Happy day, Lusi-sprites.
To make up for the fact that I was almost semi-serious last week, let us strip off our pretenses, and have us a fun little post.
While bored at work, I tend to log on to the WoW Priest forums, where there are several incarnations of threads entitled “Things You Don’t Want to Hear When Healing PuGs”. The stories and comments there tend to make me laugh, or make me facepalm and rejoice in the fact that I am at work and unable to play. I thought we could give it a try here, but of course I would not want to limit the conversation to WoW, or even MMOs. Any game where players can type or talk to each other works. So let us dive on in, and talk about the things you really hate to hear/read when playing a game with others. Here are just some of mine:
Sarcasm tends to get you absolutely nowhere with me, so I cannot stand it when people use it to insult my mad skills. This can be a “nice heals” when someone dies on my watch in WoW, or “nice shot” when I blow myself up in TF2. If I suck, tell me that I suck, or better yet, keep your yap shut. All it does is confuse the bejeesus out of me when someone sincerely is paying me a compliment. It is also completely useless, save for the odd situation when it is actually funny. In hindsight, me sitting on a pile of sticky bombs in TF2 and then detonating them probably counts as funny as heck, but well, whatever, go away, move on to the next point. Jerks.
Stating the obvious is almost as bad as sarcasm in my book. Nothing makes me want to sit there and let them all die more than DPS saying “heal me!”, as if I had forgotten what I was there to do and needed to be reminded. Stating the obvious seems to happen a lot during Smash Bros games with my friends as well, when a good item drops everyone in the peanut gallery yells at their respective favourite player to “omg, go pick that up!” Thank you, Captain Obvious. Probably the worst offender, in my book anyway, is “rez plz” in WoW. Either I am going to rez you when I am good and ready (not in combat, have mana, etc) or I am not (because it is faster to run in, or I am dead too, you idiot). I am the healer, it is my job to look at health bars. Trust me, if you are dead, I can see it. There is no need to demand a rez.
A few un-favourites that probably cross all platforms and genres are: “you’re a noob” (usually said by some prepubescent little worm who is young enough to be a ‘noob’ at life in general), “Wait, which team am I on? Oh shiiiiiii-” and seeing “Lusipurr has been assigned to -insert opposing team-” as that usually leads to pain and suffering. Oh, and this may not count as it is not being said by a player, but probably the worst thing to hear when gaming is a good old-fashioned thunderstorm. Nothing kills the fun faster than a power outage.
