I do the same as a healer. If & when I see groups so desperate they’re offering to pay for a healer I will join them and refuse payment 100% of the time. The good karma usually winds up paying more than they were offering anyway.
Someone tried to tip me for helping them with the felwood escort quest. Politely declined. They seemed genuinely surprised that someone didn’t expect something in return. Transactional kindness is a weird concept.
God I fucking hate that tipping has made its way into the game the same way it's creeping into real life.
Someone advertising enchants in game, the usual "FREE 300 enchanting! Tips appreciated!" stuff.
I needed a few and had the mats so hit them up. They did a few enchants for me and I was just checking I had them all when the trade window opens up again. I said "I think that's all just checking". "Ye".
Then I realised, motherfucker was opening trade for his payment. Now... I have no issue paying for people to craft/enchant/whatever. It's fine and when I do things for other people I accept tips as well, but apparently WoW economy has fully embraced US style tipping where "tips appreciated" means "I am pretending this is free but it's not, also instead of just setting a price I'm being ambiguous but don't you dare be cheap".
I'd planned to give him 12g... 2g per enchant. Instead I put in 10 silver and he cussed me out, so I asked him why he was offering free enchants if they weren't free and then he blocked me.
Just drives me up the fucking wall. I sell DMT buffs on my hunter and I put the fucking price in the message when I advertise. Meanwhile chat is full of "free buffs, tips appreciated!" which clearly mean "fucking pay me".
Anyway. That turned into quite the rant. But I hate it.
Even if I'm over-leveled, I legitimatrly enjoy the raid designs for BFD, Gnomer, and Sunken Temple in SoD. If I have the time and nothing else pressing, I'll happily tank or heal just for the lols. Fuck charging for that, I wanna enjoy the good parts of the game without letting myself get bitter about 'efficiency' or whatever.
If you are still leveling though as a tank it can be just about as toxic... at least for LBRS just cause there is such a diverse spread of what people are looking for and it is so dominated by groups waiting to finish filling because they have hard reserves on all the gear worth going to get.
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u/DarthArcanus Feb 25 '25
Meanwhile, I'll scout out LFG, and if a group is looking for a tank for a while, I'll go tank for them, just to help out.
Just because charging for services is becoming the norm doesn't mean you have to go along with the trends.