Archive digging: Miss Anti-guns

Since I wrote this post back in November of 2005, my readership has exploded, and many of you may have not seen this because it’s buried and didn’t have any of the original pictures in it. It came over from my Blogger.com site and I never bothered with pictures. Please enjoy and let’s get the discussion going again.

I came home and logged in Gitr to run to Desolace so I could get the SM quests that Tox told me about. I got about half-way there and got invited to SM anyway. Sure! I’ll go regardless of quests in my log. We had me, a 26 warlock, 41 hunter, 35 hunter, and a 45 pally. Totally not naming names, but what do you think the strategy should be in SM with 2 hunters, a tank, a healing/tank, and a utility? Hmmm. mmmhumm.. right. That’s what I think: hunters with their long range should pull the mobs by 1s, 2s, or 3s, and let me tank them while the pets and other go freaky on them. What usually happens is that I use my gun and pull around corners into established safe areas to finish off small clumps. So that’s what I was doing, but that’s not the beginning of the story.

Sit down and pull up a better chair. This is a great debate. (*Ayae and Sequoia especially) On the way to SM from Southshore, I had to clear a path at one point and used my gun. I see in chat, “I hate guns.” Fine. I can understand that, however, this is a game with guns. I kept silent, even as another said, “I don’t even have one. I use a bow.” Then we get in there, although separated at the time, and I went in the wrong door because I couldn’t see which one they went in. By the time I got into the right instance the whole hall, and I mean the WHOLE hall is at the beginning end attacking the group. Good Golly Molly! Challenging Shout, Thundering Clap!!! It took about 90 seconds after I got there, but we didn’t wipe. I held my tongue and didn’t chew out the one that pulled an ENTIRE hall and proceeded down the hall to shoot and pull a single target. “I hate guns,” again.
Kill. Bang!
“Stop using the gun.”
“??”
Group leader (pally), “I think you should stop using the gun.”
“Yeah, right. That’s good tactics.” I used it two more times in the courtyard before the hound master.
“STOP using the @##$@$ gun!!!” came the desperate cry.
“Gitr, please stop using the gun. Apparently they have a real problem with guns.”
We went back and forth for a couple of minutes, but in the interests of the guild and not getting kicked from the group, I complied. However the new tactic became pulling with pets, and worse yet, bodies into groups of mobs. It got messy. Screw that, if we’re pulling with bodies, it’s going to be mine so I don’t have to rip aggro off our healer and squishy. I started charging and killing as fast as I could. I didn’t care if the warlock didn’t have any mana, the anti-gun whatever. I had absolutely no sympathy or compassion over the issue at this point, because it should have been disclosed before the instance. In the last room before Doan, I didn’t use any special moves and charged in with full 100 rage. We dropped him in about 12 seconds and called it a night after doling out the drops.

So, my debate is: In an open community, should one person have the right to completly alter the tactics or style of an entire group because of a personal issue? If you have a problems with guns, are you going to play Quake or Doom? Probably not in this person’s case. In hindsight, and removed from the present situation of fighting, I can come to the understanding of one thing: if you were a victim of a violent crime or injurious accident involving a gun, I can understand the sound sending chills up your spine EVERY time you hear it. I can have compassion about that. But what are you doing playing a game with guns? Does she go around asking every hunter out there to use their axe or sword?

Needless to say, this became quite a topic in my daily discussions and I even provoked her again a day or two later: