Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Tunnel Vision

Have you ever had an experience were you were unintentionally rude? You know, your just going about your business when suddenly someone starts calling curses down on your head and you are clueless as to why? Eventually you discover you have committed some infraction against them which they have interpreted to be deliberate but in actuality was done completely innocently. I seem to have them all the time, I call it "Tunnel Vision". I am so focused on my target, getting to where I need to go, completing my objective that I have no clue what is going on around me.

Things like running over Gnomes or more rarely Dwarves with land mounts. (Horde have yet to have faction members of the vertically challenged variety, your time is coming, there is little chance you will see a Goblin in front of most horde mounts.) Killing mobs that someone else was after because you spammed fan of knives or killing spree.  Picking up items someone else needed for a quest because it appeared they were afk or you literally didn't even SEE them in the area. Failing to respond to remarks directed at you, (things like hails, whispers, questions, etc.) because you were afk, focused on fighting or what not.

The struggle I always have it how guilty should I really FEEL when these individuals are ranting at me? It isn't like I am TRYING to make their life difficult. Sometimes it seems like they are going out of their way to FIND ways to get offended. If you are going to get into a huff because someone is not responding to your hails while they are attacking a target dummy it may have something to do with the fact that they are COMPLETELY focused on what they're doing rather than paying ANY attention to chat windows. Did you ever consider that maybe YOU were being rude, not them? No, that concept never enters these peoples heads. Is there a set time limit as to how long hails are good for? 3 seconds? 5? Or does it change per individual and situation? Miss Manners doesn't seem to have a guide book for MMORPGS, and while the Drama Mama's TRY, they can only do so much for the cry babies who WANT help.

How do you determine when a mob "belongs" to an individual? Does their name suddenly appear above it so I know that they are close by? We all have experienced the frustration of getting into position behind a target only to have a Pally, Mage, DK, Lock, etc, etc go running by AOEing and losing the mob to them. Yes it is annoying, but everyone doesn't immediately think that the individual is doing it to personally cause difficultly. It is the nature of the game. The ONLY time I have ever said anything to anyone was when I was trying to do a quest and it was obvious the individual was just rep farming. I asked if they would be willing to take a 5 min break until I finished my quest or what time they would be done so I could come back later? They were actually quite pleasant about it, but I am sure it won't always be the case.

Sometimes you can't get any type of resolution. I had one individual put me on ignore as soon as they finished their profanity laced rant. I couldn't even say "I'm sorry" or "Excuse me". Granted I was unaware I had even "stolen" two of whatever it was I was suppose to have "stolen" in the first place because I was NEVER able to locate the individual ANYWHERE in my general vicinity, but we were in Dalaran so I guess that is understandable. With my luck it might have even been a case of mistaken identity, just blame the rogue, if they didn't actually DO it, they were THINKING about it! Right?

8 comments:

  1. Depends, depends. If a person whispers me with a normal/polite question asking me about something I did wrong, then I'll respond politely with a sorry and maybe even help the person if I can/have the time for it. If said person immediately starts swearing and yelling at me, then it's a 'whatever' and possible an ignore.
    Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes intentionally (Running over the vertically challenged among us is a perfectly valid thing to do), most of the time unintentionally and that's no reason to just start yelling/cursing etc.

    So all in all: Most of the time I'll just ignore it, if the person is asking it in a normal way, I just apologize.

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  2. I usually try to be polite no matter HOW vulgar they are, but I won't prolong the conversation. A simple, "I'm sorry, I didn't see you." is about the most I will give them.

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  3. There are certain players that will rant about anything. I split them into two groups (stereotypes ftw). The first are those that believe wow is srs bizness and they really need to take a break. The second are those that just enjoy ranting. They get off on it and are occasionally witty about it. They're also easily distracted by the next opportunity to rant at something else.

    One of your colleagues got upset at me in an instance because I was killing trash before he could run to it. He made some comment about heirlooms and how I would suck without them therefore I suck and anyone who uses them sucks and the game sucks (excellent vocabularly by the way, I put him into the first group). I pointed out I was wearing hunter heirlooms for exp (agi + ap) and that they were detrimental to my casting if anything (elemental shaman). He just found more to rant on, well then I should be specced enhance because those stats are too good. I said ok, I better get a good enhance weapon and successfully rolled on the dagger he wanted xD which I gave to him and he shut up.

    You will end up having more people rant at you than I ever will because you're a rogue. People don't rant at hunters, they ignore them. Rogues are assumed to be more intelligent (this is from experience playing both classes). There is some chip on people's shoulders about rogues whether it's being ganked in pvp or a misconception that all rogues are ninjahs. I have a much more peaceful life on my shaman than I ever had on my rogue.

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  4. Ok, I admit I have problems with sticky fingers...I do pickpocket every mob I can...sigh...they found me out...maybe that is it.

    Really I am sure it is they are all just jealous that we can use just about any weapon we get our hot little hands on. That doesn't mean they are GOOD for us...but we could.

    I still refuse to use maces though...

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  5. Ohhhh yes I get this all the time. You know what people swear and rant at me the most for? Being in a raid guild that actually accomplishes a reasonable amount. Yes, I get ranted at for just standing around. Apparently it's an abomination to man that I have epicz, or something. Despite the fact that unbenownst to them I'm a female molecular biology studying college student, I am apparently actually a basement-dwelling 40 year old balding man. Clearly no normal person can do well at this game ;)

    Oh and I do that mob thing a lot too. I don't see what peoples' problems are, if they were just to say to me "you did such and such" I'd just say sorry 90% of the time because I didn't mean to. Oh well. Most of the time when they won't listen I just go "what? I'm a rogue, being shady is what we do!"

    -Poptart
    http://www.poptartica.net

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  6. An attractive female gamer who plays a MELEE dps? They don't exist didn't you get the memo?

    We are only allowed to play healers with our significant others and NEVER to play better than them...or so I have been informed.

    I just ignore them as obviously they are behind the times.

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  7. @Daraia: Hahaha. Oh yes, have to love that generalization. Although, in reality, there are no girls playing WoW, so the generalization isn't even needed ;).

    Personally I don't care who plays what, as long as you do your job in a raid and otherwise have fun, then I'm fine with it.

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  8. Agreed, you could be a cross dressing pink Hippo for all I care. Just be able to give me an intelligent reason for why you are using your crazy spec.

    I actually had that the other day. I was in an ICC raid and had a DK who was doing REALLY poor dps. I check his spec and it was the STRANGEST thing I had EVER seen. So asked him about it. He was able to tell me that he had been researching dual wielding specks and found this one that promised it would up his dps by 50O so he was trying it out.

    Since I didn't know him I couldn't say if it was working as intended so I asked "How that working out for you?" The response I got was a sheepish "I will be returning to my former spec after this raid." We had a good laugh about how it is fun to try new things but sometimes they can be a major bust.

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