Willful Ignorance, or How I Wasted My Time Today

So I was idly badgehunting on my level 30 Tanker when I got a tell from someone I didn't know. He says: "Hey." "Want to team?" and then sends me an invite without waiting for reply. That's a minor pet peeve of mine, but the guy managed to use real words and punctuation, so I'm counting my blessings. I accept. The guy is a level 32 Storm/Dark Defender and in Atlas Park.

Me: Hey. So what's the plan?
Him: i dunno
Him: i just reactivated my account
Me: Oh, okay. I have a few things we can do. You need any help with anything, have any questions?

< 10 minutes of silence >

Me: You still there?

< 20 minutes of silence, in which I resume my badgehunting figuring he'll time out >

Him: yea
Him: i got 48 tailor seesions
Me: Yeah, when the Devs give out freebie tailor sessions you get one for each costume you have, so after a while you get a lot of them.
Him: im used to WoW
Me: k
Him: its hard to find quests
Me: In WoW?
Him: in this game
Me: Oh. Not really - what are you having trouble with?
Him: find missions and the being to weak to finish them
Me: You may need to respec. How long have you been gone?
Him: oh yea i was about to respec
Him: but then i thought the defender class was weak in general
Me: As for finding missions, there's a couple easy ways to do that. Probably easiest, simplest way is Police Scanner
Me: Eh, if you're going for DPS, then yeah. On the other hand, buffs and debuffs are huge in this game, so overall it's one of the stronger ATs. All-Defender teams flatten everything

I may have shown my Defender bias a little here, but the closest thing I have to a main these days is probably either my Warshade or my Rad/Rad Defender, both of whom have soloed for literally hundreds of hours. Also, the tendency to just label entire classes as 'teh weak' irks me since at least in this game it just isn't so.

Me: So anyway, I can show you how to get missions if you want. Or we can just run a few of mine, I'm good either way
Him: ok
Him: if you have one

Note: I have three missions, he has two.

Him: im gonna respec
Me: Looks like you have some too, so we can do yours if you want. I was working on getting my cape and auras unlocked
Me: Okay. You just going to use a freebie? Probably have one if you've been gone a long time
Me: You know about ED? Not sure how long youv'e been away, enhancement bonus caps changed around Issue 6
Me: Hmm, guess you already started with your respec. Hopefully you know.
Him: dimishing returns?
Me: Yes, that's basically it
Me: In simplest terms, you get diminishing returns after three of the same SO-strength enhancement. I won't get into Inventions to keep it simple.

Him: well the city of villains population is diminishing it seems
Me: CoV has always had less of a following that CoH, but since they merged the games a while back most people play both.
Me: But you're right, generally speaking there are more people playing hereoes at any given time
Him: can we level up by doing something
Me: Yes, missions are the best way overall. Task Forces are better but you need more people and several hours for those and at this time we'd have trouble finding them

Him: can we do an AE with lot of easy enemies
Me: I guess, though that's kind of boring. So you basically just want to farm?
Him: fastest way?
Him: to level
Me: Fastest way to level up, overall, would be to hook up with a high-level farmer and have them powerlevel you.
Me: Of course you'd then be a high-level person who knew nothing about the game, so if I were you I'd at least catch myself up before I did that. But it's your character.
Him: i dont know anyone

Around this time he passes me the star. We enter my mission, which I've set. It's the new cape mission, which I figure will be a good easy start for us and give him something he probably hasn't seen before to look at. We clear it easily.

Me: You could always try posting on the forums in the Victory Server section
Me: I don't have any farming characters on this server myself
Him: is there any pvp at level 50
Me: Yes, though a lot of PvPers left because of changes to PvP not long ago
Him: i was thinking of more coming from the endgame
Me: But you can still find some, especially if you go to the scheduled events
Me: Unlike WoW, this game isn't centered on the endgame much at all
Him: more on the generic werehouse missions?
Him: thats bad

Okay, at this point it sort of seems like he's already decided not to like the game, but I give it my best shot at answering his questions as best I can. I've spent this much time and I'd hoped maybe to explain some of the appeal of the game, at least for me.

