"I Guess You Like Killing Dragons"

This is something that periodically pops up when I play MMOs, and I have to wonder whether it's unique to me or more of a general reaction.

When I'm in a PvE group environment, such as a max level dungeon, instance, or raid, the question of  "What are you here for?" will occasionally pop up. In raids, that is an inevitable part of handling loot, especially in the "old style" of not having personal loot as found in Retail WoW, as no matter what method used people will want to obtain loot.  In other cases, people are merely being social and asking a pretty general question as an ice breaker. 

There's even a good chance that people have some quests they want to finish, such as the numerous quests that take a person back and forth to Blackrock Depths, or they want to help someone with a special questline, such as the WoW Classic Era Paladin or Warlock mount quests. 

But I'll use as an example an Onyxia raid from last year that I got talked into going by a couple of people in my WoW Classic Era friend group. This Ony run came after their guild's weekly Blackwing Lair raid, and for those people not familiar with the Onyxia raid, it consists of a couple of trash mobs and the dragon, Onyxia, herself. It's a fairly quick raid if it's done well. But this particular time, they had barely 20 people there out of a maximum of 40, and that as definitely pushing the envelope as far as how few people you can take into Ony and complete the raid. 

So I figured why not and asked for an invite. 

After joining the raid, I joined their Discord for coordination purposes and the Raid Lead sent me a link to a website for their Soft Reserve system, Softres.it. I didn't really need to look at the list of items to know that Onyxia doesn't drop a lot of loot for Mages. For the most part she drops one piece of Tier 2 gear (the Helm), and the only other items of interest would be the 18 slot bag and (of course) the Head of Onyxia, which you can turn in for an okay reward for Mages but you do get to have your name announced as everyone in your capital city gets the "Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer" buff. 

I just gave a brief glance at the options there and decided to pass on reserving any loot.

This didn't go unnoticed.

Before first pull the raid leader said they were one short on people reserving, and after a short pause, there was a "Cardwyn, you're not reserving anything?"

"No, I'm good," I replied via chat. 

"You're sure?"

"Yep."

"I guess Cardwyn likes killing dragons," someone quipped.

I'd begun typing a response, basically saying that the helm I was wearing (a turban, actually) from Upper Blackrock Spire is better than the Tier 2 Helm, but.. saying that was simply taking too long and they were ready to go, so I let it slide.

There's a reason why I turned off
the Show Helm option in MMOs.

But I'm sure that more than one person looked at my gear, which was a mix of Blue and Green gear, with the only Purple pieces on it being the hand crafted Robe of the Archmage and the ring I got from having an Exalted reputation with the Stormpikes in Alterac Valley, and said "WTF?"

That's the thing, really: the raids with actual upgrades for me --in the lower WoW Classic Era raids, anyway-- are in the other raids: Molten Core (MC), Blackwing Lair (BWL), and Zul'Gurub (ZG). To be honest, I'd be better off running ZG a few times to get some basic raid pieces and then go to BWL, but I'm sure people jump right in to BWL without a thought once they hit max level and get attuned to the place.

***

The concept of someone joining a raid or other group content when they don't need anything, gear-wise, seems to be such a foreign thing that it flummoxes people.

I was once kicked from an instance run of fellow raid members back in Vanilla Classic WoW because I was in there for fun and not a guildie. One moment I was in the group and the next I was kicked, being told in Discord* that since I was in the instance for fun and not a guildie they were going to give my spot to a guildie who needed the instance run. If I were given the option I would have stepped aside, since everybody involved was on the same raid team, but being booted without giving me a chance kind of stuck in my craw.

For a long time I felt that the person leading that instance run was trying in a not-so-subtle way to try to push me into joining the guild that I raided with, and I resented the passive-aggressive manner in which he was trying to accomplish his goals.** As time has gone on, however, I now realize that this was just a symptom of the encroaching hardcore direction that both the guild and raid leads were heading, and one that I became increasingly at odds with.

I realize that saying that you play for fun
can be wielded as some sort of  excuse for poor behavior,
but I've been on both sides of this argument and I can say
that the try-hards are worse. From Reddit.

Doing things for fun is just a statement that you enjoy what you're doing. It's not an excuse for not caring, or trying to validate bad behavior in group content. Unfortunately, however, "fun" has somehow gotten a bad reputation in gaming circles, which boggles my mind. 

This isn't work, after all.

If your gaming has morphed into work for you, or you begin to look down upon people who are there to enjoy themselves, maybe it's time to re-evaluate what you're doing. 

*It was a post raid instance run, so we were all in Discord.

**This person is the same person who pulled me aside after a Classic Naxxramas raid to tell me how to "improve" my DPS, despite he not being my class lead, nor a raid lead, nor playing a Mage for anything other than one of his many alts. This unsolicited advice annoyed the hell out of me, given that I knew what gear I needed to improve and I couldn't make the gear drop if the RNG Gods were not interested. Given that my class lead was really happy with my overall output, as he had his own trouble with getting gear, I valued his input far more than these "suggestions".