Friday Five

1. Amen, sister. Seriously, great article.

2. I am working on a post about Pox Arcanum, more reflecting on the whole experiment than describing what we’ve been doing lately. So, briefly, what we’ve been doing lately: we’ve just passed level 30 and will take on the Scarlet Monastery Library next week. It will be our second assault, as we didn’t get much past Loksey the first try. Last week, we did some general quest clean-up (including class quests) and have all trained in our level 30 skills, so I think we’ll get much further this time.

3. Horde side, I’ve been spending time leveling my Blood Elf frost mage, and farming a lot of thorium to level up her jewelcrafting. Over the last week, it’s gone from 210 to 278, so I’m making good progress! I’ve been feeling more mage-y than hunter-y lately, so my level 70 hunter hasn’t gotten much attention this past week. I did take her out for a few quests one night though and got her revered with Cenarion Expedition. She now has the Glyph of Ferocity, just in time for a Kara run this weekend!

4. Alliance side, my Sidhe Devils fire mage has hit level 30. I’m still feeling slightly lost over there. Horde side, I know the drill, I know where all the instance quests are, and my battle plan for proceeding through them is set and well-practiced. She’s been through Deadmines and Stockades, but I haven’t really spent much time looking up the set of quests for Gnomer… instead, I’m just leveling. I would like to get her to 70 so I can play with the cool kids. (Oh, and BBB. )

5. I’ve been feeling a bit more focused in the game lately, less inclined to play lots of alts, though I create them. I want to gear up my hunter a bit, and run Kara with the guild. I want to get my frost mage to 70, and will likely make her my main when Wrath arrives (if not before). My priest still sits at 50, but she’s the only other horde side alt I suspect I’ll be putting effort into. Alliance side, I really am enjoying the fire mage. And that’s pretty much all I’m playing at the moment (and I don’t think the priest really counts). Believe it or not, this is pretty focused for me!

Same Faction Ganking?

My husband’s Alliance bank alt was in Stormwind this morning, when he was unexpectedly killed by someone in his own faction. He wasn’t flagged, he hadn’t agreed to a duel. He was just puttering about in the AH and the next thing he knew, he was being asked if he wanted to release his spirit. (A level 70 Gnome warrior standing by said “bwahaha,” so at first he thought he was responsible, but it may be that he was laughing because he survived the blast.) As it turns out, there is an exploit, typically used by shamans with their fire totems, that allows you to kill someone in your own faction. Because of the way it’s done (and I will not post that here), it will only kill them if they are a low level toon because it requires that they be killed in a single blast from the totem.

This is clearly not something Blizzard intended to allow and it’s been reported in several places, including a few threads in the official forums. I did some searches this morning (carefully, because if you put “exploit” in the search terms, you get some rather shady-looking, potentially keylogger-laden hits), and it seems that as often as people are reporting that they got ganked by someone in their own faction, there are others begging for it not to be reported because they like to use the trick to kill goldspammers. You know, it’s funny… I did notice quite a few dead goldspammers on the ground in Ironforge this weekend, and I thought for a moment that maybe a GM actually did something to zap their characters or accounts. For as many times as I report those bastards, I’ve never seen their corpses around, so these caught my eye. But now it makes a bit more sense… I’ll bet they were killed by other players.

I’m sure this exploit will be fixed, just like the similar ones that came before it (snake traps, infernals, etc). Each time such an exploit is found and fixed, some of the player base interprets it as Blizzard’s support of goldspammers. I disagree. I think it’s Blizzard instead protecting the legitimate player who would be targeted by a bored shaman while their lowbie bank alt is checking the price of leather in the AH. Some players have not only asked that this exploit remain in the game, but that there be more options given to players so that they can take the law into their own hands and gank the goldspammers and botters. Again, while it would be great to be able to buy a nice “Shut Up Balm” (or “Bomb” maybe) to apply to a goldspammer so he can’t say anything else, I just don’t think Blizzard can trust its players to target only “the bad guys.”

The one thing I can’t decide now is whether I’d report someone if my bank alt was caught in the blast. I’ve read that players can be banned for using this exploit. (Just a 3 hour ban, but a ban nonetheless, and a flag on their account.) I think I would, but maybe it would depend on how many goldspammers they managed to take out. Maybe I should get some better armor for my bank alt?

