This is not a question about wipes in general. If the first wipe in a Final Fantasy XIV dungeon happens with a veteran party with plenty of gear because the healer just doesn’t feel like focusing on healing, the first one is exceedingly irritating. If the first wipe happens on an early pull but everyone other than me is new and it’s a tricky dungeon, I’m happy to just explain everything to the group.
No, this is about the wipes you get when your entire World of Warcraft raid group lines up outside the boss, you pull, and… you wipe. And then you get back up, cast your buffs, discuss what happened, and… you wipe again. Third pull, discussion happens again, and the pull happens again and everyone dies a third time. You get the idea.
In other words, this is about the threshold for irritation when the group isn’t just wiping, but wiping repeatedly with little to no indication that you’re actually making forward progress. It can be intensely upsetting if you know that you’re pulling off the mechanics you need to execute but the rest of your party isn’t managing the same task, or if you know you’re screwing up but don’t seem to be able to fix that issue even as you interrogate what you’re doing wrong. So how long does it take before these repeated wipes bother you?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
