Posts with tag selfish

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

One of the big annoyances of raiding is finding the right schedule. This time of year is particularly bad for many guilds, as last week's Officers' Quarters column proved. Students of all ages have finals. Working adults are traveling more often or spending more time away from the PC. When you have a small crew, the loss of even one person for a few weeks can mean all your raids are put on hold. This week, one officer wants to know how to figure out a raiding schedule despite some uncooperative individuals.

I'm sure we've all had someone dash ahead of us when we're out gathering to take our mining node, our herb, or even our skin. It's frustrating when it's a member of the opposite faction who does this. On a PvP server, you might kill them, on a PvE server, your only recourse is a /rude. It's more annoying when it's a member of your own faction and you can't even kill them. Ultimately the same is also true of Daily Quests and some quest mobs. Whenever recourse's are scarce, bad blood settles in.

I have never seen a quest that brings out the worst in players than "Junk in My Trunk" in Utgarde Pinnacle. For this quest you must gather items laying around the instance. There are not enough for a full group on the quest to pick therm up on the same run, so many people jockey to be the first to get their junk. The first time I ran that instance I was amazed at how greedy people would be. The tank would pull but the healer was off picking up a silver bar or a bauble. You guessed it, wipefest.

Hot on the heels of last week's news that employers are staying away from hiring WoW players comes this article from the BBC, quoting an IBM executive who says that gamers are actually exactly the kind of people you want on a team: David Laux, global executive in charge of games and interactive entertainment (wait, maybe that's why he's so keen on game players) says that casual games can improve memorization and the abilty to discern details, first person shooters can help with rapid decision making, and games like World of Warcraft can boost leadership skills. He says WoW specifically helps players learn how to work well on a team, assess risks, and put the group first to achieve a common goal.

Which is true -- if you're actually the one in charge of groups. I'm of the opinion that it's very possible to play a game like WoW and get a nice boost to your leadership skills (leading a guild is often a job in itself), but I think it's also very possible that you could play WoW and not get a thing out of it -- I know quite a few people I've grouped with that I'd never want to have sitting next to me in a real office.

The bottom line, as always, is somewhere inbetween the two opinions. If you're already interested in taking charge and being a leader, WoW is a great simlulation to let you do those things. And if you're already a lazy worker and interested in helping yourself more than whatever team you're on, WoW probably won't cure you of that (there are certainly plenty of selfish people running around the game every day). In short, if your hiring policies are based on whether or not someone plays videogames, you might want to reconsider them completely.

Decent healing is often a key factor in determining victory and defeat in a battle ground. Resto and Holy specced characters have quite the job set out for them. Druids, Paladins, Priests, and Shamans regularly face a healing quandary. Is it better to spend time and man healing another player or continuing to do as much damage as possible. Zanhart of Medivh believes that any character than can heal in the battlegrounds, should heal. He finds it particularly insulting when a player heals him or herself while comrades die around them.

Some agreed with him that anyone who can heal should, but most people dissented. There were several themes to the responses:

• Paying a subscription fee allows any player the right to play however they like.
• DPSers in substandard gear are a waste of heals and mana.
• Non-healing specs often have such poor healing abilities that the battleground is better off with them continuing to dps.
• Some people just don't find healing to be fun.