EDIT: From what we’ve heard and read since I first posted this, it seems very unlikely that the Gnome warrior who killed him. Instead, it was probably a shaman that had logged out, so I massaged the text above to remove blame from the Gnome.

Stampede!

Last Saturday night, I did the Running of Da Bulls, hosted by BRK and Ratshag on the Cenarion Circle server. It was initially proposed after the great success of the Gnaked Gnome Race, and then after their guildmate Sharvan passed away, it was determined that the bulls would run in her honor. And so we did… /moo!

It was quite an impressive turnout! I logged on about 45 minutes before start time and found the Tauren starting area loaded with racers, many of them sporting purple shirts. Within five minutes or so, I was added to a raid group.

I ran around, looked at all the names folks had chosen, and watched people duel. Those who weren’t dueling were mooing, dancing, and jumping up and down. All in all, it was very similar to the scene before the Gnaked Gnome race (but with more mooing).

I caught up with The Game Dame when she logged in and we managed to find one another in the herd.

We met up in vent, along with Dammerung, and mused at all the craziness. It was really fun to chat with them throughout the race, too. Everything was flying by in the chat window so quickly, I don’t think we would have been able to communicate at all that way!

Here we are getting ready to start the race, plus a classy exchange between some racers that I was lucky enough to capture. Someone also had a theory about how to reduce lag, but I don’t think it would have helped…

You can see here that someone was very concerned about the official starting line. Hehe… you definitely don’t want to be at the front of the pack for this race, dude.

And, they’re off!

It was very laggy, much more so than the gnome race. I usually have 60 fps, and was down to 20 or so. What was interesting was that my graphics were still smooth (I wasn’t getting the slide show effect), but all the people around me were gliding. There were times it seemed like I’d pulled away from the pack and was running (dangerously!) by myself, and then the other racers around me would all slide back into view at the same time.

We made it all the way through the Barrens to Durotar, where we crossed diagonally through the raptor and scorpion infested area, heading directly toward Orgrimmar. It was cool to see Orgrimmar appear on the horizon…

…but I only had a second to enjoy it because the zeppelin was already there! Aaahhhhh! Ruuuun!!

I ran up the ramp as fast as I could, but just missed it. Durnit.

So close!! It was pretty funny to watch the mass of Taurens grow as the racers behind us caught up. I also just noticed that in this first shot below, you can see the ultimate winner of the race laughing at those that missed the first boat. Hehehe…

A few minutes of mooing, jumping, and dueling later, the next zeppelin finally arrived, and off we went!

We hopped off the boat and into the darkness of Tirisfal Glades to try to catch up with the first pack. (And thanks, Surgee, I’ll be singing that song all day long now. )

Aaaand that’s when I made my fatal error. Most of the pack stayed on the road, but for some stupid reason, I decided to follow the small group of racers that veered left to take the shortcut through the water. I managed one last screenshot as I swam toward my death…

I realized I’d made a huge mistake, but held the small hope that the hungry pirahnas (or frenzies, or whatever they were) would be preoccupied with the racers ahead of me, and that I’d be allowed to pass by, but there just weren’t enough racers to feed them before I got there. So, I got eaten by a fish. He finished me off in about three bites. The rest of my race looked like this!

(And a note about that last shot — I snagged it because I wanted to catch the funny name of the runner that had just died there, but I also captured a bit of the general chat. There were a few people being annoying and spamming the general chat, and when someone asked them to stop, the first person there issued his opinion on the matter, while the second person just kept spamming those phrases. Continuously.)

I ran all the way to the finish line, but it looked pretty quiet since I was a ghost. Other folks have gotten some great shots of the area by the finish line loaded with dancing Taurens in purple shirts, but this is all that I saw.

I didn’t stay on for the raid to Ironforge because we had some guests over, but it sounded like it was a blast. There are a lot of great screenies out there, and you can catch some of the later shenanigans in this wonderful video put together by Wincefish: Running of Da Bulls. (It’s not Rick Astley, I promise.)

Anyway, even though I didn’t officially make it to the finish line in this one, it was great fun, and a nice tribute to Sharvan. I didn’t know her, but from what I’ve heard, she would have thought the whole thing was very funny. /moo!

