Looking for Grief Channel

Like many people there are a few things in life that turns our collective stomachs here on the No Prisoners, No Mercy team: Fran hates slow drivers, Julie hates coffee without cream, and both hate eight legged pugs.

Eight legged pugs?

No we are not talking about some mutant pug that has somehow made it from Fallen Earth to Wow.  What we are referring to is the sort of pug that comes in the variety of four other people and runs through instances (4 people, 2 legs, an 8 legged pug…” natch”) As you can no doubt tell from our column of November 5 this year (“This Homey doesn’t like Pugs”) we have had more than our share of bad experiences with pick up groups.  And although Julie has always maintained that Rob Pardo is in league with the devil, it has always been because WoW is just that good – not because the Activision/Blizzard gorilla is intent at making our endgame hellish. But now, it seems all that is changing.

When Fran logged on last night she was met by an awakening that was so rude it was as if the 800 pound gorilla itself had taken the time to slap her back to the curb.  It seems that despite the fact that the gaming group to which we belong (The Older Gamers) has about 14,000 gamers and is usually one of the largest guilds on any server they play on that grouping with guildies is not good enough for Blizzard. Now it seems, with the advent of patch 3.3.0, Activision/Blizzard is adament that we should pug instead of grabbing four other guildies and heading out toward the daily heroic.

“The Looking For Group chat channel has returned and can be accessed in all major cities (similar to the Trade chat channel) without the use of the Dungeon Finder interface”.

It has returned alright…and with a vengeance.

Now if we want to pursue the proverbial “uber sword of uberness” (our personal favorite pastime) we are forced to get our “uberness coinage” (now called “emblem of triumph and emblem of frost” in two cases). Not only that, we take our death knight (we all have one don’t you?) that can do either tankage or dps we get assigned to a particular role without so much as a “by your leave”.

Now we do appreciate the fact that when Fran backed out of the instance (to which the system promptly whisked her after she accepted the group that was forced down her throat) she was instantly teleported back to Dalaran. That made leaving the pug so much easier when, within the first 10 seconds of her appearing in the instance one of the pug members started bitching about the armor she was wearing.

Now on the face of it there might be some people who took our advice and read the article by Daniel Kromand, “What Gamers Think about Microtransactions” over at Gamastustra. If so you would have noted how it benefits publishers to facilitate social interaction between gamers…

“It is commonly accepted that having online friends motivates players to play more, but does this also cash out into a greater willingness to pay for microtransactions? Several of the interview respondents had in fact bought goods because of social obligations or peer pressure…This makes it crucial to facilitate social connections between players,” – Daniel Kromand

Like Tipa asserted on No Prisoners, No Mercy shows 48 and 49, Julie has also stayed in games that she would have left earlier for the sake of online friends.  We understand, however (see comments below – thanks Ravenesque for enlightening us) that there is indeed a way around the new Looking for Grief…er…group channel. If so, we shall certainly avail ourselves of it (both Julie and Fran).  After all, you know what they say:

“An older gamer in the hand is worth two pug members in the instance.”

See you online,
The No Prisoners No Mercy team

TWO BATTLEFIELD MOMENTS:

6 Responses to “Looking for Grief Channel”