But readings so hard.

I've been playing Worlds of Warcraft sense Wrath of the Lynch King, and in all that time I've only played Horde, so at this point I really don't "need" to read quest text as I have run all the quests so many times that I know most of them by heart. However I recently found myself starting a, dare I say it, Gnome. Not surprisingly I don't know any of the quests and my habit of not reading the quest text was working against me. The first problem I  had was getting to the Iron Forge air field. For those of you that are unfamiliar this area is entirely surrounded by mountains with no paths or tunnels in. I figured this out after wasting ten minutes looking for one or the other. I then made a very big newbie mistake. Instead of checking my quest log, which can be found in your control bar or by pressing the "L" key, I asked in guild chat how I was supposed to get there. Now, understand, my new guild knew that I was new to the Alliance and was very nice to me and answered my question in a polite manor.  I however felt like a fool when I realized that I could have saved myself the embarrassment

by simply checking my quest log first. Had I done this I would have seen that there was a NPC half a zone away (near where I had picked up the quest) that would fly me to the air field. So I had to walk all the way back on my tiny gnomish legs. You would think this would be enough annoyance, embarrassment and time wasted to get me to re-learn this lesson, but oh no, I'm special and I don't mean Special K kind of special I'm apparently talking water wings for eating soup kind of special. Within the hour I found myself working on a quest where I was supposed to kill thirty dark iron dwarfs. I set about the task running around killing dwarfs  all the while thinking  "man this is taking a really long time, and this is a lot of killing for a low level quest". It was at this point that I noticed their was a item icon next to the quest name and tracking information on my screen. This time I thought better of it and popped open my quest window and sure enough their was a item I was supposed to use to kill them that would have made the quest take a fraction of the time it already had. Save yourself a lot of grief, and time please follow my advice but not my lead on this one and read your quest text.

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.

-Morison

Stupid am I. I'll show you!

I saved most controversial for last. This is one of the most common forms of unintentional trolling, and how it's not seen as trolling has always eluded me. In Warcraft there are many places where a player shouldn't stand. As previously discussed, you shouldn't stand in the basic campfire, where the enemies re-spawn, or in AOE (Area of Effect) pools of damage. These AOE pools of  damage are usually called the poo or the stupid. These pools can cause heavy damage to anyone standing in them. The poo is frequently dropped by enemies in dungeon and raid instances. Obviously it's very inconvenient for your healer to have players standing in the poo. Aside from being completely avoidable damage it's also a terrible drain on your healers mana, as well as being a distraction from the task of healing the rest of the group that isn't doing their very best to get themselves killed. Given these facts it's very easy to see why players would think standing in the stupid is a form of trolling, it's a little harder for players to see where the trolling is on the other side. You don't have to look any farther then the famous healer quote "I don't heal through stupid". Your calling the other player stupid, how is this not trolling? I know what your thinking "But they are stupid, their standing in poo!". This is a mistake that we have all made and no player should get yelled at for the first time they do it.
We never know what's happening on the other side of the monitor screen. This player may be having lag issues. If your a new player that has not encountered this mechanic in a fight before you might not know what's happening and end up getting yelled at for your lack of experience. Also who amongst us hasn't had a bad case of tunnel vision while trying to top out the DPS meter. Part of the problem is that there is no accompanying sound that comes with this damage and if you have your graphic settings are set low the visual indicators might not be so overt you might not be able to see it. This coupled with the fact that in dungeons and raids players aren't used to watching their own health bars as theirs a healer that's supposed to watch that for you. Don't worry folks I'm not just here to criticize, I'm here to educate. New players head to your browser of choice and type http://www.curse.com/client. Your then going to download the client. Once that's done your going to open the client on your computer and go to, get new mods, and type in GTFO (stands for, golly thanks for oranges [thanks Koltrain]) into the search bar. Download it, this ADDON will make sure you know when to get out of the poo by making the most annoying noise possible when you are standing in it. From this point on you will never stand in poo again, if not to save your characters life points then to save your ear drums.

So remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison         

I'm just not crazy about those boots.

