Meanwhile in South Korea... [(somewhat old) crosspost from bnet]

[darkewaffle]

A curious and even a little touching story about "the outcast warrior".

Spoiler

allegedly a fabrication

A little saccharine, but I really liked it all the same. I think the part that gets to me is the OP's mention of the 'outcasts' personal life/traits. I know a couple of the guys I've played with haven't always had the best homes or haven't always been the smartest or fastest or most efficient, and sometimes they struggle or hold us back, but they're no less important to our group. If each one of us was a manic number cruncher, you know we might actually get a bit further into the games faster, but I'm pretty sure we wouldn't laugh and talk nearly as much. At the end of the day one of those things matters way more to me.

It's easy to get caught up in 'efficiency' playing a game because, lets face it, our time to play them is limited by numerous real life obligations. But I think games stay fun way longer when you don't always measure everything. Helping a noob might not be the best gold per hour or get you the most badges/tomes/tokens/whatever, but there's something to be said for intangibles as well. I remember some of the kind words of thanks I've gotten over the years just as clearly as downing Lady Vashj or Karagga or (old ) Inferno Diablo for the first time.

 

[cbrunny]

Wow. That's actually really a nice story. Thanks for sharing.

 

[PowerYoga]

I read that earlier. I had no idea wow had become such a "hardcore" game in SK when it catered mostly to casuals (and still does).

We see a lot of this crap in FF14 too, but it's because the game mechanics are unforgiving, mostly starting from the Titan HM fight. Low DPS? wipe. Eat a plume at the wrong time? probably wipe. Healer died? wipe. Tank forgot to pop a CD before mountain buster and hit an unlucky 4k damage roll? wipe. You can have a perfect group of people and unlucky lag spikes will ruin any attempts because many things are reflex dodging based.

On a less gaming related note: this applies in work as well. You don't spend the time to train up new people to do work because you can do it faster and better, eventually it'll catch up to you. Being an "elitist" at work and not teaching other people hurts you in the long run, similar to mmorpgs.

 

[smakme7757]

Pretty neat story. Good to see some people actually giving people a go. I never had a problem with taking 1 person on a 10 man if they were sub par (guild raids). I also spent quite a bit of time taking people who just utterly sucked through some of the easier raids. I thought it was fun. We maybe cleared 2 or 3 bosses when we should have cleared the whole thing, but it mixed it up. Most of them ended up doing pretty well once they got the hang of things.

My reasoning was that i remembered when we had our entire guild in Molten Core (I played Vanilla, BC and WOTLK) and we couldn't even kill the first giant. We wiped all night on that guy.

Most people suck before they actually get good at something. Most people tend to forget that.

Although it's no surprise that's it's really only hardcores that play now.It's usually those that hang on until the bitter end. I wonder what will happen when the servers go down. All those toons getting erased after 15-20 or maybe more years of play time...

 

[KaOTiK]

I get on group and guild members cases that give people that are bad a hard time and don't offer to help them improve in someway. When I run something and we have a PUG in it and they are obviously not pulling their weight, if I have knowledge of their class I'll watch them and see what they are doing wrong and offer suggestions. I'll at the very least tell them they should go to xxx site or watch some videos to improve.

In my experience most people are receptive of being offered help if you do it in a non douche bag way and are grateful. You can just tell them what to do though, you need to explain why things have to be done the way that you say they need to be, because most wont understand the mechanics behind it and in the end it really doesn't help them improve if they can't adjust in the future on their own.

 

[slpnshot]

Man, I can't even imagine being on a server small enough to have your name be infamous. I remember when I quit wow, Gearscore was such a huge thing. People would spam for some ridiculous gear score grouping for something as easy as Vault... I was lucky enough to be in a decent progressive guild so I would never have to worry about finding a spot in the occasional pugs, but I can't imagine how hard it must have been to be a newer player at the time. Especially one with a reputation...

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Man, I can't even imagine being on a server small enough to have your name be infamous. I remember when I quit wow, Gearscore was such a huge thing. People would spam for some ridiculous gear score grouping for something as easy as Vault... I was lucky enough to be in a decent progressive guild so I would never have to worry about finding a spot in the occasional pugs, but I can't imagine how hard it must have been to be a newer player at the time. Especially one with a reputation...

In vanilla it wasn't really uncommon to have famous/infamous people even in rather large servers... Cross server stuff is what really killed that.

In WotLK I was able to go from just hitting 80 (I practically didn't play in BC or until around when the Arena came out) to being in a top 20 US guild in a couple of months... If you have the skill and are willing to do some skulduggery (I joined a decent guild (moved to a good server/pugging and networking while in the pug) where I could match people even in bad gear then went searching for a top guild once I geared up) then the gearscore is just a matter of time.

 

[Maximilian]

Hope he never tries LoL. Enough noobs as it is