Generation Leeroy

Our fathers, as well as their fathers before them, have shunned the idiots of their generations. We, on the other hand, build them monuments.

I am, of course, referring to this guy here:

Remember those days? When UBRS was a small raid (small by vanilla standards) and you actually fought 1-2 mobs at a time, polymorphed the rest, proceeded very carefully, as one false move could have resulted in death?
What Leeroy is doing in that video has made him a complete and utter moron back then. He ran inside a room full of baddies, pulled every single one of them without waiting for his group to get ready, forcing everyone to run after him. Naturally, the healers couldn't keep up, the tanks couldn't contain all the aggro and a minute later, everyone ended up dead.
If you do the exact same thing today, not only will you be rewarded with an achievement and a title, but you'll also be doing 'your job'.

I won't lie to you: I've been a bit of a clueless idiot with the current state of dungeons. I've been playing my warrior since release and none of my alts ever made it past level 20. So, the occasional horrible, HORRIBLE random Cataclysm heroic aside, I don't get to see many dungeons and since I'm on a pvp realm, I spend most of my time in the arena. Works for me.

Until last weekend. Last weekend I had decided to roll a new toon and forced myself through the horrible pile of garbage, which is the Gilneas tutorial. Yes, I know - how dare I call that part of the game horrible? Well, have all your fellow NPCs despawn in the middle of the fight against Sylvanas, effectively killing you and forcing you to restart the whole damn event, paired with bugged quest rewards such as invisible weapons and you'll feel my frustration. Besides, the whole place is so unique in terms of visuals, audio and artwork, that it feels strangely disjointed from the rest of Azeroth.

But once you get to level 15, you can sign up for random dungeons and the next few hours take you around Ragefire Chasm and the Deadmines and the whole experience is more or less what you'd expect at that level. A whole lot of chaos, confusion, random insults and with a lot of luck you might bump into the occasional bunch of semi-intelligent players, who get the job done.

But once you get anywhere close to level 30, the whole thing turns into a grotesque reenactment of Wrath of the Lich King: Without bothering to type even a quick 'hi', let alone waiting for everyone to be there and ready, the tank rushes off, pulling as many enemies as somehow possible on the go. The damage dealers try to keep up and everyone ends up running and fighting at the same time. The group never really stops, everyone just runs after the tank and the healer is spamming like there's no tomorrow. Nobody stops to pick up any loot and you may consider yourself lucky if the group decides to not skip any bosses.

I have watched in horror, when a feral druid charged all across Stratholme while the rest of the group was still getting their quests, then ran back with 25-30 zombies chasing after him, our healer suffering a medium heart-attack whilst trying to keep the whole damn group alive. I dare not say whether the whole group turned out to be insanely talented, or if the game has just become incredibly easy, but for some strange reason, we just about managed to kill the huge onslaught of foes our glorious tank had dragged along with him. And all he said was, "that was epic lol".

Epic. Not only is grabbing every single monster, skipping all the loot and risking mass wipes a perfectly viable 'strategy' today, but it's apparently epic, as well.
Okay, I rolled that toon on Saturday and I'm about to hit level 50 while I'm writing this. This is the most insane level progress I have ever seen in WoW. And more often than not, this stupid tactic actually works out, people manage to get through the dungeons relatively unharmed and at the end, everybody gets one random piece of blue armor. Needless to say there's no chance in hell your professions, first aid and whatever stuff you'd like to level up on your toon will never get off the ground, forcing you to catch up much, much later.

I suppose you can love or hate the whole thing. Some might say that players have reached a skill level, which allows them to pull entire rooms full of baddies and kill them all with massive AoE-spam while the healer keeps everyone alive. Others might say the game has become so easy and characters have become so overpowered, you can now play like a complete idiot and get away with it.

No matter which of the two you tend to agree with, it does explain why random heroics suck. They don't just suck - they fucking vacuum! And that's not really a big surprise.
Provided, your group isn't completely overgeared on maximum tier raid stuff, you won't just run off pissing off every single monster in the area and then expect your healer to take care of it. Suddenly, the whole thing is a tad more old-school: One enemy at a time, use crowd-control against larger groups, whip out the good old polymorph, ice traps and sap and watch as the mage doesn't even know he can only morph one enemy at a time and as the Death Knight whacks the freshly-frozen monster right out of its ice trap and unleashes it upon the group.

And, for as sad as it may be, it's not really the fault of your group members if they suck. They suck because they don't know any better. They have spent 85 levels zerg-rushing through every instance, skipping bosses, ignoring tactics and just spamming the shit out of every single encounter. And suddenly they're supposed to use abilities, which many of them probably haven't even put on their hot bars.

Sure. You can tackle all of these challenges with relative ease, simply by playing with people you know and love, sticking to guild mates and staying the fuck away from the dungeon finder. But in the meanwhile, this handy little utility is breeding a whole generation of rushing, zerging idiots with zero sense of tactics or communication. A generation of Leeroys.

Still, I don't want this entry to end all doomy and gloomy, as there is at least a tiny light shining in the darkness: RealID groups. Having spent countless hours teaming up with hundreds of random players, I did manage to befriend some of the more pleasant and talented ones. Being friendly and helpful and actually doing your job finally pays off again. And having enough like-minded allies available for random dungeons makes the ever-growing army of Leeroy just that much more bearable.

-Cat