Greedy Goblin

Friday, April 29, 2011

Blame the guild, not the moron!

The PuG update: We are the #42 in EU according to guildox.com and #75 in the World in guild achievement points.

After several tries and lot of changes, we finally downed the final boss of Cataclysm normal, keeping our #15K-#17K position on the wowprogress world list.
For long time we did not survive P1. Either Onyxia or Nefarian tank died. Then we switched to 4-healing. It solved P1, but made P3 too long to not make a fire-related mistake. Finally we figured out: We did not kill adds in P2 but kept damaging Nefarian, taking him down to 55%. At this point the adds disappeared and lava withdrawn. From there it wasn't hard. Too bad that this strategy meant ranged stacking, which cannot remain in further raids, but I hope later we can kill him with more "normal" strategy.

Of course, like always, we are recruiting. If you would like to get the recently announced legendary staff, don't miss the guild-post tomorrow.



I have a new method running Tol Barad. Its effectivity really surprised me. When I call out some moron who is at the tower or PvPing in the middle, I mention their guild name. That's it. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated, just "ArthasDKlol or [darkhordkillaz] stop attacking the siege".

I did not design this, deriving it from my psychological studies, I bumped into it by accident. I simply wanted to note the terrible lolguilds on the server. Its ability to control the M&S hit me more than them.

I've always called out M&S who did something obviously stupid or was terribly undergeared for PvP. While I'm not much of a gear fun, but you must have at least some gear. Get at least those damn 339 crafted crap they sell below material cost in the AH lazy punks!

Earlier the direct effect of criticism was minimal. Practically the M&S only stopped doing his nonsense when he was a true newbie totally oblivious to TB. In every other case I got "lol i do what i wanna" or "whysosrs lol" or "welcome to my /ignore". Of course there was a long-time effect, they usually stopped doing the same nonsense or showing up at all. It's simple sub-conscious method, he "plays for fun" and being criticized is not fun, so he (without being consciously aware of) avoided things that attracted critical comments.

But when I called them out with guild name, I started to get "sorry" or some lame excuse and immediate fixing their behavior. I was totally amazed. Took some time figuring out what's going on.

It is well-known that groups are important part of the self of socials. They define themselves after group membership. They consider other group members "friends". While they can ignore the opinion of some random stranger over the internet about themselves or can dismiss him as "no-lifer", they are much more protective for their group. They want to avoid their group being criticized. However it's alone not an explanation as there is another way of avoiding it: fighting back. Most people are actually much more likely to fight for their group than for themselves. Just compare the reactions if you tell people that they are personally dumb or you tell them that their group (blacks, Latinos, Italians, Republicans, Arabs, women) is dumb. So actually by calling out their guild I should get furious trolling answers instead of obedience.

The key is that the "friendly social guild" is not a real social group. There isn't real friendship or other (even social) values to be found there. They are just random conglomerates of leeching and lolling M&S wishing for being liked and respected by peers. They avoid the "fight" so badly because deep inside they know that their guild sucks, their "friends" are just random people who thrown a /w to the guild recruiter and they are not respected and envied by non-members. However finding it out would hurt their feelings, so they avoid the situation where it could be tested. While it's untested, they can have the fuzzy feeling of having real friends and belonging to a respected group.

I only wish for some macro, which insert the name of my current target into one of the sentences below:
  • X of [guildofx] don't attack sieges, they have 1M HP, it's much more time killing them than replacing them
  • X of [guildofx] don't defend sieges, they have 1M HP, let the horde waste time destroying them
  • X of [guildofx] don't PvP in the middle of nowhere
  • X of [guildofx] fight INSIDE the base, not at the door

12 comments:

Sean said...

Lol, that is hilarious. But I can see how calling out the guild names can be effective.

The reason why you're having deaths in p1 if you're using 3-healers is because you don't have an effective "floating healer". You'll need a healer each on the Onyxia and Nefarian side. The 3rd healer should be in the middle but be quick to react on which side is needed. For instance, the Onyxia healer will be under pressure during adds, tail swipe or crackle.

