World of Warcraft to Become World of PUGs

[bean19]

The infamous Pick-up Group or PUG has often been the butt of jokes due to the fact that they can lead to very bad playing experiences for gamers, but World of Warcraft has a patch planned (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/3p3/newdungeonsystem.xml) to ease the pain of PUGs - as much as that is possible. In addition to automating group-matching and pulling from across servers to quickly match players, the new dungeon experience plans to give rewards for joining PUG groups that should get veteran players that normally turn their noises up at PUGs back into the mix.

Lovin’ the PUG
Players who take part in groups with one or more members who have been matched with them randomly from within the dungeon system will receive extra rewards, including the coveted Perky Pug non-combat pet. The more random players you group with, the faster you could get your new pet!


Vote Kick
Players who use the system to find additional random members for their party will be afforded a couple of extra conveniences to help them perform well. The loot option is fixed to the updated Need Before Greed option (and unalterable by any member) and players can vote to remove another party member from the group. It will take four votes in order to remove someone, however, so consider this newfound power carefully.
There are several other benefits listed and this has me fairly excited. My brother and I loved doing instances with level appropriate people while leveling, but the only reason we found players willing to do this was that we played on a brand new server. This will let us roll up new toons in the same way with less of a hassle putting together the "perfect group"

[Mav]

The vote kick option is a blessing and a curse..

On one hand, if someone is being an idiot and causing problems, it's handy.

On the other... I've been in pugs for instances where people want absolute perfect play style, no mistakes, no slipups, etc. You know there will be pug groups that kick someone because oh look the healer took some damage cause the tank let a mob slip by.. *sigh*

[Roc Ingersol]

And then you just /ignore the lot of them that vote kicked you.

It'd definitely help if the /ignore system gets an update too.

I'd like to have a clickable list of names of recent groupmates or people yelling in channels. Particularly since everyone and their mother is using non-Latin characters now..

[bean19]

Mav - A vote-kick requires 4 votes so you have to get EVERYONE mad to get kicked, and if someone is that much of a perfectionist then I'd rather not play with them.

The people I hate playing PUGs with are the people who absolutely LIVE playing WoW so they have no problem taking a phone call, pausing play to eat dinner, or taking an extend bathroom break during a dungeon raid. My game time is limited, so I don't want to wait ten minutes for someone to get their shit together.

@Roc - They probably should also put in a system for cross-realm /ignore.

[BGSS]

I don't play anymore, but the cross server fuctionality and teleportation is huge. You should be able to have a full group together and at the instance within 5 minutes of wanting to go, which is leaps and bounds over the current setup.

[Roc Ingersol]

I'm assuming cross-realm /ignore is in 3.3. Because Blizzard's been advertising /ignore as the way to ensure you don't play with asshats again.

And yeah, nothing worse than getting a PUG who takes a 10 min AFK. Hugely inconsiderate.

[RMan]

My game time is limited, so I don't want to wait ten minutes for someone to get their shit together.
Yea, same here, some people don't have a problem taking a 10+ minute AFK in a regular instance, which should take <30. I hate when my freaking healer does that and then I can't move on, and they know it :(. But last time I played the dual spec stuff helped a decent amount, and this new stuff sounds great, would make the game much more appealing to me. Might have to come back to WoW in a few months.

[net7runner]

Need Before Greed will now recognize gear appropriate for a class in three ways: the class must be able to equip the item, pure melee will be unable to roll on spellpower items, and classes are limited to their dominant armor type (for example, plate for paladins).

Mwa, mwahaha, MWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! *cackle*

Bad Healadin, no cloth for you!

[Balhem]

Also don't forget with them making it so you can trade soulbound items for two hours, if there is no one able to take that cloth item, the pally could then get it afterwords.

[RMan]

Bad Healadin, no cloth for you!
Yea, this is a nice change, and crazy that it took this long, but still doesn't seem comprehensive enough. I've had people roll on clearly class inappropriate stuff that the game shouldn't allow, like pure spell casters rolling on dps capes/rings because it has some agility on it. Seems it'd be fairly easy to weigh the stats, and if they're 20% or so less appropriate for your class/spec than someone else's, then they get dibs. Likely enough to keep healers from rolling on hit gear too. Thankfully the trading items has fixed mistakes from happening, but not jerks/idiots from messing up the works.

[bean19]

Goody for the healadins not getting to grab cloth. I'd much prefer to play with healadins who are grabbing aggro and healing themselves to let the true healer catch up than those who are trying to play a paladin as a straight healer.

