Sometimes as tank, you're asked to be party leader in order to mark targets for CC, establish a kill order, and so on. One of the problems of this position is, at times, you're forced to use it to remove problem members of a party, especially when it's a pick up group. I don't do all that many PuG's for this and other reasons, but Monday I made an exception on my tauren warrior for an old friend who has just started playing again. She wanted to finally finish Black Morass for her (now unnecessary) Karazhan key, and I decided that completing content instead of skipping it warranted some help. Plus, like I said, she's a friend, and a good player. We formed up a group... myself as tank, her as hunter DPS, another old friend as priest healing, a warlock to help with both main and add DPS thanks to those wonderful DoTs, and a fury warrior to be main add killer.

Unfortunately, the fury warrior came with enough baggage to crush ten porters.

Rude? You bet. Racist? Oh yeah. Constantly going off on tirades about his job, his girlfriend, and any other subject in party chat (we used the in game voice client... oh, was that a mistake) while other people were trying to call out where the next spawn point was? You know it. And despite the fact that he was sporting full S2 gear, he couldn't kill an add in time to save our lives. Half the time he was nowhere near the adds at all, running off in some random direction as if his sense of location had been replaced with Folger's Crystals. And by the way, yes, we noticed. Considering that I've done that job in blues, and this wasn't even a heroic, we were faced with a choice.

We could put the warlock, who seemed very good at her job, on adds full time and stick the warrior on DPSing the bosses, or we could kick the warrior and get someone else to come in and DPS. Now, ordinarily, I'd vote to keep the guy just because he came in good faith. But the combination of his ineptitude and his rather horrible personality (not to mention the way he started hitting on our DPS the second they spoke and revealed their gender in between tirades about how his girlfriend is a bad healer) sealed the deal and I booted him. Got some nasty tells, ignored them, went about my day. We got an undergeared rogue friend to come in and DPS on the boss, to be honest we might have been able to four man it (that warlock was really good) and got it done.

However, I always look back on my decisions and wonder if they were the right ones. Should I have kicked him? Should I have just moved him to the boss and ignored what a loudmouthed pain he was? Was I expecting too much out of him since as a warrior I've done the fight myself? It's hard knowing when to kick someone and when to just let it ride. I mean, it's just a game, yeah, but at the same time the fact that it's just a game means I'm playing to have fun, not listen to someone's unpleasant personality unravel while lizards try and eat my face.

So I turn to you for your opinions. When do you kick people from groups? Are you overly tolerant or are you quick to boot, perhaps too quick? What's the general consensus on these matters?

Tags: Instances, Kicking, Leader, pick up group, PickUpGroup, PuG

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Social Conventions, Odds and ends, Instances, Quests