Drop Drip Drop

I may not like it, but I've gotten used to people porting in, seeing the instance and/or gear scores, and dropping.  Heck, I've kind of gotten used to people dropping after a wipe -Halls of Reflection will do that to you- or even after a boss.  When someone actually apologizes and leaves, I consider it a victory for civility.

But if there's one thing I'll never get used to, it's when people drop in the middle of a pull.

What sort of person does this, anyway?

I know that others have written about it -Darth Solo, Vidyala, and Tam, among others- but the lack of respect for your fellow player is just ridiculous.  We're paying for the privilege to operate in an MMO world, and as much as some people fly solo (guilty as charged) you still have to interact with people to play the game.  People will talk to you; you can be an ass and ignore them, but the courteous thing to do is reply, even if you're not interested in what they're saying.

What got me all worked up about this?  I got queued up for two 5-man runs today: Halls of Reflection and Forge of Souls.  Both of them had instances wherein someone dropped mid-pull.  In Halls of Reflection, it was the Healer midway through the waves of trash between the first and second bosses.  Naturally, when the Healer goes in that place, the tank almost immediately bites it, and so does everyone else.  The second one, in Forge of Souls, the Boomkin warlock died right after pulling aggro on the trash in the run-up to the Bronjahm.  Rather than wait for a rez or releasing and running back, he just dropped.

Now, in both cases, there was no lasting damage.  We had delays in the runs, but that was it.  But the lack of courtesy -especially in the HoR run- really got under my skin.  Just like what the warrior DPS in an Utgarde Pinnacle run last night told the rest of us:  he was abused by the tank in the previous 5-man he was on because he was pulling so low a DPS.  I mean, he's a new 80, and instead of trying to tank Heroics he's trying to DPS them to pick up gear to improve his DPS.  What more could you want?

I'm aware of the general consensus out there in the blogosphere that the LFD tool has enabled or exacerbated this sort of boorish behavior, but my contention is that even without the tool the MMO community has been gradually moving in this direction anyway.  The MMO world is a reflection of society -a geeky segment of society, no doubt- and it was only a matter of time before the lack of civility out there in our society found its way into all aspects of WoW.  Even I got tired of Trade Chat and dropped it from my channels, and that's saying a lot.  I used to think that if these people who are spamming trade chat were forced to say that out loud in a public gathering, they'd shut their mouths a bit more often.  Sadly, I think that won't deter a lot of these people.

What I'm afraid of is that the boorish behavior in MMOs is now becoming the norm, and people like me who want some courtesy among strangers are now on the sideline.

Love - Hate Relationships

I spent the early morning and then the late evening running lots of 5-man heroics.  I don't normally chain run a bunch of them at a time -hell, I don't normally have the time to do that either- but since I'm going to port a character loaded with heirlooms over to Ysera, I'd better make it count.

By the end of the day, my head was kind of spinning.  Some of the highlights of the runs included:

