Perceived Experts

I completed the final part of my honor grind for my battlemaster’s trinket (62,000 honor still makes me wonder why the cap is set to 75,000). I had some really good games and some really frustrating ones. Specifically the WSG where we had 5 players who had under 14k health and the next closest to me was 20k. During the grind this week, I see a type of player starting to crop up everywhere. The player that I would call a “Perceived Expert”.

You know the player. It doesn’t matter if you are winning or losing, this player needs to tell everyone else that they fail. They always share their plan of attack, but feel that nobody ever helps them. They are usually the ones who nerd rage during the final seconds of a loss. They are the ones who crack me up.

For example: I joined an Isle of Conquest match. When I joined, 30/40 of my team was dead and the Alliance were about to break through our walls. I checked the map and we literally had nobody at the Alliance base. It was a ghost town. I started healing the players around me when a ret paladin whispers me, “give me fort”. I usually do not oblige people who ask for buffs, but I was feeling generous. With fort, he had a grand total of 17.7k health (he was wearing 2 pieces of deadly, 1 furious, and the rest were blues). He was quickly stomped by the Alliance presence in our base which apparently made him angry. In the final minutes of the match, he let everyone know that we were scrubs, we didn’t know how to play, Horde always lose, and that he deserves better. It was hilarious.

Another example was in EoTS. We were handily winning the game and I was at BE tower defending with two DK’s. The DK’s were having a discussion on how PvP isn’t fair for them. “Rogues are so simple to play” said one to the other. “Yeah, they don’t even need gear”. I checked their gear and noticed a couple pieces of deadly and mostly PvE epics (Naxx level). Their discussion quickly turned to PvE and how they were experts at PvE. They felt that PvP was worthless and that it took no skill. Their view on how good they were at the game made me laugh.

I see this type of player show up more and more. It is the “expert” player who is very moody and has bad gear. There have always been players like this, but I think it is multiplied by the fact that it is getting late in an expansion and people have probably had time by now to level another 80. It is a big transition from being geared to having no gear.

This ultimately brings up the question, “Who really is an expert?”. Although there are exceptions to the rule, most “experts” in my experience are the unsung heroes. They are the ones who help out random people by answering questions in guild chat or trade chat. They are the ones who give friendly advice at the right times instead of just telling the other player how bad they are. They are the ones who know how to take a loss without whining. They are the ones who have been around a long time and have extensive experience with the game.

I think there is a fine line between “expert” and “elitist” and most WoW players fall in the latter category. I do know that the experts aren’t the ones barking orders in bad gear then nerd raging out of BGs.

Social Experiment

There is a fun social experiment you can try. I had a classmate who used to make up words and then say them over and over. He would say these words so many times around people that they would start to say them without thinking. We had a lot of fun making up new words and seeing who we could get to start saying them. You should do the same in World of Warcraft. Make up a short phrase or take an existing phrase and start using it a lot around guildies or friends. See how many of them you can get to start using that term.

Let me know if you are successful! We’d love to here those stories.