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Wealth on Warcraft

I recently came out of my first experience of That Person Is Too Young To Be Tanking My Dungeon PUG.

I mean, I’ve had experiences before where I knew I was dealing with a young person:

  • The Hunter who was enamoured with Eye of the Beast, and would channel that pet-control spell and attack with his pet instead of attacking with the pet AND his bow…

  • The countless DPS who never talked on the party line but constantly pulled extra aggro and had to be saved…
  • The players who type quickly and talk ALL ABOUT THEMSELVES

  • And of course, the Jumpers who are SO BORED with any stop of movement that they need to jump around incessantly…

But this one took the cake. I was honestly shocked.

I logged in to my 37 Druid healer with the intent of hitting Scarlet Monestary or Razorfen Downs or Uldaman to burn off some rest bonus.

I got into a party, it was already full and a couple of people were already at the stone to start summons. The party line had light and friendly chatter.

All of these things were good.

In fact, there was no reason to suspect this wouldn’t be a fast-moving, “normal” PUG through a wing or three of the Scarlet Monestary right up until the moment that battle was to begin in the instance.

The tank came in a little behind the rest of us and DPS and myself on heals had taken down the first guy who aggro’s when you’ve got a lower-level member walking into Cathedral, and then we all lined up at the back of the hall and faced down the first hallway, and got ready to get started.

We waited. The tank was there, responded short responses to some of us in whispers when we inquired about her whereabouts, but didn’t move.

We waited longer. Lead was passed to the tank so she could mark if she wanted. Lead was passed on to a different DPS player than started with it, but the tank still didn’t move.

The DPS member who was given lead let us know that the tank was a “slow typer”. I said “She doesn’t need to type, she needs to tank”.

The other two DPS folk, including a Hunter with a squishy pet of 700 hp, get antsy and bored, and decide to let the pet tank the first 2 mobs. We get through it, but most of the fight I had one or another of the mobs hitting ME because of heal aggro to keep us alive.

The tank is still standing, motionless. Tank apparently gets onto vent with the party lead and the party lead lets us know that.

After a bunch of more waiting around, a second group is pulled with the tank involved, but again it’s chaotic and I should have let the pet die… so I’ve got aggro all over me. But they don’t hit hard, so we all live just fine.

I mention that we’d better pick up the pace a bit, or it’s going to take us 3h to get through this wing alone - and others had been wondering if we could do 2-3 wings this run.

At this point, we’re look into the lower courtyard of the Cathedral, and I stay back, as does the Rogue. A mob wanders by and aggro’s on us - the Pally tank is there and does manage to grab the aggro and we down the mob.

After that mob is down I get the shocking whisper:

“She is only 6″

Six. Six?? SIX!!??

I whispered the original lead of the party and relayed the information.

Then, I said on the party line as I turned back towards the door:

“I’m sorry, I’m 6x the age of our tank, I can’t handle that. Good luck”

And left the party.

Now, I don’t mind if 6 year olds play WoW (although that’s a big discussion on its own), and it’s possible I’ve had 6 year old DPSers in my PUGs before that we carried through and coddled, but surely it’s not to be expected for me to tolerate 6 year old TANKS in PUGs…

Note: WoW is officially rated T for Teen.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 9:48 am and is filed under Adventures In Azeroth, Adventures in PUGs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

10 comments so far

Cap
 1 

Amen… six IS too young to play WoW. I mean, if it were a single player offline game, then sure, whatever. Blizzard’s game is rated T for a reason. Can a six year old learn most of the game mechanics? Sure. Can a six year old learn their responsibility when playing in a group? Iffy. Should a six year old be privy to the majority of conversations in General/Trade/Guild/Party chats? No way.

You did exactly what I would have done. Shame on this kid’s parents. Go buy Hello Kitty Online and knock yourself out, kid.

July 25th, 2008 at 10:44 am
 2 

Lol I was in a group for Gnomergean on my pally once. I had the in game voice chat enabled and I kept hearing this little kid talking. It was the Warrior in party and he must have been about 5 if not even younger. Needless to say I left that group.

July 25th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Ganthos
 3 

No joke 6 is way to young. I’ve had kids around 15 that didn’t even know how to play good enough and they had 70s let alone 6 years. I played on dial up since I was 15 and I learned the stuff pretty well I would say. I have also noticed most of the younger kids that I get grouped with also are sporting a Druid Tank lol.

I don’t even see how a kid that age can contemplate whats going on in the game.

July 25th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Mosshoof
 4 

Six year olds are good for unattended fishing (with all the chat tabs turned off). Can’t imagine trying to coach my almost-six, or even my almost-eight into doing a good job as a tank.

July 25th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
 5 

At 6 years old….they should be out vandalising and stuff…not that I promote that kind of behaviour or anything, but you should be out and about regardless :P

July 27th, 2008 at 8:19 am
 6 

Val.. my comment is short.. to the point.. and I think very accurate..

LOL@ 6yr old pallytank.. LMAO!!!
epic: Pacifier

But grats to a 6 yr old who got this far in game.. My 10 yr old hasn’t the attention span to play..

July 28th, 2008 at 7:08 am
 7 

It’s my suspicion with the speed at which the Pally moved that they weren’t playing the character they had leveled up themselves. I’d be surprised if they had gotten one up to level 20…

July 28th, 2008 at 9:02 am
 8 

what’s a 6 year old doing on vent with strangers on the internet?

Personally I’m not really interested in playing with anyone who is under age or acts like they are. Such a big game, so little time to play it!

July 28th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
TrekNoid
 9 

My son just turned 11, and has been playing a year now in my guild. We’ve determined that he can play whatever he wants on his own. The only characters he can group with us on is as a melee DPS.

Main reason? He can contribute to the fight that way, but is less likely to make a strategic mistake that can kill a party. Tanking is too technical to trust to him and Healing is full of split-second decision-making.

It’s much better to put an ‘X’ on a mob and tell him his job is to ‘kill X’.

A 6-year-old tank, though… wow…

July 30th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
kraar
 10 

my 7yr old son has been playing for over two years, all chat but /g is turned off, he is only allowed to play for 1 hour a week at max and only w/ me or my wife present. he just dinged 18 on his druid this weekend. I would never let him group. being a prot warrior myself I’d certainly never trust tanking to anyone near that young!

August 4th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

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