Why are people so spectacularly bad at playing their classes?

[Repriever]

This thread is kind of inspired by another thread just below about how hard it is to find healers or why people don't want to play them. If you read through this thread you'll find one complaint after another from healers saying they won't do PUGs because of tanks who can't hold aggro, hunters and champions who can't manage their aggro and all manner of complaints about players how simply can't play their chosen class.

So... why should this be? Can I just say firstly that this has always been a problem in MMO's. Some people just won't bother to learn their class at all for one reason or another. It's not a new thing, but in LOTRO in particular I think I can explain why the problem may be more severe.

What happens when you die in LOTRO? What is the penalty? A repair bill? LOL to that. You will NEVER have an MMO where people who learn their class is the norm if there are no consequences to blindly wading through the content without a care in the world and naught but a very minor setback if you die. It's one of the things I really don't like about this game. It may be a casual players dream come true not having to think at all from level 1 to level 65 but for someone who likes to play in groups where everyone knows what they're doing it's an absolute nightmare.

I am not knocking the game here, I have come to love LOTRO despite initial misgivings about the lack of an open community but I really think it's ridiculous to expect good players in a game that pretty much plays itself and doesn't punish you when you die. I'm taking a guess here that most players in LOTRO don't even know what most of their skills do and forget about them as soon as they train them as long as they know what the important DPS buttons are.

Things have changed. Everything has changed. MMO's aren't even worthy of the name anymore they are so solo friendly. So, I guess play with your kinmates and you'll be fine but the days of wandering out into the wilderness and finding a killer PUG are absolutely dead and buried it's never going to happen again in this MMO or any other. Casual and solo play is king.