The Sha of 'U Mad Bro?'

While out on my leveling to 90 adventures in Kun-Lai Summit I ran across the world raid boss, Sha of Anger.  I understand why they chose to put the anger Sha as the outdoor boss instead of say, the Sha of Doubt or Sha of Despair.  No, I'm sure they chose Sha of Anger for the irony of how angry he would make the playerbase simply by being there.  I have no idea if I'll ever get the chance to be in a raid that kills him this expansion, I simply went over to watch the fight.  This does not bother me, but the thought of not killing him thatverysecond sure did bother everyone else in the zone who was not in that raid group.  I cannot even remember the comments from general chat as they were mostly buried by 'invite for sha raid' 'invite me!!!!' 'lvl 4092 tank invite sha' etc..., but I do know there was a lot of upset people.  The one behavior that I found the worst though, was the people who were advertising invites to the raid, and I can bet you anything they weren't even in the raid that tagged him.

Uh-oh, he Berserked

Didn't end well for me either...

The group I was watching ended up hitting the enrage timer, and completely wiped on their attempt.  To the grand disappointment of the gazillion other people starting up raids to hit him first when he reset, he de-spawned.  This demonstrates the saddest part of all it for me.  No one was routing for the team that was fighting the boss.  No one wanted to be invited to the raid to help kill the guy, they wanted in for themselves.  They wanted their achievement, or a piece of gear for themselves...

Amateur Azerothian (on his GW2 blog) and The Harpy's Nest have written excellent posts about the 'me-me-me' attitude that is so pervasive in WoW right now.  The three of us all played Guild Wars 2 in the month before Mists was released, and I think the bad attitude is being amplified for us by our time spent in Tyria.  Unlike in WoW, everything is shared in Guild Wars.  Farming nodes are collectible by anyone, they are basically phased for each person.  There is no mob-tagging, if you help someone kill a mob they aggroe'd, you get xp and possibly even loot.  This all leads into the multitude of World Bosses on Tyria, and how anyone who helps even the slightest amount gets kill credit.

A world dragon in Guild Wars 2

The amount of effort you put into 'helping' with the world boss determines your loot, not your luck in getting invited to the raid.  You can run around and rez people the whole time and still get a Gold package, in the form of currency, xp, and karma points.  All of the actual loot is a per-person system, much like Blizzard has implemented in LFR.  You might get a shiny new chest piece, or ya might get nothin', but it's up to RNG (random number generator), not Random Nerd Group who doesn't want your stinky shaman to come to the raid.

All of these systems in Guild Wars 2 definitely lead to a more friendly, relaxed environment.  I'm not saying WoW needs to go all hippy-love-fest on us to that extreme.  I do think they should have considered the 'Anger' this Sha of Anger would result in a little more carefully.

A few hours later I came across his corpse, I hope this group didn't have as much trouble.