Twentyfifthnovember, which became Ensidia achieved what was a rather impressive feat of speed running all of the Wrath of the Lich King raid content in a two day time span.  A lot of people have responded with shock and apprehension over the top 1%* of the players steamrolling through content that should have taken weeks to beat.  Me?  My response has been rather more along the lines of “Meh,”  than anything else, since it does not affect my game play except for dropping an handful of people out of the queues in the evenings.

It was while I was listening to the most recent episode of “PUG”** with two members of Ensidia talking about how awful it is that the content can be finished that fast.  Their only point thoughout the show was along the lines of ‘we can’t explain why, but the content being too easy for us is just ruining the game.’  They did insist that they were not the target audience for WoW, and said that they would likely steamroll any content because they were just better players than the average.

I would like to say that this is a matter of opinion, but honestly, I would prefer to group (and guild) someone socially competent who might make a few mistakes over time but not be a flaming turd when we wipe than someone who gets irate and becomes a jerk because we wiped or didn’t clear the instance in five minutes.  People need time to learn their class and how to play grouped.  If we limit ourselves to playing with people who do not make mistakes, we never learn to correct a lapse in the system and cannot stop a wipe when it starts.

But none of that is really where Ensidia falls down.  Where I saw their weakness is when it came time on PUG to do the game show, Master Looter.  Master Looter is like Jeopardy for Azeroth Junkies.   The very first question was about what item does the quest from The Lady’s Necklace deliver, and Duncor answered the question with little or no problem like anyone who had levelled in Ghostlands would.  (Answer was Lament of the Highborne,) The Ensidia guys couldn’t even understand the answer, by their own admission, because the Lore was so foreign to them.  Admittedly, it was kind of specialized knowledge, so I let it slide.  It became apparent over the remainder of the show that if a piece of lore or an item was not required for endgame raiding, they were completely unaware of it. I understand not knowing some obscure lore from Warcraft II or III, but some of the things they didn’t get just floored me.

Conversely, I know not everyone digs lore or the back story and many people forget it, which is cool.  But to complain that the game holds nothing for you because you took the shortest route to the end is like watching those Starz cartoons where the whole movie is presented in 30 seconds or reading an abridged version of Call of the Wild and complaining it was too short.  Especially when you focus on PvE solely.

I will be more impressed with the world firsts that complete all the quests available to them in Northrend than I am currently by groups like Ensidia who just blow through choice parts of the content and don’t actually spend the time to get the story that goes with it.  If the whole draw of the game  is team based combat with no story, why not try games like Team Fortress 2 or any other number of games that sepcialize in team based combat with a minimum of backstory?  I have no sympathy for Ensidia who are going to spend the next several weeks twiddling their thumbs and paying Blizzard 15 dollars a month to do it.

* Look Ma, we have our own 1%ers.  Ours are much less dangerous though.

** I haven’t decided if I like PUG yet or not.  It amuses me on a Spinal Tap level.  I am waiting for the “It goes to eleven” debate or the attempt to smuggle a murloc through security wrapped in tin foil…