Me: More on the Task Forces and story content
Him: game sucks before i even get all of my powers
Me: I guess, if you want to look at it that way. Or you could say WoW sucks 'cause you have to get to the end to start playing
Him: so the levleing is the boring part
Him: and its pointless to level
Me: I'd disagree with the boring part, but there's not a huge big thing at 50, no
Me: There's PvP, and if you go for the high-end there's a lot to do there with IOs, but if what you really want is PvP/ganking with high-end gear then this isn't the game.
Me: That may change in the future, they're overhauling PvP now, but probably the majority of players don't PvP much

Him: you mean there is strategy to this coh pvp
Him: wows has better numbers
Him: for more depth
Me: Yes, there is. Powers work differently in PvP, travel poers suppress, there's heal decay- it's mostly balanced aroudn teams
Me: You mean population? Yeah, I know. That's what happens when you're made by Blizzard.
Him: like better number calculator
Me: I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Him: wow has better real time strategy

Better real time strategy? For a moment I wondered if he had his Warcraft games confused. I think he meant real-time tactics in PvP.

Me: Okay, I'll take your word for it. Hated WoW personally.
Me: But I know people that play both it and this game
Him: this game is better visually
Me: I think the costume creator is still one of this game's best features, and with graphics overhaul coming in the new expansion it's going to be amazing
Me: If all you really play for is high-end PvP though, I think you may not be happy with the game as it is now. Most people focus on PvE. If you think that's boring, you might be bored a lot
Him: whats good about the pve

Him: the missions get repetitive
Me: Well yeah, but that's true in any MMO
Me: But there's good story, especially in the TFs, unique maps, new powersets to try, team challenges, badges to earn, costume stuff to unlock
Him: you can end up doing multitiple missions in the same generic warehouse full of baddies
Me: Basically there's lots of cool stuff to see and do. But that's subjective.

And at this point he just logs off. Don't know if he got disconnected or just logged because he wasn't leveling fast enough, or what. I don't think he even bothered to read my answers to his "what's good about the PvE?" question. So he'd pretty much already decided that he was just going to blaze through to 50 so he could PvP with his character that he doesn't know how to slot or play. So that was frustrating.

So why am I posting this? I spent some time trying to help a player get back into the game and instead I got a guy who seemingly had already decided not to like the game. I do wonder if there's anything I might have said (or not said) that would have put a better face on our community, been a better ambassador so to speak. I didn't want to give him a false impression, but I do think I may have convinced him not to bother (or pushed him towards a conclusion he was already planning on making, more likely).

So what would you have said/done differently? I'm curious. And annoyed.

Wow, you have a lot more patience than I do...

So, he's complaining about repetitive missions, but he wants to farm his way to 50?

I'm a little surprised that someone like this would roll a Storm/Dark Defender. You'd have thought he'd roll a Blaster or a Scrapper to start if he was interested in soloing. I guess he probably had no idea about how the ATs work, so he just went with something that sounded cool.

To answer your question, I don't think you could have done anything to convince him CoX was the game for him.

Justaris, you did just fine. He didn't seem to care much, and you showed a lot more caring than you needed to, probably. I would have quit after he went afk for five minutes, let alone waiting for the 10-20 minutes you did.

I've run into a fair amount of people that were confused about things and helped them out, and they responded positively. This guy was meh from the start. You do what you can and if they don't respond, there's nothing you can do. That's true of working with any people be it via this game, work, teaching, etc.

so he joined a guild in wow, got pled to max level saw the end game and desided that he would come over here and be an AE baby?

I can only sympathize with the generic warehouse comment. That does drive me crazy, but I deal with it. I stop racking my brain over this apparently 1-floor shack in Port Oakes that you walk into and it's like Xibit himself just finished up making it into a mansion with 2 or 3 floors and the weirdest layout for staircases that I've ever seen when it should look like the abandoned labs internally.

Other than that, He/she sounds like they're doomed to forever wander the mmo worlds, always unsatisfied.....