“So relax! Let’s have some fun out here! This game’s fun, OK? Fun goddamnit.”
– Crash Davis
I’m going to dive into my Eight Simple Rules series this week, but before I tackle the rules I wanted write about a comment to something I wrote on my guild forums.
In addition to writing on this blog I’ll often re-post some of the same information on our guild website. One such post was one titled Don’t Just Raid, Be a Raider.
One of my guildies responded as follows,
“Well I guess we are just not as gung ho about a GAME as the rest of you.. 🙁 Us inexperienced non serious types?????????????”
I’m going to assume that you’ve read the post or at least glanced at it. If not, I’ll wait while you do that. I’m humming the Jeopardy theme song now. Okay time’s up.
I’m sure that for those of you who raid the points I outlined fall into the realm of common sense, but for some the idea having rules for a GAME is unnecessary and serves to suck all the fun out of everything.
We put rules in-place and have raiding guidelines not to stifle fun, but to ensure that a good time will be had by all. Loot, badges and achievements cannot be obtained if your lying on your back wondering what just happened.
Another of my guildies summed it up best when he wrote,
“The most fun part of this game is a well organized, prepared team taking down bosses.
One of the least fun things is wiping and waiting and talking about wiping and waiting and why we are waiting and why we are wiping and whose fault it is that we are wiping and waiting and what we should do about it and who should do something about the fact the we are wiping and then waiting to wipe.”
All of our rules are designed to mitigate the wiping and the waiting. The notion that rules and fun are mutually exclusive is utter garbage.
Fun comes from working together and defeating bosses. Fun comes from getting badges and loot and seeing the team progress. Fun comes from success and not failure.
It’s time for fun!
I have to agree- saying it's "just a game" as an excuse is not acknowledging the fact that we all play the same game. Showing up late, unprepared, and ready to AFK for trash is like joining a beer league sports team, and refusing to pass. It's "just a game" isn't a valid excuse in that situation because you're preventing your friends from enjoying the game.