Consider this a throwback to Diablo playing (where you pick up every bloody thing you see and sort it all out later) and I promise not to do it any more.
The Background:
So, on World of Warcraft sometimes when you kill a monster it drops an item. Items are color-coded so you know exactly how nice they are. So far we have seen grey (trash), white (common), green (uncommon) and blue (rare). When you pick things up, you have to make quick decisions about what to take or leave and the color coding helps. And some of these items, when you pick them up, they get “bound” to you. This means you can’t trade them to another player, you can only sell them or destroy them. (Guess what most of the nicer items are…). So, you have to make careful choices about what to take and what to leave for others. There is a nifty game interface that lets everyone in a group make a decision based on whether they think they need the item, want the item or couldn’t care less.
The Problem:
Tiernen and I thought the standard in informal groups, like we were in last night. [I know our guild has different rules, someone actually took the time to explain them to me] is to use the interface, but be polite. If you really don’t need something, don’t ask for it. So I started out using the interface. I passed on the things I didn’t want and picked “need” or “greed” as appropriate for the rest. Then someone starts complaining. “Don’t pick need.” (Picking “need” weighs the randomizer in your favor). But, and I’ll stress this, he didn’t take the time to explain the alternate system. (I looked it up later and found out that everyone passes and then whoever wants it uses the informal dice roller to choose the person to go and pick it up). [This seems unnecessarily complicated to me. I mean, if the game gives you a tool, why not use it?] However, he was complaining and I couldn’t figure out why. I stopped picking “need” for items, but if I thought I could use something, I picked “greed” for it (imagining that that might be more fair) and if I didn’t get something, c’est la vie. We were mostly there to finish quests anyway. And this guy, kid actually, he was about 17, is still complaining about us picking up stuff.
An Aside
I think this problem was aggravated by the group we picked up. Tiernen and I are pretty methodical. We like to check out an entire room and clear an area before moving on. The people we were with were not like that at all. They kept bolting ahead and pulling in lots of enemies while we were still checking on loot and restoring our mana. So, we were constantly scrambling to keep up. And this caused a certain amount of hasty button pushing. Also, the chat window interface for party communication is very ungainly to use. The guild we are in has a voice over internet program called Ventrilo that is MUCH better.
The Conclusion
So the upshot of all of this is that I wound up with some stuff that this guy wanted and he got in a huff and stopped communicating with the group after the last boss. I feel like crap because my ineptitude with the game conventions kept this kid with a low level character from getting some gear he could really use. It wasn’t my intention to “ninja the loot”, and a little basic communication at the beginning would have helped us enormously. This is a lesson learned for me, but I hate the thought that there’s some kid out there thinking I was taking advantage of the system on purpose. *sigh* We’re going to go back and do this dungeon again, but this time we’re doing it either by ourselves or with a group we know.
Sparkly Things 