Tremendous thanks to BRK and Ratshag for coordinating and hosting this event! I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with next…

An update of sorts

I’m still sorting through the pile of screenshots I took from Saturday’s Running of the Bulls for Sharvan, and will hopefully have those posted soon…

Posting here may slow down a bit over the next couple weeks, because I’m realizing how much of my work day it’s actually taking up. I get a few work-related things going (sometimes), make myself a cup of coffee, and start hammering out a blog entry, occasionally pausing to read other blogs or look for podcast updates. Of course I tab away when someone comes to chat with me or ask me something, but I do almost no work until the blog entry is done. Sometimes, given all the distractions and interruptions, this is as late as noon. The rest of the day flies by, and next thing I know, the whole week is gone. One could argue that the game itself also interferes with certain things getting done in the evenings, but the more urgent situation at the moment seems to be the way the blogging and reading about WoW during the day is interfering with my getting work done.

So, I’m going to cut back on all this a bit. I’ll still be posting a couple times a week, as things occur to me. My blog is intended more as a record of progress and events than a resource to the community anyway, so in the end I suppose it will really only be my loss.

Ok, time to get to work.  Back later!

Readings for your Thursday

Some of my favorite posts from this week…

Mythbusting: 1-70 in a Day, by A Dwarf Priest. I can’t wait to see what he does next in this series. (Enjoyable blog all around, too.)

Omigawd! App drama ftw!11!!! from the Big Bear Butt, a confessed Drama Llama. I’m totally with him on this. Bring on the schadenfreude. I loves it. I don’t like drama or idiocy in my guilds, but I totally enjoy watching others’ dramas, the same way that some people sekritly enjoy stirring things up in Trade Chat.

The Big Bear’s most recent ‘Shifting Perspectives’ column at WoW Insider was also awesome. I suspect my next Sidhe Devil might be a drood!

It’s a bit more than a week old, but I really enjoyed this post by Lifebloomer, about how the server going down may have, in a larger sense, saved their raid. GG Instance Server!

Why Do you Play? over at The Egotistical Priest. I’ve been considering the same question, given how much I’ve been playing lately, and have come to the same conclusion.

The Goblin in the Tuxedo: Why War and AoC are awesome, at Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog. I realize that much of the post is actually the writing of someone called Barbryn who posted her thoughts in the official WoW forums, but generally, I really enjoy reading what these guys have to say. They’re part of a circle of bloggers separate from the usual WoW folks, though some of them do play (or have played) WoW. They blog more about MMOs in general, and given that WoW is my first (and only) MMO, I find it all fascinating. They often play in the open (and closed) betas for new games coming out, and I like the way all the blogs play off each other. I know I’m going to miss some goodies, but also check out pΘtshΘt, Hardcore Casual, Common Sense Gamer, Ancient Gaming Noob, Journeys with Jaye, and of course, Tobold. (Many of these folks have podcasts over at the Virgin Worlds Collective, too.) I don’t always agree with them (mainly because I’m still very happy with WoW and have zero interest in EVE Online), but the exchanges always make me think.

Groups of Words got some attention from WoW Insider on one of their recent funny posts, but they’ve got some great insights as well. Their recent musings on The Downside of Endgame Guilds hit pretty close to home.

And one final non-WoW post from Doomilias at A View from Behind. Behold, “Xtra Cheese.” Hilarious.

All your mutton chop are belong to us

(Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!)

The Purple Pox team kicked the collective butt of the inhabitants of Gnomeregan last night. Srsly.

This was my first time in Gnomer, and though I’d heard many terrible things about it, I didn’t think it was so bad. Maybe I’d grow to hate it if I pugged it a few times. It does seem to be a place where things could get out of control, particularly if the alarm bots weren’t disposed of quickly enough. As Horde, we didn’t have all the quests with the punchcards either, so maybe those are annoying, too.

Our biggest challenge wasn’t the mobs, it was finding our way around. The layout was a bit confusing and we had to do some wandering to find some of the last bosses, as well as the escort quest. There appeared to be plenty of opportunities for me to fall off of things and potentially aggro the rest of the instance, but I managed not to walk off any ledges (this time). When we were starting the final escort quest, I thought, “Oh great! This guy will just lead us out.” Uh, no … he wanted to follow us out. Doh!

But, we made it out. No wipes, no pulls that we couldn’t handle… are we just too good?

