I had what was pretty much the oddest experience I’ve ever had when it comes to being invited to pug a raid the other day. This is what has caused me to write this post.
[Complete Stranger]: u do icc 10 this week
Uh. Is that supposed to be a question or a statement? I thought about ignoring him. I thought about taking his head off about randomly whispering someone he doesn’t know that he sees has a high gearscore and a Kingslayer title.
And I decided to be nice.
Me: No interest in doing it. GL to you.
I figured that ought to be enough and continued the two other conversations I was having. Fifteen seconds later:
[Complete Stranger]: what if i pay u very high amount of gold
I sighed and quickly responded.
Me: I said I have no interest in doing so, thank you.
Ten seconds later…
[Complete Stranger]: ur cranky how rude
Okay, NOW you’re starting to get on my nerves, you illiterate, impolite child. You want to get in it with me? FINE.
Me: I said no thank you instead of telling you to take a hike. I think I was quite polite, actually. You’re the rude one, persisting in your request and just randomly asking me if I’ve done an instance. I don’t even know you.
There, that ought to take care of him, I thought. Alas, foolish me.
[Complete Stranger]: Why no interest. dont u need gear
/FACEPALM. Need gear? From regular 10-man? Are you KIDDING ME? I haven’t “needed” gear from regular 10-man ICC since, well, ever. It’s one of the positives of raiding 25-man. Determined to shut the kid up, I responded thusly:
Me: Apart from the fact that I strongly dislike 10-man raid configuration, I do not need gear. [Heroic: The Plagueworks (25 player)] [Heroic: The Crimson Hall (25 player)] [Fall of the Lich King (25 player)]
I was pretty sure I wouldn’t hear from him again, having been properly chastised, so I returned to my other conversations. About 30 seconds later…
[Complete Stranger]: ur not nice
/SIGH. Okay, kid. One last try at being polite before I rip you to pieces.
Me: Beg to differ, but you’re entitled to your opinion. Good luck to you.
[Complete Stranger]: Not very nice sir
I got snippy.
Me: Ma’am, actually.
Immediately thereafter:
[Complete Stranger]: Im sorry now i feel bad!!!!!
This is where my head exploded.
It’s OKAY to harass a GUY to do an instance he has no desire to do, but as soon as I say I’m a woman, NOW he feels bad? NOW he apologizes for being annoying?
ARGH.
Okay. Deep breath, Kurn. This all happened last Friday. It’s days ago.
…
All right, I’m better.
This little episode has illustrated the complete lack of manners people have in this game. Of course, in a game where Trade chat regularly degenerates into ethnic slurs and questioning of people’s sexual orientations, perhaps expecting any kind of manners from the population is a stretch.
But I remember a time in this same game where people weren’t quite this rude. I suspect a lot of it stems from the sense of entitlement Blizzard has bestowed upon the players these days, but I digress.
You’re trying to form a pug raid? Fine. Here’s how to do it.
1) Grab your in-game friends. Make sure you all know how to play your selected roles.
2) Make sure you have at least some of the tanks or healers required before you go seeking them out. There’s nothing worse than seeing “LF5M, 2 tanks, 3 healers!” in Trade. You know what that says to tanks and healers out there? That no one in your little group of friends cares enough about shouldering some of the responsibility in a raid to run on a tank or a healer.
3) Once your raid group has formed and you’re trying to add new people to it, type this in:
/lfr
Skip down to Browse and select the instance and size you want to do. Examine the people in the queue for that particular raid.
Whisper them, one at a time, until you’ve filled your raid with what you need or have gone through the entire list. And by “whisper them” I don’t mean “icc 10” and a ninja-invite.
I mean something like this:
“Hi, would you be interested in tanking/healing/DPSing in [name of instance here]?”
To say “heal icc 10?” is just lazy and not something that’s going to get me to want to heal your sorry butt. You’re dealing with OTHER PEOPLE here. You should really do your best to impress them with your grasp of the language your server speaks.
4) Once you’ve gone through all the people in the queue, go back to set your own group in the queue. Select which instance and size you want to do on the first screen of the raid finder interface. Put a note in the comment section advertising what you’re seeking. For example:
“Need 1 tank, 2 DPS and 1 healer!”
Set your comment. Enter the queue.
5) Ask around in Trade or LookingForGroup — don’t spam. The last thing anyone in Trade wants to see is you spamming the same line of text 10 times.