• A Forge of Souls run wherein I replaced a DPS who went AFK right before the Devourer of Souls.  Apparently he never mentioned anything and didn't disconnect, but he just stopped moving.  So I was brought in, we zapped the Devourer of Souls, instance over.  Had to be the quickest instance I've ever been in.
• A later run in the Forge of Souls where I actually had the music turned up.  What's with all the guitars and musical references with The Brohnjam?  An inside WoW joke about a developer who plays a lot of air guitar?
• An Azjol-Nerub run wherein I don't die.  I've had this bad streak lately where I'm the one that gets pounded, and I'm getting sick of it.  Even when the tank has a good lock and I'm on the side or the rear, Anub-arak spins at the last second and grinds me into the dust.
• A stupid tank move in Utgarde Pinnacle.  You know how Ymrion makes everyone cower in fear several times while he buffs himself?  Well, the tank was in a hurry and decided to pull the last trash mob up into Ymrion so that "we could get this done quicker".  Well, guess what happens when you're cowering in fear and there's trash wailing on you?  Yep, you take lots of damage.  The tank assumed that, but what he forgot was that the healer was also cowering in fear.  No healer, no heals.  Oops.  Once the tank wiped, the Hunter's pet became the tank for the last 1/3 of the fight.  Amazingly enough, even with Righteous Fury turned on I couldn't pull aggro off of that pet; the pet held aggro better than the tank did.
• A Drak run where the healer said "pull the whole room, I'll cover it".  I groaned.  The tank stared at him.  "Oookay," she said at last, and proceeded to do it.  For a change, the healer actually delivered on his boast.  "I'm just tired of this place," he said as we pressed onward.
• A Halls of Reflection run where the healer was on the verge of dropping.  "I don't think I'm good enough for this," he said.  "You'll do fine," I replied.  And the remarkable thing about that run was that nobody did die.  (Yes, it does happen.)
• A Trial of the Champion run where I bit it because I was "standing in the green goo".  Well, newsflash, Blizz:  I was outside of the green goo by a good margin, but I still was dropping as if I were standing in the middle of the stuff.   The lag monster bites again.
• The tank that got lost in The Oculus, and tried to tank on a Bronze drake.  I should mention that I did ask beforehand if anybody was going for an achievement, and nobody spoke up.  When one of the DPS noticed the tank getting a Bronze, he took a Red drake.  Good thing he did, because the tank died on the final fight trying to tank it from the Bronze, and then because the Green drake was spending so much time trying to heal the tank the Red drake dropped.  In the end it was just me and the Green drake in a race against the last boss to see who would drop first.  Miracle of miracles, the boss did.  (Then the tank -in a hurry to get back to claim his loot- flew by a whelp and killed both himself and me.  Sometimes life is not fair.)
• Oh, and we got the big ol' doggy boss in Violet Hold, so both I and the Mage pulled out our corehound pets before the fight.  "I couldn't resist," I told her, and she agreed. "It was like a Pug vs. a German Shepherd."

Sandwiched in between all of these runs were several uneventful instances.  Well, there was the one time where the tank ported in and started running, but when the healer hollered "I have no mana!" that kind of brought that little game to a stop.

Ah, what fun indeed.

Good Advice

Here's one of my fellow tank's explanation on how to tank the Rotface fight.

It's Good to be Back

I had a nice surprise awaiting me when I logged in this morning.

Twenty five mails of stuff.

And one corehound pet for each toon.

I haven't seen the e-mail from the results of the investigation, but at least my stuff is back.  I was a bit rusty in UK and ToC, tho.

Two BC Races - A Study in Opposites

It's been mentioned before on this blog that a race's starting area is designed to influence your thinking and enhance the viewpoint of that race.  That's what makes the Forsaken stand apart from the other Horde races:  enemies on every corner, they are consumed by vengeance; hemmed in and reviled by the living, they learn to give as well as receive; hunted by the Scarlet Crusade, they despise them as much if not more than the Scourge.  The Tauren have the lush, rolling fields, the spirits and hunting paths to guide them; and the Orcs and Trolls learn early that the world is a rough place and you have to claw and fight your way if you want to survive.

The starting areas are what make the two Burning Crusade races such a study in opposites.

Blood Elves are set in their old homeland of Eversong, learning how to cope without the Sunwell.  Some Blood Elves can't handle their addiction to arcane magic, and turn into the Wretched.  The Scourge and Arthas are to blame for this, we're told, but there's hope for the Blood Elves:  they know that there's an Eden awaiting them in a magical place called Outland.  You learn to deal with the Wretched, push back the Scourge from the infected forests of Quel'Thas (renamed the Ghostlands), and wreak vengeance on the necromancer Dar'khan Drathir.

By Contrast, the Draenei starting area is an unknown.  They've just crash landed on Azeroth, hunting for this "Alliance" to help them out with the Burning Legion, not knowing where the hell "here" is.  You start off thinking that your group is the only batch of survivors, and you pitch in to help the group survive.  After a while you discover other Draenei and you are led through the starting area by the hook of finding others of your kind.  You also learn very quickly that Blood Elves have followed you there to eliminate your threat.

Interesting, no?