Most of the stuff that dropped just got sharded, though I think Wara did come away with an upgrade. The quest reward for ‘Rig Wars’ was a nice upgrade for me: Triprunner Dungarees. They also seem better than the pants I picked up in RFK that I still can’t wear yet because I’m only level 28. Heh… Oh! And did I mention that there were mutton chops?! Plus, accusations of some mutton chop ninja-ing. Were there screenshots? Did it happen? /rumor! /innuendo! /dramaz!

Also see:

Gnomer is gnot bad!

…That was it?

I’m a Griefer

My horde guild organized a raid on some Alliance towns last night. It was advertised as a blood drive (hee hee), and our plan was to march to Darkshire, stir up trouble by killing NPCs (and whoever else stood in our way), and if nobody came to defend, we’d move on to Redridge Mountains and Lakeshire. We went in hopes of the Alliance drumming up some defense and giving us a good fight. There were even plans of planting someone in Stormwind to alert folks to come defend if the message did not get out on its own.

There were 13 of us, mostly 70s but a few folks in their 60s and one very brave level 38 hunter. We laid waste to Darkshire and cleared out two of the buildings, and kept killing guards as they respawned to keep the local defense messages flowing. Just a few Alliance players showed up, and some even flagged, but they were no match for our small army. We ended up chasing them down, through the buildings in some cases, and all in all, it was really fun. After a few rounds of this, we decided to look for a better matched fight and moved on to the next zone.

At first, our march was slowed by respawning guards in Darkshire, but after we got further from town, were slowed by a rogue who would randomly sap folks in the raid. It was amazing. He didn’t attack, he just stealthed up, sapped, and the person would say “He got me!” and we’d all laugh about it and try to find him. We had a few hunters with us, so when he unstealthed at one point (don’t know if someone managed to tag him with a trap or whether he was just running off), we were able to get him. It was awesomely fun for us, and I’ll bet he got a charge out of it, too. Made me want to level my rogue!

Some unflagged Alliance 70s caught up with us, and marched with us to Lakeshire. We killed some NPCs (including the gryphon master), and then tried to fortify at the end of the bridge near town. When the Alliance got a sizeable group toegher, they all flagged up and the real fight began. We were on the side of the bridge near town, and they were coming at us from across the bridge. A second group of them attacked us from the side, coming from town, so we moved up the hill a bit. That’s when the guards stormed us. Between all the guards and the growing number of Alliance 70s, they eventually obliterated us all, but lemme tell ya… it was FUN. It was a great fight. At that point, we decided to unflag and wait before resurrecting because a bunch of folks had to log off, and with no reinforcements coming, there was no way we’d get our bodies back anyway.

While we were waiting, one of the funniest moments of the night… There was an gnome called Bilbo wandering unflagged along with the group, just watching. He’d been lingering since we were in Duskwood and we were all hoping he’d flag up so we could kill him, just because of the name violation. When we were all standing there in ghost form, he finally got the nerve to flag up!! One of our shamans seized the opportunity. He quickly resurrected, killed Bilbo, and was of course destroyed in short order by the 20 other Alliance standing by, but he said it was totally worth it. Hee hee hee… many chuckles in vent over that one.

Mr. Ess didn’t come along for the raid, but he watched a bunch of it, and this morning we were talking about it a bit more. He said that I had to acknowledge that while it may have been fun, what we did was griefing.

“Well, that wasn’t our intent,” I explained. “We were looking for a fight.”

“But you have to admit it was griefing.”

“We were hoping to get something going with some 70s that showed up. We weren’t killing the NPCs just to make the lives of the lowbies difficult.”

“Yes, but that’s still what you did. That’s griefing.”

I recounted the time he and I were in Thousand Needles, standing at that little camp, getting ready to turn in a quest when Night Elf druid passing by smoked the NPC in one shot with his moonfire, waved to us, and rode off. Now THAT is griefing. Mr. Ess said I had to admit what we did was griefing, too, or else I’d be a hypocrite. What about the folks that wanted to use the gryphon master in Lakeshire?

“Ok, it wasn’t our intent to grief anyone, but I can understand if people felt griefed by what we did.”

“That’s like saying you’re sorry if someone was offended. Not quite the same as saying you’re sorry.”

“I definitely don’t feel bad about what we did. We had fun, and I think the other folks that showed up to fight did, too.”

“That’s fine, as long as you admit it was griefing.”

Gah.

Ok, fine. Last night, we undoubtedly griefed somebody, intentionally or not, so that made us griefers. I was part of that group, so technically, I am a griefer. Fair enough.

It is interesting to think about though… I still believe intent should be considered, but maybe that’s just me defending my actions. I think there’s a difference between intentionally trying to make another player’s life difficult and what we did last night. I can hear in my brain the level 15 me standing there in the Crossroads saying, “Why can’t those Alliance *&#^@#’s go roll on a PvP server instead of hassling us?” I can see now that maybe they weren’t trying to inconvenience us, they were just hoping to get some defense out there for some world PvP. They don’t want to PvP all the time, as on a PvP server, just a taste now and then. Take out the NPCs to alert the opposite faction to your desire for some bloodletting, and wait for the defense to show up. Why not go pick on someone your own size? You want NPCs that are easy to kill… you want the focus to be fighting the opposite faction, so you pick an area where you can swat the respawning NPCs like flies.

It’s not for everyone, I suppose, but I can see both sides of it now. And, I’m sure that wasn’t the last raid on an Alliance town that I’ll participate in. Apparently, I do like to partake in a little bit of griefing, even if my intentions aren’t mean. It’s fun! Sorry, Alliance.

Lovely non-pugs

The weekend recap continues…

There was the one poopy pug I mentioned yesterday, but I managed several guild runs over the weekend as well, with both my Horde and Alliance toons.

I ran Deadmines twice with the Sidhe Devils. The first shot at it was Thursday night (not really weekend, but I took part of Friday off, so it felt like it!), with Waldorph (Mr. Ess) and Wulfa, and we were later joined by Dax. Waldorph tanked, Wulfa healed, and my fire mage burninated. Our three man assault was pretty slow and I had to stop and drink a lot, but we did pretty well, I thought. It was really fun to finally play with a different poxer, too! I still enjoy Pox Arcanum, but most of us agree that it didn’t quite turn out how we thought. One of the bummers about it is that we really don’t interact much with poxers outside of our teams. (Could write a whole post on this, I suspect, so I’ll just stop right there for now.) Anyway, Wulfa did great with the healing, and it was Waldorph’s first shot at tanking in an instance! /cheer ! He was awesome, though he said it’s hard for him to see stuff sometimes because he’s a gnome. I have a habit of running over to look at the pull, too, and would often block his view, too. (Oops.)

We were able to pick up the pace quite a bit when Dax brought in his hunter, and we made it all the way out to the pirates and Mr. Smite. Unfortunately, I fell in the water during that fight. Long story short, I cast a poorly placed frost nova, grabbed some aggro, Wulfa bubbled me, and as I was running along the pier toward Waldorph, I fell in… *splash* There were some little goblin dudes in the water that followed me as I swam back around, so I arrived at the fight bringing a bit of extra chaos with me, and … wipe. It was getting late, and it had taken us long enough to get there that there would be respawns, so we just decided to call it and try again later with a full group. It was super-fun though.

Friday night, we managed to get a group of five together. Again, it was Waldorph tanking, me with my mageness, Nas on heals, and Palintera and Feralicious bringing teh drood awesome. This time we managed to kill Mr. Smite (and I managed not to fall in the drink), but as we were making our way up to the second level of the ship, we accidentally pulled the patrolling baddies above. I didn’t type “uh-oh” fast enough (we should really get on vent next time!), so Waldorph pulled the next set of mobs, and then Nas lagged out … pretty much the perfect storm. Only Palintera and I were able to get to the wheel fast enough to get away from the mob of baddies that descended upon the group. When our other three party members re-entered the instance, there were respawns. Waldorph said that they were respawning just slightly faster than the three of them were moving forward, too, so we just decided to call it. We’ll get you next time VanCleef!!!! I’m really looking forward to running more stuff with the Sidhe Devils, too. Great bunch of folks.

