I was musing on some posts I see around the WOW Blogosphere and my first hand interactions with people I know on my server and it reminded me of when I was first getting started with proper raiding. Basically there's people I see every day who will often hold back their own progression because they're afraid of the tarring and feathering that often follows in most online communities when you make a mistake.
Now as a Raid Leader our squad is solid and we have no recourse to invite friend ranks let alone randoms for progress but in my alt runs I often ask people I know if they want to come along to some very easy content for some free purpz and a laugh. More often than not from the indiviuals I'm referring too I get back
Sorry man, I'm not sure I'm ready for x instance, I think I need to do more work on my gear.
or at least a variation of that. Now I know I'm an asshole sometimes and it could be they don't prefer my raid leading style (carrot and stick approach, mostly stick) but I think it's a problem a lot of basically good players have. They are suffering from "low self epeen™"!
Back in the days when I was just sinking my teeth into TBC content I was obsessive about my gear. I may not have had the best gear but for the access I had - I had the best gear in each slot available and enchanted and gemmed and I believed that if I wanted to get further I had to be in the maximum the previous content offered. I was not the only one in the guilds I was in who felt like this and often it was used as an excuse by the guild leaderships to call off raids or stop trying. When I joined my current guild I was completely broken of this. Initially we didn't have the best gear or even the best players on the server. We started Lich King content in blues and we cleared everything the first week. It took us a little longer to get the 3drake OS but still we were improving all the time and were trying to avoid getting complacent as we moved into Ulduar. Half of the time we'd down shit and I'd be thinking "I didn't think we'd manage that after the first 3 wipes". It wasn't uncommon for the people I was playing with. They were used to wiping and used to overcoming content by wiping on the fight and learning something new each time.
My point is DO NOT GIVE UP. Nobody can tell you that you cannot do the content you are attempting except you. Sure it might put a bit more pressure on the raid but we're strange beings us humans. We need adversity to grow and yet if we see the easy route we will almost always take it. Stop being humble because I've seen full t9 232 players pass on doing ICC because they thought they weren't geared and players in worse gear join and rock the meters. I have even tanked up to putricide ICC10 on a death knight wearing mostly naxx gear with a couple bits of T9. Sure it was harder and I had to work really closely with my healers to make sure if they were boner spiked, for example, I'd use something to try to stay alive but it was also a hell of a lot of fun. Coasting through content as soon as its nerfed isn't.
To the players who don't believe they deserve or are ready for higher content:
Only you know how good you are and only you can deny yourself opportunities. Sometimes it will be legitimate but remember: Failure will make you a better player because the awful feeling you get when you do let the side down is the perfect motivation to get better and never do that again.
Echosnare - Motivational speaker (2010)
And accept my goddamn invite to the purp train
/echo out
very nice post. And i do agree - it is a lot more fun doing content with a group which is fittingly geared so that things are a challenge, rather than a cruise.
ReplyDeleteThat said, i have myself declined raid invitations based on insufficient gear. Not because i was unwilling to fail - i do not care. For me, the game is mostly about fun. But because i am unwilling to force a raid group to fail simply because i do not live up to their expectation. Therefore, as long as i am not absolutely sure they know what they get when inviting me, i will decline if i think my gear is not good enough.
Lleleth
Nobody can tell you that you cannot do the content you are attempting except you
ReplyDeleteI get what you're saying here, but the problem is that it's only true in the metaphorical sense. People can and do tell you you can't do the content you're attempting all the time.
I think a lot of the time when people say "sorry, I don't think I'm geared for this" what they really mean is "I expect, as a result of my personal experience, that if I join a group for this content at my current level of gear, I will open myself up for a whole lot of shit from people who want to faceroll the content." It means that when somebody does say "no its okay, come along anyway" you're suspicious.
There's also the fact that nobody likes to feel like they're being carried. If nothing else I've had bad experiences with people genuinely not realising how much harder things get when your group is undergeared (see "Festergut is easy") which then leads to frustration all around.
I understand what you're saying Tam. I guess coming from the guild I do we tend to underestimate content, especially 10mans because we're often entering in 25man gear. However a lot of what the stuff I invite people to is easy. I save the hard shit for the people I know can take it.
ReplyDeleteWhat frustrates me is the people too worried to fail. I've got a friend in game who has a terrible time healing. She panics and heals the wrong thing and lulz ensue. I don't like bringing her on that char because I'd rather she had fun on her alt with us (ret pally) which she finds much easier to play and has less responsibility.
I guess my other problem with this mentality is the ease that gear can be upgraded now. Without setting foot inside ICC25 you can be decked in gear good enough to get to putrcide. It might take a bit of work but again, most of the people in the guild tend to do that.
I completely take the point about people telling you what you can and can't do, however I regularly get told by failure trolls in /trade that my ALTICC25 run will never clear anything and every week we push ourselves a bit further.