touch with the way the game works now, only giving people access to something that is effectively leveling content just as they are leaving for the next expansion.

The zeros used to be the cap. You stayed at them and therefore they were the ideal place for content you spent a lot of time in: dailies, raids, reputation. But these days the zeros aren't the highest, but the lowest. 60 isn't the big number after 59, but the smallest number in the 60s.

By the 8s or 9s players might be sick of an expansion. They were probably cherry-picking the best zones and have run out, unless they really like old content. Or with the odd leveling curves they've finally finished a second zone and need just a little tiny bit of a third, and then they'll run off partway in and spend a day trying to not fill up their quest logs before they finally dump the old zone in frustration.

Why not lower the raid requirements to the 9s? It's not like the old days when special abilities arrived at the 0s or new ranks every 2 levels. Odds are you won't even get a new talent point with those only appearing every 15 levels. With the raid requirements lowered and the already-functioning cross-realm raid-formation tool players could easily do a few raids during their last level before starting a new expansion. Players who want to raid at that level would see more players, of slightly lower power, but more than offset by significantly faster queues.

Great guilds are more important than great raids

Not too long ago, Doone made his list of the top five raids in WoW. I tried to make my own little list, but I was hindered by a few things. First, while I've seen and finished all but one pre-Cataclysm raid, I'd done many of those during the next expansion and therefore with a different experience. Naxx at 70 is not the same as Naxx at 60, and of course neither are like new Naxx at 80.

Why wasn't I in those raids? Because I wasn't in guilds that were doing them. In Cataclysm I was almost never in a guild and consequently did almost no raiding. Ditto for Pandaria. LFR was raiding in visuals only.

If asked about the greatest raid ever, of all time, I will answer Karazhan. Why? Well it certainly was a great raid. The bosses were varied. Some were made-up for the raid, but many were straight out of the stories we'd hastily clicked past to get our quest reward or the games that made Warcraft a title that could sell millions of copies of a game in a completely different genre. Kara introduced many innovations such as tokens that reduced the tendency to get completely screwed by the RNG; a small, accessible raid; and polite ghosts.

Yet, why don't I say Ulduar? That was a place with a nifty story, varied bosses, and all manner of neat new tricks such as getting to punch a tank. It was perfectly tied into Storm Peaks and if there is one thing I love it is when instances are tied to their locations. The short reason is that I was in a different guild. I still enjoyed their company and stuck with them for a while after, but it wasn't the guild that I ran Kara with. I ran Kara with my guild, founded by my friends and me, filled with people of a similar mindset. Ulduar was someone else's guild that I was let into. Though in retrospect, when I took another shot at playing again in Cataclysm they were the ones I ran with, even giving up playing my paladin (it was on another server, this wasn't one of those "I quit my main to get into a raiding guild" stories). Just writing that was enough to make me start looking for them again. This is a dark road. :)

Anyway, there's the general trend: While Ulduar was on par with Karazhan, even a little difference in guild attachment can dramatically tip the scales. There is another issue though: I never finished Ulduar. We were stuck so close to the end, and I think slowly getting there and I would have gladly fought it out. Then someone set up a circus in Icecrown and we were off for some of the most forgettable bosses since Molten Core. My WoW experience was downhill from there, struggling through ICC, with Ulduar still bugging me, all because Blizzard yanked guilds away.

That brings me to my happiest time in Cataclysm. It wasn't a long time, but for a few brief moments I was back raiding with them again. I wasn't on my paladin. I don't think Dragon Soul was all that great of a raid. But I was with friends. About a week and a half ago I went looking for them, eventually going with the straightforward method of resubbing. Sadly, many of them are inactive now (not gquit), but a few are around and maybe more will come back. In the meantime, some low-key MoP is fun.

But about my top five raids...
Molten Core
Karazhan
Zul'Gurub
Gruul's Lair
Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj (20-man)
These are in no particular order. Nor do I suffer from the delusion that these are the Top Five Raids. They are only mine and are almost entirely due to my situation at the time.

