Drop Drip Drop

I may not like it, but I've gotten used to people porting in, seeing the instance and/or gear scores, and dropping.  Heck, I've kind of gotten used to people dropping after a wipe -Halls of Reflection will do that to you- or even after a boss.  When someone actually apologizes and leaves, I consider it a victory for civility.

But if there's one thing I'll never get used to, it's when people drop in the middle of a pull.

What sort of person does this, anyway?

I know that others have written about it -Darth Solo, Vidyala, and Tam, among others- but the lack of respect for your fellow player is just ridiculous.  We're paying for the privilege to operate in an MMO world, and as much as some people fly solo (guilty as charged) you still have to interact with people to play the game.  People will talk to you; you can be an ass and ignore them, but the courteous thing to do is reply, even if you're not interested in what they're saying.

What got me all worked up about this?  I got queued up for two 5-man runs today: Halls of Reflection and Forge of Souls.  Both of them had instances wherein someone dropped mid-pull.  In Halls of Reflection, it was the Healer midway through the waves of trash between the first and second bosses.  Naturally, when the Healer goes in that place, the tank almost immediately bites it, and so does everyone else.  The second one, in Forge of Souls, the Boomkin warlock died right after pulling aggro on the trash in the run-up to the Bronjahm.  Rather than wait for a rez or releasing and running back, he just dropped.

Now, in both cases, there was no lasting damage.  We had delays in the runs, but that was it.  But the lack of courtesy -especially in the HoR run- really got under my skin.  Just like what the warrior DPS in an Utgarde Pinnacle run last night told the rest of us:  he was abused by the tank in the previous 5-man he was on because he was pulling so low a DPS.  I mean, he's a new 80, and instead of trying to tank Heroics he's trying to DPS them to pick up gear to improve his DPS.  What more could you want?

I'm aware of the general consensus out there in the blogosphere that the LFD tool has enabled or exacerbated this sort of boorish behavior, but my contention is that even without the tool the MMO community has been gradually moving in this direction anyway.  The MMO world is a reflection of society -a geeky segment of society, no doubt- and it was only a matter of time before the lack of civility out there in our society found its way into all aspects of WoW.  Even I got tired of Trade Chat and dropped it from my channels, and that's saying a lot.  I used to think that if these people who are spamming trade chat were forced to say that out loud in a public gathering, they'd shut their mouths a bit more often.  Sadly, I think that won't deter a lot of these people.

What I'm afraid of is that the boorish behavior in MMOs is now becoming the norm, and people like me who want some courtesy among strangers are now on the sideline.