You’re not going to believe this, but I promise it’s true.
January 15, 2010 § 19 Comments
Ok, so I’m sorry I keep doing so many prefaces/making excuses/etc but I just need to say: I’m still getting my blogging voice back. So this post, and probably plenty to follow, is a little all over the place. Not quite the caliber of my previous posts. But I’ll get there. I promise. Also…I’m sorry I seem to be letting the obscenities fly a lot more lately. I hope nobody gets offended.
So, as I mentioned, I recently had a pretty bad accident, which resulted in some head trauma. Because of said head trauma, I’m have some normal, expected memory loss and trouble processing things. Needless to say, it’s taken a little bit of a toll on my tanking. Where once I was a fantastic multitasker, able to process lots of information, coming in very fast and furious, now there seems to be a hard cap on the amount of info I can process. It’s like it isn’t even happening. Pretend I’m tanking a group of 5 and one of them breaks away and goes after the healer. Then a patrol comes by and joins the fray. Suddenly it’s as if there is no patrol. It doesn’t even exist. I’m so busy trying to catch the mob after the heal that the patrol doesn’t even register.
As the days and weeks go by, the amount of info I can process has gone up significantly, in fact it’s not really noticeable any more. But that’s just so you don’t worry, my brain is getting back to normal.
But let me get back to my story. I logged in to wow about a week ago to see if playing would take my mind off how stir crazy I was feeling.
Oh wait! Side story! I totally forgot! Word of advice: If you are going to get into a sever accident and end up in the hospital, make sure someone logs in for you so your guild doesn’t toss you to the curb. That’s right. That new guild I joined? Booted me. Because I hadn’t logged in for (count them) 4 whole days. 4 days! And they booted me! Ridiculous right? Good riddance I say.
Ok, so after getting over the initial confusion of no longer being in a guild, and stopping myself from sending a very snarky, guilt-filled tell to that guild leader, I decided to stick myself in the random dungeon finder and see what the fates had in store for me.
The dungeon of the moment? Heroic Ahn’Kahet.
I’ve done this one quite a few times, so I didn’t foresee any problems. Nonetheless, I decided to issue this warning to the group: “I’m currently recovering from brain surgery so I’ll need to take it a little slower than most of you are probably accustomed to.”
Pretty simple and straightforward explanation right?
No response from the group…
“Ok, well, anyway, I’m going to do my best, so here we go. Ready?”
No response…
I go for the first pull. No problem at all. We clear all the spiders near the first set of stairs. The dps is super high and the mobs are going down fast.
We get up past the first set of steps and I’m lining up for the pull in the next room, and I just completely forget that there’s a patrol. I don’t even think to look. I’ve done this dungeon many many times, and yet I forgot about the patrol. I charged right into the group in the room and pulled the patrol right along with it.
Now as far as every day tanking foul ups, I will admit, this is a pretty stupid one. First, even if I didn’t remember that there was a patrol, I should have checked to see if there was a patrol coming around the corner. I should not have charged headlong into the room without even looking.
However, the dps and healing in the group was high enough that even though I totally screwed up the pull, all the enemies went down and none of us did. So I figured that everyone surviving, combined with my earlier warning, would have earned me a little slack.
It did not.
Now, I am going to relate to you what the rest of the group members said and I promise you, I am not making this up.
DPS 1: Dude what the hell? Are you retarded?
DPS 2: Yeah, what did you have brain surgery for? Stupidity reduction?
Healer: haha yeah, if I were you I’d get my money back, clearly they fucked up that surgery.
DPS 3: Hey come on guys, you don’t know, his stupidity may be unrelated to his surgery. He’s probably always been this stupid.
Healer: You probably didn’t even have surgery, you just use that as an excuse because you’re a dumbass.
You have been removed from the group.
Before I could even process what they had said and respond at all I was sitting back in Ironforge.
First of all, in hindsight I probably didn’t need to tell them I was recovering from brain surgery. Maybe a little bit too much information. All I really needed to do was say, “hey I like to go slow, so don’t expect a speed run.” But I was still a little woozy and not thinking quite straight.
