Late Breakfast Topic: PUG-ing in WoW
by Elizabeth Harper 
May 23rd 2006 at 1:30PM
I'm sure we've all played in PUGs - that's "pick up groups," for the uninitiated - before. When attacking dungeons or battlegrounds, you'll always end up grouped with people you don't know. For me, the type of group I end up in makes all the difference between enjoying and not enjoying the game. Unfortunately, though, bad pick up groups seem much more common than good - but even then, they're a necessary evil that you may just have to tolerate until you manage to complete whatever mutual objective brought you together in the first place. So what do you do when you encounter an obstacle that you can't get past on your own? Hit the local looking for group channel for a PUG? Wait until you can get a group of friends together? Or just wait until you're high enough level to do it on your own?Filed under: PvP, Breakfast Topics, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jason May 23rd 2006 2:20PM
It seems to me that Pugging was a much more viable option before patch 1.10. With 15 in UBRS, you could afford to have one or two people that didn't know what they were doing. With 10, it's a disaster. While UBRS is the most notable example- I've had at least every other pug in that place go to hell- Baron and Scholo are barely better.
Honestly, I rarely run anything that isn't at least 75 percent guild members any more. It's just to much of a risk for something that potentially takes hours to complete. It's easier to get guildies that know what they're doing, won't argue endlessly about loot, and won't drop the group at the first sign of trouble.
stew May 23rd 2006 2:26PM
PUGs for me generally go sour quickly. The worst is actually trying ot form the group. Spending an hour in Ironforge just to have the group disolve before you even get to the flightmaster is intolerable. Its gotten to the point where I now wait for groups to form. I can tolerate people's playing abilities. Sometimes they don't get a heal off fast enough, sometime the warrior can't keep aggro, those things don't bother me too much. The lack of respect for other players really bothers me though. Know it alls quickly spoil the fun for me. When I get pissed, I always keep my finger on the vanish button. You all can die, but I will not take 10% degradation because someone pulled ten MOBs. Now with all that said, the keys to a good group include patience, respect, and a dose of humor. Let the rogue sap, the warrior tank, the healer heal, and everything should go ok. I always find it annoying when people yell at me for not having a certain skill. I know how I like to play, I'll try not to tell you how to play your character. I think this has gone on long enough, lets hope the servers are finally up.
the Brightside May 23rd 2006 2:29PM
For the most part, if there's something I need to do that I can't solo, I'll wait until some guildmembers are on and ask their help. We're mostly a PvP guild, so if there's something in Horde territory, it can pretty much wait until Thursday's PvP night event to get done.
However this weekend I was recuperating from surgery and was all alone on WoW, so I randomly joined up with a guy who was kicking skeletons for the beginning of the Scarlet Monastery chain quest. I wound up in a PUG with him and some other fairly random people, and went straight through SM, ending in the Cathedral at about 5 in the morning. It was a fantastic PUG, and a great experience.
Of course it was balanced out by last night's SM PUG, where we wiped about six times and I had to fake-disconnect to get the hell out of there (you know you've done it, alt-tab to the desktop and then close from the system tray). What's really great is that after I ditched the SM PUG I wound up right back in SM with some guild mates and had a blast.
In my earlier levels I probably would have waited until I could solo it, but as a mage, that was always pretty untenable anyhow. So from now on I'm thinking it'll be a guild thing.
Violencio May 23rd 2006 3:16PM
Was in an SFK PUG over the weekend, and we had been using standard loot rules. Right before taking out Arugal, the group leader whispers me to ask if I was planning to roll on the Robes of Arugal if they drop (he was also a cloth wearer). I say "yes", he responds "k". Arugal is down to 15-20% health, and I suddenly notice that the guild leader switches the loot format to "free-for-all". Realizing what he is going to do, I make sure I am right beside A when he goes down. We both loot his corpse at the same moment, and I come up with the robes. He spams some nasty words, and then bails. Idiot. He would at least have had a fair chance at the robes if he hadn't tried to pull that BS.
Server = Runetotem (Horde)
Idiot = Blinging
dj May 23rd 2006 9:46PM
I have been lucky so far, almost all of my PUGs have been good. I also seem to luck out at tagging on to two or three players from other guilds, usually with a higher level player walking a lowbie through a quest or instance. They are happy to have me along to protect the lowbie if they aggro the mobs. Certainly makes things easier for me! Having said that, doing an instance with your guildies is more fun on the social side, as everyone is usually more relaxed.
Abhinav May 24th 2006 3:07AM
PUGs is realy like rollingg for an item in WoW. Most of the time you are going to loose. With that loss comes unhappiness, high repair bills and timesink. Yes UBER/LBRS for the Horde Onyxia Attune is the best example for this. You could get ninja, people stepping on the eggs, people over pulling, people getting agroed in the beasts room, and just groups falling apart before the gen is the norm for atleast 90% of all UBRS runs. I personaly hate PUGs as most of them have left me with a high repair bill and someone else on my ignore list but i recently got my Finkles Skinner in a PUG and i couldnt be happier. There is no way now that i wont be giving pugs more of a chance. Well that was my little rant, PUGS suck most of the time but that small chance is realy worth it.
joey May 24th 2006 10:08AM
I joined a Kazzak PUG on Feathermoon the other day. And it was the smoothest takedown of Kazzak i've ever been in on. We downed him well under the 2 min mark and there was not a single death (as would be expected from a good kazzak run).
PUGs for FTW?
AcceptableRisk May 24th 2006 7:32PM
Violencio, I'm saddened by your story. I'm from Runetotem (Horde side) and so far my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I've had a couple of rough groups because of inexperienced players. That doesn't bother me, we've all been there. I've never really run into a group with a really bad egg. I thought maybe Runetotem managed to escape relativly unscathed in the asshole department. I guess it was a little bit of a reach, but it's nice to imagine...
Nex May 25th 2006 10:01PM
In truth, I havent done a PuG for probably 6 months now. Once you get your tier 0 (or the newfangled .5 for you damn kids these days) there isnt much reason to do PuG's if you have a guild.
I will say though, when I was still doing PuG's, I didn't find them to be all that bad. I'd get a group with an idiot in it probably 1 out of every 5 times, and even then if you explain things to the person, they usually catch on, unless they're just a griefer. And, if they are, you can, at least, have some fun insulting them.
Maybe Uther is just a good server for the general public.
Draitheryn Jun 20th 2006 9:00PM
I've recently had to get back into pugging since I rerolled when my guild decided to break up in the middle of C'Thun attempts. My classes before were priest and warrior, so I had a much greater hand in how the group went so I never liked the forming part, and the leaving, but skill I didnt seem to mind since I could compensate(though i noticed a lot if the tank sucked and couldnt keep agro off my priest no matter how careful I was).
Now I'm a hunter and I dont have such a direct control of things, I can kill fast and manage my own agro, but thats about it and thus far it has sucked. Ive had one good group and that was where I was the only pug with a bunch of guys using skype, even though our only healer was an enhance shammy we made it through the princess run fine. Every other pughas made my teeth cringe, anything from a warrior who doesnt understand the concept of mana, or a priest who doesnt know he has fade and a tank cant take agro off him if he runs away from the tank into more mobs. I have decided I will only pug end game instance and either wait for friends or buy my equipment here on out