Part 1: Introduction, and a call for comments
Part 2: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
Part 3: PvE vs PvP
Part 4: Variety vs Specialization
Part 5: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
Conclusion: Your role in a PvE group

No class is globally better at PvP than every other class. WoW PvP is a huge rock-paper-scissor game, where there’s an answer for every move, or in WoW’s case, Class A always feels overpowered to an opponent of Class B, Class B over Class C, and Class C over Class A. (except expanded out to an 11-way graph) While no class is universally dominant in PvP, some builds are universally better than other builds in that environment.

For example, protection warriors are a PvE tanking spec. They don’t provide a heck of a lot of control or damage, and no healing, to a PvP group. (They do get to annoy casters and melee dps though. Also, reflecting pyroblast back at mage is joy.)

Likewise, a character that is heavily invested in pvp is specialized in abilities that don’t matter in pve, like extreme survivability or crowd control. The extreme survivability doesn’t matter because of the basic nature of PvE: you have an absurd amount of damage coming into points of the raid whose job is not to be instantly killed by it (the tanks), you have people’s whose job it is to keep those people alive (the healers), and then everyone else has to remove the source of that absurd damage (the dps). If your raid’s system breaks down and the boss starts running around the raid and killing non-tanks, your priest or warlock’s improved fear won’t help, your rogue’s cheat death won’t help, your arms warrior’s and paladin’s plate won’t help. Various class’s ability to recover from critical hits doesn’t matter when the boss hits you for four times your maximum health. All those PvP tricks don’t matter.

Running a PvP spec toon in PvE raiding is pedaling uphilll while others are on even ground, and some are rolling downhill. If you’re a PvP spec and are awesome in raids, then congratulations: you are a great player! However, your guild also knows you’re a great player. There are many other people of your spec who are frustrated and confused as to why people pass them up for groups and instances. PvP specced people are even more reliant on having outstanding gear and greater skill than an equally-geared pve spec player in order to do the exact same job in a PvE raid.

This is fair. PvE spec people are less effective in battlegrounds and arena. (Unless by “effective” you mean “easier to kill”, in which case they are much more effective.)

Both ways, the average experience can be overcome with sufficient skill, but given two equal characters played by two equally skilled players, one built for pve and the other built for pvp, with no other variables a raid or group lead is going to take the pve build, because it’s designed to be successful in the content that they want to run.

Part 1: Introduction, and a call for comments
Part 2: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
Part 3: PvE vs PvP
Part 4: Variety vs Specialization
Part 5: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
Conclusion: Your role in a PvE group

Your ability to solo partially determines the experience you’ll have in groups. If you have an easy time in the leveling game, you are going to have a more difficult experience in the endgame/group game. The following list goes from easy-to-solo to hard-to-solo.

• Hunters are the easiest class to level while playing the solo leveling game, no matter what spec. Pet plus ranged damage is just simple.
• Warlocks are second. Again, a pet class. (I might be wrong on this. Someday I have to fill in my knowledge gap regarding warlocks)
• Rogues and mages are third. Lots of damage is easy grinding.
• Then shamans and druids, because of the damage/healing hybrid nature.
• Until finally you get down to classes that are harder to solo, like paladins, priests, and warriors.

Now, I’m not saying that paladins are hard to solo. All of WoW solo content is easy with every class. It’s just that leveling a pally is harder than leveling a hunter or a warlock. Of course, it’s possible to build a “hard to solo” class like a pally in such a way that when matched against a poorly-played warlock that the pally would come out ahead. Player skill counts for a lot, and that’s true of all the comparisons to come. But given two equal players, there’s no way to correctly spec and play a priest so that they’ll solo as fast or as easily as a correctly spec’ed and played mage.

So why does this matter? Well, classes that are easier to level have that balance come out somewhere. Somewhere inside their decision tree, and this is just an example, Blizzard said “hunters will not have an easy time in raids because they level so easily”.

Now, individual hunters can be great in raids, just as great and useful as other classes. But your typical fully-leveled hunter never had to build a good skill set that a player needs to be a good raider. Four parts pet attack button, four parts Autoshot, one part Mend Pet. Sprinkle Arcane Shot and Multishot to taste. Let simmer for /played. Voila, max level!

Blizzard decided that hunters would have to work harder (shot rotations based on hidden cast times, non-obvious math, and spreadsheet-only derivations regarding weapon choices and haste) to do comparable performance as other classes in their role (damage). If it were easy for a hunter to be competitive in raids, nobody would ever play anything but hunter! They would rule both inside and outside groups.

