There is a growing trend in MMORPGs that has me a bit frazzled. It is a danger to guilds and groups alike. I’m talking of course about the willfully ignorant. These are not unintelligent players. They just don’t care enough to read, listen, or prepare for anything. It is their secret hope that they’ll just “Get By” or that someone else will carry them. Their battle cry is, “I’m just here to have fun!” but they always want in on groups and raids. I want to give you tips on how to deal with the willfully ignorant and give some advice on how not to be one.
Cleanse the Ignorance – (Right off their smug faces)
Any guild leader is going to run into a willfully ignorant player at some point. Dealing with them is pretty straight forward. If someone has agreed to join your guild than they’ve agreed to be part of the team. That means a selfish attitude just won’t work. Politely remind your WIP that they need to be aware of what is going on in the guild. Point out good sources of information such as your forum and anywhere else you feel is necessary. Being called out politely on willful ignorance will snap some players right out of it. Nothing like a little shame to get people back on track. Others are more stubborn than that and won’t be as easily motivated. They will need to be addressed negatively.
The best method I’ve found to deal with willfully ignorant guild members is to exclude them when possible. If your raid is capped at 20 people and you have 21 start favoring others over the WIPs. Eventually your unprepared players will be curious as to why they’re being left out. As nicely as you can explain that prepared players have priority. You’ll either get a positive reaction about making a change or the player will head off to greener pastures. There is nothing wrong with either. A WIP is of no help to you.
Wise Up
Yes, I understand that MMORPGs are about having fun. You can refrain for posting comments about how it is “all about having fun” and how I “can’t tell you how to play.” The interesting part about being willfully ignorant is that you’re ignorant to the fact you’re not the only person in existance. MMORPGs aren’t only about you having fun. When you join a group or a guild the focus shifts to having fun with others. That is part of the agreement. If you’re unaware of that you need to go back to soloing. By being ill prepared you bring the group as a whole down. You reduce their fun and you simply have no right to do that. How can you not be a WIP?
1. Have the decency to at least know when your guild has activities and where they will be. This will help you show up at the appropriate times and be in the right area.
2. Learn SOMETHING about the encounter you’ll be doing or at least listen when someone explains it to you.
3. Prepare in advance. If a fight needs a special set of gear, a potion, or just a general level of statics work on having that.
It doesn’t take a whole lot to show you care. Everyone should be aware of the WIP and how not to be one. They’re bad for morale and don’t actually bring a lot to the table. You might not even know you are one!
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I don’t think it’s as binary as you’re making out.
At the very top of the raiding game are the people who think outside the box. The people who come up with original builds and figure out boss strats without a roadmap. Let’s call these guys the type A players.
The next plateau down are the people who are a combination of those things. People who check information provided by the best players while also doing a considerable amount of tactical and strategic thinking. Let’s call these type Bs.
Next there’s the people who carefully follow the roadmaps laid out by the pros. They copy the cookiecutters and watch the boss videos. Type Cs.
Now you have the people who form random attachments to builds. Subtlety Rogues in WoW, or BM Hunters who stay BM when Survival is best. These are your obvious WIPs. However they see themselves as type A players and see well-intended advice as attempts to make them over into Type Cs. Of course they don’t want to downgrade.
I have a theory that practically every player is rational for a certain value of rational. No one is wilfully ignorant because that’s irrational. People who are type Ds have some rational reason for being Subtletly Rogues, perhaps seeing it as a clever combination of being “good enough” for raiding while being amazing at pvp. You can’t make these players over by telling them they’re ignorant because from their perspective and given their priorities what they’re doing IS logical.
Now exclusion works. Your advice here is solid but I think for the wrong reason. I think to fix people who are letting the raid down you need to work on convincing them to decide to re-assess their priorities. And calling them ignorant won’t convince anyone. But as you say you can just exclude them.
I certainly won’t disagree with personality types. That absolutely comes into it with all of your examples. Could you relate that to things such as not paying attention to raid instructions or refusing to read information? To me, that is willful and it keeps them in a position of ignorance.
When I read this article, I immediately thought of a basic area where things can break down: communication preferences, namely not paying attention to the one that isn’t yours. Let me elaborate. If your guild is like mine, you have a couple ways in which people communicate while playing the game: voice, chat text, guild MoTD, message boards.
I find that some players will not pay attention to guild chat typed in-game, to the point of turning it off or relegating it to a special tab they never look at — and others will stubbornly (if quietly, pun intended) resist any attempt to get on board with voice chat (or to migrate to agreed upon platform, whether it’s Ventrilo, Skype, an in-game system, etc.). Similarly, some folks swarm the boards and blogs daily, a few others make accounts but never visit, and some won’t visit at all (i.e., the game world vanishes when the game is closed – so message boards are firmly in extra cirricular territory). When asked to participate in whatever is being used at the time, whether it’s paying attention to typed guild chat or logging on to Vent for a raid, the excuses I hear make me weary: I’m a slow typer, I don’t have a mic (but you could still listen! argue the audiophiles), I forget to read/never read chat, etc.
This mess of communication venues makes it quite difficult to ensure that everyone has the same information and is making their choices based on the same information as everyone else. It also means groups tend to fragment along the lines of those they can actually communicate with (go figure).
I suspect this problem is lessened in guilds full of dedicated conscientious players. But for casual – and even quasi-casual – guilds, it’s a big hurdle. I’m experiencing it right now in RIFT… we have Skype fans, Ventrilo junkies, chat-o-philes and people who just ignore everything.
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it put quite that well. Bravo!
Irrational as it may sound, there are willfully ignorant people all over MMOs. They are the ones who don’t take the time to determine the best adornments for their gear, or the best casting order, or figure out how to use macros, or what the best AA build is for their situation, etc… The list goes on and on. To some people, doing the research or experimentation to figure these things out seems like work (heck, some of it seems like work to me sometimes as well). Rather than spend their free entertainment time doing what they perceive to be “work”, they just say: “If what I’m doing isn’t good enough for others, that’s their problem. Let them take somebody else and I’ll either solo or find another group/raid/guild where they don’t require me to “work” just to play a game.” Although these people do have a point, they don’t think about it in the terms that I quoted from Ferrel above. Solo that way all you want. But once you join a group/raid/guild, you’ve committed to a bit more.
Updated with more thoughts: http://www.epicslant.com/2011/06/thursday-tip-willful-ignorance-ii/