Making a Successful PUG Raid

Immediately following each successful capture or defense of the Wintergrasp fortress, a number of 10 and 25 man VOA groups start to form. I've been a involved in quite a few of these, and they have the highest failure rate of any PUG, anywhere.

The following are some general guidelines I've come up with on how to increase the chances of a successful PUG.

1. Before each boss, explain the fight. Don't ask if anyone needs it explained, just do it. In any large PUG there are bound to be a few people who don't know the fights, but who are unwilling to admit to it lest they appear to be a noob. (I've never had that problem, but I'm less shy that way.)
2. Remind people that this is a PUG, and to expect a few wipes, and to be patient. Ask people to commit to a minimum of four attempts. If at that point the group is clearly not getting it, is not improving on each attempt, doesn't have high enough DPS, or generally appears doomed to failure, then go. But don't be such an impatient and arrogant fool to expect that your PUG is going to be the magical one that manages to down the boss on the very first try.
3. Keep it moving! One of the largest attrition factors I've found is the delay between attempts. Get everybody right back in, get rebuffed, and go. Maybe take a minute to discuss what went wrong, and to change assignments if necessary, but make it quick. Don't debate endlessly. Take too long and it will appear that you simply have no idea what you're doing. People will get bored and start to leave.

Got any others you can think of? Please share them in the comments!

Keeping it all in perspective

I want to take this opporunity to address two completely different groups of people who don't quite have things in the proper perspective.

Group 1

Since discovering WoW earlier this year, I've spent an inordinate amount of my free time playing the game, reading about the game, talking about the game, and most recently, writing about the game. I occasionally hear or read things from non-players saying that people like me need to "get a life", or something along those lines. They are quick to point out how nothing in the game "means" anything, and claim that I am just wasting my time.

"So," I ask, "what do you think I should be doing with my time?"

"Oh any number of things. You could be playing a sport like golf or volleyball, or reading a book, watching a favorite TV show or going to the movies, going out to the bars or nightclubs with friends."

This causes me to chuckle a bit, and it is around this point that I have to stop them. I point out that none of those activities "mean" anything either, any more than playing a pointless video game. They are all just different ways we choose to spend our leisure time. Neither I nor the avid golfer are likely to find the cure for cancer. The guy at the nightclub, notwithstanding any deep conversations he might have after half a dozen beers, is not going to bring about world peace.

The whole concept of "meaning" is completely arbitrary anyway. What is important to one person is not necessarily important to others, nor does it have to be. You get all these people looking for meaning in everything, or searching for meaning in their lives. To them I say this: Life is what you make of it, and it means whatever you want it to mean. Do what makes you happy (just don't be a dick to others in the process).

[BTW, this is not intended to address the separate issue of WoW addiction, where your excessive playtime is a detriment to other aspects of your life, be it health, family, job, schoolwork, etc.]

Group 2

On the opposite end of this spectrum is another group of people who has lost perspective. They are the hardcore and/or addicted WoW players.

The people in group # 1 above have a point: playing WoW doesn't really mean anything. It isn't going to cure cancer, or even hemorrhoids for that matter (though it may cause the latter depending on where you are sitting while you play). Getting a new chest piece or an enchant for your bracers isn't going to make you better looking. Killing the newest boss isn't going to get you laid or find you a prettier girlfriend. Farming mats, doing dailies, and playing the auction house aren't going to make money to pay your rent and your utility and food bills.

And since that is the case, I don't understand why some people take the game sooo seriously. If you wipe a couple of times on a raid boss, so what?? Geez you'd think that people were suffering actual physical injuries or monetary losses the way some of them react in these situations.

What's so bad about wiping a few times during a raid? I'll tell you what: People are stupid and lazy. They want everything given to them, they don't want to have to work hard for it, and they want it right now. If you wipe, it means it isn't just going to be given to you, you are going to have to work for it, and you won't get it right now.

A wipe should not be seen as a failure; it is an opporunity to learn and/or to teach... and to actually play the game. It is an opportunity for improvement. The real satisfaction from any game comes from overcoming challenges. Having something handed to you on a silver platter is boring. Having an 80 run your low-level alt through Dead Mines is boring for both of you, because there is nothing challenging about it.

Want to show what a great player you are? Don't start whining and complaining, and then leave the raid after the first or second wipe. Instead, try explaining to others what they are doing wrong, and show them the right way to do it. This impresses me a lot more than calling another raid member an insufferable moron (even if it's true).

And above all else, keep it in persective: it's just a game. You aren't actually being injured, and those repair bills aren't costing you real money. Try to have fun, damn it!

How boring would life be without PUGs?

