Ignoring done correctly is very effective. I started the following after encountering an an anti-Semitic tool in a Gnomer PUG:

Step 1 - Put player on "Ignore"
Step 2 - Ask in party chat for the other players to relay any important or relevant information the ignored player might have, making sure to reference that you are now ignoring that player
Step 3 - Run remainder of dungeon

Message delivered without feeding the troll; this has worked for me on multiple lowbie dungeon runs, and I've only ever had one ignored DPS drop as a result.

Bonus: You will not be grouped with that player again in the future.

Happy Gaming.

It's funniest when the rude player is a DPS and you're a healer... their life is in your hands. I was in a FoS run yesterday and we were on the last boss. He did that move where he links with a player and reflects their damage back. The healer (and a guildy of mine) told the mage to stop dpsing the boss to which the mage replied "shut the fuck up"; he promptly blew himself up from his own damage and sat there dead for the rest of the fight. We left the dungeon, ignoring his cries for "REZ PLS", maybe on his solitary corpserun he'll reflect on how he acted :P

@Boz

That's exactly the advice I give guild members when this happens. "Put them on ignore and continue on or drop the group if you can't go on."

I just don't understand the 'holier than thou' attitude. People forget they were once the new kid on the block, learning the ropes of an instance.

What Kemikal says.
I actually kind of enjoy it when my healer gets grouped with arrogant a**holes that think it's ok to mercilessly flame other people for stupid reasons. They will stop getting heals, they will get no ress, they will get ansewered only in sarcasm filled with sweet little smileys and they will get set right and ridiculed when thew spew some crap about other classes they clearly have no clue about. And when they are the 'noobs I am only here for frost ffs!!1! Gogogogog! @#$%*#!' type, they will get a nice kick right before last boss.
Mwaha!

@ Gimmlete

People that behave like this will never stop beign the "new kid on the block"... they just have better GS than before.

@Boz - I'm with you. Ignoring while finishing the dungeon is the best solution. No sense in letting jerks completely ruin your game play.

Unfortunately, that doesn't always work. Sometimes it is someone ELSE who is being ripped in to. Are you just going to place them on ignore and leave their victim to be bullied?

Yesterday, for example, I got a healer and 2 dps who turned out to be from the same server along with a warrior dps who while he wasn't pulling 9k, was at least pulling 1500. Needless to say, the harpies spotted Recount within a couple of pulls and immediately started tearing into him. This is H HoL and we're clearing the trash right after the first boss when I notice that the healer hasn't topped off the warrior after the last pull. Hmm. Well, he might be conserving mana or something, so I shift out of bear and toss a Regrowth onto the warrior. THEN we get to the Slag room and sure enough, the warrior and one of the other dps die on that pull. The healer does one rez. Guess who it's NOT to. I call the healer on it and get back, "I don't rez noobs." Thank the Earth Mother I'm a druid. Drop out of bear AGAIN, rez the warrior, buff him, and whisper him to stay close and I'll watch after him as best as possible.

The VERY loud argument that stretched over the next two bosses and assorted trash would probably have been funnier had it not been on tv and not in rl, with 3 people who absolutely DID mean the crap they were throwing out. Anyway, long story short, they finally back down and we finish the instance, but it was not a pleasant experience.

(That said, there was a shining moment in that pug. The hunter dps decides that I should be pulling instead of stopping to rez/heal the warrior, SO...she MD the next pack onto me. Standard procedure...except that she's the type who can't stand to not be on the top of the meters. So she dps's enough to MD them onto me and then doesn't stop to make sure the tank actually IS bothering to pick them up. /evil grin. I'll give her this, she somehow managed to kill them before they could kill her. But it was definitely a fun stressbreaker after the 'fun' of the last several pulls.)

Even better...I just /leave the party when players get like that.

@ kittens

exatly what my healer and (tank) do. We have leveled up exclusively through the LFG and spent 30 days at lvl 70 working on all content in BC.