Just like last week we're going to talk about a way in which people accidently troll other players. This week we're going to be talking about I level snobbery. For those of you that don't know, a I level/ILV/I score/gear score, is a rating placed on gear by Blizzard in order for players to gage it's relative quality. These ILV's are also used by Blizzard to gate content. At various points in the game (most notably at end game) certain dungeons and raids require not just a minimum character level but also a minimum ILV. Blizzard imposes these requirements like a carnival has a height chart you have to measure against before you can ride the really dangerous rides. This helps to keep players from getting in over their heads. There is however a few problems with this system, as with all other brilliant systems, it involves people and free will. Therefore, we're screwed. The problem breaks down into two sections; snobs and newbies. We'll start with the snobs as this is the more obvious form of trolling. Some players think themselves better then others and impose their own set of

  requirements for this gated content. These players, at the start of a encounter, will use the gear inspection function in order to decide if the other players meet up to their standards. If a player doesn't meet their standards they will remove them from the group by one means or another. Typically this is done by using the vote to kick function. Players manage this by controlling the majority of a group with ether friends or guild members. This allows them to kick any player they want for any reason with total impunity. This can also be done by controlling key positions in the group, such as the tank and healing positions, and refusing to start the encounter until the people they don't like are kicked out of the group. Rather then wanting to wait in the outrageous raid ques, the other players in the group will let themselves be bullied into being bullies. Truth is these players think their performing a public service by kicking the under geared player before the encounter starts. That way the group doesn't have to lose worlds of time and gold to gear repair from repeated wipes. As well intentioned as these players may think they are, Blizzard put the actual standards in place, and if it was good enough for the makers of the game it should be good enough for any of us. New players have to play in increasingly difficult content in order to get better gear. That's how progression works. We were all the new guy once, try and remember how it feels. Additionally just like the old saying goes, the cloths don't make the man, it's the man that makes the cloths. So let new players, play and they might surprise you. The flip side of this coin is that as a new player you shouldn't just jump right into the new content as soon as it opens up just because you can. I can drink a whole gallon of milk in five minutes, that doesn't mean that I should. In fact, just like the raids and dungeons, this would end in a truly unfortunate and squishy way. You should continue to farm the content you are currently working on, get as much gear from it as possible before moving on to the new hotness. This will make sure that you and the rest of your group stand a far better chance of completing the content and doing so in a timely manner. It will also help to make sure that you have more fun doing it.



Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison

Troll?...No I play a gnome.

Some forms of trolling (bullying or grieffing) like yelling at players or calling them noobs are obvious. This article and the two to follow are about some less obvious forms of trolling. I can't believe I'm quoiting Tom Cruse but; "People don't do things to be evil, they do it because they think there're right". Sometimes we think we're in the good, but if we look at what we're doing from the other side of the fence we see that we are a giant pain in the butt. The particular topics I'm going to cover will require an explanation as to how they are a form of trolling. Don't worry newbies, I'm going to list ways for you to help avoid feeding the trolls. The first form of trolling I want to talk about is grieffing or kicking new players in dungeon groups for not knowing the mechanics of the fight. I want to be very clear on this point. If a group leader or a tank fails to check to make sure all the members of the group have done the dungeon before or know how the fights work and end up wiping because of it, then the blame rests squarely on their shoulders. Just because you've been playing sense vanilla and you've run all the dungeons sense day one dose not mean that all players have. If you want better karma group leaders, take the extra time to check to see if everyone understands the fights. If they don't, then take the time to explain the fights. The time doing this will be far better spent than sitting in the que waiting to replace a group member. If a player doesn't know a fight but is unwilling to admit to it when asked, then it's on them. Also newbies remember, when you don't know a dungeon tell the group. I know that some groups don't want to wait around long enough for you to type in the message so I'm going to show you how to make a macro for it. First thing you're going to do is go to your chat window and type /macro and hit enter. A large macro window will pop up.  At the top right their will be two tabs. One tab is for general macros, the other is for macros specific to the character your  playing at the time. I would use a general macro as you may want to use this macro on more then one character. In the bottom right corned there are two buttons; new and exit. Click the new button. This will open a window where you can type in the name of your macro. I'd call this one "new". At this time you also select a icon from the menu for your macro. I would suggest that you pick one that you aren't likely to use for any other macros. I know we haven't covered these before, so what I mean is, I would pick a icon that doesn't match any of your abilities. Now that you've got your name and icon picked go to the bottom window and type something along the lines of the following. /say Sorry guys I'm new. I haven't run this dungeon before. Please be patient with me. Thanks. After you've done this your going to hit save. You have now written your first macro. You can now drag the icon from your macro menu down to one of your action bars. Now you can get this message out to your group with the click of a single button. Good luck. Sorry folks not a particularly funny article but I think it gets out some much needed information to new players and perspective  to veterans.

 

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison