@SunfallE:

The difference I see when doing ZM stuff is that Speed Clears fail and efficiency wins. For instance, when you, Des, Lun and I were doing Gyala, we didn't wait around much after each individual group kill before moving to the next one. We moved, cleared area, moved, cleared area, snap snap.

That's pretty well the same as happens in any other ZM I've been on. And no, very few (if none) of those groups will wait on you to see if you know what's next. They expect you to know what's next because the vast majority of the players have been there for years and don't really need to figure the maps out any longer. But that's why you learn the map beforehand. If you know what you need to do, you don't need people to wait around and make sure you know what you need to do.

And then again stuff like the Unwaking Waters clear I mentioned was just because we had Spiteful Spirit, Spoil Victor (me; with Rising Bile and Diseased Flesh), Signet of Spirits, a Fevered Dreams mes, and a Fire ele all pumping degen and damage onto Kunnavang as fast as we possibly could. The longest part of that map was literally us walking from the initial mob to the dragon. We bypassed everything else.

I got turned off by PUG's mainly because at first, people were just too damn impatient. Any hint that you were a newbie (which to some of them meant n00b) and you got booted out of the team without being given a chance. After a few times of that I was like... forget this and played mostly on my own (other than with you guys).

Then I got to work with an alliance member who, to be blunt, didn't have their head shoved up their ass, and took the time to help me understand builds better. Not to be elite, but so I could get a better feel for how things worked together.

Combined with stuff I learned from you, Des and Fox... I've had much better luck with PUG's and I've been doing them more often. I still get bad runs, like the one when you were with me, but still, not enough to stop me from trying it.

One thing I've learned is that I don't like Speed Clears. I don't like the Hurry, hurry, hurry mentality. Cause any mistake at all and they rage and get pissed. So though I understand being speedy for zm and zb, I still prefer people who are there to have fun and not "LOLMOARMONEYNAO" or whatever. :p

@Desbreko:

And here I created a monk cause I wanted to understand the class better. I'm even starting to learn how to run a smite build. Heh

The thing about oldies bashing PUGs is that most of our horror stories come from before GuildWiki was widely known, before the official wiki or PvX even existed, before PvE-only skills were introduced, and before skills had split PvE and PvP versions. The game was quite a bit different back then in both difficulty and the skill level of players at large. As such, I very rarely found a PUG that could do better than me alone with my heroes and henchies except for certain things that h/h just suck at, like splitting.

Also...

"no one plays monks for some reason; I would but I'm out of room"

That is exactly why no one plays monks. They play other classes instead and never create a monk. =/

@Allamorph:

lol do your own dirty work 8D

I like reading it because the game sounds like it would be fun to play. ^^

~Sarah

@Miss Anonymous:

Help me beat some sense into the rest of them, then?

=D

I get a crapload of responses back telling me how dead wrong I am

You'll be glad to know then that I didn't read a word of the Guild Wars rambling. :V
No offense, I just don't care. And it probably has something to do with my brothers' tyrannical attitudes when they were playing WoW...

EDIT: But I'd rather you ramble on about MMOs than have depressing stuff happen to you, so there ya go.