It’s a simple question, but one that you’ll find has very varying answers, and answers that vary wildly depending one’s situation. How do you treat someone who randomly whispered you asking for help with their class? How about someone who’s asking for a spare gold? What if you’re a mage and they’re asking for food or water? If you see a player nearby you pull a few too many mobs than they can handle, do you pitch in a helping hand and save the day? What if they’re part of the opposite faction?
Overall, kindness in WoW falls in one of two categories: random kindness that isn’t prompted, and kindness that’s done as a reply to a request. The latter is a topic I can talk about for ages, as it involves everything from friends asking, to a guildmate asking, to random players asking. Not to mention all the things they can ask for. So let’s talk about the former: random kindness.
I don’t know about you, but one thing that always brings a smile to my face is when people I don’t know — complete strangers — act kindly towards me, without me having to ask. Has it ever happened to you when you were a lowbie and didn’t have many abilities at your disposal, and while trying to make a risky pull, you accidentally pulled more mobs than you can handle? Now, more importantly, have you ever been in the situation where some random passerby helped you out and between the two of you, you managed to clear off all the mobs you pulled and stayed alive? How did you feel? Did it encourage you to do something similar yourself in a similar situation, but on the opposite side?
When I was a lowbie on my first character, my Mage, something happened that I remember to this very day, and it’s something that really affected the way I play the game. I was level 18 or so, and just about to graduate from The Barrens (yech, Barrens, I know). I was doing that annoying quest where you have to steal silver back from some raptors who decided they needed it for their shiny metal nest (Stolen Silver’s the name), and realized as I got there that the raptors were all symbiotic creatures and were always in groups of two. I managed to get through the first few groups of them by sheer luck and with a mage’s wealth of “oh sh*t” buttons, but the last pull was a difficult one. Right next to the silver is a group of three raptors. One is a little bit father away from the rest, and I knew with clever planning I could pull him separately from the other two. So I targeted him, backed up, and prepared to fire… and aggroed the other group of three raptors right behind me, just as my shot fired off and aggroed the first group of three. I now had six very angry raptors after me, and my escape was blocked off because the raptors on the way out had respawned.
Of course, being a mage, they ripped right through me and before I knew it I was staring at my toon’s body lying there on the ground. With a groan we’re all familiar with, I reached over to the [Release Spirit] button and prepared to press it. A second later, I found myself alive right near where I died, at the feet of a level 30ish shaman. I was amazed. This random player, who I had never seen nor spoken before, had apparently noticed I died, and had stopped in the middle of their journey to give me a rez. I whispered them a “thank you”, and they just said “no problem” and ran off on their merry way. However, that random act of kindness has stayed with me ever since. Just the other day I was doing my Quel’danas dailies and saw a resto shaman get eaten alive by some blood elves just before I could get to him and help. Being a druid, the only thing I could do was to throw him a battle rez (which cost me a reagent). He was shocked that I would spend money on a complete stranger. But that’s just the person I’ve become, and it’s something I don’t mind doing, especially knowing the smile it brings to the other person’s face. It varies per server, but I’ve found the WoW population as a whole is mostly rude, including a few who go out of their way to steal a node/chest that you just cleared a mob for, and stealing quest mobs/items right in front of your face! However, I find that it’s those rare situations where someone goes out of their way to be nice to you, that make all the difference.
What about you? Do you have any stories about times when someone you didn’t know was kind to you? How about something you’ve done? Let me know in the comments!
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When I first started playing WoW back in 2004, my Alliance Warlock was visiting the tower in Elwynn Forest for some Enchanting training. On my way down from the tower, a random person stopped me and traded me two stacks of Strange Dust. He said something like, “I figured you could use these.”
This was totally unexpected, but something I’ve never forgotten in my 3 1/2 years of WoW. It’s amazing how a random act of kindness in any aspect of life can have a tremendous impact on someone else.
I try to return the favor when people ask for help (except for those that beg for gold), but I also try to surprise people with offers to help, gear, enchants, etc. when they least expect it.
I love to randomly tip big when someone helps me with something, or they give me something or do a service intended to be free.
Kindness in WoW can be a great thing :)
having a guild on a new server take me in when I found myself homeless, and all the people in BA chat showing their support when the drama llama paid me a visit is just priceless.