Saturday morning, Horde side. There were a couple of 70s around, including our GM who has not been on much lately since his son was born. He said he had time for a short instance, so folks decided we should run Black Morass. I’d just recently been in Old Hillsbrad for the first time to pick up the pattern for the Riding Crop for my leatherworker, but that’s been my only experience in any of the Caverns of Time instances. When the group found this out, they suggested we run Old Hillsbrad, too! I won’t give a play by play, but in short, those are really stinkin’ cool instances. Part of it is that I think Thrall is awesome, and any interaction with him always makes a quest cooler, in my opinion. (I think he’s one of the reasons I like playing Horde so much, even though he is a bit of a noob.) Black Morass is pretty nifty, too. The Hourglass of the Unraveller dropped, and I won the roll for it. I felt kind of bad about this because one of my guildmates there was apparently doing the run specifically for that item, and it was his 15th shot at Black Morass to get it. Part of me wishes that I’d just passed on it since it was my first time in the instance, but it really was a huge upgrade for me and that is the nature of the random roll. Any time he wants to run that instance again, I will go!

Anyway, it’s been great to have so many cool people to play with lately. I’m starting to feel like I’m spreading myself a little bit thin, but it is very nice to have options. If something isn’t fun, there are potentially three other fun places to play.  Guild hugs all around!

Ah, Pugs

My little undead warlock has fallen behind the rest of the alts in the new guild a bit, so on Sunday, I took her around to pick up the quests for RFC. Someone in the guild mentioned a possible run, but I decided to go ahead and look for a pug to get a potentially more level-appropriate group together. (I could run it again with the guild later.) I really want to learn to play this class, and if other people are blasting the mobs into oblivion before I can get my second DoT up, it’s not going to get me anywhere. Plus, between guild runs and pox adventures, I haven’t run with a pick up group in ages. So, on Sunday morning, as soon as I had all the quests, I popped into the LFG and found a mostly formed group! Woo!

Within 10 minutes or so, folks were heading toward the stone. We had a warrior, two druids, and a hunter. I summoned my imp, passed out healthstones and elixirs, and crossed my fingers for cloth drops. The warrior actually hadn’t made it into the instance yet when we went in, but everyone else seemed unconcerned so we proceeded without him. One druid tanked, the other healed. We plowed forward, no marking, just the steamroller approach. Sort of.

Our DPS was reasonably high, but rather unfocused. The hunter kept drawing aggro (often firing his first shot right before both his pet and the tank reached the mob), but rather than run toward the tank, he ran away. “If you draw aggro, please run toward the tank,” I said. “Im kiting,” he said. Uh… this isn’t the time for that. But, he did it again and again. I didn’t want to sound like a jerk, but I said again that he should really run toward the tank. “Hes kiting,” said the other druid. “Yeah,” I said, “away from the tank so he can’t get aggro back, and probably out of line of sight of the healer, too.” I told him that it is good grouping technique to run toward the tank so that the tank can get aggro back. No dice. This hunter was not interested. What an idiot. If you’re out in the wilds by yourself, kiting is fine, but I don’t think that was appropriate in this situation.

The warrior eventually showed up and started tanking as well, so we two-tanked (or three-tanked, if you count the “kiting” hunter) our way up the hill to Oggleflint. We killed him, and just as I was saying, “hey, good job folks,” somehow, someone aggroed every remaining trogg in the instance. “RUN RUN RUN,” someone said. I almost made it out, but they got me right by the door. Doh! Apparently someone got too close to the edge somewhere (though I’m not sure where), and we were ambushed by about 20 angry troggs. It was actually kind of funny.

We moved along pretty speedily after the corpse run. We plowed through the cultists to Taragaman the Hungerer, who dropped Crystalline Cuffs. These were a huge upgrade for me since my other ones were like Flax Cuffs, or some such starting area reward. As the greed rolls went by, I said, “those would be an upgrade for me, may I roll need?” “Yes, that’s how it works,” said the warrior. Well, I always like to ask so nobody gets pissy…

And the need roll was won by … one of the druids??? “Sry,” he said. “I didnt have a bracer.”

/sigh

So lame. But, whatever. Onward.

We were going up the hill toward Jergosh, and had a few pulls where we took on more mobs than we initially bargained for due to aggro radii and so forth. “I need mana, please wait a sec,” I said before we went in to get him. “Use ur wand,” said the warrior. “I can do better damage if I use curses and spells,” I said. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. What a charming group of individuals.

We killed Jergosh and then wandered up to kill Bazzalan. Someone knew a shortcut to him that I’d never seen before, so at least I got something positive out of this pug.

