In You Suck, we relentlessly berate people who suck at games, for no reason other than our and your amusement. We also provide some advice for you unfortunate saps. Sometimes.
Asking someone to be good at World of Warcraft isn’t like asking them to fly the Space Shuttle. The fact of the matter is that WoW is 80% knowledge and 20% application of said knowledge. The more you know about your class and the fight you are attempting, the easier it will be – to the point of triviality.
The problem, however, is that people get defensive when you try to help them.
“Hey man, if you stop turning with your keyboard you’ll be able to tank better.”
“WHAT? I’M NO TURBONERD, THIS IS MY $15 A MONTH!”
Sigh.
I’ve played games since I could crawl, and WoW is literally the first game I’ve ever played that people seemingly try to be bad at. If you, my noble reader, are one of the few who seek to drink from my fountain of knowledge, please, follow me to four steps that can make your life absolutely incredible.
1) Don’t pug.
Pugging is awful. Stop it.
“But Chris!” you scream, “I don’t have friends! How do I play game?” You see, this is the first problem. Using the dungeon finder is perfectly fine when you’re leveling, because it is difficult to find 4 friends who wish to level side by side with you. After you hit max level, though? Forget it. Stop it. Delete the button, hide it, stick a sharpied piece of tape over the icon.
Not only are they incredibly frustrating, but they can give you a false sense of superiority. Many people grow an ego because they do the most DPS in a 5 man, or, even worse, because they tank and heal so well – that last heroic only took 6 hours, down from 7! Yay!
No.
Being the best player in a five man is like being the fastest horse at a NASCAR race. Sure, your peers might look up to you, but you’re a goddamn horse that’s about to get run over by a field of cars.
The solution? Find a guild. Go to your realm forums, talk to people on your server, do whatever it takes to get into any guild with a decent amount of people – and then play with them. Get to know them. Make friends, and most of all, get better with them. When you’re in a random group of people, you can just bail out and place the blame on someone else, but when you’re in a guild full of friends you (hopefully) will be much more likely to stick around and help them while helping yourself.
If your guild turns out to be bad, simply join another one. Just remember to do your research before slipping into that new tabard. You don’t want to be paired up with gamers who are social poison.
If you find that you can’t get into a guild because people don’t like you, try harder. Or quit the game. World of Warcraft is a social experience. If the thought of having to make friends in game startles you, considering retiring to a life of Minesweeper and gin.
2) Stop clicking.
You’ve heard it before. Gladiators say it. The best raiders in the game say it. Your poor arena partner friends who secretly hate you for being awful say it. Clickers are bad at World of Warcraft. There’s just no way around it. No matter how good you think you are at “clicking” – someone who binds their abilities will always, always be better. This isn’t an exaggeration, either. If you click your abilities then you are literally the worst person in the world. I’d rather play with a corpse than someone that clicks. At least the corpse has an excuse.
Unfortunately, many people are under the impression that you only need to bind your keys if you are playing at a very high level. This just isn’t true. Casual players can benefit from taking advantage of keybinds. Even if you are just someone who logs on once a week to level up a random character, it is worth binding your abilities. Likewise, “casual” doesn’t mean “I like to feast on window panes.” It is possible to play WoW a few hours a week and not make everyone around you want to saw off your limbs with a pine cone.
Below is a video by a pretty cool guy on YouTube named Xzilend. If you have no idea what you’re doing, check it out. It’s pretty informative.
Even if you are skeptical, give it a try. Go a week without clicking. If you play a DPS’er, check your damage before and after the change. If it doesn’t go up, I’ll eat my face. If you’re a healer or tank, after a week of play seriously ask yourself – am I having more fun? Is my job less stressful? If you answer no, quit World of Warcraft because you are a liar and no one likes you.
3) Stop being ignorant.
Frequently in my virtual travels I will come across the most frustrating type of player: The one that does absolutely everything wrong, insisting that they are right. This player, in fact, may even be you. If it is you, jump into traffic. But wait! Don’t do that! Instead, continue reading and try to redeem yourself.
Do you know if your talent spec, glyphs, gems, and gear are optimal? If you don’t, why not? Do you enjoy being wrong? Is being hideously bad at video games your favorite hobby?
