We’ve all met these people. I can say with 100% certainty that we’ve all met a Noob, and that most of us have met a “Pro”… but you probably didn’t notice the “Pro”.
By their very nature, Noobs are loud and obvious. Easy to spot, easy to remember, and we all stop stories about their antics.
“Pro”s, on the other hand, are much harder to spot. Come into an AB a few minutes after it’s started, run past farm/stables and see a stealthed rogue there, seemingly guarding it, and you breathe a sigh of relief. Some other poor guy’s on watchdog duty, you can happily go kill things. And hey, he’s got S3 shoulders to boot, he knows his stuff.
More likely than not, that guy’s off making a sandwich.
“Pro”s standing around at an objective doing nothing is the reason why terms like “afk cap” exist.
It’s all in the attitude.
There are two schools of thought that a “Pro” follows. The first was highlighted last post, the whole “why try?” thing. A large number of people take it to the next level, “battlegrounds aren’t real PvP anyways”.
… huh?
Bg’s aren’t really PVP. It’s a ball of morons zerging stuff that may or may not win because they’re too stupid/scared to leave the group.
~ Nibcoilz, <Nubcake>, Kel’Thuzad
This is so completely wrong, I honestly have no idea where to start with this.
PvP is defined as “player versus player”, or, in other words, a character controlled by a living person attempting to kill, or otherwise defeat, another character also controlled by a living person.
Warsong Gulch is PvP. 5v5 Arena is PvP. A player getting ganked in STV is PvP. A hunter misdirecting the Cenarion Emissary in Orgrimmar to a level 10 bank alt is PvP.
I will concede that it is different types of PvP.
Arena is designed around killing an opposing team. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s about pitting yourself and your teammates against another team with the sole purpose of seeing if you, and your gear, are good enough to defeat them.
Battlegrounds are something else entirely. They are designed around completing objectives and winning the battleground, which just so happens to involve killing other people. Death here is not bad, and quite often can be useful. It’s possible to win the majority of battlegrounds without killing a single member of the opposing team.
They both involve skill and proper use of tactics to win, just different styles. You can launch a feint in Warsong, where 6 people suddenly attack from one way, while a druid slips past and snags the flag. You can launch a feint in an Arena, where suddenly you put a lot of pressure on non-healer while you have the healer crowd controlled… for the sole sake of forcing them to blow a major cooldown.
The end goal is always the same: unconditional victory. The means and strategies of getting there differ greatly.
In other words, it’s still war whether the end result is genocide or assimilation.
Any disagreements from there is simply semantic arguing. Useless, pointless, and silly.
Those who play arenas and think themselves superior to the average BG goer are misguided or arrogant at best; at worst, they are a cancer of humanity. Not all “Pro”s think this way, but there are plenty who do.
The thinking stems from the idea that battlegrounds aren’t real PvP. If it isn’t real PvP, then those participating are not real PvP’ers… and thus, are inferior to me, the successful arena player.
Of course, the opposite is true, too. There are those who feel just as strongly that arenas are not true PvP. These people, too, are silly.
I never said I don’t fight because those players aren’t good enough for me or that they don’t live up to my standards.
I said I afk because I know we aren’t going to win the game because they have terrible gear or are terrible players.
~ Daays, <Real Mature>, Tichondrius
In response to “So now it’s Blizzard’s fault that you afk?”
in my opinion the players shouldn’t be blamed for bugs/flaws in the game’s design
~ Caim, Gul’dan
The quotes speak for themselves.
I’d just like to take a quick moment and point out that non-participation is against the Terms of Service, if somewhat loosely. To quote 5C, Rules Related to Game Play:
Game play is what World of Warcraft is all about, and Blizzard strictly enforces the rules that govern game play. Blizzard considers most conduct to be part of the Game, and not harassment, so player-killing the enemies of your race and/or alliance, including gravestone and/or corpse camping, is considered a part of the Game…
Nonetheless, certain acts go beyond what is “fair” and are considered serious violations of these Terms of Use. Those acts include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:
- Using or exploiting errors in design, features which have not been documented, and/or “program bugs” to gain access that is otherwise not available, or to obtain a competitive advantage over other players;
- Conduct prohibited by the EULA or these Terms of Use, including without limitation that conduct prohibited by Section 2(C); and
- Anything that Blizzard considers contrary to the “essence” of the Program.