Now, the solo game doesn’t just come to a screeching halt when you hit L70. There are dailies, reputation grinds, crafting that requires plenty of hard-to-find materials… in fact, much of this is very helpful to generate the resources to give you an edge in performance while participating in the end game. However, the playstyle of all this content is exactly like the solo/levelling game. So for the purposes of this discussion, it’s the same.

When farming motes for primals, everyone groans when the hunter arrives. Nobody has it easier. You don’t find many RMT-farming priests, warriors, or paladins.

On the flip side, the frustration that pallies, priests, and warriors feel while leveling and playing the solo game is more than made up for in their group play. Tanking and healing shines in groups, and this is the big payout.

Part 1: Introduction, and a call for comments
Part 2: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
Part 3: PvE vs PvP
Part 4: Variety vs Specialization
Part 5: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
Conclusion: Your role in a PvE group

It occurred to me that people who haven’t been grouping or raiding a lot don’t know what role various classes have in a raid, or of class design in general. You can go read the page on the worldofwarcraft website, but they make every class sound equally great at everything. That’s just not the reality of it. So I can keep complaining about how many people get stuck between little knowledge and expanded knowledge, or I can take my shot at fixing it via explanation.

If you don’t know how a particular character or spec of a character fits into the group game that follows the leveling game, this is for you.

It’s possible to find out everything I’m about to write from various places online, but as far as I know, there’s not one place where it’s all connected. Most articles are written from the point of view of one class or another; every guide is written by that class, for that class.

This is going to be the top level view, how raid leaders (and possibly Blizzard designers) look at classes and their role in the game.

I write here simply to relay what I’ve come to understand as the game of WoW as it relates to the PvE endgame. If you disagree with something I’m about to say, that’s fine, but please remember that I’m not thinking of any one player, especially you, when I’m writing this. I’ve read as many internets as I could, led many raids, played too many classes, and this is what I know.

Now, I’ve raided with a number of classes at high level, but not all of them. I’ve lead many raids of various sizes, but not all the way through the endgame in either version of WoW. Some of what I’m about to say might be incorrect. Therefore:

Please comment to educate me, and I’ll update the articles as necessary.

Hope you enjoy it.

(Someone else can write a “The Secret Design of WoW: PvP” guide or series. I’ll be glad to link from it here.)

I realized in my last article, I used the reference “25th person” without explaining what it meant. In my time as raid lead, it became a shorthand for the most underperforming person in the raid. A raid lead typically knows this as they’re assembling the raid.

“Hey, Lisa wants to come along to Gruul tonight.”

“We already have a 25th person.”

The Nth person is someone the rest of the raid plays around in order to make sure the common jobs get done. Good healers cover for the bad healer, strong dps makes up for weak dps, everyone covers for the tank who can’t remember to use their cooldowns, etc. This person, for whatever reason, just doesn’t help in raids that much.

You’re counting up from the bottom, so in a 10-man raid Lisa would be the 10th person.

Of course, if you’re bringing multiple people who need to be played around, you could have a 24th person, 23rd person… but there gets to be a point where somebody has to know what they’re doing. Unless you’re talking battlegrounds, in which case it’d probably be easier to count good people from the top.

(Important Safety Tip: Raid leaders should only use this language to each other, strictly behind the curtain. I do not advise referring to anyone like this publicly. Although, I would like to hear how that goes. I think it’d be funny, in a dark way.)

(Related post: Raiding does not mean Skilled)

World of Warcraft, and every game like it, is really two different games. I first read this thought at Penny Arcade (can’t find where because their search function is weak). Basically, you have the levelling game where you start at L1 and then play until max level (currently L70), and then the game that happens after the levelling game, which is filled with group activities of all sorts as you improve your max level character.

Which brings me to another iconic player, Lisa. I’m sure that all of you have met her before:

“I’m max level! I couldn’t have gotten here unless I knew something about my class. Let me tell you about why…”

“…my retribution paladin has a lot of defense.”

“…my hunter has a lot of spell damage.”

“…my holy priest only uses flash heal.”

“…my warrior tanks with a two-handed weapon.” (Note: reroll deathknight in a few months)

“…my mage loves to wand.”

