Why is there this innate expectation that everyone should know what they are doing?

If people of your guild do this to you, change guild.
If it’s random PUG players, just don’t care and roll on what you need.

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I have bumped very little into these kind of players in game, I have mostly noticed them on the forums. I don’t really get it either, as it’s quite easy to be sympathetic if someone’s experience isn’t that great and an ‘I told you so!’ or ‘You should have known better!’ has never lifted anyone’s spirit. That in itself makes it a pretty pointless comment in my humble opinion :wink:

While mentally prepping yourself for a 15 year old game up to a point where you can always make exactly the right choice may seem fun to some, I, like you, fully get those who prefer to go in more innocently and with a happy go lucky attitude. For me that only added to the vanilla feel of it all. It’s been good to be a noob again and to meet fellow happy noobs.

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I find if I don’t remember or don’t know what I’m doing, I will mention at the start of the dungeon etc. and usually people will be understanding and mention things as we progress through.

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It’s not that they’re “ignored”. But when you jump into a brand new game (especially an online game with an established meta/ruleset like WoW), you must understand that you can and will commit mistakes.

For example, suppose you’re a new player, who wants to roll a Paladin. You just check the class’s description in-game, which says:

“Paladins do battle to protect the world from the forces of shadow. Powerful warriors in their own light, they can also call upon the Light to heal wounds, create shields of force, and incinerate evil creatures.”

Judging from this description, you might be led to believe that Paladins will be primarily tanks and DPS with heal only as a side role. Only to find out at lvl 60, much to your dismay, that everybody expects you to heal.

Does this mean paladins should be changed in Classic? No, it’s a legacy game with its own flaws, “warts and all”. What you play is what you get.

The “jump in” approach could’ve been more valid when Vanilla was current, because they could always hope their class could be changed/improved - and in fact, class revamps were pretty frequent. However, when you get into a legacy game, you do so knowing that you play an aged game with all its flaws, and that if you don’t do any research you might be left disappointed.

Tl;dr: Being screwed by your own lack of research happened back then, and even moreso now since it’s an unchanging legacy game that won’t be updated/revamped.

While I can understand people committing mistakes like this when they’re new (I myself don’t know the full extent of every single BiS list, ofc), I can’t blame the warrior who decide to not take any risk and never group up with that hunter again, especially when such rare loot is involved. Who knows if that same hunter won’t steal a Striker’s Mark or something equally ridiculous next time?

Going in blind is good and all, but why should other players be expected to pay for your mistakes if they don’t wish to do so, as in the SGC example above?

And from a dev’s point of view, this is a legacy game. It has its own flaws and it’s not gonna change. Ofc, flaws induced by Classic alone (such as layering) are a matter, but stuff like how PvP servers and the Honor system work is something intrinsic to the game that is not gonna be changed, because that’s what Vanilla is/was. Asking to change it just because veterans play it in ways unknown/unexpected back then is like, I dunno, asking for all bosses/fights in PvE to be retuned/revamped because people know them already (which, btw, would only end up screwing the ppl who actually go in blind, but that’s another matter).

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The expectation is there because WoW itself is a very old game now, classic was mostly brought about by people wishing to relive the old days, so you would imagine most of the players will have been round the block a few times.

Here’s my take on this, and this is my personal opinion as a player who played launch week in the US and then restarted on EU when the servers came up here, but also as someone who’s been here at Blizzard for the past 11 years.

Classic is kind of like dusting off that old NES and firing up Super Mario Bros again. It’s ingrained into you, you know the maps, the worlds, you can remember things, it doesn’t mean you’re going to one clear speed run it though.

Even the most old school players from Vanilla can make mistakes, and that’s totally normal for something as massive and complex as WoW is.
My own playtime in Classic would be described as sub optimal, but I’m not there to be BiS everything, I’m there to re-explore a world I fell in love with and still hold very dear.

Sure now a days the resources available are far improved, having info at your fingertips online is a massive help. Meant I didn’t have to dig out my old Brady Games inch thick companion book and world maps again and my folder of notes :smiley:
I still did, and my original WoW mousemat from back in the day just to have them nearby, hoping some of that old lore and knowledge rubbed off again I guess.

No one should be expected to know everything, you can’t, there’s simply too much out there in Azeroth to even try.

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WoW in a frigging nutshell.

Sigh
At this point they need to stick a big warning on the screen that tells people what exactly they’re getting into (as well as the various disclaimers about being ganked an such) when they select a PvP server.
It would save so much time, effort and tears.