Molten Core was my first raid. I have fond memories of fighting Garr, a fight which required many warlocks, and during which I demonstrated my creativity, figuring out, in a time before many guides were around, a better way to banish. Perhaps it was a small thing, but it was fun. While it was an amateurish raid design, it was also perfectly integrated into Blackrock Mountain, a place filled with instances and raids, all connected in one way or another, making it a prime destination for players 50-60. That made it a fun, or frustrating, place on a PvP server.

Karazhan was a hard-earned victory, fought through with my own guild of friends. It was there that my paladin went from alt to main, a position that would only be lost because of The Great Betrayal. There was such variety, such strange things to find.

Zul'Gurub was strange place. There are multiple optional bosses. One boss was different depending on the week, and somewhat difficult to summon, needing an alchemist and some odd ingredients. Another boss was fished up. Where MC was dull, ZG was bizarre and outlandish. Players could loot voodoo piles for a chance at voodoo dolls, needed for trinkets, a rare thing in those days, but they'd be mind-controlled for a while. The 'correct' response was to CC them, but why not kill them instead? In an era of 40-man raids, ZG only needed 20. Its loot was an unusual mix of purples and oddly-powerful blues, seemingly scattered at random. Even that long ago Blizzard was doing strange things with its raiding.

Gruul's Lair consisted of one incredibly hard pull and a somewhat pushover final boss. The Council was based on a good pull: get the mobs where they needed to be, attacking the right people, and things could go fairly smoothly. Screw it up and it's a horrible mess of everyone dying. The final boss, Gruul, was a fight about spreading out: he'd slowly turn players to stone, then shatter them, hurting those nearby, so spreading out 25 people just right was sometimes difficult. I'd recently joined a new guild, merging our fading one with another that needed a boost. They reluctantly let me tank Gruul, but called for a lot of misdirects, because "paladins have trouble with aggro." I proceeded to double everyone else, at a time when aggro wasn't a matter of sneezing with righteous fury on. That was a source of endless amusement for me. Even beside that, those were still days when paladin tanking was still in doubt, it wasn't that long ago that paladins were mostly just exceptionally mana-efficient healbots. Of course we were recognized as good trash and five-man tanks, with our mechanics perfectly suited to holding aggro on unlimited enemies, but handling just one was apparently in doubt. And, of course, I always pulled with my goblin rocket launcher, because if you're going to make a tank, why not do it in style?

How many players need to have fun for it to be a good fight?

Earlier I said how I'd liked the Dread Approach bosses in LFR.  Since then I've worked up the courage to go in as a tank.  In its infinite mercy, LFR dropped in in on the last boss.  That platform-switching guy might have been trouble.

It was a fun fight as DPS.  But as a tank?  Boring.  The greatest challenge was figuring out how to tell what is in front of him.  I figured that out.  I spent the rest of the fight wondering if I'd be better off putting the other 'tank' on follow.  It's not as if my prot DPS is anything to write home about, unless you want to send your parents a letter about a joke.

This wasn't even similar to a tank and spank fight.  On those I can at least feel like I could mitigate more damage, maybe deal more to help with an enrage.  There is some optimizing to do.  Here, I had nothing.

Does that make it a bad fight?  Does every single person need to be having fun for it to be a good fight?  What if some are merely slightly bored?  Insufficiently excited?  Despite my dull task, I think it's a good fight.

The Dread Approach

I finally got into LFR for this.  Well, a second time.  First time I stumbled into an apparent wipe-prone group on the last boss and wasn't in a mood for that.  Surprisingly, not many people drop groups on the last boss to give a random stranger whom they'll never meet a quick one-boss-kill for weekly valor.


I enjoyed all of the fights.  A lot.  Maybe the first a little less.  That was one that gets messed up by LFR, where some mechanics seem neutralized but still happen, and then it's not clear to me what's going on.  Does this shiny circle mean something bad, or should I finish the cast at take a pitiful amount of damage?  Now you might think it is odd for a ret paladin to use the phrase "finish this cast", but that just shows your limited understanding of true skill.