Lisa feels like she knows what’s what, because all these super-raiding-types she sees in the common cities? They’re the same level as she is. Aside from their zomgepics, there’s no visual indicator that what they’ve done is any different than what she’s done… in her mind. And frankly, since anyone can get zomgepics in battlegrounds, even that is less of a clue than it once was.

The problem is that hitting maximum level in one of these grinding-type games has absolutely no relation to knowing anything about the game and how to play it. All it means is that you have been dedicated and persistent, and hopefully had fun along the way. Especially in World of Warcraft, the game is extremely forgiving and easy to solo play.

There’s no smooth transition between the first game (levelling/solo play) and the second game (endgame/group play). I’ve read a lot of intelligent suggestions on how to bridge that gap, but the reality is that as long as Blizzard sticks with their design choice of letting anyone get to maximum level, with no intermediate checks along the way relating to their skill of play, then the vast majority of players are going to go the easiest way possible, because people are fond of success. Also, Blizzard is fond of money, and this super-casual crowd is a decent chunk of their base.

When a hunter can level to max level by using only melee weapons and never once firing a ranged weapon… don’t get me wrong, I think that what Gweryc did is cool. He deliberately made the game challenging in the levelling process, which is an interesting turnabout for a hunter. What makes Gweryc notable is not that that he did it, it’s that he did it on purpose.

There are thousands of people making those same against-the-grain choices but not understanding that they’re doing so. I usually find them waiting for a battleground to begin, wondering aloud if their 20-game losing streak is ever going to end, and silently weeping for the 15-45 minutes I’m about to waste in the upcoming losing effort.

What makes Lisa so annoying isn’t that she’s max level, it’s that she doesn’t understand the difference between the levelling game and the endgame. She doesn’t understand that there’s more knowledge to be attained, so she dismisses any advice or criticism out of hand. After all, she’s been to the zones, done the quests and gotten the quest rewards, same as you. She doesn’t care or even really think about the fact she skipped every group quest and every instance.

You: “Hey Lisa the pally, what’s the cooldown on Divine Intervention?”

Lisa: “Divine Intervention?”

You: “Yeah, it’s a spell I heard about that you have.”

Lisa: “O rly? Let me check my spellbook.”

(time passes)

Lisa: “Pssh, I’ve never seen this spell before.”

Actually, she did. Lisa just instantly dismissed it when she saw that it killed her to cast it… which is opposite of the whole point of the game when you’re solo’ing. What possible use could it have?

Max level isn’t even a hint.

As Blizzard announced last week, every WotLK raid will have a small-raid (10-man) option.

So if there are (guessing) four endgame raids at launch, each will have a 10 and 25 man version, creating a completely parallel path to the current 25-man raiding standard. Every subsequent patched-in raid will follow the same design. No more of this “two raids for small group raiding, eight raids for big group raiding”. All 10-man raids will be able to physically visit every raid instance, see every boss, gear up and progress along a similar path, and ultimately see the entire expansion.

This is like ice cream in digital form. Strike that, this is like a pack of ice cream wolves wearing ice cream shoulder-cannons running through the streets, shooting ice cream fireworks everywhere. This is simply the best news since the game was released.

This raid design change is a much, much larger change than shrinking large-group raids from 40-man to 25-man. This is huge. This is an attempt to change everything about endgame raiding, not just the encounter size. And although I know that my little essays are read by beautiful and intelligent people, and I know that Blizzard didn’t read my post on raid sizes, but… It’s just absurdly freakish that they’re doing exactly what I wished for, even though I didn’t think they would until WoW2. (That alone made me feel weird while writing this. If you’re reading, I love you too, Blizzard.)

I strongly suspect that this will create interesting (and for my guild, extremely welcome) social repercussions throughout endgame raiding culture. Mainly because the loot still won’t be the same. The 25-man versions will probably be a half-tier or full-tier higher than the 10-man versions. Oh no!

But really, who cares? This is good news for everyone involved, both large-group and small-group raiders. For my guild, if you’re the kind of person who absolutely needs the best loot, then neither of us is going to get what we want by you being a member of my guild. Yay! We’re filtering each other out! What difference does it make that my EndgameA loot isn’t as good as a parallel EndgameA loot? They both allow access to our next EndgameB. That’s it. That’s the whole game. Small-group raids can basically ignore 25-man raiding now, as they only have better loot, and not more encounters, more story, or more of anything except people.

But what about the “10-man is normal mode, 25-man is heroic mode” stigma? We’ll encourage it. Please, fictional-Mike, go swim through the constant churn and drama that is the hardcore raiding guild experience and leave my happy small-group guild and all those like it alone. We’re not hardcore enough for you, and we wish you luck and good fortune.

