Suck it up, buttercup.

Indulge me for a moment as I stand on my soapbox and get a little haughty. There's a good chance I may insult you in this post. It's not intentional and it's not personal. I'm going to make a lot of gross generalizations and I'm fully aware that they are not representative of each individual. Just (my view of) the culture as a whole.

Big news floating around this morning is that, come 4.1, Blizzard will be incentivizing tank (and to a lesser degree, healer) queuing in the LFD tool. Why? Because the lack of tanks (and to a lesser degree, healers) in the LFD queues is what's causing DPS to have to sit and wait upwards of 40 minutes to run randoms.

How are they doing this? By offering guaranteed gold, plus chances at gems, flasks/elixirs, vanity pets, and mounts.

Even if you didn't click the link above to read the post, it's easy to see why this could be a controversial decision. And whenever there's controversy on the internet...well, you've been around. You know how it goes. All the armchair designers come out of the woodworks, spewing diarrhea of the mouth about how much it sucks and blah blah blah.

Some of my favorite lines so far have been, "this is an admission of failure," "tanking is not fun," "healing is not fun," and the best, "First make heroic's easier so there are less wipes and problems. Second add an expert level of the dungeons". (Seriously. I lol'd).

Blizzard hasn't failed at anything. That's not to say everything's perfect or ideal or whatever word you want to use. Yes, they have a stated aim to make tanking and healing more desirable and more "fun." But just because you don't think those roles are fun doesn't mean Blizzard has failed. (I, personally, think both roles are fun. I love tanking. And while I haven't healed a lot yet in Cata, I still have a desire to do it more.)

Let's get this straight. I realize not every class and every spec and every role is fun for everybody. I get that. But let's also be honest here. No less than 90% of the people complaining that tanking and healing aren't fun are really saying "tanking and healing require thought and effort, which I can't be assed to put forward. Also, I might actually have to take some sort of responsibility for bad outcomes."

I get it, though. I really do. I enjoy playing my Hunter in groups specifically because it's damn easy. I hit four buttons. Sometimes five. And I light up the meters doing it. The closest I've come to stress was pet-tanking the last 25% of Foe Reaper 5000 with my spirit beast because the tank dropped to Harvest and like hell I was going to start that fight over. (That required six buttons.)

Many DPS are complaining that this shows favoritism to tanks and healers and why don't the DPS get something, too?

You do get something. You get (theoretically) significantly lower queue times. You get a quicker path to your gear upgrades, your (Cataclysm) random mounts, and your VP/JP. You want more? Bummer. You're a dime a dozen. Not in the sense that you're worthless--you're an essential part of a dungeon group, too--but when was the last time you lost a DPS mid-run and had to wait more than three seconds to get another?

How long do you end up waiting when you lose a healer? Or a tank?

Admittedly, I don't think what Blizzard is doing is going to have much impact. It might at first, but then it will wane. I doubt we're going to see an influx of new tanks or healers queuing up. Some of the current ones who don't mind using LFD but just don't do it often may find incentive to use it more, at least until they get all the rewards they want out of it.

I still won't queue as a tank, and probably still won't on my healer. The rewards Blizzard is offering aren't enough to overcome the reason I don't queue on them, which is probably the same reason a lot of other people don't, either: LFD is a minefield of Internet Fuckwads. Every single role.

I despise dealing with the over-inflated egos, the people who still seem to think dungeons should be played like the were in Wrath, and the general hello-goodbye impersonal nature of the whole system.

And here's where I give you DPS a break...tanks and healers are the worst of them. They act like they're Aman'Thul's gift to groups. Like the rest of us are being graced with their time and so we'd better not waste it by not measuring up to their standards. They're only there for the rewards and we're just a means to that end.

And that's the problem with throwing more rewards out there as an incentive. The people who are going to go for that the most are the pushy, arrogant jerks that are only there for the rewards anyway. And the people that don't queue because they don't want to deal with pushy, arrogant jerks? This doesn't do anything for them.

Bottom line, there is no solution to the problem. LFD is an amazing tool, but it has serious flaws that can't be fixed. Because the flaws are the players themselves. You want low queue times and reasonable people to run with? Find a good guild.