Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, Michael Gray fills in for John Patricelli, to discuss more about mobility for healing Arena Druids.

Allison Robert wrote a pretty solid summary of a Druid's life in PvP as a moving target. This week in Shifting Perspectives, I'm focused on a specific aspect of your life as that moving target. I'm talking about one of the most quintessential Resto-Druid skills in small-group Arena play: Poledancing.

Many Alliance players have this impression that the Horde is constantly united, more cooperative, and generally understands how to play better than the Alliance does. Whether this is true or not is not something I myself can speak for, though I have heard my Horde friends say they have just as many clueless PvP people as the Alliance does.

So perhaps both factions can relate to Mendax's complaint that so many people seem to go into the battlegrounds with no idea how to win, and somehow fail to learn how, even in spite of playing a great deal and getting a lot of good gear. Their tendency is just to go in and lose over and over again, repeating the same old proven-to-fail methods for various reasons: possibly because they don't know anything better, possibly because they don't care anymore, and possibly because they've already identified themselves, their faction, or everyone else in their faction as born losers.

In any case, Mendax thinks that Blizzard should make the battlegrounds themselves reward you for better play, so that the game mechanics themselves encourage you to play in such a way that you're more likely to actually win. First of all, they could provide more honor for kills near contested objectives (such as flags or towers), and secondly, they could deny all bonus honor if you lose. His first idea quite interesting -- I like the possibility that the reward system of the battlegrounds could somehow teach you to play better in itself, if that's really possible. However, while I can understand his reasoning in removing all bonus honor gain for losing teams, I think this would just make the "losers" stop queueing up altogether. We might be happy to get rid of whiners, complainers and all them, but in the end would the increase the waiting time in between battles be worth it? And in any case, would the "losers" really go away, or would they just look for ways to get around the system?

In the battleground matches I've played lately, it seems that somehow the number of people complaining and whining has decreased, even though our faction seems to be losing just as much as before. Instead, the Alliance players I fight with seem almost depressed, as if every match is a torture to them -- they don't shower blame on other people, but instead say things like, "I have a dream that one day we might win a BG," or "Golly, this is horrible, I hate Alliance PvP." They have their heart set on a particular PvP reward, and as soon as they have enough honor or marks, they will heartily abandon their fellow teammates to the sad task of losing to the Horde day in and day out.
It's true that losing isn't fun, and whatever the reasons our side seems to be losing all the time seem quite outside of our control. That's hard no matter which faction you're in. But there is a thing we've all heard about growing up called "good sportsmanship." When we play competitive games with each other, the idea is that we're supposed to enjoy the actual playing of the game more than the winning or the losing. Indeed, as with anything in life, if you get too attached to the outcome of a particular endeavor, you are less likely to do well than one who plays for the love of the game itself.

I've been thinking about this lately because I myself don't want to log on to WoW only to feel like the game is like banging my head against the wall. It has helped a great deal to realize that whatever rewards we get are more like milestones along the path, not really an end in themselves. After all, if I play, it should be because I truly enjoy playing, not because I absolutely must posses some item that will be out of date in a few months no matter what I do. This realization has enabled me to pace myself, so that I don't allow long losing streaks to carry on for hours and ruin a good part of my day. If I'm losing a lot, I can stop and do other things, then come back to it another time with an entirely fresh set of allies and opponents -- and more importantly, a fresh desire to do my best and improve my skills. WoW is supposed to be fun; but if it isn't fun for you anymore -- whatever the reason -- then it's time to either change your approach or do something else.