4 ms·

That video is incredibly good. The same trouble with the meta One True Path existed all the way back in vanilla. Our guild was objectively faster clearing dunge

by eszed 2y ago

That video is incredibly good. The same trouble with the meta One True Path existed all the way back in vanilla. Our guild was objectively faster clearing dungeons by departing from widely-disseminated strats (by, e.g., selectively kiting / evasion-tanking, and using hybrid characters as intended). That maybe wasn't "best" in top-tier play, but it absolutely was in situations where everyone wasn't geared to the max. (And, you know, we had loads more fun figuring out our own optimized path than we would have copying someone else's.) WoW broke for me when cross-realm play was introduced. Prior to that, you gained a reputation on your server, so poor behavior was kept (somewhat) in check, and "randoms" you grouped with were therefore a) more willing to listen and follow alternative approaches, and b) worth teaching, because you knew you were likely to see them again. Complete anonymity removed the social contracts that made the game special.

nozzlegear 2y ago
> WoW broke for me when cross-realm play was introduced. Prior to that, you gained a reputation on your server, so poor behavior was kept (somewhat) in check, and "randoms" you grouped with were therefore a) more willing to listen and follow alternative approaches, and b) worth teaching, because you knew you were likely to see them again. Complete anonymity removed the social contracts that made the game special. I was just talking with my wife this morning about how different dungeons are now compared to back then, and how we'd be unlikely to wind up together if it were to happen today in modern WoW. She and I met while playing WoW back in Wrath; she played a paladin tank and was looking for a healer to heal a dungeon with her and her friends. I played a resto shaman at the time and decided to join them. We all ended up chatting so much that we added each other to our friend lists and started running dungeons together regularly. One thing lead to another and now we're happily married — 15 years later and still playing the game together. I've been leveling some alts via dungeons recently, and the sense of community you get when you're in dungeons is completely gone. People do not talk to each other at all, there is zero communication. They are in and out of there as quickly as possible, no time for talking, no time for "hello." The same is doubly true for LFR. 25 people in a raid and nobody talks to each other. If you're not at the boss by the time everyone else is, they're not waiting for you and they're going to pull. If you caused a wipe, you're going to get kicked from the group and replaced. They're just there to get loot for their alts and queue for the next wing of the raid.
- rKarpinski 2y ago
  How could you bring yourself to marry someone from that class! I never approved of Shamans and Paladins being on the same faction
- eszed 2y ago
  That's such a shame. I think I had as many friends outside my guild as I did inside, back in the day. I had a macro which buffed + whispered folks, and I spammed it at everyone I ran across; I'd join a PUG and people would say "it's you!". There was one guy I'd group up with every Wednesday to run East Strat (this was early on, when it was a challenge for most PUGs) - he was a hunter (<Preyofwar>, if you're out there, it's been a long time, buddy) and I was a druid, so when we got a tank I healed, and when we got a healer I tanked; and, you know, hunters were intended to be group leaders, and mark + make the pulls - and for a while we made it a Thing; people would message us when they saw us come online. This one time we grabbed a woman who mainly crafted - she'd sit outside the auction house handing out low-level bags to noobs - and had barely run dungeons before; it took some convincing to persuade her to come, and she didn't really know what she was doing (I think she was a resto shaman?). Halfway through, the assholes we'd picked up outside the instance started giving her grief in the chat - she'd wiped us at least a couple of times in a row - and she started apologizing and offering to go, and we said "no fucking way" and kicked them, and then called in favors with our guildmates to get some better-geared and more-experienced folks to help us carry her the rest of the way. That's the sort of thing I loved about early WoW. We took the gamey side seriously - like, that guy and I really prided ourselves on how quickly we could run a group through the dungeon, and optimized the hell out of our pulls - but it was set up to remind you there was a human on the other side of the keyboard, too. It's the best time I've had (or ever expect to have) with any video game, ever, and I'll never ever go back.
eszed 2y ago
Replying to myself, because whenever I think about early-WoW I get nostalgic, and it's on my mind for a while. Our guild strictly prohibited posting DPS or healing logs in raid or guild chat (though linking them in class-specific threads was fine). This was excellent, because it kept us from making targets out of those metrics, or making apples-oranges comparisons, and kept our focus on completing instances efficiently. In one of my favorite fights the mages and I worked out a cool trick that I never saw in any strategy guide. Do you remember the banquet fight in Karazan? One of the bosses had pretty good spell resistance, and we suggested saving it for last. By that point in the fight I'd be helping the melee toons get it down, so my mana would be basically full at the end. The mages would totally stop casting on that boss, and aim to be at about half mana when combat stopped. The instant we finished the mob off, the mages and I would run out the door, and I'd head up to the top of the stairs. With precise timing from a particular angle I could pull two groups of trash mobs in the next room, and make sure that they got to the stairs at the same time so they'd all get caught in my AoE. Between that spell, HoTs, and Thorns, druids could get phenomenal threat on grouped mobs. They'd hit me for a few seconds until they were sticky enough that the mages could AoE them down without getting touched. Then we'd sit down and drink/bandage, and laugh and point at the group if they'd taken too long looting. Because no one particularly cared about their individual stats we saved everyone three or four minutes of waiting for those pulls. We were anything but an elite guild, on a bog-standard non-competitive server, but it was deeply satisfying to discover those small moments that contributed to everyone's success.

