MMO rules you live by.

I was gonna say something about people who would not team with stalkers so out of hand, but those pugs are just way too cute. You win this thread!

Anyway, I live by different rules in different MMOs. In City of Heroes, I don't really care how my teammates spec or how they play in most of the content because it really doesn't matter. The point is to get together and wreck things up with superpowers.

1) Follow the tank.

2) Don't bail on a group at a bad time. In CoH, that means don't leave in the middle of a TF or trial.

3) Don't grind. That's usually the point at which an MMO stops being fun for me.

When I say 'follow the tank' I mean that literally, get your butt behind the tank, let him take point and get initial aggro. I realize that CoH is easier and more AoE-centric than many MMO's, thus it is much more tolerant of alternative tactics and outright sloppy team play in general, but 'follow the tank' can still be a good idea when the team isn't overpowered for the instance. In other MMO's I've played, when running through tough dungeons, if a squishy class runs ahead of the tank and pulls initial aggro he's apt to die quickly. If the healer tries to keep him alive the healer will often gain heal aggro, meaning the tank now has to pry the mobs off of the healer. I've seen too many team and even raid wipes that happened exactly this way, even caused by people who have played long enough to know better.

So... follow the tank.

• Respect the other players. Everybody has their own idea of what is fun to them and who are we to mock them if we ourselves cannot understand the magnitude of fun that a roleplayer/badger/pvper/base builder/AEer has.
• Make every experience unique in its own way.
• Be true to yourself, dont try to blend in with the crowd.

Personally, I'd go with two things:

1. Wheaton's Law.
2. If you're not having fun, something's wrong.

1.) Golden rule and all of its corollaries that apply to real life......treat people as you want to be treated//leave the place (supergroup stocks) as good, if not better than, as you found it//etc.

2.) The response to any variety of "can I bring my <insert toon>?" is "play what you will have fun with, we'll make it work."

3.) Review badges during any sewer run/DfB to identify new players, then welcome them to the game.

1. I agree with Dechs: if something isn't fun, don't do it. Being miserable for hundreds of hours so you can have a few minutes' worth of fun later is never worth it.

2. Play nice. Insulting somebody else is never worth it. It's pointless, they don't benefit from it, and the drama just expands. Don't do it.

3. If you want to decide what task the team is going to take on, recruit the team yourself, or shut the ____ up. If they did they work of recruiting the team, they get to decide.

4. TGIF: Tanks Go In First. If you want to decide how fast the team moves from spawn to spawn, and what spawns to skip, and what direction the team goes at each intersection, roll a tank or (maybe) a brute and lead from the front. Otherwise, shut the _____ up. Nobody likes a back-seat driver.

5. Blessed are they that expect the worst, because they can be pleasantly surprised.