The second boss was plain old fun.  I was never good at mario or other games of quick movement, but I managed and it was a bit of a thrill.  Right!  Left!  Right!  Oops!  Right!  That one cheated and spawned on top of me!  Left!


Then the last boss.  There's a bit to keep track of, but with nice convenient circles for those of us who can only communicate using Venn diagrams.

Overall I thought this section of a raid had a good bit of movement, but it wasn't some sort of absurd, precisely-timed pre-scripted dance,  Rather, it was about keeping track of one's surroundings and responding accordingly.

How not to lead a raid

To start, clearly state that there are no reserves in your trade ad.  On the first boss, turn on master looter during the fight.  Don't ninja anything, since that might at least offer some reason for the action, but instead very slowly link items and demand rolls.  Tell people to chill or get lives if they request group loot.  Ignore any claims that people can't ninja thanks to the "able to use" need system.

Be sure use raid warning for normal communication, rather than limiting it to when you need full, immediate attention.

Above all, make sure you treat a 90-filled transmog run of a level 70 raid as if it were extremely serious.

There may still be items that you really want, but for some reason did not reserve.  If these drop and you do not win them, do the following.  First, ask somewhat nicely, but with little punctuation.  When the person opens trade, feel a sense of urgency.  Know this: they are trying to scam you.  For example, if they put the wrong item in, cancel trade and begin to yell at them.  Ignore their absurd claims of "full bags" or "mistakes", because that's just what a bitch would say.  Speaking of which, be sure to call the person a bitch.  Maybe add in other profanity, such as stating that you can't stand this shit or how it is all bullshit.  For the sake of clarity, call them a ninja.

Of course you can't be all talk.  At some point the player with the item you want may finally find it in their bags.  Before that happens you should swear some more and drop the raid.

Finally, be sure to tell them that you're opening a ticket to report them for ninjaing.  Be sure to have screenshots of your earlier conversations, so that the GMs know that you're serious.

The One Player Problem

What is the biggest problem in balancing a multi-player game?  It's the first player.  In a game with classes and limited talent flexibility there will still be many classes against which to balance an encounter.  But fine, let's roll with it and say that the developers can customize each encounter for each class.  It means making ten fights rather than one, but in this hypothetical world we get to handwave a mere order of magnitude.

That leads us to the second-biggest problem in balancing a multi-player game.  That is, of course, the second player.  We had our ten or so fights.  Now there is another player.  That makes it... ten fights with ten modifications to balance the next possible player.  Okay, one hundred fights rather than one.  I'm having difficulty waving my hand.  But fine, let's go along and add the extra work and everything will be fine.

But this isn't a couples game, so let's bring in a third and thus get the third-biggest problem.  Add them on and we're at a thousand fights.  My hand is now broken with the effort of waving away problems.  We might as well bump it up to five or six players and admit that we've been defeated and can no longer count the zeroes (five or six, but I don't know what those numbers mean).

At this point there are few options.  One is to shrug and give up on fine-tuning, stepping in only when the most egregious problems present themselves.  Or classes could be restricted further into some sort of defined generic role, such as the holy trinity of tank, healer, and DPS, or crowd control if that's how you roll.  This essentially cuts it down to four classes and that can be further reduced by having fight mechanics which dictate aspects such as "minimum of one tank and one healer".  At that point it may all be simple enough that classes can be given non-flavor differences.

Still, even with the three or four class/roles, adding additional players is trouble.  Surely we can see that a tank, healer, and DPS are different when soloing and that adding a healer to a tank or DPS has an effect greater than adding another tank or DPS.  And so on.  Each additional player, if players have abilities beyond basic damage, changes the entire structure of a fight.  This means that scaling content to match the number of players is bound to result in problems with difficulty: too easily becoming too easy or too hard, depending on how the marginal player adds to the group relative to what the developer expectation is.

As much as we might wish to be able to bring along one more friend, is the benefit of once in a while bringing along one more person greater than the harm to the difficulty?  I don't think so.  Only at the very edges, with dozens of players, is the additional player not going to have much impact.  Though there were complaints when content allowed, or mandated, dozens of players...

