Communication Breakdown

Miss me? I know, I know, but I’m swamped with post-holiday ACTUAL PAID WORK this week, plus, I’m still addressing (i.e. scratching my forehead while furrowing my brow) the overheating issues with my gaming computer.

I think the heat thing is solved — it damn well better be or I know a computer nerd who’s gonna get sand kicked into his face — the ACTUAL PAID WORK thing will take some time, however.

To reward you for checking up on me and asking after my health (I’m fine, thanks!), I’ll relate a quick anecdote from Lord of the Rings Online last week.

I’m in this PUG (the dreaded Pick Up Group) to kill this elite boss in Garth Agarwen — Ivar. In the group is a level 39 hunter. I think he was a hunter, he didn’t really do anything as I recall. Anyways, as soon as he joined, he’s all full of advice cuz he knows it all.

One thing he didn’t know was how to get to Garth Agarwen on his own. So I showed him how to arrive safely at the zone-in, using one of those kinda exploit-y shortcuts. After zoning in, TWENTY minutes after everyone else arrived, he started up with his unsolicited advice again. Oh how I hated him.

He never set traps for huge trash pulls, never helped out the minstrels (the LOTRO main healers), never used assist to DPS the mob everyone else was focusing on. Three things he did do all the time, however: 1. He’d hit the crowd-controlled mobs much to our lore-master’s chagrin, 2. He’d run ahead into the next room and train the resting group with his aggro shit and 3. He knew what the rest of us were doing wrong.

So we were close to Ivar’s room and someone had a few hints and tips for the encounter — naturally, the hunter knew better, even though, I will remind you, HE HAD NEVER BEEN THERE BEFORE. We finished the last trash clear before Ivar, the minstrels were recovering power (that’s mana in LOTRO), etc. and hunter-tool runs into Ivar’s room and starts the encounter. So much for the last-minute strategy talk.

We wiped, of course. We run back and the group is yelling at the hunter for running in early. He denies it. Also, we don’t know what we’re doing. And we should shut up.

Ok, that’s when I’d had enough of his bullshit. Which is what I said. “I’ve had about enough of your bullshit and I’ll pay real money for you to shut up.”

He turned his character around to face me, with his back to Ivar’s room and asked me what the hell was my problem. I was about to say, “you’re my problem” but before I could, the idiot accidentally backs into Ivar’s room and starts the encounter again. Heh, he tried to run back out before Ivar would notice, but Ivar’s no fool — /begin encounter.

Graveyard visit #2.

I asked him if he was going to deny starting the encounter that time too. All he said was, “cya fuckface” and then he left.

Since he chose the singular “fuckface” rather than the plural “fuckfaces”, I assumed he meant me. Which I don’t have a problem with.

What I do have a problem with, what concerns me, is the “cya” part.

Why in the world would he think I’d want to see him again?

13 thoughts on “Communication Breakdown

  1. Heh, the PUG blues…gotta love hearing about them, ’cause that means it’s not happening to you!

    Hope we’ll hear more from you soon.

  2. Glad to hear that the LOTRO player base is still as dumb as some of the WOW player base. =)

  3. Wow.. that’s a pretty bad PUG. I haven’t had any bad experiences so far. Of course, I haven’t gotten to that point in the questline. I’ve already seen from going through the Book 1 questline that the instance difficulty ramps up pretty quick and requires a solid group working well together by the end. So, I can see that PUGs getting pretty ugly further up the quest lines.

  4. Oh how I hate the know-it-alls.

    My fave of those was some twit who went into one of the easier parts of Scarlet Monastery with my husband and myself to finish up some quest. He kept telling us everything we did wrong and how to play our classes, but naturally he kept running ahead and pulling stuff before we’d rested, aggroing extra mobs, etc. (Huh, looking up at your entry this sounds awfully familiar.) We eventually split after wiping (again).

    The next day we decided to go back, just the two of us. We figured we wouldn’t be able to finish without more people, but what the hell, it was worth a shot and we could live with the repair bill if, in fact, we died.

    Whaddaya know. What we couldn’t do with three people, we managed with two, once we were rid of the twit.

    Funny how the folks who are loudest about telling others how to play are always the ones who are busy compensating for their own shortcomings.

  5. Glorious PUG hijinks! Interesting to see that LotR gets these muppets too.

    If there were any justice you should be able to collect these people, and keep them in display cases, pinned to the card like Victorian butterfly collections…

  6. The other night I ran Blood Furnace. The group formed in under 2 minutes, zoned in, buffed, and started pulling. For the next hour it was pull, kill, pull, kill, mana, repeat. Bosses fell, loot dropped, and we were done.

    There were maybe 10 sentences in party chat the whole night. Everyone was unfailingly polite, completely competent, and nobody died, even though we were under-level and under-geared for the instance.

    Every time I think every other player in the game is an ass, I have a PUG experience that is completely positive, and forces me to step out of my bitter, cynical bubble and think positive thoughts about other humans.

  7. PUG peeve #1 – The lazy ass that won’t run back from the graveyard even if everyone else already released.
    PUG peeve #2 – The group leader that waits until all 4 group members have zoned in and then he quits with no explanation. I love being the last party member summoned to Caverns only to have the group breakup.

  8. good lord i hate PuGs now. it used to be only one in every 5-8 that sucked, now all of them do. it proves my theory that the farther you progress, the more likely you are to have your brain reduced to mush

    as for your overheating, have you tried just blowing the dust out of the PC w/compressed air?

  9. If PUGs were ACTUAL PAID WORK, I’d find a new career. Since they’re not, I do them fairly often for recreation. There’s something wrong there.

  10. Had quite a bad PUG experience in the Deadmines last night, mainly because the healer was level 12, we only had 4 people, and the tank (who, to be fair, didn’t have english as a first language) kept rushing forwards, getting us wiped several times.

  11. Some things never change…. I’ve had bad PUGs in EQ, EQ 2, DAoC, and WoW. I sometimes wonder if perhaps being the asshole in a PUG is a way of life for some people.

    In both EQ and DAoC I mostly quit grouping with people outside of my guild, people I personally knew, or those I’d grouped with before. In some cases, no one else was on. Being the reluctantly cheating bastard that I am, I would login my heal/buff bot and proceed to kick that ass. That is, unless I logged in my DAoC Hunter or EQ Druid for some solo fun. 🙂

    Strange enough, in WoW I find the times few and far between that I need to group and I feel no need to make a bot at all. Heh, I solo’d my NE Hunter about 57 of the 60 levels he has. The only reason I haven’t gotten him past 60 is because my friends begged me to go play Horde on a damn RP realm, the lousy bastages. lol!

  12. I had a pug this weekend which hit new lows. I’m healing for a group with a hunter and he wants to tame a pet and asks me to keep him healed. I was about to tell him about trapping it then taming but thought it would only be a heal or two no prob. Well I healed him and drew the aggro to which the hunter yells don’t kill the mob. So of course my pug does nothing while I take this scorpion in tow back and forth in front while they watch me take hits and die.

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