Az seemed the perfect toon to just do whatever for an hour, so I hopped onto her and, on a whim, I decided to see if I could get her a Stormwind Stockades run. She had a bunch of quests to complete in there, and the instance is usually completed in about a half an hour, so I just figured that with the early afternoon crowd it would be pretty easy to get into a run.
Things never end up the way as intended, you know.
I discovered that back in 2019 when I began to struggle getting Azshandra into instance runs. Part of it is that certain classes are preferred over others in instance running --such as Mages-- and part of it is that Rogues tend to have a certain... uh... reputation. When Linna got into a Deadmines run, the group that showed up on the LFG tool had the tagline "NO ROGUES". I figured that if anything, in the Deadmines no less, that a Rogue would be preferred over a Retribution Paladin, but when I joined the group the Warrior said, "Hell no. Rogues suck. They steal your gear."
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| When you prefer playing a Robin Hood type of Rogue, the struggle is real. From Reddit. |
Ooo-kay.
Still, I figured I had an hour to play with, and as long as I got into a Stockades run by the half hour mark, I ought to be fine.
The time creeped away, and most of the groups that showed up in the LookingForGroup chat group were for Stocks boosts. The LFG tool was kinda-sorta active, but I was bypassed a couple of times via that tool as well. Finally, at the 20 minute mark I got an invite to a group.
"All we need is a tank, and we're good," the group leader said.
More time passed, and we were rapidly approaching my half hour cutoff when finally a fifth member of the group appeared.
"Thank goodness," I muttered, and made sure I had my poisons ready to apply to my weapons. Because Az is a Rogue, you know.
"Free run, guys!" the group leader declared, and only then did my brain go "Huh?" and I hovered over the last toon.
It was an L60 Druid.
Well, crap.
***
I had a choice: stick to my principles and pass, or accept the de-facto boost and just deal with it. The quests that involved the Stockades were taking up a quarter of my quest log, so there was a certain amount of pressure to get those quests completed to free up my quest log a bit. At the same time, there wasn't a lot of gear or whatnot that I needed out of the Stockades per se. Sure, there's the ring that is a random drop, but outside of that there isn't that much in there. Storywise, it does propel the Defias narrative along, but on the flip side was this tank expecting gold despite the group leader claiming it was a free run?
In the end, I decided to accept the boost and be done with it. After all, a boost ought to be quicker than a regular run.
I didn't bother with adding poisons to my blades, because I figured it'd be a waste.
The run began, and we were tasked with "clean up": the enemies that turned tail and ran had to be tracked down and killed. Part of me watched the run progress, thinking it would be a nice bit of schadenfreude to have the Druid overpull and die, but the other part of me that is basically a nice person was pissed that I'd ever consider this sort of thing.* I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the Druid could handle the pulls without issue, but I've heard some of my WoW friends on the receiving end of boosts complain about the boosters not always knowing what they're doing. (Again, schadenfreude.)
We blitzed through the Stockades, a ring dropped that I won, and then once it ended I thanked people and dropped group as they were getting ready for another go at the instance. The run completed in 15 minutes, in plenty of time for me to make my next meeting.
And I felt like I needed a shower afterward to wash away the stink of shame.
***
The other day it struck me as to why I hated receiving boosts so much: they make me a passive recipient.
If the entire point of playing an MMO is to perform group activities together, then being a passive recipient of a boost is the antithesis of that. Boosts are transactional activities, but beyond that transaction there's nothing required of the boosted player. And that kind of galls me.
I want to be an active participant in whatever activity I'm doing in an MMO; I want my actions to matter. So while boosting is obviously a non-starter for me, my distaste for passivity includes carries where you're so over leveled by other participants, your actions don't even matter. I've written before about how I've unwittingly been the subject of carries, and how such a buzzkill it was to discover that I had so little impact on the actual group activity.
Yes, yes, I know, "friends wanting to do things and whatnot", but that knowledge doesn't change 55 year old me. If my actions don't matter, then why bother? We can just chat online or talk on Discord instead, and not engage in the pretense that we're playing together as equals. It feels less like friendship and more like receiving charity. And that old Midwestern pride kicks in that I don't need your charity. Or sympathy.
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| From Yarn. And Howard the Duck. |
I suppose that viewed from the lens of the "poor but proud" people that I've known all my life, it kind of makes sense. Kind of like arguing with my mom whenever I take her someplace she wants to pay for my gasoline. "Mom," I always say, "I don't need it. Just accept it."
She always insists that I take the money. We're two people too proud to simply let things be.
*Yes, I have these long conversations with myself over this crap. I'd like to think I'm not the only person who wrestles with dark impulses, but this is something that people just don't talk about very much, so.... Maybe it's just me.
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