Bad arguments against Attunements

WoW Insider is trying to hate attunements. And failing. Take note of the examples.

First there is Onyxia. Okay, I'm convinced on this one. It could have used some serious trimming and not-having-to-find-Rexxaring. And that stuff in BRD that the ALliance had to do which I have apparently suppressed. Either that or I recognized that I players at 60 ran BRD a lot anyway so it's not as if it is some terrible burden to have an attunement that relies on running BRD. Still, the Onyxia attunement took the "fly to random places, and then back to them again" tactic a bit too far.

Then there is the entire Burning Crusade expansion. That one I can accept. Needing every single person to do a particular, and not particularly short chain to get into Kara was a bit much. Needing one person (as it was changed to just be a gate that needed unlocking), not so much. Beside that, the instances were all places that people were going to anyway, since they needed that gear. Unfortunately, that's the extent to which I can claim that the BC attunements were not completely ridiculous. I'm looking at you, every single other raid.

My theory is that BC was intentionally designed this way to be a real strawman extremist as a way to justify going to the opposite extreme. It's a tactic we use in politics: accuse your opponent of being the ridiculous extreme in order to justify going to your own extreme. In the case of Blizzard, someone who hated attunements turned an entire expansion into an argument against them. Note that when I say this is "my theory" what I really mean is "here's a ridiculously insane theory that I doubt is true and yet still insist on taking credit for."

After that we have heroic raids. At that point I don't care. Let players go in at level one or make them do a six-month round of dailies, as a guild. I don't care either way. It's sort of like how when you're trying to get into the Olympics they can force you to spend a week in a cave with no light or food. It sucks, but it's only my fault that I couldn't make it past the third day and it's the Olympics, so they get to make the rules.

Now it's time for the part where I copy out words and insult them.

"Progression raiders do that anyway.  You ran BWD and Bastion, then ran Firelands, and finally ran Dragon Soul. You progressed, mastered the content, moved on.  All that attunements did was force your raiding guild to take a night off and run older content again. We have a new healing paladin joining, he's done everything but Kael'thas because his last guild just couldn't hack it"

Yes, they do, which suggests that they should already have that done.  Oh, but our poor guy is stuck in a guild that can't kill Kael'thas and has to hop up to a better one that is entirely done with Tempest Keep.  Well fuck that guy.  If there is a mechanic that reduces the habit of entitled jerks from hopping a guild the moment it slows down to join one that is further ahead, great.  Add more of that.

"In fact, I never did a single attunement chain in either vanilla or The Burning Crusade that wasn't pointlessly long, full of extraneous steps, or just plain tedious."

Really?  I can't beleive you never did the attunements for BWL or MC.  You know them, the attunements which consisted of "talk to someone" or "loot something and read it" followed by running the instances that you'd be running at that level anyway.  Given that MC is right next to BRD, even if this was somehow something you'd never done, getting players attuned was not a big deal: the portal was a short run away and after that, a few trash packs and some lava swimming are all that stand in the way of the attunement.  The BWL attunement took longer, but given that the quest ended six inches from the tail of the last boss, it wasn't out of the way of someone who had run UBRS once.

"There are the people who just plain don't want the hoi polloi in their heroic raids and will welcome anything that keeps players out to inflate their own sense of accomplishment."

Right, because those inconvenient but entirely-doable and not skill-related quests are such a great barrier.  Also, who the fuck is doing heroic raids where the "hoi polloi" are just wandering in?  Do they not run with guilds, somehow being the sort of elitist who is inclusive enough for a PUG but not inclusive enough for a PUG?  Sorry, but you seem to be making up imaginary people.

"unduly hinder that really excellent rogue who blasts out tons of DPS but has to go to her kid's piano recital"

There is nothing I hate more than musically-talented roguelings.  That is clearly it. You got me.

"Another group seem to believe that the attunement process creates bonds between players and promotes unity. In my experience, it just ended up ticking people off who had to run Steam Vaults again to get Dave's priest attuned for the alt run or forcing us to spend a raid night getting the new feral attuned to Hyjal instead of running Black Temple. They didn't foster a sense of group unity; they hampered it."

