Maybe we need more patience

This is just awesome music, totally unrelated, to be enjoyed while reading this post.

When a child is old enough for school, or starts interacting with other children on the playground, people around it will immediately step in and tell it if it's out of line. "No, don't throw rocks at other people". "No, you can't just take that buggy, but if you ask nicely you might be allowed to borrow it". "No, you can't push people" and etc. This is how we learn what to and not to do against other people before we're smart enough to realize that we probably shouldn't do to other what we don't want others to do to us and all that. It takes people a long long time to put theirselves in other shoes and think "hey maybe I stepped out of line here". In fact most people will suck at this kind of thinking all their lives. But most of us have learned how to behave acceptable so that society doesn't cast us out.

Isn't it therefor interesting that when we come to another society, namely WoW, we don't do this at all? I often do random lowbie pugs and I am amazed at the behaviors some people have, just to realize that they probably haven't learned how to do it any other way. We have the people who need on everything, who ninja-pull everything, who go randomly afk all the time, who generally don't know what to do, who need on the wrong kind of items and so on and etc.

I often tell them, after having asked them to stop their misbehavior a couple of times, that "this might work for you now, but I assure you that if you don't try to cooperate further on, you won't get to experience end-game". Maybe they're not interested in that. Maybe a child isn't interested in being nice to people to be a part of society either. But we should at least give everyone a chance to learn the social codes of our society, so that when they get to 80 they know what to and not to do. Maybe the guy needing on all those greens actually thinks that is how you do it and then sits there like a questionmark when he is kicked out of the group. All the time. Ok so the guy isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but as we have noticed that is a common problem of WoWers, especially in the lower levels for some reason. Well actually it might be that most people have learned the social conduct rules of WoW by 80, and so they are perceived of as less misfits than the really odd lowbies you'll come upon in lowbie instances.

Why don't we step in and tell people what the right thing to do is? I usually give it a shot, but few other people I pug with do. They just expect people to know these things from start, and if they don't they're kicked. Not all of use come from heavy rpging either, and maybe if you've never touched a rpg in your life you won't know that Intellect generally is seen as a bad stat for a warrior. We might be shocked at some peoples behaviors, but before we assume the acting is to annoy is, we should at least give them the benefit of a doubt and treat them as the very new players they might be. I have touched upon this subject before, but it keeps coming back to me how difficult it seems to be for us veterans to imagine what it was like the first time we tried to understand an RPG, and all the things we've done wrong in WoW since we started out.

Maybe we need just a little more patience.

But of course, if you have tried to explain something and the behavior doesn't stop and/or keeps wiping the group, there is always the vote-to-kick. The game puts demands on people, and if you can't live up to them then maybe you should go do something else. Patience can only help you so far.