My guild will just continue on in our own little raiding utopia, recruiting friendly people and continuing to have fun. Except this time, we’ll be running all the content in the game. We don’t have to choose between social and exploration any more. We’ll see the final boss of WotLK. We’ll see the conclusion of every story thread.

Great days are ahead!

I’ve been reading Tobold and Potshot lately. They’re talking about loot and game design as it relates to endgame guilds, specifically guild hopping and progression problems due to it. I haven’t seen a decent explanation of the problem, but as a guild officer/leader I’ve seen it in action twice now, once with the original WoW endgame and now with the TBC endgame. I don’t have a solution, but I can frame the problem.

For me, the most fun time in WoW is right after an expansion hits, when there’s limited collective endgame exploration. All the content is new and fresh, then I find myself grouping with not just my long-term guild friends, but also my friends who left to get on the progression roller coaster. It’s glorious! This is what the first two months of TBC was like.

Then, endgame progress starts to happen, and a tiered system begins to form.

Some guilds progress quickly while others progress slowly. Before long, you have some small percentage of guilds at the top level, a larger percentage slightly below them, and ultimately many at the bottom. Now let’s follow a person, Mike, through his ascent to the endgame.

First, Mike belongs to a leveling guild. He groups with and rides that guild up to the maximum level, but the guild doesn’t have the wherewithal to group up for the endgame content, for whatever reason. Ultimately, Mike decides that he wants to see some of this content, so he joins pick-up groups, and he finds that it’s fun. He does a little research and applies to an entry-level endgame guild. Mike is accepted! Wait, why is this endgame guild recruiting?

Entropy is constant in all guilds. A personal dispute can’t be resolved, or someone can’t afford to fix their computer, or they get divorced, or die, or become parents, or get sent to jail, or change jobs, or any number of other real-life reasons. Or they simply get bored with the game and never log in again. Regardless, even good people with no other issues leave the game. Every guild’s membership is never constant, and therefore every guild must constantly recruit.

At Mike’s first endgame guild, he learns to group, and the guild is sweeping through EndgameA content and is trying to get through EndgameB content. Mike is getting loot upgrades at a decent rate in EndgameA, because the guild has that under control. The goals of Mike and the guild are in perfect alignment for this time. Let’s define these goals. Endgame guilds are easy:

• The goal of an endgame guild is to raise the total level of gear of its members so that they can explore the next level of content. The ability to run endgame content is dependent on both the size of the group and the collective loot level of that group. This means that taking a slightly-underequipped person is acceptable, because it’s better than the empty spot you have that threatens to kill your guild’s basic ability to raid.

Players are harder. Each endgame player is a combination of the following three goals:

1. A loot-driven player wants loot upgrades. Zomgepics.
2. A socially-driven player wants to play with their friends.
3. An exploration-driven player wants to see all the content available.

(There are obviously more goals, but bear with me for the purposes of this article.)

Mike participates and gets all the gear available at EndgameA content. After some variable amount of time (due to the randomness of loot drops), Mike has nothing left to gain from EndgameA. He finds that his guild’s progression on EndgameB–where progression is not easy and where the guild is currently stuck–is simply painful and too slow. Unfortunately for Mike’s guild, Mike would rather see new content or get loot sooner without the struggle of doing it the hard way. His goal ranking is: loot/exploration first and social last. The people in his guild don’t matter as much.

Luckily for Mike, there is another guild on the server which is exactly one step up in progression; they have EndgameB conquered and are working on EndgameC. The minimum requirement for gear to be successful in EndgameB content is EndgameA gear. Thanks to the random loot system, most of this new guild is still gearing up in EndgameB, so it’s fine for a new applicant to simply be in EndgameA gear. Thanks to the effort of his current guild, Mike has EndgameA gear! The door to his second endgame guild is open.

After some amount of sweating, Mike leaves EndgameA guild to join the more-progressed one. The new guild gladly looks the other way at how the player came to them. Who can be certain what happened? The new guild is hoping for the best, so they welcome Mike with open arms and a big cheer. After all, this new guild is trying to get through EndgameC and needs active participants, because they keep getting poached by EndgameD guilds, who are getting poached to EndgameE guilds. And so on.