“LF3M ICC10, need 1 tank, 2 DPS, PST!”
That suffices. Once every couple of minutes at most. You want to be short and direct in your advertisement for your raid.
6) Ask your current raid members if they have any friends who want to come.
7) Check your friends list or guild to see if anyone’s logged on since you last checked.
8) Continue the above tactics (also checking the raid queue frequently) to pull in more people until your raid is full or you decide to cancel your run.
Note that at NO TIME is it considered “okay” to see someone randomly run by you in a major city and act like you are entitled to their time and services.
If you are absolutely desperate for just one more person, it might be considered all right to gently inquire as to the potential availability of a random stranger.
How do you gently inquire? Like so:
“Hi there, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m putting together a raid for [instance, size] and I was wondering if you’d like to join us as a [tank/healer/DPS]. If not, no problem, I just thought I’d ask.”
If they say “sure” or another few words agreeing to the run, please be sure to thank them and then toss the invite.
If they say “no” or anything else stating that they’re not interested, here’s how to respond:
“All right, thanks anyways and have a good day!”
If they do NOT respond, do NOT keep whispering them.
Every person that you antagonize or annoy or piss off is someone that will potentially never run with you, ever. They may put you on ignore. They may remember your name from that day you annoyed the crap out of them. It’s a social game, people. You have to play well with others to do anything in terms of raid content and to succeed at high-levels of PVP. Everywhere you look, there are PEOPLE and, sadly, we can’t ignore them all. (WTB larger ignore list, PST!!!)
TL;DR Version:
– Don’t piss people off
– Don’t randomly demand time or services from someone you don’t know
– Don’t act upset if any random people don’t want to join your run — they owe you nothing
I prefer Astral Walker, but that’s just me as a Draenei. :3
But yeah, I’m exceedingly polite when trying to gather people for a PUG raid – way more, in fact, than if I was fetching guildies instead, since I already have a good level of rapport with them.
I do enjoy my Astral Walker title, too, but felt nostalgic for my old guild, with whom I earned Hand of A’dal, so I put that one on. :)
I know exactly what you mean about guildies. It’s like “YO. Accept your invite, NAO.” haha. :)
I suspect that the “kid” in question was someone who saw your gear and figured he’d ride you to victory!
Then he found out you were a girl and knew you probably flirted (slept) you’re way into raids to get geared up and that you’d be no help to him at all. That or he was sorry because you were a girl and he figured that being a guy instead of raiding with you he would…um…ride you to victory?
(sees a royal ass chewing in my future…)
You continually prove to me why I should not have a forum on my blog, man. ;)
Someone once told me…at the rodeo there are some bull riders that think that raw muscle, strength, and determination is all they’ll need to stay on for 8 seconds. There are others who look at the bull and try to get in its head, to figure out how the animal will move and jump, planning out elaborate strategies, before ever stepping on the beast. And then there are the few that look at the animal and say “screw this give me a gun and we can all eat steak for a month”!
We all look at the world in different ways…
PS: No bulls were harmed in the making of my last post.
Ugh, people are so annoying. I’ve got whispers like that, and I’m not even GEARED for ICC yet. It also happens sometimes on my non-guilded characters (especially my hunter, she’s nearing 60 now) with people looking for people to join their guild. And then they get all annoyed when I’m not interested, and gripe at me.
Though regarding girls vs. boys, I think my favourite (in that it actually did make me laugh) was during a conversation on Gen in Elwynn, I happened to say something that brought up my gender, and a guy sent me a tell informing me that there was no way I was a girl, because girls didn’t REALLY play WoW. I was a boy pretending to be a girl. For… some reason he never specified.
I’m not too worried about my Kingslayer title, when I eventually (probably many months from now) get it – I am desperate to do an Ulduar run, and very badly want the “Starcaller” title, which is probably what I’ll stick with for the foreseeable future. I want to do ICC because I’m interested and I want to try everything. I want to do Ulduar because I love the lore around it, and the visual design, and the utter EPICNESS of it. I guess it makes sense I’d be more excited to see “Starcaller Áislinn” than “Áislinn the Kingslayer” – the fact that it will potentially save me from some annoyances like you had on Friday is just a bonus. :)
I saw the bit about trade chat, and I was so tempted to come here and put [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] a few time. Have I fallen so low?
Times. Damn it.
Wonderful isn’t it? In World of Moroncraft, we aren’t allowed to harass you but we are allowed to patronise you.