However, that one PuG has pretty much destroyed my faith in the WoW community. I know, maybe I’m overreacting, and probably should lay everything on this one group. But their reactions were so horrible and so out of line that I just lost it. Seriously. What kind of mouth breathing low life ass whole fucking dougebag cock ass says shit like that?
Sorry…sorry I don’t usually let the obscenities fly like that but it pissed me off so much that I haven’t played since. First off I don’t think that being that angry is good for my head injury. But regardless, I just don’t need stress like that.
It’s just amazing that a group of people could be so arrogant that when a slightly difficult situation arose but everyone lived, they could react that way. They just expect that everyone else in the group (tank, heals, or dps) be perfect, rocking tier 9, and able to pull at least 5k dps. Do they not remember that everyone had to start somewhere? Or are they all just warcraft savants that just instantly knew how to rock the game, and had their gear gifted to them? Yes, I know, your gear level makes it super easy to go into the original Wrath heroics and faceroll. I know that in ilvl 225+ gear you could auto pilot yourself through an instance, skill or not. But guess what? Not everyone is in your same situation. Some people are still starting out and are in blue gear. Some people just don’t have that much experience, and are still learning how to run these instances. And some people are recovering for fucking brain surgery you goddammed obnoxious twits!
I hope they die in a fire.
So I have decided that, at least for now, I am done with the random dungeon finder. First of all, I don’t want to get stuck in another PuG. Secondly, I don’t want to do another “vanilla” Wrath mess where the only communication in party chat is “gogogogo”. And third, I’m just not interested in running instance after instance for no real reason. I mean, I’m not in a guild, so I’m not raiding. And I sure as hell aint gonna PuG a raid. So there’s not a real reason for me to need to upgrade my gear. It just feels like a long pointless grind.
Man I hope Cataclysm comes out soon. I could use something else to do in the game.
“[Insert clever sign off phrase here]”
~Fizz
The Cranky Old Gnome 
What jerks. One of our guildies had brain surgery (for Parkinsons?) and he was fully integrated into guild activities upon his return.
Booting someone over a 4 day absence is the lamest thing I’ve ever heard. Maybe that’s because I’m in a casual guild – but if you aren’t supposed to be somewhere, nobody takes notice of your comings and goings.
Your ex-guild sucks. Your battlegroup sucks! If you are amenable to server hopping… email me at crankyhealer at gmail dot com (original, right?)
That’s just… so despicable, I don’t know what to say. To be honest, if I ran into a group like that I wouldn’t want to play anymore either.
In my several years of playing, I have yet to find a guild where I really belong. I thought at last I had found one a few months ago, I was a founding member and had done many a raid with them. I took a break to focus on my schoolwork, I told them this. I log in about a month later to find I and all my alts had been booted. No one cared aside from 1-2 friends I had there. All the leader said was “Shouldn’t have been inactive”. So yeah, fuck those guys. And fuck pugs as well. The amount of stupidity coming from them is ridiculous. I’m currently leveling a warrior up. He’s at 30 right now and I almost can’t deal with people. DPS always pulling. Always yelling gogogo. The tank sets the pace you fuckers. Gah. I feel for you man. WTB Cataclysm.
Booted for not logging in for four days? And then this pug… omg. You have every right in the world to be desillusioned bout the wow community. And a bit cranky. I just hope that you’ll stumble upon some decent players and find a good home in game. I know there must be some place for you there.
/hug
Yeah, if only I could transfer all of my 9 Quel’dorei characters for one low flat fee. As it is, I’m stuck there.
That’s.. astonishing. In about the worst way I’ve ever heard – even with the huge number of FailPugIsFail stories floating about the internet. If you stick up a ‘donate’ button on the blog I’ll chip in to send your characters somewhere else :p
That is *appalling*. I am … …. wordlessly appalled, and disgusted and outraged. What a horrible run of misfortune – first your guild and those arrant cockmonkeys! I know how demoralising this kind of thing can be but I hope you don’t lose faith with WoW, and with the majority of players in the game (who are not like this).
I’m glad to hear your recovering from the brain surgery though.
I’m so sorry that you had to go through this 😦 then most I could wish for you that you never run into people like that in a real world
The difference being that at least in the real world I could punch them in the face (and then run away!), and probably be given a medal for it.