I like to think of myself as generally quite generous, I always hit anyone I see with a buff (thank you to the any rank buff update many moons ago), I never charge guildies for anything and always freely give them any mats they need. But most of that stuff is free to me (the buffs) or giving to myself in the big picture (guildie help, secondarily really helps yourself as they raid/run with you). I don’t like people to ask me for money (I think that’s rather rude), I tell them that if they need money, questing is the means to making some good coin. And I always ask before hitting a node if I see someone else, even resorting to some silly emote dances if its cross faction.
The single most impressive act of giving I’ve witnessed was when I doing that quest to get the plans in the mines in searing gorge. This was before TBC, and if you don’t know, there’s some tough customers guarding the plans and its the quest that gets your thorium brotherhood rep started which was an important faction. Well I was down there and saw a couple of alliance (I’m horde) fighting the group, it wasn’t going too well, so I jumped in to help, then we pulled more adds, I died, one of them died, but they did end up getting the plans. I released and starting running back thinking nothing of it when I was suddenly sent a whisper by a level 1, it was one of those alliance who said thanks for the help and to wait by my body so that he could bring in his level 60 to help me complete that quest for me!
Wow, I was floored, not only did he bring in his main to come and help after he no longer needed anything from there, but he took the time to create a character cross faction to communicate this to me!
My very first Priest made it to Iron Forge in 2005. She was greeted by a pink-haired Gnome Mage who saw that I was obviously rolling around on my first ‘toon, and was hopelessly lost. I have no idea how she picked me out of the crowd (even back then, Draenor was a busy place), but she set me up with 10g and two Rune Cloth bags. That account is long-gone, but I’ve never forgotten how much frustration her help eliminated from the leveling process, and have since made a point to hook up any lowbies I help with their very own bags and a little pocket money.
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I first started playing bc one of my professors talked about it in class. I got the game and passed her in level rather quickly (I probably played 4 hours for her 1 hour). I wasn’t too far from the starting area, getting the quests in Razor hill and trying to kill guards. Another player around my level was also on the quests. I really didn’t know anything about the game at this point and it was helpful to follow someone who knew where to go and what to do. He was on a new alt, but had a level 60 and he invited me into his guild. It was absolutely the best thing that happened to me. I learned a lot about the game and how to play from people in that guild. One of the kindest people in the guild is still a friend of mine in WoW several years later, and we have even server moved together.
Whenever I see someone (on the same side) dying, I always try to help out. I like to give bags and gold away to lowbies too. I know how it’s like to understand nothing or not know where things go, so I try to answer questions I see when paying attention to chat. I think the greatest part of this game is the social interaction and helping others.
Generally the most I give people is my time. Helping in quests, in an instance, by doing farming for Primals that they might need. I donate to my guild often. I’ve been known to help out random people by joining in and helping to take down an enemy. I treat everyone as my friend until they do something to change that.
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Lovely post. I never get tired of reading kindness stories. I do disagree though about the statment that the WoW population generally is rude. You’ll find a comment about it on my blog here:
http://larisamage.blogg.se/2008/june/is-the-wow-population-really-rude.html
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I’d like to think I’m a nice person, but I can’t recall any incidents where I helped out a person. I don’t think it’s because I didn’t do anything nice. It’s probably because I forget about it and consider kindness as something that I do in passing. I don’t remember it so that I can boast about it.
Back when I was in STV, I had a bit of problem dealing with the nagas on the western coast. A druid came to help and we did several quests together. He was several levels higher than me and I think just farming a few things. We managed to find a rare mob that dropped a nice green necklace. After an hour or so, we parted ways, and he said I could add him to my friends list. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen him since.
Last night, I rolled an alt on a fresh server. The normal buffs are passed around between people in the starting zones. Then out of the blue when I was levelling, a JC gave me a ring she had just crafted. I was really surprised since that’s never happened to me from a stranger.
I remember back when I was a low level warrior, always asking high levels and such what I should do, what spec, what items, etc. I remember reaching a certain level, and there was this insanely good weapon that I was too poor to buy, (and I was a warrior, so I had really needed an overdue upgrade). I was asking around for just a gold, because I had earned 99% of the rest myself, but most of the higher levels shrugged me off, told me to go f*** a goat, something like that. There was this one kind level 70, which I will never forget his name, he gave me the money I needed, and more!
So now whenever a lowbie asks for advice, I’ll gladly give them some of my time, even when questing with my curfew coming up. And if any lowbie asks me for an amount that’s reasonable, I’ll hand them double, sometimes triple what they had asked for.
One high level had changed the way I played forever. I figured I’ll try to spread that same kindness.