AFK Raiding

This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Seriously, you join a raid group and then find that someone is on auto-follow or they join the group and then say they have some sort of IRL issue and ask “Is it alright if I just follow so and so? We've got plenty of DPS.” GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR It sets my brain on tweak, my eyes starts twitching and my head kinda jerks to the side almost as if things are cramping up and going into spasms. I don't know why it bothers me so much but it does. I am positive that it's partly due to a feeling of disrespect. It also has a lot to do with my feelings towards gaming and life in general. I could easily be called elitist by certain groups of people because I subscribe to an older way of thinking. If you don't have to work for it, it's not worth having.

The title was inspired by events from last night. Grettir and I decided to run The Nexus since we had gathered all four quests, and we enjoy hitting an instance now and again while we level. We knew it would be hard to get a group together so we weren't going to be picky. Grettir called out an ad for dps and we immediately picked up two people: a huntard (sorry to the decent hunters out there but I still remember the idiot-boys playing hunters in vanilla wow that have since moved on to DK's) and a warlock. I was instantly happy that we weren't dragging a crew of Death Knights around and said as much to Grettir on Mumble. It took another ten minutes or so to get a fifth person and wouldn't ya know it, an 80 ret pali. I like to play for the challenge so having an 80 kind of put a bit of a downer on things in both of our minds. Seriously, it makes it too easy. (another reference to my way of thinking)

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We summoned the DPS, and once everyone was there the group walked into the instance. The Warlock immediately informed us that the huntard needed to take care of their little sister or something, and was going to auto-follow. They asked if it was ok and I told Grettir in our personal Mumble conversation that I didn't care and to ask the 80 paladin because truthfully if he didn't go along with it, it wouldn't matter. Grettir knew I was sitting there at my laptop, virtually cockeyed with irritation. Finally the ret pali, Grettir, and I threw our hands up in the air and just said in essence, “to hell with it, let's just go.” The run went fine, rest assured, but watching that little punk get free exp torqued my shorts and put an even more serious twist in the short and curlies.

I am from a different gaming culture. My time has come and gone, socially things are different. A lot of people don't see the issue with grouping and going afk, if the group can handle the run without the afk person the there's not an issue. I was reading in a blog and sadly I forget where, that the general consensus is that the game doesn't start until 80. Well, it's true in two ways, for the social younger generation it's almost entirely the main fact, for the older crew like myself it's only true in that there is a whole new part of the game that opens up at 80. (or 60/70 back in the day) To me that means that the social crowd has spawned the advent of the heirloom exp gear and the K-mart epic lay-away program. For a lot of the older guys and gals like myself we find it a bit demeaning to the original achievement of earning something. I think everyone can agree that before the implementation of these things by Activision/Blizzard it was harder, it was changed to allow more people to get farther into the game. I don't think I'll ever get around that issue in my own mind. So, say to me if you will that I am an elitist because I preferred to be abused and forced to work hard to get things; I never got many of them but it was a goal and a challenge that I understood and appreciated.

The AFK raider will never be a part of my guild or my runs in the future. I will skip the run rather than willingly make things even easier on some slacking lazy moron. (someone shoot me, I sounded like Gevlon for a second there)I just think people should earn what they have rather than have it given to them because for me I don't appreciate it nearly as much if I didn't earn it. Hard work, sweat, tears, pain, they all lead to positive results given the right attitude in applying them.