Wolfshead: That makes a lot of sense. And it isn’t just the broader demographic, some of it is just experienced players dealing with less experienced players. Or people who’ve been hanging out online for 10 years with their own idea of netiquette having to deal with the facebook crowd. I honestly feel that we’re watching the internet grow up in front of us and this is part of the growing pains.

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=852

The problem is that the quality of the player base become more and more diluted. At what point will the community are large say “enough”? The problem is that as the community keeps getting worse no one will even care. By that time good people will have long left your favorite MMO if they already haven’t left.

Tanks: I’ve never seen a tank for a good raid guild who couldn’t play an excellent 5 man. I have seen them play semi-afk with long pointless pauses between pulls at irregular intervals. Understandable since tanks are often also officers but annoying too.

Healers: I’ve never seen a healer from a strong guild who sucked in a 5 man. I’ve seen annoying superior or smug healers but never an incompetent one even by my own rather demanding standards.

DPS: The natural tendency of well-geared dps slumming it with randoms in a pug is to create problems for other people. To be honest I saw it more in the level 60 wait for 3 sunders days when you were boned as a tank if a dps out-geared you. Now it’s still annoying to see them overaggro and blame the tank and healer. I’ve played with a couple like that this year who’ve ended up getting the boot and everyone cheered to see them go (while they presumably ran back to their guild whining about noobs). The current dynamic is that is your tanks have the same or better level of gear you almost never need to throttle threat so there are some dps raiders in very advanced guilds who can’t manage that basic skill.

When one is in that mindset, the usual rewards of purple pixels, the play experience itself, social acceptance, learning the game, sense of accomplishment, victory over other players etc are worthless. Because there’s nothing to be gained, they venture nothing.

I have no problems with the newbie that’s trying to better himself. And I don’t have any problems with the “not a game” types as long as they’re not slacking off in a group that I’m in. If they are.. I’ll use my freedom to not associate with them.