Posts with tag afker

With the Wrath Beta Opt-in available, we're one step closer to the expansion. We're all anxiously awaiting the time when the expansion is ready. I'm still having fun with the existing World of Warcraft, but I'm a bit antsy. There is a lot of frustration over existing conditions, especially when it comes to PvP.

Chloroform of EU-Magtheridon isn't interested in waiting. He listed his grievances in the EU-PVP Forum, "Balance issues, queue times, destroying premades, AFK problems, uneven teams, world pvp screwed by 9000yd aggro range ultra guards." Like many others, Jasse of EU-Bronzebeard blames the arena for the death of PvP.

In an odd expression of the "we can't beat them so we might as well let them win" attitude, someone on the forums has postulated the following logic:

1. Battleground AFKers want a limited amount of honor to purchase their gear.
2. AFKers will stop AFKing once they get that amount.
3. Reporting them slows down their AFK honor gain.
4. The slower it takes them to reach their goal, the longer we have to suffer their presence.
5. We should let them have their honor, so that they'll get out of the battlegrounds faster.

Obviously he is completely wrong. First of all, he's assuming that there's only a set amount of AFKers out there, and once they're all done, there won't be any more left. To the contrary, the more people succeed at getting honor rewards for free, the more people are going to see their example and try it for themselves. Additionally, the AFKer has no real reason set a limit to the amount of honor he can get this way. Only those who have bought all the items they can use and saved up the maximum amount of honor points and marks will stop, unless Blizzard gives us the tools to stop them ourselves.

Besides, letting people get away with AFKing for their gear is inherently unjust. It may not be on a par with stealing the crown jewels of the Queen of England, but it's theft nonetheless. After all, in a battleground, other people do all the work, but AFKers get the benefit. They are effectively stealing the time and energy we put into the game, and making it doubly hard for us to succeed at the same time, just like a parasite which does nothing for itself except leech away the energy your body works so hard to create. We should never let passivity overcome our natural yearning to see AFKers fail in their goals, and should fight them with whatever tools we have, no matter how inadequate.

As we're looking forward to a new patch tomorrow, it's appropriate to look back at the last patch and what it added to the game. While there were also several tweaks to class mechanics and items, the main thing it added was Blizzard-supported voice chat. Earlier today, Mike admitted that he hasn't ever used the voice chat, and aside from experimenting with it a bit on the day it was released, I haven't either. I don't do pickup groups much these days, but the few I've been in haven't bothered with the chat at all. This may be due to the fact that its sound quality isn't all that great and there may be other issues as well. People being embarrassed to talk out loud to total strangers or simply being habituated to typing in pickup groups are both possible reasons why the chat may be neglected. What's your experience with it? Have you used it much?

One of the other major changes in patch 2.2 was reporting AFKers in Alterac Valley. While I personally like this change, (if nothing else, it gives me something to do while protecting a flag,) for whatever reason, it seems to have skewed the battleground in the Horde's favor (my main PvPer at the moment is Alliance). Honestly, I haven't read a lot about the reasoning behind this phenomenon, and for all I know, it's different on other battlegroups. What's it like on your server? Do you like this change?