MMOsolation, By Reverend Unk

Today, The Wayward Initiative brings you our VERY FIRST GUEST POST!

Hooray!

It is my absolute pleasure to feature this post from Reverend Unk, both friend and guildie.

He offers us a frank reminder of how tough it can be to new to the game and that we should take the time to help out some of our newer friends.

Thanks for the contribution, Fal!

Please keep reading, after the cut:

Earlier today I found myself in a situation that I didn’t feel competent enough to deal with properly. I’m fiercely independent; I really don’t like asking for help, but during the middle of this I appealed to some of my guildies on Twitter to help as they could. And that situation was that of a low-level guildmate whom was new to the game, and I hesitate to mention it, but young of age as well, and was feeling a bit left out. Well, a lot left out, truthfully.

I think the fact that I was in a raid at the time, and in answering his questions truthfully, mentioned that he wasn’t likely to be able to join a non-battleground raid until 85, are what brought his feelings of isolation to the surface. But the feelings were there, probably lingering in the back of his head, for who knows how long. But to see the phrase “So I’m of no use to the guild” show up in my chat-log is heart-rending for me, in no small part because I was there once.

I replied to the above phrase by telling him not to feel that way, not to feel rushed to level to 85. To level at his own pace, and enjoy the game along the way. That a lot of being max level is being bored, or doing things that just generally aren’t, when you get down to it, that pleasant. That the people in TZI are some of the nicest, coolest people I’ve met offline or on, and that no matter how long it takes him to get there, the rest of the guys are just awesome to hang out with. That it’s probably been about six months since I grouped with anybody in the guild, but I’ll still log on just to chill (leaving out the bit where I generally don’t say anything to any of my friends while on). All of this is true, and I mant what I said, but I got the feeling that what I was saying wasn’t enough. This is when I sent my plea out on twitter.

And then I did something I’m not entirely comfortable with having done. I offered to group with him on my hunter and level together (that part I’m okay with), and also offered, essentially power-levelling via dungeon runs with my death knight (that part I’m not). The latter portion went out with heavy repetition of synonyms of the phrase “if levelling fast is that important to you”. And I do feel that if levelling fast so he can do more stuff with the guild is important to him, I should help. I’m just unsure of the method I offered out there.

Okay, part of the reason I have misgivings about this offer is because he’s young. His spelling is terrible (but forgivable), and when there was a misunderstanding about a question he mentioned asking his dad. Also, he’s a hunter. Now I hate myself for having these prejudices because back in vanilla when I raided full-time, our best rogue was only 16, and my main (and only, at that point) toon was a hunter. I’m worried that the increase of levelling speed will be inversely proportional of his understanding of the class. I don’t want him to be unhappy, but I don’t want to be responsible for the creation of a “huntard” and make a lot more people unhappy.

I also believe that at least some of his feeling of isolation within the guild comes from his play-time. He tends to play from noon on. I’m not entirely sure until when, as that’s where the misunderstanding came about. But the vast majority of his play-time seems to be when those of us in the guild whom are employed (ie all the adults save myself) are at work. He just really doesn’t see too much of us on the whole. Not that any of us see a whole lot of us right now, what with it being summer, but we see each other a lot more than he sees us.

We also can’t forget that levelling – even now, with all the zone overhauls and such – can be fairly slow when one doesn’t have the benefits of heirloom gear, and having done all these quests (or similar enough to be damn near indistinguishable) umpteen times before. I didn’t think to ask, until now, but he’s probably not using any addons, and certainly not ones like QuestHelper.

In a lot of ways, the reason this gets to me as much as it does, is that my experience levelling back in vanilla was very similar. It was different in quite a lot of ways too, but it was close enough for me to identify with. Let’s hop into the WayBack Machine. Kael’Thas (US) opened on October 19, 2005. I rolled my very first WoW character on the day that it opened as a Dwarven Paladin (I had to look up the open date, but I do distinctly remember that I started playing the day my server started. Also, holy crap, I’ve been playing WoW off -and-on for almost six years! I just realized that.). I spent about a week playing that guy, before I decided that the Alliance wasn’t for me, and then rerolled as a Troll Hunter named Zarica. I made three friends along the way, a mage, a rogue and a priest. I ended up forming a guild with the mage and the rogue, and we were happily nubbing things up. Around level twenty I ran into a priest in the Barrens. That priest, Diabolica (I sat here for twenty minutes trying to remember her name), and I became really close friends. Probably better friends than I was with my then-guildmates.

Diabolica was levelling a character on KT to join a raiding guild her friends were in. I can’t remember what that guild was called, but it’s not important in the grand scheme of this story. She’d had experience as a raid healer in the past, and the more she talked about raiding, the more fascinated I became by it. By level thirty, I was just pushing myself as hard as I could to level as quickly as I could so that I could join her guild – not realizing that I’d have to apply. I was a nub, remember. I wasn’t satisfied with a day’s play session if I didn’t gain at least one level. So the day finally came that I hit level 60, and I applied for membership to this raiding guild that my friend was in.

Along the way, I’d left my friends in the guild I was in behind. They’d lent me the money to buy my first mount, they’d helped me level enchanting, and I hadn’t even mentioned that I was applying to join another guild. I ended up being denied to that guild as I had no previous experience in any of the raids available at the time. My friends, in the current guild, that I had essentially treated like shit, then realized how much raiding meant to me (please remember, that as awful as what I did was {and make no mistake, I firmly believe it was awful}, “casual” content really was damn near non-existent), and consequently arranged a guild merger with an entry level raiding guild by the name of Iniquitous.

I did say that this was different in a lot of ways. The similarity, and the point that I was trying to make, albeit in a round-about “I’m a terrible person” way is that I understand the desire to be max level. To want to raid and being too low level. To want to hang out with my friends in guild (although, in my story the friends I wanted to hang out with were in a different guild than the friends I was already in a guild with. See above, re: “I’m a terrible person”.) and do stuff with them. I understand these desires, because I had them once.

So please, if you have people whom are low-level in your guild and you know (or even suspect) that they might be new to the game, reach out to them. Try and find out if they’re having any issues, or need any help with levelling. Or even if they just want to have some company. Roll a lowbie. Do something. Help them enjoy the World of Warcraft as a lore-rich environment, full of entertaining quests and challenging dungeons, before they become the people who are bored with the game, that so often end up writing WoW-related blogs (myself included). If they become disenfranchised with WoW upon hitting max level, or they get burnt out on raiding, fine. But let them cancel their accounts at max level, not halfway along the journey.