The Five Most Undesirable Group Members

Greetings! It has been over a week since the last article. This has been in large part due to an online class I have been taking. All of the work for the class was due this week and of course, I had procrastinated and hadn't looked at the assignments required. It is rather sad that the same stupidity I did at 20 has carried over to age 30 but at least this time around I can blame my apathy on a full time job and an 8-month old baby (That's my story and I'm sticking to it). At any rate, all of the work for the class was completed in two days and my goal is a "B" in the class. The class itself was not difficult but it was the kind of topic that doesn't really translate to academia very well. It is the kind of class that would be better taught using kinesthetic learning but online classes do not lend themselves to this kind of learning except on an individual basis. Regardless, on to this week's article...


Exactly how many of us enjoy pugging? I know I sure don't. It's not that I am a recluse but more that I have a limited amount of time to play and wasting time on incompetent groups incinerates that time in a non productive manner. I also have an intolerance to stupidity and that intolerance shuns me away from the roulette wheel of pick up groups. With that in mind, I have a list of the five least desirable group mates in the game. I am sure we can all pick out one of these people in our travels throughout Azeroth. In my gaming experiences, here are the five player stereotypes that have facilitated my disdain for pugs.



5. The Emo Caster


This is the 20 year old second year college student playing in his dorm room in the dark. The world doesn't understand him so he immerses himself in the world of Azeroth, only to discover that he truly doesn't understand himself. The backlash is seclusion. He plays a warlock and solos most of the time, in dark, deserted places while listening to Flyleaf and Linkin Park via Itunes. In the rare instances he does unveil himself to group, he is the guy who fears mobs at every turn and instinctively death coils anything that gets near him only to meet an unfortunate demise by the seven mobs who his feared mob have now pathed and brought to the group. After his death, he begins lamenting about his "miserable" life and how he cuts himself when he's alone. The immaturity and self loathing suck the fun out of the experience like a vacuum. The group disbands and logs as C-SPAN 2 suddenly seems uplifting.


4. The Stoner Healer

This is the 22 year old college drop out who spends most of his life under the influence of illegal drugs. He starts the group off with mildly entertaining group chat but as he smokes more dope while playing the game, becomes less and less focused and begins drifting. As he drifts, his attention to detail and reaction times become slower and slower and eventually net persistent wipes. His once entertaining banter has become incoherent rambling and grinds the group to a halt half way through an instance. In the end, the group has to boot him because he is no longer responding to chat and his toon isn't moving. He has either fallen asleep or the munchies have sent him on a quest for twinkies.


3. The Patchwork Tank

This is 15 year old Johnny's pride and joy; his level 70 warrior creatively named Taurenwar. He gets to play two hours a day after his homework is done. As a result, his gear is a mish mash of battleground gear, auction house fodder and a few quested greens. Unfortunately for Johnny, his gear has no focus to it in any aspect with some pieces having dps statistics while others having defense. He even has a ring with spirit and agility because he got it as a random drop while fighting in Nagrand. When this guy gets in a group, that group is in for a long night.

Within the first pull, it is readily apparent that this guy has no clue how to tank. Furthermore, even if he did know how, his gear is so god awful that he couldn't hold aggro if you super glued it to his head. He keeps his two hander equipped at all times because his shield is in the bank and because it's a "sucky green". The rogue and enhancement shaman inherit the role of tank and are killed many times over as a result. The group attempts to keep going but there is no hope with him in the party. His dps sucks. His tanking sucks worse. He doesn't use battle shout. He doesn't use commanding shout. He used retaliation on trash, thinking the pretty swords that fly around him might entice monsters to hit him. His first aid is leveled up but he doesn't have the cloth to make bandaids. This guy is a cancer, sucking up coin and loot. He is eventually replaced as the group cannot progress with his presence after which he begins spamming the group members asking why he was kicked. After futile attempts to reason with the group, his mom tells him time's up and he logs off till tomorrow.

2. The Omniscient Advisor

This is the 23 year old guy who joins the group with his level 70 mage in full green garb. At first the guy is harmless but as the group gets configured, it starts. He begins instructing the druid how to heal, the rogue how to fight and the warrior how to tank. Not only is his advice unwarranted, in most aspects, it is completely wrong. Things like mortal strike is the best skill in the game for threat and full resto druids are uber dpsers with wrath spam. Meanwhile, he is so busy telling every one else what to do, his performance as the mage is miserable. His dps is garbage due to his amazing green gear and his 250 spell damage. After focusing on the other members for the first 25 minutes of the instance, his haphazard play wipes the group. This begins the whining about how if the group listened to him, they would have been done by now. After 30 minutes of his bitching, the warrior in the group gives him the infamous "STFU" and the fighting starts. The warrior intentionally stops tanking in an effort to get the mage killed. After two deaths, the mage finds the largest pack of mobs in the instance, frost nova's them, ports out and disbands. The group may wipe but assuming they can replace the mage, they are far better off.

