03-23-2005, 05:03 PM
Which is my worst group? So far, excepting guild groups it's almost every one - at least every full group of five.
The problem is 4 good players and one awful one = an awful group
Wailing Caverns seems a particularly touchy spot. It is Horde, level 20ish and it's the first instance I've seen that drops really good stuff, that introduces Bind on Pickup and it can be quite tricky tactically
One group was competent but I got very frustrated after winning two BoP rolls to have it stolen due to a full inventory. So frustrated in fact that I actually abandoned my Rogue and switched to a Mage. With the Rogue I had to care about stuff, with the Mage I don't
Today's effort was led by a very skillful, knowledgeable, irritable, hyperactive priest. He knew a lot about WoW. He knew virtually nothing about making friends. He spammed the tank (who was a bit clueless) with advice and kept ninja pulling adds during the easier fights. I added him to my ignore list after a while after which the group got considerably more enjoyable as far as I was concerned :D
To me a big part of grouping is a process of filtering people into two camps:
- good players with whom I would love to group again go on Friends
- people who I don't want to play with again go on ignore
I don't use these lists in the way I would befriend or ignore people in real life, to me it's a much more neutral Group With list and Do Not Group With list. The latter has the side-effect that I don't see the chat but it's prime purpose for me is to keep me from grouping twice with someone who makes the game less fun
I always try to send players tells before inviting them and I obviously don't get the opportunity to join up with recruiters who I've ignore listed
So while a third party might end up recruiting both myself and someone I don't especially want to play with it should do a reasonably effective job of separating these people out from my player pool
A related point about which I'm wondering is what the actual size of your player pool is. While there may be thousands of people on your server a lot will be alts or very casual players who don't get past level 20. The player pool who you actually play with might be quite small - for me currently its the low 20s Horde people who are mainly playing on Kalimdor, who don't exclusively solo or play with friends/guild. So if, hypothetically, it's actually only a hundred people of whom only 20% are so awful that they will ruin your evening putting a person on your Do Not Group With list is a significant step forward
The problem is 4 good players and one awful one = an awful group
Wailing Caverns seems a particularly touchy spot. It is Horde, level 20ish and it's the first instance I've seen that drops really good stuff, that introduces Bind on Pickup and it can be quite tricky tactically
One group was competent but I got very frustrated after winning two BoP rolls to have it stolen due to a full inventory. So frustrated in fact that I actually abandoned my Rogue and switched to a Mage. With the Rogue I had to care about stuff, with the Mage I don't
Today's effort was led by a very skillful, knowledgeable, irritable, hyperactive priest. He knew a lot about WoW. He knew virtually nothing about making friends. He spammed the tank (who was a bit clueless) with advice and kept ninja pulling adds during the easier fights. I added him to my ignore list after a while after which the group got considerably more enjoyable as far as I was concerned :D
To me a big part of grouping is a process of filtering people into two camps:
- good players with whom I would love to group again go on Friends
- people who I don't want to play with again go on ignore
I don't use these lists in the way I would befriend or ignore people in real life, to me it's a much more neutral Group With list and Do Not Group With list. The latter has the side-effect that I don't see the chat but it's prime purpose for me is to keep me from grouping twice with someone who makes the game less fun
I always try to send players tells before inviting them and I obviously don't get the opportunity to join up with recruiters who I've ignore listed
So while a third party might end up recruiting both myself and someone I don't especially want to play with it should do a reasonably effective job of separating these people out from my player pool
A related point about which I'm wondering is what the actual size of your player pool is. While there may be thousands of people on your server a lot will be alts or very casual players who don't get past level 20. The player pool who you actually play with might be quite small - for me currently its the low 20s Horde people who are mainly playing on Kalimdor, who don't exclusively solo or play with friends/guild. So if, hypothetically, it's actually only a hundred people of whom only 20% are so awful that they will ruin your evening putting a person on your Do Not Group With list is a significant step forward