[Smicer]

I'm assuming cross-realm /ignore is in 3.3. Because Blizzard's been advertising /ignore as the way to ensure you don't play with asshats again.

And yeah, nothing worse than getting a PUG who takes a 10 min AFK. Hugely inconsiderate.

Cross-realm ignore is gonna be in 3.3. And they are bumping the ignore list to 50? If I remember correctly :)

[Mephistopheles]

First it was cross realm battle grounds and now dungeons.

To be honest I preferred battle grounds before the cross realm business: you'd get to know the other players in your bracket over time, both on your own side and the other. It did take longer to fill a battle ground instance but I think it was worth it; nowadays when I hop into a battle ground they may as well be bots as far as I can tell.

I do the same thing with dungeon runs: over time you build a mental list of people who are good to group with and people you'd rather not run with again. I suppose this will still be possible when things go cross realm, but that depends on whether the LFG tool can be restricted to your realm only or if it's cross realm by default. Even if it's the former it may be harder to find people if the majority are just auto-joining matched cross realm groups.

I'll see how it turns out but it feels to me like the quality of the experience is slipping for the sake of convenience.

[Sasori the Medic]

I think it's a great addition. I'm on a Low/Medium population server and finding people for some of the more obscure dungeons or nonheroics can be a real pain. I almost considered transferring off but with this new functionality, I won't have to. Pretty happy about it.

[randir14]

I don't play anymore but this change is something that could bring me back...maybe when the expansion comes out. The worst part of the endgame was sitting around for hours trying to find groups.

[Anenome]

If the healadins are grabbing cloth the game designers have failed in some way. I played a paladin my entire WoW career and am more familiar with their issues than most. I started as ret, levelled, people tried to get me to go healadin, right when they were becoming amazing healers and their DPS was a joke. But I went tank before it was cool and built myself into the top pally tank on the server, and easily one of the top three across all classes. Despite that, I was successful enough at tanking to collect ret gear no one wanted, and the occasional healing drop, enough to fake healing on fights where I wasn't useful as a tank, which really only meant the last boss of Hyjal. That's the only boss literally impossible for a pally to tank. Lots of other places they said it couldn't be done I did anyway, Teron Gorefiend, 3rd boss of Hyjal (the magical explosions boss), etc. I was good enough the know what I was doing and make it work, and my crew had knew what I was capable of.

My conclusion is that Blizzard coded themselves into a corner with the paladin class and have been trying to fix it ever since. Changing one thing easily breaks something else, etc., etc. I eventually grew very bitter about tanking disparities, and was looking forward to switching to Death Knight tanking when circumstances finally conspired for me to quit the game. The idea of a mana-less tanking class, and not having to deal with spellpower was a dream. Mana-tanking meant that all the evil effects the designers put in the game to hurt healers and dps ended up hurting tanks too.

It's just all one big messed up thing. And when Northrend hit, I tried out the new pally junk, but the thrill was gone. I hear they're still good tanks. I was quite happy to see pally tanking become a respected phenomena during my tenure, and to be known across my server as a prime example.

As for this issue of PUGing, it's a pain to PUG with people. We used to do several instances a day in my guild, and as a guild tank you've got an invite to every party. And because I was a pally, I literally owned the five man. In fact, I'd often outDPS the DPS, and I could hold threat like a Nazi while engaging 10+ adds. Pair me with a bomb healer, and kickass DPS and we'd smoke instances in no time.

Perhaps my most famous run was the time we did Shattered Halls (heroic), a place so well known to pally tanks that I'd taken to recording my best times at it. So, one day I decided to try out something, I wanted to see if we could sneak past the Ogre boss and go straight to the last boss. I'd never tried it, and he let us walk away without aggroing him, so cool.

No sooner did we engage the final boss of Shattered Halls then I see the Ogre come running down the hallway to attack, and I start laughing over the com. The others see him coming and start freaking out, and I tell them I'm going to hold both bosses, to focus on the last boss and we'll drop him, then the ogre next. Everyone calmed down and went to work, and we freakin' did it! The ogre never dropped threat on me, or when he did my consecrates picked him right back up (I was an expert at keeping threat on ogre usually anyway), and I kept adds on me too as DPS blasted away with everything they had. We all used every trick in the book, and when we dropped him, the clock sat at 19 minutes for the completed instance, most of that saved by doing both bosses at once.

Fun stuff :) I have no desire to return to WoW now, but I'll always have the memories and the friendship of guildies.

[lockwoodx]

The expansion and forcing of battle.net cause me to cancel my wow account for the first time in 3 years.