To be honest, I find this assumption some people have that you’re either fully optimised or a brain-damaged parasitic scrub rather wearying. It would make about as much sense for me to refuse to group with any player under the age of 25 because younger players are all whiny, self-centred brats who will ninja all the loot and go linkdead at boss fights when daddy turns their internet off to make them do their homework.

For short term relationships below actual content (newest heroics + raids) I don’t care about the optimization level of my groupmates. If they’re good, I’m happy, if not, it’s a challenge.
But getting a lottery-pimped tank in ZA hero with 146k hp, not knowing the instance, nor willing to join teamspeak when offered, is a quite good slap in the face of all puggers.

Thing is, for anyone who feels like this the easy solution to this is just not to use LFD and then they won’t have to worry about how good the other players are in it. But it’s also true that you won’t always be ‘paying it forwards’ because the nature of the random group finder is that you’ll get a mixture. Some groups will be fine, others less so.

I do think you’re right that people who genuinely only want to run groups with people from their raid group should just put together their own groups though.

As others mentioned, if you cannot be bothered to do something to help the success of the group, you are indeed “stabbing your friends in the neck” – it is not so much the literal +30 stat difference, but rather the principal of the thing. Although I would suggest not discounting +30 stats when it gets compounded across 17 pieces of equipment and then further compounded across 10/25 players.

Imagine you were raiding and your paladin friend refused to buff the raid with Might. The difference between that and optimization is one of degrees, not kind.

Re: Fallacy 2

And it’s only one short step away to say that you also need to be a masochist to want to play with people who themselves are learning the game.

You do actually need to be a masochist to want to play with new players when you have already “paid your dues” when it comes to learning encounters. Are you suggesting that you enjoy wiping on farm runs or on trash? I know I don’t.

LFD pugs get angry because new players want to get carried by random strangers rather than putting effort into getting guild groups together to learn dungeons. I didn’t run ZA/ZG until I cleared both with a guild group, for example, because I believed it unfair to demand that four randomly chosen people teach me how to clear those dungeons. Even if you are a 100% Pay-It-Forward kind of guy, the LFD pool is bottomless – you will be paying it forward ’till you’re broke, and they will still demand more.

Re: Fallacy 3

It’s the same deal with Fallacy 1, namely that it indicates a willingness to put in effort, not whether the effort itself is 100% necessary for success. Nobody likes wiping at 1%. The fact is that I would rather raid/group/hang out with people willing to go the extra mile without complaint than someone just screwing around with no care for what’s going on outside the monitors of the other 4 players.

Would you rather have the 110% coworker as a partner for a team project, or the 9-5 clockwatcher?

The problem is that people want the reward first time, every time, without the learning experience. The other problem, of course, is that giving consolation prizes for “less than full success” is a tricky act – if the rewards for failure are good enough, you’ll get people taking them as the path of least resistance. For some reason just typing that I hear echoes of the cry in Alterac Valley “Let’s kill Balinda and lose fast!”

Also, “I don’t care if I’m not doing the best I can” could mean “I have optimised my gear based on the time available to me to play and the requirements of this raid, I have no intention of rearranging my RL schedule even more to grind for a minor and unimportant upgrade.”

It comes from the fact that a person who is not willing to optimize the small things is likely to be a person who doesn’t care about being able to pull their weight in a group. “I don’t care if I’m not doing the best I can” can become “I don’t care if we can down the boss or not” which can become “I don’t care if the time of my groupmates is wasted due to wipes.” It’s courtesy to try to do your best for the success of the group and if you don’t care about that you’re likely one of those selfish, terrible players we’ve all heard stories about.

It’s like when serious raiding guilds looked for the Exalted Sons of Hodir shoulder enchants during Wrath. It’s not that the difference between the Honored shoulder enchants and the Exalted shoulder enchants were the difference between a successful kill and a wipe; it’s that a person who was willing to put forth the effort to grind Sons of Hodir rep to Exalted was more likely to be more determined about being successful at raiding and consequently a better raider.