The clash of server cultures

Oh, East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet…

–Rudyard Kipling

One of the interesting pieces of fallout from the new cross-server dungeon tool in patch 3.3 in WoW is that players can now easily mix with people from different servers. And wouldn’t you know it, some of them do things very differently indeed.

In groups I’ve seen, we’re gradually moving towards to more multi-server-cultural understanding, but it isn’t always an easy journey.

So, do you need or greed on Frozen Orbs? (We’re moving towards everyone rolling need, but it is a server specific custom. On mine for example, we usually roll greed on all BoE drops. On other servers, it’s more normal to roll need. Once everyone stops accusing each other of being ninjas, I think we’ll shift to all rolling need.)

Do you say Hi when you join a group and Bye or Thanks when the instance is finished? (My server is polite and we usually expect this, if only to show that everyone is ready to start. Others seem to run silently. I think the trend is towards the Hi/Bye because it is a convenient way for people to show that they are awake and speak English. And whilst Gevlon would hate it, I suspect people are less likely to boot someone who seems friendly but is sub-par than someone who hasn’t said a word and underperforms.)

Do people on your server normally ask if it is OK for them to roll need on offspec gear before they do it? (They do on mine because we’re all so polite, but actually it drives me nuts to have to keep saying ‘yes, just roll need if you need it’. I know on other servers people assume that it’s fine to roll need on any upgrades, and I think that’s how we will trend. After all, with instances so easily available it isn’t the end of the world if you have to run a few to get ‘your’ drop.)

The server custom which boggled my mind the most was the death knight who swore to me that it was completely normal on his server for people to deliberately pull extra patrols from halfway across the room “just in case the tank hadn’t seen them.” I did my bit for cultural understanding by telling him that if he did that again while I was tanking, he’d be out and that he was lucky the healer wasn’t making him pay repair costs.

Have you seen any interesting server culture clashes in your 3.3 dungeon adventures?