My little sister is eleven years old. If you know anyone that is eleven, then you’ll know what I mean. The thing that characterises a lot of children this age is the lack of self control. That’s what temper tantrums are all about. She hasn’t had one since I’ve been back, but it’s a waiting game. It’ll happen soon. Which is fine, it’s all part of the learning process. As we get older we learn about self control. Well, some of us do. Some of us also become social workers, but that’s too far out in left field for the purposes of this post. And with self control then comes social responsibility. Self control is the basis for every stage of learning. You can’t learn anything, or teach anything for that matter, if the students are not capable of exercising self control.
Tobold yesterday demonstrated a lack of self control. The type of self control that connects your brain to your fingers when you’re typing on a keyboard. If his brain had been connected, and he had been exercising self control, then he wouldn’t have written the fucking stupid pile of dogshit masquerading as a post that he did yesterday. It was news to me that social responsibility extended into a game played on the internet. I mean, have you been in a PuG group recently? But apparently it does. And what’s more, it seems that people who choose to play healers and tanks are being socially responsible. Which is really weird, because I thought that they were playing healers and tanks. Tobold seems to think that DPS have not only brought all their problems onto themselves, but that they are the actual problem in the equation. Their selfish behaviour has created the situation that we find ourselves in, where DPS have to queue for inexorable lengths of time, while healers jump in fairly quickly and tanks get in immediately. If he had half a brain then he would realise that Blizzard created the game that we play in. The players merely react to the conditions therein. And the reality is that tanks are not an attractive role for a lot of people, and even for those that do it, very few indeed wish to throw themselves into the horror of the LFG system.
Why? Because it is an anti-social mess where the sane do not wish to tread. Who created it? Blizzard. Well, that’s what I thought. Apparently us anti-social DPS mongrels caused it for actually, you know, wanting to play a class that we may actually enjoy in the game that we pay to play. Blaming the players for a games limitations is pretty fucking stupid. I thought that Tobold was better than this, but apparently not. But expecting the same players to then turn around and solve the same problem is taking wishful thinking to new alternate universes where small furry animals play hacky-sack while smoking cigars.
With self control thus comes knowledge and learning for learnings sake. I suppose that an experienced player would know when choosing a new character that they will stand a much better chance of having shorter queue times by choosing to play a tank. I challenge you to ask a person who doesn’t play WoW to read that sentence and tell me what the fuck I’m talking about. If I load up the starting character screen, I do not see a flashy neon sign telling me that tanks are under-represented and I will be skirting my social responsibility by not playing one. It’s just not there. But, thanks to Tobold’s wisdom, now I know. And in order to live up to my social responsibility I will have to re-roll a new toon and level him all the way to level eighty-fucking-five, and then willingly enter the hell that is the random dungeon finder, and then, and only then will I be a socially responsible gamer.
I’m sorry, I just can’t. I don’t have the self control.
January 19, 2011 at 3:02 pm
In fact, I am pretty sure Tobold consierds his own post bullshit. He is the last guy on earth who would change his gaming habits for ‘social responsibility reasons’.
The reason he writes it is not that he considers it to be true.
He writes it to create a wave. To receive recognition and comments. And other blogs linking to his.
He is good at that.
January 19, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Just read that post. Seems like i’ve heard that exact kind of shit before, about how it’s everyone’s responsibility to selflessly sacrifice for the benefit of others, instead of selfishly enjoying that which they have worked for. How, if they won’t, maybe those in charge should force them to do so…
Oh yeah, i remember where i’ve heard that!
The US Congress.
January 19, 2011 at 4:28 pm
“where small furry animals play hacky-sack while smoking cigars” — I would like to go there.
January 19, 2011 at 5:34 pm
DPS is getting alot of hate lately.
January 19, 2011 at 6:36 pm
The LFG tool is not a good tool for in-demand roles.
A tank is better off inviting players from his realm. The idea is to be able to add players to his Friends and Ignore lists so that eventually he can create groups from a pool of players with “good characteristics”.
January 19, 2011 at 9:40 pm
How long was it to do heroics before the LFG tool? I don’t know why people complains. Seriously, if it was not the Daily Dungeon (Early Wrath), nobody was running anything. Waiting 40 minutes (while doing dailies, quests, etc…) is nothing compared to how it was before.
January 19, 2011 at 9:52 pm
I agree with you!
(sarcasm mode)Dk’s and Warlocks are selfish DPS because they don’t do a CC either! (/sarcasm)
Dear Tobold/Blizzard, I play to have fun, not work for epics.
January 19, 2011 at 10:46 pm
“If you don’t want to be a leader, don’t complain because there are too few leaders.” This is paraphrasing one of Gevlon’s recent posts.
Social responsibility aside, certain roles are in short supply: Tanks; Healers; Raid Leaders etc. Everyone can play whatever they want, but if you pick the more popular role, you will sit in a queue longer and you will be perceived as being more replaceable.
In reality the poster that Tobold responded to initially complained that DPS are too easy to replace. In truth, once you’ve sat through you 45 minute queue and the dungeon is in progress you can usually find a replacement tank/healer in a shorter time than it takes to make a corpse run.
DO NOT TOLERATE jerk tanks with a sense of entitlement. KICK THEM let them know that they are just as replaceable as the dps. (Yes they can just hop into the next instance, but if enough people kick them maybe they’ll get the hint).
January 19, 2011 at 11:12 pm
What do they say “There’s no I in team” I’d just like to point out that there’s no “a” in responsibility either. But sloppy spelling aside I was wondering why such bile was being generated towards dps players ?
If you are a healer or tank then why would you care ? If you’re dps then you’re in the same “socially irresponsible” group so why blog about it ? Unless you’re in the holier than thou group of healers and tanks who have the best of the LFD but still like to revel in their supposed piety.
Having said all that he could get a good job with the UK newspaper the daily mail.
(If you’re not in the UK see here for what I mean http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI)
January 28, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Raiding is a team sport, but the dungeon finder sure as hell isn’t. Its purpose is to come as close as possible to allowing people *who don’t want to play on a team* to experience some content anyway. Ideas of “taking one for the team” don’t belong anywhere near it.
In the end I gotta agree with Nils that Tobold’s just trolling the DPS.
Here’s some trolling right back: I’m leveling a Resto Shaman who will never, ever use the dungeon finder at max level. Neener neener. 😉