If your sense of unity was wrecked by having to help a group member, then you're some pretty disunited people.  Next time, recruit people who have done an instance before and stop poaching from lower-ranked guilds.  The people you get doing that aren't known for their team spirit.

"As for the lore aspect of attunements, I won't lie -- that's valid to some extent. It was usually buried under lots of pointless busywork, but it was there. I did love watching Windsor clean house in Stormwind. I did enjoy some of the AQ opening. Seeing the last of the Highborne inside Naxxramas the first time we zoned in was cool."

None of these are necessarily part of attunements, so they are irrelevant except to the extent that adding them to attunements increases the likelihood that players will see them.

"But ultimately, a lot of these moments were seriously delayed gratification and were at a cost that just shouldn't have been paid. Making cool lore stuff part of a mandatory gateway just takes the shine off of the cool lore, because you're so focused on burning through the attunement as fast as possible you can't take the time to pay attention to it anyway, especially if you have four or more other people there who did it already and are just carrying you through it as fast as possible to get you ready for the raid."

Delayed gratification tends to be the only one there is in these sorts of games.  Beside a few bits of scenery porn, games don't lend themselves to gratification that is quickly or easily gotten.  There must be some barrier, because as in life, it is usually the anticipation that is the greatest.  Scientists proved this with people, and of course monkeys too, because that's the purpose of monkeys: science and strange arguments against evolution.  This barrier could be based on skill, time, or I suppose heredity or money.  I'm guessing those last two would be rather unpopular, though one could argue that money is a barrier if we're not pirating all our games (I'm not, for the record).  That leaves time or skill.  Time is clearly the hated one here, because it delays the efforts of amazing rogues with children who play the piano.  Yet it is the skill one which would truly keep people out, particularly the hoi polloi.

There could of course be no barriers at all to any content, so roll up your character and teleport to Deathwing.  With your 24 friends who you magically found despite having played none of the rest of the game.  There is no time, skill, genetic, or money barrier to fighting Deathwing, but I suspect having heroic Deathwing kill you over and over again isn't the best way to start a game.

Since the name of the game seems to be hyperbolic accusations against imaginary people, I'm going to say that only ghost Communists would want to remove attunements, claiming they are a tool of the oppression of the bourgeoisie. And ghosts love pianos.

The Case for More Gear Inflation

Jump off a one-foot drop and you can catch yourself, a few more feet and you can roll.  Jump off a three thousand foot ledge, and with the appropriate training and equipment, you might not break your leg.  But anywhere in the middle you're probably going to die.

I've seen Dragon Soul and Deathwing.  Not just in LFR, but in real raids.  This fits with the current WoW model of bumping players up to the most recent raid.  It accomplishes this with gear inflation, with steadily stronger badge loot, higher LFR-available raids (I'm guessing that's going to be the pattern moving forward), and the late-expansion release of instances with upgraded loot: Zulroics and then Caverns of Time, preceded by Trial of the Crusader and before that, Magister's Terrace.

There is a problem, though: The philosophy is one of players seeing content, but if they're always in the most recent, then they're not in anything lower.  That's fine if they started at the start of the expansion and have stepped up with each gear wave since then.  What if they came in late?  Then they're missing the start, because thanks to the inflation, people don't do those anymore.

People might go back if the earlier raids were easy enough.  Maybe there isn't any greater incentive, since the loot did not improve, but the barrier to backward entry can be made lower.

The solution: even more gear inflation.  Don't make a tier 10% stronger than the one before.  Make it 50%.  100%.

Think of the raids from previous expansions, which originally needed 10, 25, or 40 people.  And then five go in.  Or two.  Or one.  They can do this because the character and the gear has gotten stronger by orders of magnitude.  Similarly, if gear advanced by enough, players could take small groups of interested friends for easy tours through the earlier raids in an expansion.  It won't be the same experience, but it will be something.  It will be seeing content rather than nothing at all.

You must, maybe, be in a raid to enter this isntance

Why?  And when?

