Staring Down The Lich King

While it’s not Life, World of Warcraft is a pretty nifty place.

The quests are interesting, the lore is expansive, and the group content is challenging.

The majority of what makes group content challenging isn’t really the content itself necessarily, although that’s part of the equation – the biggest variable that determines success versus failure in a group encounter is the group itself.

The people in the group.

Their level of experience with the encounter and with their class.

How much attention they’re giving to the encounter.

How competitive they are within themselves and with others in terms of doing the very best they can do.

And when it comes to player attitudes, how much each individual adds to the party or detracts from it during particularly rough sections of the encounter.

I ‘R’ A PUGger

I PUG all the time. And when I mean I PUG all the time, I mean that I generally run at least one PUG per day on average, and some weeks I luck into some awesome PUGs and we romp through 3-5 instances within 2-3 hours, which brings my daily averages up over the week.

And for the record, my definition of PUG is that at least 75% of the other party members are either completely or only just *largely* unfamiliar to me in terms of all those attributes I listed above.

If I’ve played with them before, it was so long ago or so infrequently that all I’m left with is a “good vibe” or a “bad vibe”.

Stacking The PUG Towards Joy

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to bring in one (or more, in raids) “known variable” to the parties, and I always choose people who are not only good players with good gear and plenty of playing experience, but also have attitudes that are a match to what brings me personal joy.

Why joy?

Because I, personally, enjoy dungeon runs way more when I can share my state of joyfulness with someone else, especially in the face of someone who may not be so joyous in the group.

A Sample Of My Joyful PUGging Thoughts

I love difficult fights.

Shrimproll and Loken in Halls of Lightning

Ones that require a lot of movement, ones that keep you on your toes and require you to pay attention, and be aware of your environment.

Fights like Utgarde Pinnacle’s battle against Skadi the Ruthless and his mist-breathing dragon, with all of the waves of adds for a healer to worry about aggroing with an ill-timed cast, and the dragon’s breath itself… those are great.

Going through Azjol Nerub the first time, and misunderstanding how to handle the Gauntlet event before Hadronox and wiping horribly was pretty funny, too. I still remember how running around on the spider web floors there made my knees feel week IRL!!

I love how the Heroics of today are reminiscent of the Raids of Burning Crusade, so those of us who did the raids have a bit of a familiarity advantage, and can re-visit some of the fun fights that were super-hard in BC. Plus, anyone who didn’t get a chance to raid in BC will get a taste of real raider training by learning the Heroic fights of today.

What I Don’t Understand

Almost every heroic I’m in, and definitely every raid I’m in where people have the freedom to speak their thoughts instantaneously, there’s at least one person who “hates this fight”.

I wonder, those people who hate difficult fights, do they realize that people who thrive on the challenge and derive joy from it are going to be the ones who easily defeat the encounter, and those of us deriving joy aren’t going to want to bring along wet blankets who “hate” every second fight?

Do the people who “hate” fights ever get to the point where they can reliably beat them, or do they just avoid what they dislike and therefore begin to stagnate in their learning and personal progression, relying on others to carry them through to the loot?

Is *this* the main reason why people “hate” PUGs?