Another reason for the tank deaths could be because of crackle. Note that the raid does not need to be immediately topped off after crackle because there is no aoe damage on the Nefarian side. So, for example, the floating healer can help stabilise the Onyxia side first, and then come help top off the Nefarian side. Healers should prioritise tanks first before the raid.

Lastly, your healers should use their regen cds during p1. The fight is quite long (p2 = 3 mins) and so the cds should come back up in the middle of p3. This will allow your healers to use more inefficient heals to help keep people alive but still emerge will good mana leading into p2.

Anonymous said...

Target substitutions with the addon Prat (Enable the module in the config):

%t for target name

%tg for target guild.

I look forward to future results.

Anonymous said...

/run t="target";SendChatMessage(UnitName(t).." of "..GetGuildInfo(t).." don't attack sieges, they have 1M HP, it's much more time killing them than replacing them","RAID");

There you go. I am unsure, if this will work everywhere in Tol Barad, I quote wowpedia on that:
"This function only works in close proximity to the unit you are trying to get info from. It is the same distance that the character portrait loads if you are in party with them. It will abandon the data shortly after you leave the area, even if the portrait is remembered."

So, let me know if there are any problems with the range, maybe I can work around that.

chewy said...

I would never have guessed that this would be so effective but it doesn't entirely surprise me.

When I was at school we were known only by our surnames. Both teachers and pupils referred to the boys (it was a single sex school back then) only by their surnames. The effect was to induce discipline and respect rather than friendship and fun.

I imagine that mentioning their guild name has the same effect.

Anonymous said...

Make sure your tanks use the TB trinket. Also DK tanks are very strong here due to AMS.

The "floating healer" mentioned by Azzur is a very demanding role because he will need to read the fight and anticipate damage bursts and boss abilities to move safely and be ready to heal in time. Make sure whoever you choose for this is ready for a challenge.

Riptor said...

@ Anonymus: In P1 there is not a single Boss Ability that can't be anticipated or seen coming 5-10 Seconds beforehand.

DannyFlorida said...

Many times people will say in General or Trade chat that they are reporting so-and-so for their bad behavior. I have discovered that reporting to their guild leader (and saying you are doing so) can be highly effective to retarding their behavior, in addition to opening a GM ticket.

Anonymous said...

The "not being tested" part also explains why M&S don't enchant/gem/L2P. It's a defense mechanism, to provide plausible deniability in the event of failure. If the M&S really did try and did all those things, but still failed, he would have no excuse and would have to admit that he really did inherently suck.

stubborn said...

This is fascinating, and precisely the kind of strategy that I like to see cropping up to help improve the overall game. I wonder if using it in a cross-dungeon LFD group would be effective. While I know it's naughty to plug your own blog on another's comments, I hope you'll forgive me for this one. I've been working on the idea of a player "LFD" reputation system, and Maisith suggested that I read your post here and think about how I could make guild rep and player LFD rep interlinked. Your discovery here has given me a lot to think about. Thanks! Great post.

Ygg said...

My guess is that the fact that your guild was the first to reach lvl 25 on the realm makes it impossible for them to fight back when you attack them with their guild name. So your idea about boosting your guilds "reputation" on the server to demoralise the M&S seems to have worked. The question is, will it have the same affect in cross-realms BG's?

Simon said...

If you need to dps nef to 55% before phase 3, you are not using a good strategy for add tanking in phase 3. This is confirmed by the screenshot showing nef at the edge instead of the middle. Maintankadin has several threads including discussion on add tanking strategy, some are for heroic/25 but they are applicable to 10 normal as well:

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=30760
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=30687
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=31357

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the explanation for the "calling out by guild" phenomenon is the fear that their "fellow guildie" will see your calling out and think less of them?

For a social, reputation with said "fellow guildies" has value by itself, even if it doesn't have any effect on anything - so he would hate even if a non-officer would see it. Now, a social probably doesn't think that he did something wrong, but he may fear that a guildmate will see your comment and "falsely" believe it/misrepresent it.

No social would say "lol i do what i wanna" or "welcome to my /ignore" to a member of his guild, so "defending is reputation" against guildmate is much harder.