Breakfast Topic: Dodging guilt
by David Ritsema 
May 13th 2010 at 8:00AM
My mouse hovers over the "leave battleground" button.
I want to click it.
I don't.
There's something about the Deserter debuff that just gets under my skin. I can't help but picture someone clicking my 'toon and seeing "Deserter" attached to my name. They think, "Well, now, that there's a coward!" Inside, I know that it's just as reasonable as dropping from a bad dungeon PUG (even more so, if I drop from a turtled AV). But then I think, "I'd be a deserter." I'd end up spending the next 15 minutes wandering around Netherstorm or Silithus, keeping clear of other players, contemplating rolling a warlock and other self-hating activities. So I stay and rack up another "L" on my personal record.
But it brings up the question: what do you put yourself through to avoid guilt in World of WarCraft?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Zalvi24 May 13th 2010 8:01AM
whats guilt? never heard of it
Eternauta May 13th 2010 11:16AM
^ This.
The moment I log in, I become a socipath. I think it's necessary to some degree in order to mantain sanity and deal with the constant sh!t happening in WoW. Is it me, or for every nice reasonable person in the game there are 10 more douchebags?
Josin May 13th 2010 8:06AM
I maintained an RP guild for probably a year and a half longer than I should have.
Jamie May 13th 2010 8:07AM
Avoiding guilt? Running very very far away from new people that I have spent a decent 15mins of my time helping, if I run far enough away I might be able to persuade myself not to go back and help them more.
Lurking on alts and avoiding my mains while supposedly being away from raiding for a considerable amount of time, I miss my mains...
Also I completely agree with you on your comments about BGs, it seems that the Alliance doesn't have a clue most of the time while the Horde are trained super soldiers, GRRRR.
Sargenus May 13th 2010 3:26PM
THIS! When ever I help someone with a quest or they help me, I always hesitate to click "Leave group" 'cause I'm so afraid of it coming off as me wanting to leave ASAP!
BadAndyMk3 May 13th 2010 8:07AM
I only desert a BG when something else (a raid or a dungeon or something) is forming up. Beyond that, honor is honor.
I actully feel more guilt toward NCPs than I do to other players. For the longest time I wouldn't fly into the taunka camp in Grizzly Hills, just because of all those yellow exclamation points staring at me. Dammit, those Taunka NEED me, and I'm avoiding them! What kind of a hero am I?
Tricia May 13th 2010 8:09AM
On the flipside, if everyone who saw a losing battle left then of course there'd be no winning. Sometimes you just have to lose, because other times you pull a win from almost certain loss.
earthexile May 13th 2010 8:55AM
This reminds me of the most epic AV I was ever involved in.
We were getting zerged by the Horde, and had lost nearly every point in the entire map. All we had was our farthest-back graveyard and our commander, and the Horde was ahead of us by about 150 reinforcements.
And then there was the only truly epic battle I've seen in WoW. The entire Horde side was assembled into one mass, charging up towards our base, and we were preparing to make a last stand. For a moment, everyone hovered just out of spellcasting range, sort of awkward, like, who goes first?
Then a warrior next to me /yells, "FOR THE ALLIANCE" and charges, probably thinking he's being funny. What ensued, instead, was a ten-minute bloodbath in front of our base, and somehow we held the line. Maybe they were just trying to run past us and kill the General, and getting trapped in our kill zone. Maybe all 40 of them got up and let their little sisters play. Whatever happened, when the smoke and spells cleared, we'd massacred them so badly that they'd lost the AV by running out of reinforcements.
Sometimes an embarrassing loss can turn into a truly heroic victory. I never leave a bg unless I'm asked to a raid.
PictoKong May 13th 2010 10:07AM
Somehow your story remembers me of the opening of WCIII, epic large scale battle are always better
Hunterlicious May 13th 2010 10:54AM
@earthexile- Did this epic battle happen a while ago? Like, over a year ago? I may have been in that- or an identical scenario happened to me. It was the LONGEST AV I'd ever been in. My guildies were all making fun of me for wasting time in a losing, turtled, AV...and then the tide turned. Everyone played their best game and Horde players did not get through. It was the most awesome bg I've ever played because it was so unexpected and no one gave up. Know how when you're in a losing a bg there's always an optimist who types, "We can still win this, guys!" only to get shot down by a barrage of angry comments? Well, that night everyone in the bg was that optimist. :-)
But back to topic: I always feel guilty when I am in a bg running towards an objective and pass someone fighting an npc. Sometimes I'll stop to help, but more often than not I don't feel like wasting time fighting an npc someone else was unfortunate to aggro (I'll help if it's a player vs player situation)...
Jamie May 13th 2010 8:11AM
WoW is a game sure, but it's a game based predominantly around social interactions - which often run deeper than the game mechanics itself to a large portion of the community.