The reality is it takes 15 minutes – or less – to research any aspect of your class. WoW is pretty popular, and an advantage of this is that someone has probably done all the work for you, you lazy slob. There are whole communities of theorycrafters that tirelessly crunch numbers to figure out what is best for your class. 90% of the time, these incredible pie chart warriors can be found at ElitistJerks.
Simply browse on over to your class forum and click the thread relevant to your question. Are you a Destruction Warlock looking to max out his DPS? Click on over to the Destrolock Guide! Are you a Restoration Druid looking to be a boss in raids? Here you go. Seriously – it’s all there.
Once you’ve figured out your class, head on over to TankSpot to watch videos that walk you through entire boss encounters. Seriously. Back when I used to lead raids, I’d sit my group down in front of these before heading into a boss fight. It makes everything much easier and a lot less frustrating.
But wait! You don’t like PvE! You want to be a PvP superhero, slaughtering your enemies as you climb your way to the top of the rankings.
Got you covered.
ArenaJunkies is a great stop for the basics, although I wouldn’t suggest lurking around for too long as, well, you know how competitive types can be. In my travels, the best place to find PvP tips and guides is actually YouTube. Try searching around until you find someone that plays your class. Chances are, if a decent amount of people follow them, they are probably a good resource. Many players stream their arena games now-a-days, too. It’s a good idea to watch some of the best players do their thing. You’ll probably pick something up if you pay enough attention – not to mention that some of those guys can be pretty entertaining as well.
Now go fix your junk.
4) Stop whining
Ultimately, there are two types of gamers: Those that accept a challenge, and those that whine incessantly to every person on Earth about every speedbump they encounter.
If you are in the second group, then brace yourself.
Stop.
When your group dies in a raid or five man, don’t hit enter. Don’t rage quit. Don’t page a GM with a story about how the devs hate your class.
Instead, think.
What could I have done better?
Yes, sometimes the odds are stacked against you – and yes, sometimes your class is at the bottom of the totem pole, but that doesn’t mean it is the reason behind your failure. Most of the time, the reason you’ve experienced some negative thing is because of, well… you.
Even if you are a great player, you still make mistakes. The simple fact of the matter is that WoW is not a game about massive leaps in skill. The one thing that separates the best players from the average ones is their ability to sit down and realize that they made a mistake. That critical ability also makes a player much easier to play with.
While I’ll be the first to admit that there is a bit of dedication necessary to actually fix the problem, your gaming experience can benefit greatly for simply taking some humble pie to heart. Realize that you can always improve, and that often these improvements are a greater “upgrade” than any piece of gear.
Whenever I hear someone whining about X beating them in Y, I immediately ask if they played it perfectly. The answer is almost always yes, followed by a lengthy bit about how the cards are stacked to infinity against them. But are you sure, I’ll follow up – and of course, this is typically where I get destroyed by a wall of profanity and bile.
But you know the truth.
When we die in a boss encounter, it isn’t our fault. It’s the healer. Or Blizzard. It’s never us. Taking the blame is hard, so it is much easier to hide behind the subterfuge of a big bottle of whine. The same goes for PvP. It’s always something else. It’s Ghostcrawler. It’s the other team’s composition. It’s your connection.
It’s never “Well, I could’ve played that better.”
And you know what? That’s awful. You could’ve made a glaring mistake, one that cost you the match, but because you lack the ability to critique your performance, you’ll never know about it and you’ll continue to get frustrated while you berate the game and everyone else around you. So stop it. Seriously. Cut it out. Stop whining.
If for nothing else, what does your stream of spittle and rage actually fix? Nothing. It’s useless. Whenever you start screaming about anything video game related, you look like an idiot to everyone around you. Not only that, but you become That Guy.
In short, it is why you have no friends and everyone thinks you smell like cheetos.
Next time you have the urge to whine – realize that. Figure out where it is coming from. Why are you really frustrated? Ignore everyone who isn’t you. Did you really do your best? Could you have done better?
If you honestly come up with yes – then you’re lying to yourself. Quit the game and go focus on something easier. Like breathing.