I do a LOT of pickup groups. I like to run lots of instances, do lots of heroics, earn lots of badges. I also like to participate in a lot of battlegrounds (as you can see from my battleground guides), which are almost nothing but PUGs. (Hmmm, that phrase comes dangerously close to "butt plug", which wouldn't be an entirely inappropriate analogy.)

Even with a fairly active guild, I find it difficult to regularly find 5 people who want to do these activities with me. When we aren't raiding, they are all busy farming and cooking and crafting, which mystifies me a bit. I mean, I can do all of those things in real life. If I wanted to fish, I'd grab a pole and walk down to the local pond. Why would I play a game to do something that I can do better and get more enjoyment and satisfaction out of doing in real life? On the other hand, when (in real life) am I ever going to get the chance to kill trolls and dragons, strangulate a magic user, cast chains of ice on a fleeing target, infect a group of giant spiders with diseases? Never. To me it makes much more sense to play the game to escape reality, not to emulate it!

Because of this inability to find "regulars" to group with, I end up in a fairly large number of PUGs. I have a few people that I group with on regular occasions that I know and trust, but usually have to fill out at least one or two spots with random unknowns. And sometimes its the entire group.

When I mention PUGs to most people, they do whatever the digitial equivalent is of groaning loudly and rolling their eyes, and act like it is the bane of their existence. I may mention to a guildie that I need one more for a group. "Guild-run or PUG?" he asks. When I tell him it's a PUG, he invariably says no thanks, he'd rather continue farming mining nodes... or put a sharp stick in his eye, for that matter.

But why the utter prejudice against PUGs? All PUGs follow one of three variations:

1) Best case: it turns out to be a really good group, we all really "click", and we plow through the content with little or no problem. You get people with good senses of humor, and who are good players without taking either themselves or the game too seriously.

2) Maybe there are one or two bad apples in the group who we all secretly laugh at. There's a couple of wipes or near-wipes, and the bad apple starts making off-the-wall comments. Or maybe he's just bossing people around indiscriminately, despite the fact that he clearly is not as great as he seems to think he is. Sure we could let him make life miserable for the rest of us, but this IS just a game after all. No sense getting too upset or letting him ruin it for the rest of us. It's more comical how serious he's getting.

3) Maybe the whole group is a disaster. Lots of conflicting personalities, people complaining about who did or didn't do what, finger-pointing, and just general stupidity all around. One idiot standing in the fire, the DPS DK death-gripping everything, the warrior tank who can't manage rage. In these cases, I try to remain quiet and just soak it all in in a state of bemused horror. A wise man once said: "Never argue with a fool, people might not be able to tell the difference." This is never truer than in a bad PUG.

But in any of the above cases, I still enjoy it. Is that so strange? If you didn't have the occasional number 3, there is no way that you can seriously appreciate the number 1's. And it's those two's and three's that give us great stories to tell and jokes to make, and it gives people like me things to blog about!

If you are refusing to join PUGs, you are really missing out on the good times! You should go and join a PUG right now. Just commit yourself to having fun, since that's what playing WoW should be all about in the first place. Even if the encounter turns into an unmitigated disaster, you'll still come away with good stories to tell and lessons learned (i.e. how NOT to do something in the future!).

One final piece of advice: Save your sanity; don't stick around in group #3 any longer than absolutely necessary. Know when to cut and run. :)

If you're an idiot, try not to flaunt it

I'm a noob. I freely admit it. I've only been playing WoW for a few months. When I go into an encounter I haven't experienced before, I tell people up front, and I ask to have the fight explained to me. People who know me tolerate this quite well, because I have spent the time learning to play my class well, and I'm usually in the top 3rd in DPS in raids. (Almost always 1 or 2 in 5-mans.) I'm a quick learner as long as I'm given good information. I'll only stand in the fire or poison cloud once before I learn my lesson. :)

I take constructive criticism well, and I try to be helpful to others who are even noob-ier (new word!) than me. I seek out the new players in the group, and explain to them all the things I wish someone had told me the first time I experienced something new.

What really bugs me is idiots who don't understand something, and yet act all elitist. Seriously, some people need to heed the old adage: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Case in point: the other day I'm in Wintergrasp, on my Warlock alt who was then at level 76 (and who will hit 80 at about 6:00 PM today). I started doing WG battles early so I could get a head start on the marks and honor points I'll need to buy gear when I'm 80.

As everyone does upon entering WG, I ask for an invite to a raid group. I get in... and about 10 seconds later I get kicked. Maybe it was a mistake, I think, so I ask for another invite. I get in... and get kicked again.

I ask unpolitely who the jerk is who keeps kicking me. It turns out it is the raid leader who has determined that only 80's can be in the raid.

Come again? "Dude, this is Wintergrasp, not Ulduar," I tell him.

"We want to save the raid spots for 80s."

