On Teamwork

If there's a dark side to the new LFG, it is this: it has strengthened the illusion that World of Warcraft is a single-player game.

I want to make this absolutely clear: no matter how it seems, WoW is not a single-player game. I know it looks that way; soloing for casuals has strengthened, badges and shiny epix are available with (comparatively) minimal effort, the Argent Tournament, all of these things, sure. It's easier than ever to float on through Azeroth like a neutrino, interacting only weakly with the other real people who are sharing your virtual breathing space. It's easy to forget that there are other people at all. It's easy to gear up into full T9 without ever speaking to another player; it's easy to treat PUG runners like hirelings, marching on a grim and silent death march through heroic after badge-geysering heroic, the terse atmosphere broken only by calls for this buff or that without so much as a please. Might as well be pushing a button to make your pally buff-bot give you what you want. You ungrateful son of a bitch.

It makes me sick, the disregard for their fellow human beings some of the PUGgers show. So here I am, saying it loud and clear: the game is not about YOU. From start to finish, from the time you log on to the time you log off, you are part of a team. You are part of a community, and you have just as much responsibility to be a decent human being in Azeroth as you do in the real world. I realize that that doesn't mean much to many of you out there, that a lot of you don't have any idea what that even means. Hey, you pay your fifteen bucks a month and that entitles you to wring as much blood from the game and your fellow players as you can. Take what you can, give nothing back? Go die in a hole.

Let me elaborate on this.

Most importantly, no matter how much it might seem this way, the other people running that PUG dungeon with you are people. They're looking to have fun and gear their toon exactly like you are. Display a little empathy. Sure, they might not be from your guild or even from your server, but they are still a part of your team. They are still a part of your community. Treating them like a buff-bot or rolling on things you don't need (but they do) just because you might never see them again isn't being a team player. It's not just about you. It never was.

There's more than this, though. You know all that stuff you buy from the Auction House? It's there because other players put it there. It didn't magically appear, it isn't being seeded by Blizzard. Sure, you have to spend some of your hard-earned gold to get the stuff, but it's there because they chose to level those trade skills and make their services available. You might think you're a solo player but you're not. Try leveling through the game without visiting the AH. It'll be unpleasant and painful. Try doing decent DPS in heroics without the services of a chanter or scribe or crofter. It'll be difficult. You need these people.

Moreover, you are paying your fifteen dollars a month to play a massively multiplayer online game. There are hundreds, literally hundreds, of lush, enormous single-player RPGs out there where you can God-mode all you like and nobody will ever complain. And you know what? Most of those don't have a monthly fee. Why would you pay your money to interact with other people and then act like a bridge-dwelling troll? You are part of the world, you are paying for the privilege of being a part of the world, a world populated by other human beings. They aren't bots, they are people, and they all paid to play in this rich, densely-populated world too.

I see the way a lot of people act in PUGs. I read comments on forum posts. Many seem to think they're entitled to special consideration, that they have the right to grab two handfuls of loot and skedaddle, and to hell with helping out the team or seeing that they had a good time, and many who don't feel that way naturally have learned the behavior as a defensive, pre-emptive measure. To paraphrase Syndrome, "Once everyone's a ninja ... nobody will be."

This attitude doesn't help; it makes it worse. It creates a vicious cycle of ever-more-selfish behavior. It encourages the little trolls and selfish gits; now they've successfully reduced everyone to their level, their childish, churlish behavior has been validated and normalized. Worse, it causes damage to the community as a whole -- sure, you can find a guild and be treated decently, but woe to the man who steps out into the wild world, lest he have his loots ninjaed from him and his gear mocked with allegations of noobishness.

I've had good PUGs. I've had people who played as a team, who were cordial and competent and generous with the loot. I've also had my share of bad PUGs, full of self-important, selfish twelve-year-olds rampantly and vigorously exhibiting the behavior that inspired this post in the first place. I don't know about the rest of you but I know that I, at least, enjoy the former much more than the latter. I'd guess that the majority of you do as well.

But in order to live in such a world, we all have to do our part to create it. Don't be a loot whore. Be polite and considerate. Remember that not everyone has the ability (or desire) to chain-run heroics for six hours a day (and thus might not yet be in full T9 despite the dungeon finder being out for a whole six weeks). Don't drop group because you don't like the instance and make everyone else in the group have to wait to replace you. Don't kick a DPS because he isn't pulling 3k or has a Gear Score of under 5k. Greed on the Frozen Orbs, don't need on stuff you wouldn't, in principle, equip right away during the run you're on, and consider maybe letting someone else have the [Battered Hilt] once you've won it twice. Part of being a team player, the team that is helping you run through the dungeon, is occasionally taking one for the team.

Azeroth, the World of Warcraft, might be just a game world, but it is a world full of people who have chosen to be there and who have chosen to be part of a community with you. Don't make them regret it.