Wednesday, December 15, 2010

True Stories

The past 48 hours in WoW have produced some moments that make you shake your head.


Ding and Drop in Unique Fashion

Tomakan was sitting at L67, only two bars away, so I figured I'd dial up Alterac Valley and push him over the top that way.  He did make it to L68, but he got to be witness to a crash and burn of an AV run in epic fashion.

The BG started off fine, with the Alliance quickly capturing the middle towers and killing Galv.  We also defended our own towers and took the mines.  Soon, there were only the two Frostwolf towers and Drek's homebase left for the Horde to defend.  In terms of reinforcements, we were up 380 to 110.

Then the bottom dropped out.

The Horde turtled in the home base and eventually pushed out to a chokepoint south which we simply could not break.  We still seemed to be in control, being up 130 to 40, but then a few of their Rogues slipped out from the firefight and began killing our reinforcements wholesale.  A few people chased them down, but a few more Rogues slipped through and the process started all over again. 

People in BG chat were shrieking at us to go around the chokepoint, as we didn't have much of a chance to kill off reinfocements, but those people didn't realize there was a second wave of Hordies behind the first to make sure we didn't do any damage.  Believe me, I tried.

So our numbers dropped.  110 to 40.  90 to 40.  60 to 37.  40 to 37.  20 to 34.

At last, painfully, it was over.  We had just snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

***

How Not to Get an Achievement

I was on Neve in Coldarra, waiting for the LFD queue to spit something out.  In the meantime, I was working on the Alexstraza quest chain.  I was flying around, collecting shards, when a nearby Wyrmkin aggroed on me.  No big deal, really:  Frostbolt plus Fingers of Frost = dead Wyrmkin.  I then mounted up and leapt off the cliff I was on.

My mount squawked.

And I immediately got the Going Down? achievement.

"Oops," I said in guild chat.  "Wrong mount."

***

The Puzzling Case of the Disappearing Healer

Tomakan's second instance run in Northrend was memorable due to the number of healers we went through.  The first run had tank/healer drama ("If you pull one more time while I stop to drink, I'm not healing you, you dumb ass!"), but the second run was... more mysterious.

At the beginning of the run, the tank said to be patient with him as this was his first time tanking.  This was no longer a big deal to me, as I'd survived the "DK tankfail" wave in Outland.  In fact, this tank was pretty damn good.  He took his time, but he knew who to pull and when.  The guy had obviously done his homework.

However, the healers kept disappearing.

We'd gotten through the Furnace of hate and through the first hallways, and then the healer dropped mid-pull right before the Blood Prince.  Naturally, we wiped. 

So, a second healer ported in and we finished off the trash and the Blood Prince.  Then he dropped right before the second pair of Bosses.

A third healer came in, but we wiped in the Boss fight because the healer stopped healing.  Believe me, I watched the bars, trying to decide when to pick up the slack.  Problem was, I was #2 on the DPS chart, and things were going awfully slow as it was.  So we wiped, and that third healer dropped.

By now, I was just happy to have a healer that stuck around through a single fight.  A fourth healer ported in during the runback, and she flatly stated that if we were on the last boss she was going to drop.  "No," we told her, "we're on the second."

We finished the second pair of bosses, and wonder of wonders, this healer didn't drop.  She didn't seem happy, either, but at least she stuck around.

And then the Death Knight running as DPS started spamming party chat with guild recruitment posts.

I'm still not sure how we finished off Ingvar with a huge chat bubble floating over him from that DK, blocking off all viewing.

But if you're on Deathwing server, I do know that there's a guild recruiting.


EtA:  Convoy to L85 Update:

Nevelanthana (Area 52) -- L71
Tomakan (Ysera) -- L69
Quintalan (Area 52) -- L80 (and enjoying the fishing in the Dal fountain)

4 comments:

  1. There's just something about those Hellfire instances that brings out the weirdos, I swear.

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  2. @Rades-- You are so right. I didn't bother with posting about most of my Hellfire runs because, well, a Hellfire run became exceptional when it was normal.

    I think that's why I was so surprised about these UK runs. I expected them to run slow --we're all new to Northrend, after all-- but boy were they oddball.

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  3. Wow man, that is a jam-packed two days! I have had some experience being the healer that randomly joins a group and is greeted by 'please don't leave us too'. I actually tend to have more fun on those runs, as the group is usually more chatty and joking.

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  4. @NaturalGamerGirl-- Believe me when I say it didn't feel like it was jam packed.

    After this post, I've had even more bizzaro UK runs, like the run this morning where the same two pieces of rare gear dropped 3-4 times each. I'm thoroughly sick of the place.

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