The problem is that the best situation for people who are loot driven is to be in a guild where the average level of gear of its members is higher than his own. This grants access to higher level content without the difficult part of sweating through it the hard way. Loot-driven people like coasting easily through content. They like getting rewards for minimal effort.

As you can see, this leads directly to guild-hopping. And endgame guilds, in their state of constant recruitment, make the problem worse with their constant poaching of each other. If they don’t recruit this player, then some other guild will, and increase their chances of progression, which is just another guild to poach from them.

Thus, soon after endgame is explored by some, a guild stratification system sets in. A clear path through guilds emerges. Start in guild 1, jump to guild 2, then guild 3, and so on. This continues until the ladder is reset at the next expansion.

Blizzard has taken steps to combat this: reputation levels with instances; attunements; badges of justice; tier set tokens; exchanges for pve to pvp gear. Each has helped, but the problem is still there. The individual gets all the rewards, regardless of the relative efforts involved.

So while people say that Tobold’s “loot belongs to the guild” idea is crap, that’s not the point. There has to be a better way. Any suggestion is better than no suggestion.

In the meantime, the system churns on and the socially driven players who are close friends in an endgame guild–like mine–end up bitter that they’ve helped so many people up and along their own personal ladder, while the guild progresses very slowly because they hang on to a fraction of the people who pass through. Remember, we socially-driven people aren’t purely social, we want to get upgrades for our characters and see the next endgame, and the one after that. But we won’t give up friends just for loot or to visit another part of the game. Our only options are: 1) continue to hope that we can find enough like-minded people to get momentum to clear our current hurdle and experience the joy as a group; 2) give up on the endgame altogether. Giving up isn’t a good solution because raiding is fun. Seeing new content is fun. Clearing obstacles with your friends is fun.

So we loyal ones stick together and keep recruiting, hoping to find the rare person who values camaraderie over loot, while we quietly look forward to the next reset (the next expansion). The ladder won’t exist for a little while, and we can play in ideal environment, briefly.

I’m cheering all of you on, Tobold and Potshot and the rest.

(edited on May 2 for some grammar flubs)

(Previous article)

While it’s a bad idea to link your damage meters over a common chat channel, it’s a very bad idea to link your damage report if you’re a damage dealer and you’re that one dps’er who consistently does less damage than the tank. What you’re trying to say is that you outperform the healer at doing damage, but what you’re really saying is:

“The healer’s good enough to keep everyone alive and also do 30% of the damage that I’m doing.”

The healer’s damage is basically like the rock bottom of damage performance in a raid. Healing does zero damage. You are also saying that you don’t understand groups enough to know what the different roles do, but you aren’t going to let that slow your spamming down. This is a chain of thought that will immediately lead others to group with you less, because veterans will sense that this is probably the tip of the iceberg:

• you roll for gear that doesn’t apply to you and then throw a fit when someone tries to tell you how your character works
• you don’t understand or don’t care about crowd control
• you cry and blame someone every time you die
• you go afk without warning
• you complain about repair costs
• you never have elixirs/poisons/food buffs
• you use curse words in a way that’s not interesting, relevant, or funny

Not everyone is all of these, but usually these character flaws don’t come in single servings. Most people went to the all you can eat Buffet of Broken.

And yes, this was all that a single damage meter post said. And incidentally, this person lived up to many of the above-listed predictions.

I healed through Magister’s Terrace this weekend to get a couple of friendly guildies ready for MrT heroic. My wife, in the next room, said “What’s wrong?” I hadn’t even realized I sighed. “This new recruit just spammed his damage meters after our first wipe.”

I had forgotten about this little slice of the game. Of course, now my blissful ignorance has been shattered, but it’s a good topic of discussion.

The following quote has no definite attribution, but it’s good advice in general:

“It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

In World of Warcraft, this applies to damage meter reporting. Every raid diagnostic addon has a whisper/party/raid/guild broadcast feature. Whoever first thought of that should be killed! Despite that, these raid diagnostics and their ability to broadcast will exist forevermore and so: better to educate.

What came about very shortly after damagemeters-broadcast was invented was an eternal epeen contest between the dps’ers in raids.

“Who can top the damage meters?! Let’s export the results to raid chat after every boss attempt! After every wipe! Every raid!”