Everytime we group with a gogogo or a mouthy Elite's BoA wearing ALT we warn him to behave, or we will not let him get heals or Rez. Personally, I find four manning more challenging and have had to do that in BC herorics on more than half of our runs, due to someone that thought we " need" 3 DPS. Guess what, as overgeared as we are, it's more fun with four.

My healer and I like noobs because we like to show people the ropes. We like to chat in our runs and we aren't here for two emblems of frost, we are here to play a dungeon for the fun of it. Not because we need gear.

We have found in BC herorics we have been grouped with the same people a lot because we run late and only que for herorics. When we come across the same bad players again, they have a different mindset or they immediately drop group.

That's the advantage to having a healer tank team as you level. Our secret is, we have always turned off XP every couple of levels so we stay in the same content for ransoms.

After only a week or two of play your child is being bullied by their Coach in front of the rest of the team, and now your kid's teammates are picking on him or her. Do you speak with the Coach about the behavior? Do you talk with the other parents?

You could step in and confront the bullies - and it might even limit or eliminate the bullying - but you might be doing more harm than good. Bullying is something that needs to be addressed, but it is ultimately up to the victim to learn how to cope with the it, because bullying is something that everyone has to deal with throughout their lives. Sometimes we forget how humiliating it is to have someone step in for us; it makes the victim appear weaker. Think back to grade school and remember who got it worse: The bully or the tattler?

Coping means helping the victim stand up for themselves, to confront the bullies themselves, to defuse the situation using humor or logic, to ignore the bullying (if that tactic works), or to fight back if necessary. The tough part is knowing when you should step in and when to let them get a bloody nose.

Being a parent is very, very hard like that.

As we're reminded *constantly* by the social players, WoW is an MMO and if you're a lone wolf, GTFO. People who make snide comments and trash talk during a PUG - in my experience - are bored socials.

Being social, they really want to communicate and engage with other people. Being bored, they use insults and other behavior that typically ensures other people in the group will pay attention to them. (Negative attention is still attention.) In a sense, they're looking for verbal PvP.

Off-topic: I suspect that for many people, the allure of PvP is purely social... the need to engage in activity with other people. Why else would world PvP be "exciting" and world PvE be "boring"? Have to think about this some more...

Anyway, for quick reference, here's Hob's Three Rules of Dealing with PUGs:
1. Don't feed the social. Don't reply to a rude comment, EVER.
2. If you're making progress in the instance, stay.
3. If you're stalled because the group is bickering instead of doing the run, sit down with your back to the group and wait for 2 minutes. If they're still arguing after 2 minutes, leave without comment.

It will make your life so much easier.

@ Everyone saying to leave:

The problem with this is Blizz is tracking how many times you personally abandon a RDF PUG. People who tend to leave groups or kick members will find they still have to wait the fifteen-minute grace period when others can boot jerks instantly.

In other words... it's in your best interest to stick it out. Put the trash-mouths on /ignore, tell the group you're doing so (or better yet, whisper one of the goupmates who is acting the most maturely instead, so as not to let the abusers see you're doing it, as they are after all looking for attention). Then just run as normal. If the group is paused because of the arguing, go make a sandwich or something. If you're in a hurry, say something about it. Don't be That Guy who initiates pulls when the tank isn't ready though.... even if the tank is the one who initiated the verbal PvP (love that phrase!)

A few nights ago I did a dungeon with a bickery hunter, who kept making snide comments about how crappy I was as a healer since his pet kept dying, how terrible others' dps was, etc etc. Constant bile spewing from his general area. When I snapped and told him his pet was his responsibility, the tank whispered me and told me to ignore him because he's always like that in groups... turns out the tank was his wife... I felt so bad for her :(

No it isn't in our best interests to stay, Snuzzle. Because first, Blizz isn't paying us enough to be there to put up with that. And second, since this is usually a very rare occurrence, it is unlikely that any tracking mechanic will be held against you if you leave. I have only left twice on two different characters running PuG's since DF was released. So unless you're the one looking for trouble, this should not be an issue.