Obviously from a strategic standpoint you're going to need a raid group to get far in a contemporary raid instance.  Just zoning in though, that also requires a 'raid'.  There is this strange requirement that players be in a raid group in order to zone in.  It's an inconsistent requirement.

The raid group does not even need to be a group.  Five players in a group cannot zone in, but hit the convert to raid button and now they can, despite no actual difference in the group composition.  This was a past-time in the past, of completing a BRD run and attuning people and then you'd convert to a raid and gaze in wonder at the Molten Giants that stand near the entrance.  Sometimes we'd pull one, they're linked so we'd get both, and see what happens.  Usually it meant we died.  Sometimes we ran out fast enough.

You don't need 40 people to zone in to a 40-man raid.  You don't need 25 for a 25 or 10 for a 10.  Or even two.  The other person in the 'raid group' can be offline, even on another character, and it still works.  I don't know why the raid group requirement exists.  Maybe it was a way to prevent the generation of hundreds of single-person raids that would destroy the servers back when Blizzard staff wasn't yet swimming in pools of molten gold.  BTW, a very painful process, but they come out very shiny.

The inconsistency goes further.  It seems to me that the raid group check only occurs at instance portals.  That means that if you can get inside without the glowing purple or green wall curtain, you don't need a raid.  There are two raids which have that ability.  It's not coincidence that both are also linked to instances.  Molten Core is linked to Blackrock Depths and has a portal down there, which no one uses (anymore), but also in Blackrock Mountain there is a window which acts like a portal.  The window does the raid check.  But next to it, there is an elf.  He doesn't.  Talk to him and you can get in, even without being in a group, let alone a raid.  Blackwing Lair is linked to Blackrock Spire, and also has a teleport mechanic in Blackrock Mountain, an orb which will put you inside the raid instance, again, without needing to be in a raid group.

I've tried other raid instances, not all, but a decent sample covering both sides of Ahn'Qiraj, Karazhan, Mount Hyjal in the Caverns of Time, Icecrown Citadel, and Ulduar.  All block me, requiring a raid group.  This seems to support my theory that if you can bypass the portal, you can get inside.  But I don't know of any other raids which allow that.  Maybe the legendary staff from old Naxxramas would do that for Karazhan (I don't know where the portal it makes goes, inside or outside), but good luck finding one to test!

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.

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...

Were Baron's Bombs a Wipe?

It's been a while, so I can't remember. This came up over at WoW Insider, about the newness of the dance, perceived or actual, and the penalties of bad dancing. So to you I ask, Do you remember if a screw up on living bomb on Baron Geddon was a wipe? I know it was a big deal and definitely a major setback, but I don't recall it being an instant wipe. For some perspective on my perspective, I was doing this with people in mostly blues, with one guy loaded out in purples because he'd done MC before. So it's not as is we were significantly over or under-geared. Looking at the ability on wowhead, it says 3200 damage. Trivial these days, but if I recall, that would have been a pretty big hit back then. Maybe not quite an instant kill, but close enough that it could trigger a wipe if it lined up with his melee AoE or if someone important had a mana burn tick.

Beside the power of the failure, I'm wondering about the difficulty of the mechanic. I don't think it was very difficult, and certainly easier than more modern dances. We'd set a spot to run to, or multiple, since not everyone would have time to get there, or just generally tell people to get the hell away from the raid. If they moved away, even to the wrong spot (high ceiling ftl), they would only hurt themselves, and even then a quick priest with levitate and feathers could save them.

It helped that the fight didn't have too many things going on. Some classes were, of course, on dispel duty, because that mana burn would quickly ruin a caster, so a slight distraction there. Melee had to run out when he'd do his flame AoE. But overall that is two distractions, which would be almost exclusive, as there was only one melee class with a magic-remover, aka: lolret. When players only have to focus on that one part, it can be a lot easier to handle. It also helped that DPS was much simpler, leaving even more spare mental capacity.

So there's another aspect to consider, not just how difficulty a mechanic is in isolation along with the cost of failure, but add to those what is happening around the mechanic. If we're already worrying about X effect, when Y happens we may not be as ready for it, and will react more slowly and with greater confusion.