Having played several Blood Elves, I know without a doubt you never hear about any of the following while you're leveling:

• Draenei
• Outland is in turmoil with the Burning Legion
• You're the bad guy

Likewise, the Draenei haven't heard (as of yet in the toon I'm playing) of any of the following:

• The Scourge
• Arthas, Illidan and their relationship to the Burning Legion
• You landed on the Blood Elves' homeland

When you play a Blood Elf, you have absolutely no idea there's something wrong in Outland until you reach 58 and can port to the Blasted Lands.  Then, right before you go through the Dark Portal, you have that conversation with the Draenei and the Orc leaders, you start to wonder WTH is on the other side.

I have no idea if the Draenei are fed a steady diet of "hate the Blood Elves", but if the BE model is transposed onto the Draenei, they won't have an inkling up until they reach Outland that a whole boatload of despised, evil Blood Elves are now fighting on your side.  Talk about hitting you with a 2x4.

I have to admit that Blizz has done a bang up job in creating stark differences between the two races.  If I develop split personalities later in life, maybe I can blame these two races for my malady.

Hmmm.... What to do.... What to do....

Since I seem to have a copious amount of time on my hands, I've been thinking about the future.  No, not Cataclysm -I'm trying to not think about that too much- but what I intend to do once my main goals of Loremaster and Seeker are achieved.

I guess I should specify that my main goal is to have Quintalan complete Loremaster and Seeker on the Horde side.  Once that's done, I figured I'd slip Quint into semi-retirement, using him to accumulate Emblems for Heirloom items.  (If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.)  He could chill around Dalaran, or hang on a park bench in Silvermoon and harass the newbies all afternoon. 

"Whining about Dar'Khan Drathir, are you?  You young whippersnappers don't know how easy you have it!  Why, back in my day we got ganked 10 times a day in Tarren Mill, and we liked it!"

"Aw, shut up you old Geezer!"

"Come back here or I'll whack you with my cane!  I'll have you know I got this wound fighting alongside Sylvanas Windrunner herself!  Call me Geezer, eh?  STAY OFF MY LAWN!"

But what after that?

Originally, the plan was to transfer and faction change Quint to follow Souldat and Millalyn to Ysera, but since I can't really finish the Horde side Loremaster that way, Quint will have to stay Horde for the time being.  At the current rate I was on with questing, it would have been about early summer before Quint would ding that last quest to capture both achievements.  With my account in a holding pattern until my stuff gets returned, that timeline will slip into mid summer.

My backup plan was to generate a new Alliance toon on Area 52, load the toon with Heirlooms, and ship him/her over to Ysera to begin a new life.  (And start running instances with similarly leveled toons that Soul and Milla would have.)  I was planning on shipping a Paladin over so I could take my lumps as a Holy Spec without the backup of an overgeared tank, but it might be smarter that I ship my Blood Elf Mage over instead.  She's already at L26 and has all but the Heirloom trinkets.  I'd have to find a decent Alliance toon that has her snarky BE attitude, but that might make the most sense.

Once the toon gets shipped over, then what?  Just run LFD?

Part of me wants to go for Loremaster on the Alliance side, just because I can say that I've covered all of my bases.  (Crazy?  Yes.  Insane?  Nah; it's just another challenge.)  Another part of me thinks that it would be smart to get in early on PVP, so that you don't have to learn what the hell you're doing at 80 in the battlegrounds.  Either way, my time spent online ought to fit with within my budget.

Well, I've got plenty of time to stew over my options, although I definitely wish I had less time right now.  My trigger finger is getting plenty itchy.

Progress? It does exist!

Awesome, awesome raid week with my new guild.

We downed Rotface in 25 man, which was both a new kill to me and the guild.  We also were able, in one night, to get 8 bosses down in icc 10.

The Valithria Dreamwalker fight was really fun.  And it was even more fun to listen to the hoots and hollers after downing (raising?)  a new boss.  As a side note, our one holy pally had a crit heal on the boss for 83,000.  *boggle*

And, on top of that, I joined up with a resto shaman for a twos team, and we got up to about a 500 team rating.  Not bad for the first week.  And I am teamed up with the very same resto shaman and a ret pally for a 3s team.  ZOMG, combine my spiffy new sword from icc 25 + heroism (bloodlust) + ret pally bust damage = something dead and FAST.  Our 3s team is at 739 after my first week of joining them.

All in all, it was a great week of PVE and PVP content.

Being a "good guy" has its benefits.