In all seriousness, World of Warcraft is a game and I understand that. The thing is, being bad isn’t fun. It’s miserable. Really and truly, have you ever met someone that has less fun when they get better at something? The better you get, the more fun you will have because more paths will open to you within the game – plus you’ll probably be frustrated a lot less, if ever.
I agree to an extent you have to accept that certain aspects of the game are just plain broken like pvp for example.
I’ll agree with everything -except- number 4, because it is -never- the main tank’s fault.
As a former priest, you are the reason PUG’s were 45 minute nightmares. =D
Regarding gems, I’ve seen a fair share of people who are just fine with sub-optimal damage if they get to play their style.
Doesn’t sit well with the general population of gamers, though.
this is generally good advice for people that are willing to take it. as you said, the majority will make up an excuse or get heavily defensive over incorrect gemming.
Sadly with things like this you are usually preaching to the choir. People who want to better understand the game will go out and search for tips/guides.
Then there are those that believe they are fine, or are just trolls out to be a jerk to unsuspecting victims. All part of dealing with (bored) humans over the internet.
I was once like you, ignorant WoW players. I declared myself to be in the right, though wiser heads than mine tried to convince me through numbers and FACT that I was OBJECTIVELY WRONG. I had owned a G15 keyboard for four years or so, and never once keybound anything that wasn’t already on my one-to-nil bar. I dismissed them with fire in my eyes and the scent of brimstone on my breath. Whenever some untimely failure befell me, I did not retreat into deep introspection regarding what I did poorly, and how I could improve. I railed and screamed and blamed it as an inherent flaw of this virtual universe. Which was entirely probably, but the moral of this story is this: I was once this person, a boy, cold and shunned in a vast and unfriendly landscape, engaged in a vicious cycle of obstinate behavior. Simply put, I sucked at World of Warcraft. So what did I do?
I quit and now regularly copulate with MY GIRLFRIEND. trololololo
(P.S. Although a computer can never replace a piechart-wielding neckbearded theorycrafter, if you DPS competetively and haven’t been using Rawr, please kill yourself.)
(P.S.S. In all seriousness, it’s entirely up to you as to how much you decide you want to invest in World of Warcraft, in this case, primarily time-wise. However, the mitigating factors working against you are these: WoW is uber-popular, so you’re more likely than not a Google search away from some advice that could make you better at whatever you do. And you in all likelihood already paid 15 USD for a month of game time, so you might as well get the most out of it. That said, if you like to PuG, go hog wild. Or whatever it is you do, because it’s a big game, and you’re statistically likely to be better than or at least have someone else be as bad as you are at raiding/battlegrounds/arenas/whatever. Perhaps you’ll never go Bastion of Twilight 25-man Heroic or top 5% in your Battlegroup, but if you’re having fun, the only person you’re bothering is me, so cut it out and quit already. But not really. That’s not to say it’s an excuse for rules three or four, because while ignorance in WoW is in the grand scheme of things harmless, it’s indicative of your own tendencies to ignorance, which is never excusable, and because nobody likes a whiney #$@^$*.)
(P.S.S. Smaepdii is the best tank, it’s never his fault.)
One of the reasons I quit is because everyone else sucked.
One of the reasons I quit is because everyone else sucked at the game.
If you are claiming you left because everyone else sucked then it is clear that it is YOU not the other players that are the problem.
It is this type of bull that helped me decide to leave the game. This crap elitist bullshit where people think that it is everyone else causing the wipes and not looking at their own playing is a sign of a bad and ignorant player.
I was lucky enough to be in a wonderful guild with very patient and mature people when it came to raiding and end game content. However the more I played the more the game started to feel like a chore rather than a fun way to spend my evenings.
I quit 2 years ago, I think I made the correct decision.
Well done sir. Stay clean.
This applies to just about every MMO I’ve ever played. Some people are so damn lazy they’re just beyond help. With the prevalence of Wikis there’s no excuse to not be able to find the information you need. ESPECIALY when a game is really popular like Everquest or WoW.
I’m glad my video could help! Thanks for using it in your post!
You are very welcome! I certainly don’t mind giving some love back to the community. Your videos are pretty good, keep it up.