Slow, confused and fumbly

Yesterday my husband had to report three players for their behaviour in a timewalking dungeon. It’s the usual story. It was our 4th of the 5 timewalking dungeons we needed to do for the quest. The other three had been fine & we’d enjoyed seeing the older dungeons. In this one (Shattered Halls) the third Dps started by saying,”Let’s do a speed run yes?” Two trash mobs into the run and the same Dps was demanding “More Dps please”. I’ve never understood this. My husband & I were doing everything we could –  full rotations. It’s not like we were only using say half our spells and abilities for the fun of it. Anyway we carried on & the first two bosses were fine. The tank and dps talked non stop to each other during the run – about gear tiers and the hey day of vanilla etc. Husband & I kept silent – we were trying to focus on what we doing & in all honesty I probably didn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves. We are not high ilevel – I am 640, husband is 635. I know it’s scaled for Timewalking dungeons but possibly the rogue was wearing older sets from BC time & had set bonuses? I didn’t inspect him but he & tank were talking a lot about gear sets. Certainly he was doing a lot more damage than us. Maybe he was just better (perish the thought!)

Anyway during the third boss fight about three quarters through I pulled aggro & the boss started attacking me. The dps & tank started saying how useless I was. By this time my husband was typing a response to defend me. I begged him not to. I hate conflict. I just wanted us to get through the run. I somehow survived the boss’s onslaught (healing myself ) but by then they were calling out to me,  “Are you there, are you there?” I wouldn’t respond – I did not want to get drawn into a slanging match (plus I would be no good at it – I cannot fight & type). They then moved onto husband & accused him of being a bot. Again I wouldn’t let him respond (though now I wish I had). They kept on goading him & then booted him. At this point I did speak up – I said he was my husband (ie a real person) & I was going to report them. They laughed & called it a bot marriage & then said we should have spoken up. I said why should we when you have insulted us, we can’t all be as uber as you, we are just trying to gear up. At this point they booted me.

Husband immediately took down their names & submitted a ticket to Blizzard. I first tried to talk him out of it but he was insistent, saying this sort of behaviour is unacceptable. Blizzard have responded to the ticket to say they agree (that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable, not that I’m useless and husband’s a bot) & they are looking into it further. I assume from that they will check the logs? I don’t know what will happen next & suppose I never will.

I get that our Dps wasn’t good enough for this group but we were doing our best. We just wanted to run five dungeons, possibly get some gear and complete the quest. We did not speak because they were insulting us and we did not want to make it worse. I’ve seen these things degenerate into slanging matches in the past & it’s not nice. I know some people will say only do dungeons with friends/guildmates. But that’s not always an option & why should this be the case anyway? There should be a bare minimum of civility in all dungeons regardless of people’s skill and ability. Some runs will have people of different ability. Some runs will be slow. Some will have wipes. It happens. Why can’t we all just be patient with each other? Why has everything got to be a race? And in any case all this unnecessary drama usually slows the run down (the tank died shortly after booting husband and just before booting me). Surely it’s much quicker if we all just get on with it. And if someone really can’t tolerate the varying ability in LFG then perhaps they should group up with their friends/guildmates and do the run their way. Take their uberness out of the LFG gene pool for which they are clearly too good.

Or maybe there’s another way … Blizzard please please can there be an LFG box for poor dpsers like me & husband who just want some fun. This box would say “Tick here if you are slow/confused/low geared and and a tad fumbly but want to do a dungeon.” I would tick this box. There would be another box for other people to tick (kindly souls) that would say, “I am happy to be grouped up with someone slow, confused, low geared and fumbly.”  Then all us “fumbly box” tickers could play together in a slow, confused & fumbly way. Everyone in the group would know exactly what they had signed up for so there would be no judgement or rebuke, just patience, tolerance & fun. Please Blizzard – we need this box. I suspect there are many people in Azeroth who do not have a friend/guild network to draw on & end up missing out on the dungeon side of WoW because of experiences like the one I had yesterday. But if we could easily find each in the world by ticking a box then we might never feel harassed or bullied again (and added bonus for all the super duper awesome dpsers out there – they would never have to see us again).

I’m still shook up by what happened. What little confidence I was slowly rebuilding is gone again. I went to bed upset last night & that’s not what I want from this game. Just when I thought things were different I realise that nothing is different. Plus ca change and all that. I’m sad today.