*sings to The Beatles tune*
There’s a disturbing trend I’ve noticed not just in MMO’s but pretty much since “online” came to mean “the internet.” I’m certain this mentality was around in pre-internet online systems such as BBS’ and commercial services like the old GEnie, CompuServe or AOL but I was too young and too preoccupied with causing trouble to notice. 
Ever notice when people ask for help — and this is assuming they even ask, rather than demand — most don’t truly want to be helped? Most give the impression, if not outright admission that they just want to be hand-held and handed all the pertinent information on a silver platter that they can quickly move onto the next item on their list so they can “beat the game” faster.
When someone asks for directions or a location, do you give them descriptive directions such as “take the road West out of town and look for some broken walls. Turn left between them and look for the path into the forest,” or do you just say “go to these coordinates on your map: xxxx,yyyy.” Mind you, I’m not saying there isn’t an appropriate time and place for coordinates or very direct information. Much can be ascertained or deduced either from knowledge of the person asking the question or from contextual clues in the question itself.
Personally, I try to phrase my questions so that attentive readers, rarity that they are, should easily pick up on whether I want specific information or simply want to be pointed in the general direction and let me take it from there. I get very exasperated when I’ve done all I can to find a location or NPC or find a clue from a quest puzzle, finally give in and decide to ask the public, carefully phrase my question stating I’m looking to just be nudged along when some asshat spews forth detailed spoilers, ruining any sense of discovery or accomplishment I may have had on my own.
In a similar vein, is it “helping” the lowbies who beg for level-capped characters to run them through low- or mid-level instances? Or by agreeing to the run are you not only hand-holding the lowbies, but being their enabler, further promoting their overall lack of knowledge and skill? (I’m referring to legitimate lowbies, not friends or guildies running alts) Running someone through a somewhat dangerous zone to get to a player city or hub could potentially be another story, not quite as enabling as the dungeon runs. The Menethil-to-Ironforge run springs to mind, though I was always able to easily make that run solo at very low levels with no deaths, so I never quite understood why so many people wanted to have higher level runners.
How about class skills or abilities? Do you take a little time (or perhaps a lot, depending on the situation) to actually explain skills or techniques to someone who obviously doesn’t know about it, or simply sum things up with “just spam [skill1], [skill2], [skill3], n00b!!1!” The former puts you not only in the role of being helpful but also that of a mentor while the latter is insulting, and the only bit of information the player “learned” is that you’re a jerkoff and he can’t wait to get out of your group.
We veteran players so often bemoan that the new players don’t take the time to learn anything, yet so often it’s the veteran players who hand-hold the new or uninitiated players, dole out spoiler information, or enable noobishness by running the lowbies through dungeons so they get free gear while not actually achieving anything on their own whatsoever. We have our own game to play too, so if we’re going to pay attention to chat questions, going to decide to stop and take time to help, shouldn’t we actually help instead of spouting off coordinates that merely enable that person to be the same one we gripe about later because he doesn’t know this or that, doesn’t know how to play his character, doesn’t know his roles in groups? If not, how about we just shut our yaps and keep playing our own game? Perhaps someone more up to the task will help the noobs.
Tags: MMO Gaming
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