Ever Onward

I'm putting the finishing touches on my Tier 10 examination of tree gear today.  It'll go up tomorrow morning.

This counts for getting it done on Tuesday, so you don't get to feather me and call me a boomkin.

For the first time I've really had a few subpar experiences in random groups, but I wanted to call attention to something else.

I was tanking a random Gun'drak the other day, when I got in they had already downed the snake boss and had apparently lost their tank.  I really have no idea why, although when I glanced at GearScore I suspected it was somebody who wasn't willing to be patient with alts or new 80's, since most of the crew was relatively low.

We proceeded through the trash to the Colossus.  Having noticed a few things about the play of a couple of the DPS, and in an effort not to call anyone in particular out, I asked in party chat (perhaps not quite verbatim, but close enough)...

"Please don't take this the wrong way, but has everybody been in here and know the boss fights?"

I received three variations of "yup" in reply, and one "Staring over here at the lady all in blues and greens I see..." followed by the confirmation that no, she hadn't been in here before.  I was surprised because I actually thought at least one other of the DPS on the run would say that.  Perhaps it was an alt.

In any case, I said it wasn't a problem and proceeded to tell her the key to the Colossus fight (which isn't really key anymore, if you have a relatively normally geared healer): Stay out of the purple stuff.  We proceeded to smash face and move on.

The lady in question commented something to the effect of "Wow, a nice person.  So refreshing!"

We moved through the rest of the instance and although it went a little slow, we cleared it without an issue.  I took the time to try to explain at least the necessary details of each fight (and a little more with Eck - I tried to get her puked on for her achievement but it didn't work), and we had no problems at all.

I was struck, though, by the fact that she hadn't wanted to admit she hadn't been there, essentially for fear of arseholes, and the fact that she was that incredibly surprised by the fact that there are regular, nice people out there.

A lot of folks talk about the general lack of good behavior amongst players in WoW.  I hope that what I did as a general course of being a decent human being inspires some kindness in others, and while I know that all the bad behavior and the disillusionment associated with it is a symptom of greater societal issues, I also hope that we can one day reach a point where it's no longer an issue.

Perhaps I'm just being idealistic.

Hope everyone's doing great with the new year and see you on the flip side!  Thanks for reading.