1. The Ebayed Character

This is the story of 16 year old Mikey. Mikey's dad is too busy with his business to really deal with Mikey and Mikey has been telling stories about how all the cool kids at school are playing this game called World of Warcraft and little Mikey wants to join. In an effort to compensate for being a marginal father, Mikey's Dad buys him a level 70 priest from Craigslist for $500 and tells Mikey to enjoy. Little Mikey jumps right in and begins looking for his friends. Unfortunately for Mikey, his friends are on a different server but Mikey has no clue. He begins the futile quest for looking for his friends on the wrong server. After spending an hour figuring out how to log in and press the buttons. Mikey begins searching the world. He has some of the best gear in the game with Memento of Tyrande and Full Tier 6 healing gear. He gets random whispers from people saying "Awesome gear, man" and "Dude, I wish I had your stuff" but Mikey has no clue how to respond. In fact, Mikey has his combat log up and never sees these whispers. Inevitably, Mikey dies 22 times running around the world looking for his friends only never to see them. After a while, Mikey begins to click his interface and discovers the chat channels. He begins reading the general and trade channels frequently.

After messing with the channels for a while, Mikey begins to understand how to talk and communicate. After a few days, he gets invited to a place called Karazhan. Mikey has heard his friends reference this place and thinks, "Hey, I might find my friends there!" and promptly joins the group. The group gawks at Mikey's gear with phrases such as "OMFG, your gear is ridiculous!" and "Damn man, why the hell are you coming to Karazhan with T6?" but Mikey is oblivious to any of this banter. Instead, he asks if he will find Aaron inside. The group replies "Ya, Aran is a few bosses away but we will get to him." Delighted by the response, Mikey says "Thank god - I've been looking for him for a few days." The group ignores this and begins to start. The group asks Mikey for Fort and he tells them that the last fort he saw was back in the Orc city. They ask him for Spirit and he guides them to the spirit healer, a place he is most familiar with by now. The group laughs as they think he is being sarcastic. He has no spells on his bar as he doesn't know what spells are in the first place. The raid starts and Mikey watches the group kill stuff and begins to melee mobs but then he sees the other priest in the group summon a shadow fiend. This intrigues Mikey to figure out how to do that so he begins clicking on buttons. Meanwhile, the group has begun to fight Attumen. Mikey is far, far away and dies to Attumen's repeated charges. Pleas by the group to collapse on the tank go unnoticed by Mikey who is still enraptured by locating a way to summon a shadowfiend. Regardless of Mikey's epic failure, the group defeats Attumen and moves on to Moroes. That's when it happens.

Mikey clicks on the spell book and finds his spells. While he doesn't click on the shadow tab, he does open to the holy tab. One spell sounds exceptionally interesting; Holy Nova. He figures out how to bind a spell to his casting bar and now begins spamming holy nova throughout the entire raid. He runs up the stairs to a host of aoe mobs where his holy nova is met with a zerg. The group asks what Mikey is doing but Mikey doesn't respond. The group presses on and urges Mikey to wait for the AOE pulls before using Holy Nova. He has no idea what AOE means so he just keeps using it for every pull. After clearing the trash for Moroes, the group gives him the healing assignment of the main tank. This turns out to be a bad idea.

Even with his ridiculous amount of overgear, Mikey's holy nova's can't keep the main tank alive. Worse, his holy nova's have broken the shackle and the frost trap, thus resulting in the death of the hunter and second priest (go go no threat from Holy Nova!!!!1!). The group now understands what they are dealing with and put Mikey on raid healing the rest of the night, where he spams Holy Nova over and over and over again until he is OOM. By the end of the night, the group only can get to Nightbane, where Mikey repeatedly dies to Charred Earth and his lack of healing ensures the main tank's death. The group disbands and blacklists Mikey from further raiding. In the end, Mikey never finds his friends and begins to hear the ramblings of 10th graders about Halo 3. After telling his dad about Halo 3, His dad once again buys him the game and Mikey never plays World of Warcraft again.


So there we have it. My questions to the masses are as follows:

• Which one of these do you fear the most and why?

• Is there a stereotype that I missed that you feel is more undesirable than one of the five mentioned above?

• Why do you hate pugs (not the dogs)?