by eszed 2y ago

nozzlegear 2y ago

> WoW broke for me when cross-realm play was introduced. Prior to that, you gained a reputation on your server, so poor behavior was kept (somewhat) in check, and "randoms" you grouped with were therefore a) more willing to listen and follow alternative approaches, and b) worth teaching, because you knew you were likely to see them again. Complete anonymity removed the social contracts that made the game special. I was just talking with my wife this morning about how different dungeons are now compared to back then, and how we'd be unlikely to wind up together if it were to happen today in modern WoW. She and I met while playing WoW back in Wrath; she played a paladin tank and was looking for a healer to heal a dungeon with her and her friends. I played a resto shaman at the time and decided to join them. We all ended up chatting so much that we added each other to our friend lists and started running dungeons together regularly. One thing lead to another and now we're happily married — 15 years later and still playing the game together. I've been leveling some alts via dungeons recently, and the sense of community you get when you're in dungeons is completely gone. People do not talk to each other at all, there is zero communication. They are in and out of there as quickly as possible, no time for talking, no time for "hello." The same is doubly true for LFR. 25 people in a raid and nobody talks to each other. If you're not at the boss by the time everyone else is, they're not waiting for you and they're going to pull. If you caused a wipe, you're going to get kicked from the group and replaced. They're just there to get loot for their alts and queue for the next wing of the raid.

rKarpinski 2y ago
How could you bring yourself to marry someone from that class! I never approved of Shamans and Paladins being on the same faction
eszed 2y ago
That's such a shame. I think I had as many friends outside my guild as I did inside, back in the day. I had a macro which buffed + whispered folks, and I spammed it at everyone I ran across; I'd join a PUG and people would say "it's you!". There was one guy I'd group up with every Wednesday to run East Strat (this was early on, when it was a challenge for most PUGs) - he was a hunter (<Preyofwar>, if you're out there, it's been a long time, buddy) and I was a druid, so when we got a tank I healed, and when we got a healer I tanked; and, you know, hunters were intended to be group leaders, and mark + make the pulls - and for a while we made it a Thing; people would message us when they saw us come online. This one time we grabbed a woman who mainly crafted - she'd sit outside the auction house handing out low-level bags to noobs - and had barely run dungeons before; it took some convincing to persuade her to come, and she didn't really know what she was doing (I think she was a resto shaman?). Halfway through, the assholes we'd picked up outside the instance started giving her grief in the chat - she'd wiped us at least a couple of times in a row - and she started apologizing and offering to go, and we said "no fucking way" and kicked them, and then called in favors with our guildmates to get some better-geared and more-experienced folks to help us carry her the rest of the way. That's the sort of thing I loved about early WoW. We took the gamey side seriously - like, that guy and I really prided ourselves on how quickly we could run a group through the dungeon, and optimized the hell out of our pulls - but it was set up to remind you there was a human on the other side of the keyboard, too. It's the best time I've had (or ever expect to have) with any video game, ever, and I'll never ever go back.

eszed 2y ago

Replying to myself, because whenever I think about early-WoW I get nostalgic, and it's on my mind for a while. Our guild strictly prohibited posting DPS or healing logs in raid or guild chat (though linking them in class-specific threads was fine). This was excellent, because it kept us from making targets out of those metrics, or making apples-oranges comparisons, and kept our focus on completing instances efficiently. In one of my favorite fights the mages and I worked out a cool trick that I never saw in any strategy guide. Do you remember the banquet fight in Karazan? One of the bosses had pretty good spell resistance, and we suggested saving it for last. By that point in the fight I'd be helping the melee toons get it down, so my mana would be basically full at the end. The mages would totally stop casting on that boss, and aim to be at about half mana when combat stopped. The instant we finished the mob off, the mages and I would run out the door, and I'd head up to the top of the stairs. With precise timing from a particular angle I could pull two groups of trash mobs in the next room, and make sure that they got to the stairs at the same time so they'd all get caught in my AoE. Between that spell, HoTs, and Thorns, druids could get phenomenal threat on grouped mobs. They'd hit me for a few seconds until they were sticky enough that the mages could AoE them down without getting touched. Then we'd sit down and drink/bandage, and laugh and point at the group if they'd taken too long looting. Because no one particularly cared about their individual stats we saved everyone three or four minutes of waiting for those pulls. We were anything but an elite guild, on a bog-standard non-competitive server, but it was deeply satisfying to discover those small moments that contributed to everyone's success.