The Tale of RandySavage and the Consequences of Cross-Realm Play

      Yes this is another post about some of the consequences of cross-realm integration. While there are a lot of good things with cross-realm play, like dungeons are easier than ever, BG queues are shorter, and of course the raid finder there are still consequences that only people who were around before it would know. Back then realms had a well fostered community because you had to find other players in trade chat to organize dungeon runs. This meant that if you were a good player and did your job people would hear and you would get invited to other groups. But if you were bad or a downer this would harm your reputation and you would have a much harder time finding groups. This leads me to the story of Randy Savage that your probably wondering about by now. The story with this one player is a very good example of the consequences of cross-realm play.
      Anyone who played Alliance on Alterac Mountains-US during the beginning of WotLK will know the player I am talking about. RandySavage was a warrior tank who developed some what of a infamous reputation on my server. This player was about every bad player stereotype rolled into one. He was a "troll" in trade chat, he didn't know his class or how to tank, and if offered criticism would get extremely angry and defensive and drop group. It didn't take very long for his reputation to spread around the server and soon people would only invite him to groups at their own peril as he would negative, cocky, and criticize every player in the dungeon/raid when they didn't deserve it. Once is reputation spread he was never invited to groups this kind of thing only happens when a server has a good community. Before the dungeon finder you had to find people for groups so you knew who you were inviting most of the time and knew who to avoid. But now if you get a bad player in a dungeon group you can just kick him or he'll leave and you just sit in your queue for another hoping that they aren't the same. The anonymous nature of these cross-realm tools do nothing to foster a feeling of good sportsmanship because even if they are a pain they will still be able to get another group by just hitting the "join queue" button. Now the dungeon finder and raid finder are great tools that make content more accessible for everyone but I can't help but be a little nostalgic for when servers felt a little smaller and you knew people had farther reaching consequences for their actions.