I briefly tried to explain to him how silly this was, but he was having none of it. "We want to save the raid spots for 80s because they need the Wintergrasp marks." I explained that I would be 80 in a few days, and his response was that I should come back then when I can actually use the marks. Before I could explain to him what an idiot he was, he put me on ignore. Just as well, because it would have taken too long in game-chat to explain the depths of his stupidity:

1. Wintergrasp battles are not limited to a single raid group. There are often two or more raids. Everyone who wants to play can get in; it isn't like someone is going to be left out.
2. Everyone who participates gets their marks, regardless of whether they are in a raid group or not. Being a member of a raid simply makes it easier to coordinate (and makes you more likely to get healed). But on the extremely rare occasion that someone couldn't get a raid invitiation, they would still earn the same marks and honor.
3. Wintergrasp is not nor is it intended to be limited to 80's. In fact, the more people, the better. You get three marks for a win, and only one for a loss, so you want as many people in the battle as possible regardless of level. Especially in a defensive battle, as this was.

Made worse by the fact that the player in question was a Death Knight, just furthering the bad reputation of Death Knights that I am constantly struggling to overcome.

And one more thing...

What is it with people with special characters in their names? Bôb, Annă, Jímmy, etc. I've found that, by and large, they tend to be the biggest dickwads in the game. The only good reason I can see for putting non-standard characters in your name is to make it harder for other people to contact you. But why anybody would choose to have contact with these asses in the first place is a mystery to me.

Why Battlegrounds Rock!

I seem to be somewhat in a minority when it comes to my enjoyment of battlegrounds. Mention the word "battleground" to a lot of WoW players, and you will hear various moans, groans, and complaints. But I think that battlegrounds can be far superior to other types of gameplay in WoW, and I'm here to tell you why this is the case.

Most people who hate battlegrounds dislike it because it is the worst type of PUG (pickup group). When you enter a battleground as an individual, you are randomly assigned to a team with a bunch of strangers, many of whom are undergeared and/or have no idea what is going on or how to play. There is little to no communication or coordination among team members. There is no real sense of "team". Strategy is right out the window.

BUT, that can all change when you put a coordinated team together, and you enable voice communication either through in-game chat or a tool like vent. Just like dungeons and bosses, you can discuss raid strategies beforehand. (In fact, this is the purpose of my battleground guides.)

Battleground raids can potentially be much more entertaining and rewarding than dungeon raids for the following reasons:

• Battlegrounds are more challenging. In a raid, the monsters you fight do the same thing over and over. No matter how many times you beat them, they will never change their tactics.
• Battlegrounds require you to think and remain alert at all times. Not only do you have to continually adapt to your opponents' tactics, they will adapt to yours.
• You can't cheat. There is no "deadly boss mods" for battlegrounds, and no videos you can watch to tell you how to defeat the team you're facing. Yes there are general strategic guidelines, but no add-on that is going to yell out "Fear being cast in 10 seconds!" You have to actually think for yourself, learn to anticipate, and be ready for the unexpected.
• Everyone gets to share in the rewards for battlegrounds, through honor points and battleground marks. You can buy some really cool stuff with honor points. In a dungeon raid, you have to clear it again and again, hoping that the item you want drops, and hoping that when it does drop, someone doesn't out-roll you for it. But in a battleground, you ARE going to gain honor (more if you win), and you can see exactly how close you are to earning that iLvl 213 chest piece or helm.
• In a battleground, you can lose. Some might think this is a disadvantage. But I've only been playing for a little over a month and I'm already getting bored of clearing Naxx over and over. There no longer seems to be any question of IF we will succeed, only how long it is going to take us. Having no real chance of losing makes winning much less exciting.
• A successful battleground requires excellent coordination and communication, even more-so than a raid. In a raid, it's basically everyone beating on the same mobs over and over. In a battleground, different people will be assigned to different areas and roles, and will have to adapt as the game progresses. It isn't nearly as predictable as a dungeon raid.
• The best part: battlegrounds don't cause durability damage on your gear! So no matter how often you die, you won't have a giant repair bill at the end of the night.

If you are in a guild, doing battlegrounds is a perfect way to break up the monotony of doing the same raid over and over. It is also a good way to participate when you have either too many or too few people show up for a raid. For example, if only 8 people show up, Warsong Gulch is a good option since it is limited to ten-person teams. Having a coordinated 8-person team would be a distinct advantage. (The system will automatically assign you two players if you don't care to search for yourself.)

Battlegrounds do require a bit of a shift in your expectations for gameplay. First, you will die and die often, especially when you are getting started. This is simply part of the game. Second, you won't be able to kill level-80 players with the same ease and speed that you dispel level-80 mobs. It just doesn't work that way; that's part of the challenge.

All you need to do is learn the proper strategies and tactics, and enjoy the game!