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So… basically the same as retail, better play Horde unless you’re on an RP server or something. I’d love to see the people who claimed in Classic Alliance had better racials so the imbalance from retail won’t carry over.

Good post - thumbs up

Classic is - at its core - about the community helping one another

The forums are too often a whinge fest - but in game I will always stop to help folk out - or even make a 45 min detour to group for a guy who really needs that Elite kill

You’ll find many folk kicking around who will share time and knowledge

Because Classic doesn’t really have an end game - no gear score - no rating

The journey and the people are the adventure

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and what about that alot, don’t you see that?

ETA: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html Forgive me, I could not stand the temptation.

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Nobody should have this expectation that everyone especially new players should know everything. And generally, people are rather friendly towards totally new players.

What people should expect is that a player take responsibility and consequence of this choice.

Here are tons of “PvP happened on PvP server”, “Alliance/Horde ruined Classic”, “enough, I quit” etc threads on forum all the time. Everyday we see players complaining about PvP situation on PvP servers, and of course they always blame other faction or Blizzard for it.

Well, on server choosing and character creation screen, i believe, there is brief explanation about PvE, PvP, RP servers. Maybe some players don’t understand it that well, or underestimate the world pvp situation, but still there is no reason to blame anyone else for it.

So you made a wrong choice, then accept the consequence of your choice, learn from it, and continue.

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There’s this weird underlying tone in this thread that stigmatizes the expectation of “skill” or “knowledge”, whatever you may want to call it.

But you’re stigmatizing all of it, which is not realistic and frankly naive. You’re not expected to know everything, that’s normal. But you’re speaking of social norms, and while the technical definition of social norms can get quite tricky, it’s basically invisible expectations, sort of like “rules” if it’s deeply ingrained, that if you break it then you’ll be acting against the “best interest” of the perceived social group.

Now this is why some people expect you to know more, while others expects you to know less. To claim everybody expects you to know everything is nothing but a hyperbole.

However, to function better you need to know a certain amount. This is fact. The ones who doesn’t know will function less efficiently, both socially and in terms of “game power” for lack of better term.

So after all this time of both retail norms becoming better defined, as well as private server norms mixed into it for the release of classic, there is a certain expectation that you should know certain things.

But that depends on the average level of “skill” of the social group.

What you all should be focusing on, are the underlying social norms causing these conflicts. Which is the norm that many people follow, to look things up on their own. To not ask for how to sell things to a vendor, for example. While others follows the social norm that others should teach me, because they already know but these two social norms are so different in nature that they do breed conflicts.

But yeah, the ones with knowledge will therefore be excluding the ones without knowledge, and vice versa. It’ll just take time. (It’s part of how social cliques are formed, people similar to each other will eventually find each other.)

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Because youtube, reddit and this forum and other social media and many many wikis and sites like wowhead and classicwow live. We have all info available 24/7 years before release in our pocket.

Litterally all info have been availbale and are available in your pocket. That makes it unreasonable to complain about things you could have easily found out while on the toilet for 2 years before launch.

Being ignorant in classic is a choice that can affect other people negativly. All you have to do if you make that choice is to not complain and ask before you click need. Its really that simple.

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This.

I mean the whole BiS for PvE is a laugh anyway everyone seems to have turned into Min/maxers it seems and having BiS is oh so important, but heres the thing: MC/Ony was cleared by players still in leveling greens and a few dungeon blues. The content is not really that hard and it’s doable in mediocre gear. I feel like too much emphasis is placed on gear nowadays. The whole MT/Melee priority is rather silly too, you’ll clear raids slightly faster but there is still plenty of time for EVERYONE to get what they need before the next content patch arrives and even then people will still be running MC/Ony. It’s all a bit over the top and it really doesn’t have to be because as I said the content is easy.

I wouldn’t use the word “slightly”. The difference is several hours! The fastest guilds clear MC in 30min and the slower ones spend 2-4 hours. This is not a problem if you have 40 people that dont mind spending 3h in MC but it gets old really fast.

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it depends what u mean, tactics for endgame stuff sure ppl dont know but basic stuff like what abilities to use and to not stand in bad aoe is pretty simple

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But some still need to learn it.
Some weird stigma going on, like newbies should feel ashamed or something :d
Its a game…

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I did! poor things falling apart now! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: It’s been a great way to read up on dungeons and related quests as opposed to looking it all up online.
I also have my TBC dungeon book at the ready.
just in case…

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