I was telling my guildmates about the whole thing after, and one of them was saying, “Well, were any of them in guilds?” No. “Did you tell them what the loot rules were up front?” No, I rarely do this. “Maybe they have no one to teach them?” This may be true. This is RFC, after all, which is the first instance ever for many folks. And was it the most horrible group I’ve ever played with? Definitely not. In fact, of the things that bothered me, the one that bothered the most was the last thing, the guy that would not wait for me to get my mana back. Obnoxious.

I took two things away from this experience…

One is that even if a dungeon is low level, I still believe it’s worth doing right. It happened sort of here, but more specifically in previous pugs — I hate it when someone suggests something that is reflective of good grouping technique, and someone else says, “It doesn’t matter, it’s just __(low level dungeon)__.” That’s the first thing that bit about not stopping for my mana regen said. To me, it does matter how the dungeon is approached, even if it’s a forgiving, low level dungeon. Not only does it help me practice good technique, it can teach others good grouping techniques as well. (I’m looking at you, Kitey McHuntard.)

The other is that I am probably a fool to expect random people to be courteous to me in this game. I really have been spoiled lately by the poxers and my other guilds, where people are more than courteous when it comes to grouping. We are helpful to each other, mindful of the needs of each character and the feelings of each player. It makes for a much more pleasant playing experience. As I start doing a bit more pugging, leveling up these new toons, I need to remember to lower my expectations again. Kind of sad, but that is that.

Lil warlock is now level 15. Just before bed last night, she turned in the necklace to have Lady Sylvanas sing her a lullaby.

RFK > BFD

The Purple Poxers cleared Razorfen Kraul last night, and all in all, it was much more fun and challenging for us than BFD. We still whipped it though. I managed a few screenshots, but not nearly enough for a picture book post. Also, Wara has put together a nice one here, so I don’t have to!

The pulls in RFK were a bit bigger, some of them unintentionally so. A couple times, I accidentally brought more enemies to us when I stepped around to the back of a mob for some shredding, and my cat butt pulled the next group. My shining moment, however, was just before going after the giant pig… we were in the room before, where there’s a group to left guarding the entrance to the pig’s lair and a group to the right leading to the next area. There was talk of “should we clear out this group on the right first?” “Yes, let’s, just to be safe.” Everyone else ran right, I ran left. That was 100% autopilot, sort of like when my car wants to go to work, but I really meant to drive to the store. I’ve only been in that instance a handful of times, but my instincts still told me left. “Um, Madj, you ran the wrong way.” Erm, yes. /blush. But, we took them all down with no problem. Same after killing the very last boss (though this wasn’t my fault!). We jumped down, and as each dying mob ran off, they sent a few buddies in to attack us. When everything had finally fallen, we counted 8 bodies.

I spent most of the run in cat form, but did pop into bear form during one of those extra big pulls to try to get mobs off of the clothies until Harisan could come over and grab aggro. I was getting quite a beatdown, so I stayed that way until she had their attention. During one of the bigger pulls, I also popped back into my normal form so that I could heal folks when Daxe ran out of mana. This is one of the cool parts of being a hybrid, and though I only really exploit this when we’re in a sticky situation, it is really fun to be able to contribute a bit of extra tanking or healing when we get into trouble.

I don’t know that I’m doing all that great with the DPS though. This whole energy thing is much less intuitive to me than the mana pool, so I’m not sure that I’m doing my attacks in the optimal order. I experimented with attack rotations throughout the run, keeping an eye on my DPS, the uptime on my DOTs, and figured a few things out by the end (that I may or may not remember when we meet again next week). The +6 agi quest reward ring, plus the +5 agi green ring that dropped for me, plus my new dagger, and my new pants (when I can wear them), will really improve my % crit chance, so hopefully I’ll see a bigger boost during our next instance run. We’re not having too much trouble downing things, but if there is room for improvement, I’d like to improve! So, I shall also be reading more about feral DPS mechanics before our next meetup. Melee DPS is different, interesting, and kind of challenging to me (as I’m much more accustomed to being a mana-based range attacker DPS type). I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I’m coming up on level 30 though, so I could certainly respec and try something different, too. We’ll see…

Other Purple POVs:

Pally Poxer Power!

WTB A Challenge for Purple Poxers

OPP: The Second P is for Purple Poxers