The PUG Remains the Same

That’s one of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs, on one of my favorite albums, the most excellent Houses of the Holy. The album cover is whack though. The heroin must have been flowing wide and open when they picked that out.

If you don’t play a MMO, PUG stands for Pick Up Group. You PUG when you can’t find a friend or two to help you run a 5-woman or complete an elite quest. It basically involves using the game’s group finding system to track down other people that need to do the same thing you do.

People you don’t know. The root of every PUG evil known to MMO kind.

Most games’ group finding interface suck (including WoW’s and LoTRO’s), so most everyone ignores them in favor of spamming the trade, OOC, or general channel looking for unsuspecting vict--, err, people to help. A precious few use the more appropriate LFG or LFF channel (Looking for Group and Looking for Fellowship, respectively.) But really, it wouldn’t matter if a game’s group interface worked better; a PUG inherently begins life as a turd.

As we all know, you can’t polish a turd.

For a long time, I’ve labored under the assumption that since LoTRO has about 8 million fewer people playing it than WoW, it must attract a more discriminating, perhaps more mature crowd. My first clue this was not the case occurred to me last week when a toon ran by with kinship membership to The Hogs of War (Actually, come to think of it, I really like that name. Maybe I’m just jealous I didn’t think of it first).

Well, I’m here to clarify that Lord of the Rings Online's playing audience is no better than World of Warcraft's. And as far as PUGs are concerned, they stink as bad in LoTRO as they do in WoW. Take last night’s adventure. I finally get done grinding wolves for medium leather pelts (woot, master apprentice tailor!) and set my sights on some fellowship quests in the Lone Lands. This dwarf dude needs me to collect 24 axes from some Dourhand dwarves. What makes this a fellowship endeavor is the fact that most of these Dourhands are elite mobs and come in packs of three to four. They’re ornery as all get out too and don’t part willingly with their axes.

Porting to Ost Guruth, I barely step outside the ruined city when LLF blinks: “LFM Dwarf’s Duty and Sever the Hand. PST.” I’ve already done Sever the Hand, but I PM Jabber telling him I’m in for Dwarf’s Duty.

And this is where PUGs begin to suck.

Most people think that PUGs suck because they can’t get the instance finished or the quest done. And sometimes that is the case. But this PUG sucks because it can’t ever get started. The third dude that joins is still in Bree. He says he’s on his way, but ten minutes later I check the world map and he’s still in Bree. You can’t even read the Lone Lands LFF channel in Bree, so he must of read Jabber’s ad, accepted the invite, and then promptly hearthed to Bree. It takes him another fifteen minutes to finally make it to the Lone Lands.

The fourth and fifth dudes that join promptly ask, “What we workin’ on?” I scroll my chat log up to verify, and yup, sure enough, Jabber did clearly type in the LFF channel “Dwarf’s Duty.”

My god, who joins groups randomly? Without knowing why they’re joining?

These two specimens realize neither one actually has Dwarf’s Duty. They haven’t even done the prerequisite quest, fetching a Dourhand banner. Since toons aren’t exactly beating down our door, we wait while they get that quest done. #3 is still in Bree, so what does it matter.

A half hour goes by and we finally marshal forces and sally forth. We bump into a 28 champion along the way who offers to help and quickly massacre a whole mess of dwarves and collect our 24 axes. At 24/24 axes, #5 wastes no time in leaving the fellowship and hearthing without a word of thanks or adieu. We’re still smack dab in the middle of the Dourhand ruin. I guess he figured we could fight our way out without him.

Which we do. With about 50 million Dourhands chasing us. I felt like Indiana Jones, fleeing the natives for the river and the floating plane. But instead of bamboo darts, I’ve got steel axes sticking out of my ass. We turn the quest in and the remaining five of us agree to tackle the pinnacle of the quest chain, slaying the Dourhand leader. We run back to the Dourhand ruins.

Remember #3? He’s the guy that joined the fellowship than proceeded to do some window shopping in Bree. Well, we no sooner arrive at the ruins when he says in fellowship chat, “Oh, my armor just arrived in mail. Brb.” Yup, he proceeded to run all the way back to Ost Guruth to pick up his parcels. Fifteen minutes later, we plow into more dwarves, kill the leader, and complete the chain. Upon the fellowship arriving safely in town, I leave the group after saying a friendly goodbye I didn’t mean.

Across MMOs, no matter their popularity or pedigree, the PUG remains the same.