I danced in the morning, when the world was begun

And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

In the morning...

The raid dancing is not new.

Before I get into things, I want to note that I am using the term "bad player". I mean this in a very broad sense of "players who do not contribute to the death of the boss". That could mean slow reflexes, ignorance of fight mechanics, inexperience, poor gear, etc. It's not a value judgement or a measure of intelligence. I'm not using it as such and frankly, people shouldn't. But people who extrapolate from game skill to real life qualities are a topic for another day.

Let's go with the danciest of the dances, the Heigan dance. The floor explodes in a pattern, so you move with it. Such a terrible Lich King-era fight. Except it was recycled content from vanilla. But late vanilla, let's use that excuse, and only have earlier fights count. In that case, let's try Ossirian the Unscarred in the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, where the raid was constantly moving to keep away from tornadoes and get the boss to the next available crystal, and clump up for meterors on the trash before him. Too late? Then let's go to Zul'Gurub and make sure everyone moves at the right time for bats and gets in the poison cloud just in time for Hakkar to drain them. It's still too late? Fine. We'll go to the very first raid and collapse for sons on Ragnaros, make our pretty ring of groups for Shazzrah, and get out of the fire from Gehennas. Alright fine, we'll go earlier, to Stratholme where you'd better get over here so we can AoE the skeletons and if you want something more dynamic we can go to BRD and better keep moving because these dwarves will respawn behind us in about 15 seconds, so stick to the clock and do not fall behind.

The dance has been there. But maybe the dance has changed. Maybe it's a dancier dance. A costlier dance. Ah... let's try that.

Failing to collapse for Sons of Ragnaros would likely get you killed or at least OOM and in a lot of pain, as well as putting one out of position for the AoE. Not a raid-wiper. Be out of position on Arthas and a Val'kyr will drop you off the side and a puddlefire is going to kill everyone. Dying as one of 40 makes you look like an ass, but is it the end of the attempt? No. Dying as one of 25 and killing everyone else is the end of the attempt. There's the change: the cost of failure has gone up.

Tobold had a useful classification which I can't find, but it roughly divided raids into three types: One stressed a few pre-selected players (Garr banishers, jugglers in ICC), another stresses the average (any DPS check), while the last stresses the worst players (puddlefire on Arthas). The first allows for good players to carry the raid, whether with good or bad players, meaning that if you can find a few solid players, they aren't likely to leave because the raids are succeeding. The second allows good players to carry bad players, but they must make an extra effort (or tuning must be low enough), so that they may down the boss but still feel cheated. Finally the last encourages serial dumping of the lowest players because no one can help them and even gear may not fix the problem.

I think WoW has been shifting from the second category (average) with some use of superstars (seriously, I was awesome at banishing, I even figured out how to make it something worth bragging about because I was so awesome) to ever more of the third type.

This doesn't make fights harder for people who need harder fights. It just makes failure more likely.

A good player isn't pushed any harder when the rest of the raid can screw things up for him. A bad player possibly cannot get better, being at some limit of reflexes or how much they care to learn or practice (everyone has their limit, but of course anyone lower than you is lazy). There may be some who are able to be good but have not yet been challenged, possibly quite a lot of them. In that case, the second category is a way to challenge them without making their lower performance the death of the raid. But for players who aren't very good and aren't going to be better, putting burdens on them is utterly pointless, worsening the game for both bad players (who now wipe) and good players (who wipe or have to waste time finding new players).

Ironically, as addons have gotten better at tracking DPS, DPS has become less important. Reverse that damnable trend! Have more DPS fights and yes, the much-maligned tank-and-spank. This allow the best players to prove their mastery of their classes (or badge grinds) without shoving everyone else out of the raiding scene. Have more fights where a few good players can carry the tricky parts, so they can shine without having to kick the duller players. Better and worse players can coexist, but the raid design puts them into competition rather than cooperation.

And let me put my banish key to work again, with a curse ticking on the boss and my healer bored with no damage to heal. Just don't ask me to move out of the puddles.