Gamer am I May 13th 2010 8:11AM
As a tank, I can't exactly just drop out of PUGs and expect that the group will quickly be able to find a replacement. Heroics have reached the point where this is never an issue anymore, but back in the day, I put myself through the horrible PUGs just so that I wouldn't have to live with the guilt of abandoning those players. However, that doesn't mean that I never told some people off before leaving the group after we finished, like that triplet of two DPS who considered it a personal victory to pull aggro off of me (and this was in heroic PoS, mind you; it's not like the damage was negligible) and that healer who started pulling when he thought I was going too slowly (I wanted to let the mobs kill him, but his DPS friends saved him). It's people like them that made me stop going into heroics, but I couldn't abandon that group because of that poor mage who was still trying to gear up. I stayed for him, and only for him, and he did get an upgrade out of the run. Of course, once we killed Tyrannus, I let the others know exactly what I thought of them, telling them that it was people like them that are responsible for the tank shortage and that I hoped I never had to see them again. Of course, they just snidely told me goodbye and probably didn't change their ways afterward, but at least I felt vindicated.
Holgar May 13th 2010 9:12AM
THIS x1000, pre 2.3 I played a tank, then swapped to a healer then back to tanking in 3.0.
I put up with HORRIBLE pugs for the sake of friends/guildies. I ignored streams of unreasonable abuse from dps with meters for brains.
Way too many dps are unwilling to cut an undergeared or inexperienced tank ANY slack whatsoever.
The result is that the fledgling tank gets sick of the abuse (Pro tip: screaming at somone for being undergeared dosn't make T10 magicaly appear in their inventory) says !@#$ this and goes dps or heals.
If you don't like tanking thats fine but if you can't be bothered to help people that are trying to learn to Tank or build a Tank set in heroics then you DESERVE 30 minuet queues and having to fight tooth and nail for raid slots.
Kurick May 14th 2010 3:41AM
I feel your anguish.
I leveled my paladin during tbc (before it was popular). Im not supergeared or anything - but decent enough as a tank (i tanked ICC 10 - and was on the pvp fight before i realised i was holding aggro without RF on!). For guildies who need the daily i will still tank, but for any pug group ill go as my alt spec (holy). I quit tanking when the dps did the normal. Run ahead tag a new group - and bring it back n stand in my concecration, whilst i had no mana to do ANYTHING. Not just once, but many many times in many different heroics. Each time if anyone died, i was blamed by the dps - although usually the healer /w me and told me they knew it wasnt my fault.
As a healer i normally support the tank, for when we meet these meterhead dps. I also say at the start of a run (after talking with the tank) 'if you pull it - you will tank it - and im healing the TANK not you so you will probably die'. This seems to prevent most from being bad, although we sometimes lose a dps at the start as they 'dont want to be with prima donna healers and tanks'. Tis no great loss when that happens though.
Oh as an afterthough, you do realise that even if you drop out as a tank, the group is put to the head of the list again, so the next solo tank will pick up that group (so they will get a replacement quite quickly). I kept finding myself put in with these groups - mostly in HoR - and they were almost uniformly composed of 'bads'. So much so if i found myself joining a HoR run, with hundreds of skele's on the floor - i would be very much inclinded to quit immediately........But i couldnt. I too joined in - often spending an hour or more wiping on the waves as people would not follow any tactics. Damn that guilt!!!
Grovinofdarkhour May 13th 2010 11:27AM
What about those of us who have literally spent 2+ years gearing up dozens of tanks through heroics and earlier raids, just to watch them get purple fever and leave for an uberguild without even a "thanks for all the gear and training guys, good luck to ya"? Do we deserve those things too?
Oh yeah, the Niceguy Fastpass is still in development.
talkaboom May 13th 2010 8:13AM
I can totally understand. While I am no PvPer myself, the occasional BG i get into generally turns into a loss for Horde on my B-Group. But leaving not just makes me feel like a coward, I also end up feeling that I did not do the best that I could. It is similar to when you get stuck with a mediocre/bad PUG. Even if you have a crappy player or 2, you can still finish the dungeon run, esp if it is the daily heroic. So why not finish the BG?
Mike May 13th 2010 3:51PM
Left Doomhammer Alliance (50/50 WG win/loss ratio) for Thrall Horde. Horde dominates WG to the point that alliance win 1 game out of 10 if their lucky. I feel so bad for the alliance that I don't heal anyone anymore. Just run around spamming moonfire. LoL. 2 funny how our brains work sometimes.
HHUK May 13th 2010 8:12AM
Pixels aren't worth being guilty over, just need roll on everything, leave all the BG's you can and play the AH like a pimp.
I love being morally unbalanced.
Jonisjalopy May 13th 2010 8:12AM
I feel the same way after /afking out of a bg or random. I know its just a game, but I still have ethics and a conscience.
It's like working a crappy job. You still give it 100% even though you have every reason not to. It's called integrity :)
Grovinofdarkhour May 13th 2010 12:30PM
Like those above, it isn't your opinion I have any issue with, it's only your choice of terminology.
People have things come up all the time, whether in-game or out. The phone rings. The baby's crying. The thing is running too long and they actually have to be somewhere. To suggest that afk'ing out of a BG or random means someone doesn't have "ethics and a conscience" is TOTALLY uncalled for and irresponsible. People really need to learn to think about the things they're typing before they hit the Add Comment button.