It’s that last part that concerns being “afk” in battlegrounds. Blizzard has stated, repeatedly, that not participating in a battleground is “contrary to the essence of World of Warcraft”.
Violating the terms of service, which being AFK in a battleground does, leaves your account susceptible to Blizzard’s right to suspend, terminate, modify, or outright delete your account. Just think on that.
It all has to do with attitude. It has nothing to do with the game itself, and nothing to do with the actions of other players.
Do raiders not try the first time they attempt a new boss? Do they use the excuse “it’s the first attempt, we’re going to wipe anyways, so why bother healing the tank”?
Of course they don’t. They’d be a moron to think that way. A lunatic, if you will.
That’s right. I just called all the people who AFK through battlegrounds lunatics.
Here here! I’ve never understood the defeatist mentality in battlegrounds and I think the people who call out for an unconditional surrender in AB after the opponent has gotten control of 4 nodes in 5 or 10 minutes are a shameful, rotten bunch. As soon as one thing goes wrong there is inevitably one to three people clamoring for everybody to just roll over, die, and take the next queue.
I never knew so many French played Horde in the Reckoning battlegroup.
To me this is the antithesis of what a successful pvper’s mentality should be. Pvp is the ultimate us vs. them situation and in order to be successful you need to have a killer’s attitude about the opponent. Picking up the ball and going home is not an option; only victory or a decent death are options. Standing in your graveyard dancing is not a decent death. I know at some point in battlegrounds there is no way for a technical victory but for God’s sake have some dignity and go out swingin’. Far too often have I been in a battleground where we could turn the tide of battle but the dang debbie downers killed off the spirit of the team and we got waxed.
If you’re not going to try don’t even bother signing up; some of us want to win. And you know what? Sometimes we’re going to lose and we don’t need you crying about n00bs and how everybody but you is a worthless shite that couldn’t punch his or her way out of a paper bag. Suck it up, do your job, and fight ’till the end.
Yeah, nobody “goes out on their shield” anymore. Too many whiny babys saying “let them 5 cap”. Also commonly heard from the terribad afkers is “Its just a game”. If is just a game then GTFO of my BG and go play Hello Kitty Adventures k thanks.
Also, I hate when I see an AB where the Horde has like 7 Rogues and 5 healers. We are going to get rolled.
I had two long responses written for this, but all I really have to say is this:
Non participation in random grouping is going to happen. The players have no incentive (for whatever reason) to try hard, if a minimum reward can be garnered for minimum effort. This has nothing to do with player skill or gear as players, good or bad, geared or ungeared afk bg’s.
If you could solve this phenomenon, you’d probably also solve our nation’s teeming masses sucking on welfare’s tits, which would probably get you a Nobel Prize.
It’s not a ‘Pro’ quality, nor is it a ‘Noob’ quality. It’s an -easy- solution, and therefore can be justified by someone.
(the ‘Pros’ are easy targets, though, because people expect them to perform better than the undergeared, and therefore others set higher standards for conduct)
I love the BGs, more so than Arena because it reminds me of my old favorite PvP games like CS, DoD, BF1942, MOHAA, etc
I used to be a FPS freak (before my WoW addiction took over my computer) …and the BGs ARE real PvP. Its just as much of a team effort as Arena, just in a different form.
It may not seem like it at times, but people do still “go out on their shield”.
There are those among us who fight to the bitter end no matter how hopeless the cause. I think those players attract a bit less attention than the whingers, simply because they aren’t being vocal about how everyone sucks, they are busy fighting the enemy.
You know its a war and stuff?
So as I’ve said before, and something that for once isn’t so much easier said than done.
I die with honor dozens of times a night!
Mori potius quam foedari
- it is better to die with honor than to live in shame.
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