[…] Poor Cranky Old Gnome. He had brain surgery. Most of us civilized humans would forgive him for being a little “off” in the tanking department. But the jerkfaces he ran with berated him and kicked him from the group. […]
I just started reading your blog today 🙂 You were mentioned in a post over at Cranky Healer’s
It is really very sad that people can treat other people like that. I can sympathize – I got called the “C” word one time in a battleground for no reason – I had stayed in the little fort thing to help heal the person who was protecting the flag. I was shocked, to say the least.
I guess some players forget that there are real human beings behind these toons. I hope that you are feeling better and I look forward to reading more from you 🙂
Fiery
That’s absolutely awful and inexcusable behavior.
Given the dungeon finder debuff which prevents vote-kicking doesn’t lapse until 15 minutes into the dungeon, I can understand a little impatience at not even getting to the first boss by that time. But I can’t really understand how some frustration at slowness translates into license to abuse you as they did…
Ah well. If you remember their names and servers, you could always post them on wowjackass.com. Especially if you happened to save screenshots, though understandably that doesn’t always come to mind in the heat of the moment.
Yeah, looking back I wish I’d had the wherewithall to get a screenshot. But I was so shocked and frustrated that I immediately logged off.
Well, I might be stepping on some toes here, but anyways here goes:
Guild kick related: Just yesterday I kicked a warlock trialee for being out of reach for 3 days and 2 raids. But we are raiding guild with small roster and he was in trial period to prove himself. My reason was simple – either he does not bother letting us know he can’t be on for few days – so he deserves to be let go, or he had something serious come up his RL that he won’t be back any soon – so I need to replace the spot anyways. To improve my image a bit – I would be a lot more tolerant if one of my core members went missing. And I sent the warlock an in-game mail with explanation. So I can totaly see why they did it, though even parachute should be given with explanation.
PuG related: The PuG behavior was terrible, without a doubt. However, telling everyone straight off that you had brain injury/surgery was really bad start from you. I understand your reasons and I myself would appreciated that info and replied to it somehow; unfortunately most of people in PuGs nowadays are non-talkative douchebags that act like assholes. Few months before if anyone was asshole, there always was the “possible punishment” they might’ve received from their GM if you really decided to talk to them about their guild member trashing (I am always raining godly fire upon people with our tag damaging guild reputation). PuG is no longer a place to chat and fool around, it’s grind-focused speedrun, unfortunately.
I am really sorry you had to encounter things like this as your first welcome to game after the absence though and I hope your next PuGs will be improvement. And just tell them you are not sure on all the tanking yet so it will go a bit slower. Afterall, it’s you the tank who gets queves instantly 🙂
@Rahana
I don’t think you’re stepping on toes at all, because your comments made total sense. I would however like to point out a few things. First, the guild that booted me, recruited me with things like, “no required raid attendance” and “not a hard-core guild; we’re totally casual”. Now if they had been a hard core raiding guild with strict raid attendance polices, it would have made much more sense to receive a boot after only 4 days. As it was, that’s not the case.
Secondly, I totally agree that mentioning my surgery was a bad idea on my part–in fact I thought I had mentioned that very thing in my post. It’s not exactly the type of information I need to be sharing with a PuG especially when I can just say something like “hey, I’m a little unsure about my tanking let’s take it slow.” However don’t forget I did just have brain surgery so it’s not as if my thought process was exactly the clearest or most logical.
In any case, whether I should have told them or not, I’m still sticking by my opinion that their behavior was ridiculously uncalled for.
Screw that man… Just catching up on all the news… Which leads me here…
I can assure you that with or without your opening statement to the pug I wouldn’t have kicked you.
With your statement I would have gone the other way… You know, checking in if you were ok?
Maybe you are at home, alone, and having a spell that requires attention, something that maybe you weren’t capable of.
Hell, I’d call 911 in the states from Oz if I found out a group member was having an emergency…
But them…
Clearly you are a much better person than them.
[…] for all intents and purposes, Thistlefizz is retired. This is due in large part to certain events that happened back in January, but it’s also related to the fact that I don’t have […]
[…] Poor Cranky Old Gnome. He had brain surgery. Most of us civilized humans would forgive him for being a little “off” in the tanking department. But the jerkfaces he ran with berated him and kicked him from the group. […]