This damagemeter wanking was so strong in my guild’s Molten Core days that some characters would willfully skip the kill order just to have a longer uninterrupted damage stream on a target. Lunacy! Kill orders are critical in grouping. I’ll write more about it another time, but basically everything goes better when the damage dealers coordinate efforts. However, every class loses damage output while switching targets: melee has to run between targets, casters have to build up debuffs or whatever. It’s part of the game. But people were so wrapped up in epeen that they were actually trying to win at that stupid meter more than they were trying to win at the events. They’d push damage so hard that they’d pull aggro and wipe the raid, over and over, just to stay on top of the epeen meter. (Not multiple times in one raid, but once per raid) It wasn’t just one person; most of the damage dealers had been infected by damagemeter epeen madness.

I know that this wasn’t local to my guild, either. Every dps recruit had damagemeters, and they jumped right into the epeen contest.

It took us months to stamp that out. (Actually, most of those people left once TBC hit to form a hardcore raiding guild, which then naturally imploded after six months and then scattered to the winds. Real-life friends were on non-speaking terms with each other. Yay hardcore raiding! Later, I receive a tell, “lol you’re still on Aran?” “Yes, but I didn’t have to leave the server, and my friends are still my friends, and we still laugh with each other most every raid.”)

Anyway, I’ll speak for every healer and tank out there: nobody cares about your dps diagnostics. I mean, you wouldn’t want to see the following wipe out your chat box every few minutes, right?

Recount PANTS ranking:
1) Tank: PANTS
2) DPS1: PANTS
3) DPS2: PANTS
4) DPS3: NO PANTS
5) Healer: NO PANTS

Healing is best done with no pants, but I can’t speak for dps’ing. Would you want this spammed over your chat window? Your answer is what healers, tanks, and progression-minded dps think every time someone posts their epeen.

Virtually every raiding guild had to suffer through this. Most of the ones that I know realized that epeen and progression were counterproductive, and have some kind of policy on epeen spam.

I’m not picking on dps’ers, but I’ve only seen one healer ever spam healing numbers, and the rest of us whispered him so quickly that he couldn’t respond individually. “/ra Sorry!” Also, I’ve never seen a tank spam a damage breakdown. Maybe it’s something about the team-oriented mindset that tanks and healers must cultivate.

Also, this is nothing against raid diagnostics. I love them! Install them. Learn what they’re telling you. Use that information to improve your character. Discuss what you find with your peers. It’s even useful to challenge other players outside of a raid setting, “Warlocks, the mages/hunters/rogues are outdamaging each of you by 40% per person, and yet you have equivalent gear. What’s going on?” This can all be useful. You might help someone play better and have more fun! I personally use Recount and Recap every raid.

But have mercy. Keep your damn epeen out of my chat window.

I have to admit that my most coveted drop that I want from Magister’s Terrace is the phoenix minipet. Minipets are probably the silliest thing in World of Warcraft. A non-combat pet. Window dressing.

For my wife, I think minipets are about 20% of why she plays the entire game. When I passed on the rumor of minipet bags, she was thrilled. She is that person who has 20 minipets, in her inventory. Chickens, robots, elephants, glowing balls of light, bugs, old chewing gum, and a ball of string. I have a mere dozen. Only four on my inventory at a time (less on my bagspace-starved warrior, he only gets three) Our love of minipets is strong, and it turns out that we are not alone.

The best minipets have a noise you hear when you click on it. Like with Willy, you get a groan. Mechanical chicken, you get a robotic clucking noise. And so on. It’s something fun you can do if you’re on a raid and the raid leader has to explain an encounter you know to the new person.

Come to think of it, the baby panda is partially what sold my wife on the game in the first place. You have these majestic, imposing characters, with huge shoulder armor and glowing effects and fearsome weapons and so on. And then you have a humble prairie chicken pecking the ground next to you. There’s something about that pairing that’s just perfect. Before we got her a computer of her own (and a game client of her own), my wife and I would play together, with her riding shotgun. We chatted up someone in Ironforge who had a baby panda. “That’s so cool!” “Yeah, but he doesn’t really do much.” And at that moment, the baby panda took a nap, laying down with the green zzz over its head. We laughed for a solid ten minutes. That was the beginning.

Minipets factor into our guild’s raid strategy as well. When we encounter difficulty on a new boss, the wipes can get tedious. Someone always suggests different minipets, and everyone in the raid says “Ah yes. Minipets.” A different contingent of (useless) minipets will certainly make this attempt much easier. Like I said, we’re casual/raiding, and we should probably be talking more about whatever’s killing us, but how can you turn down a guaranteed smile and laugh before rushing in to die again?

You can’t. It’s just one of the silly parts of WoW that make it fun.