You raiders have a new toy to play with very shortly, Assault on the Ruby Sanctum.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Halfway Houses
I occasionally get strange looks when I'm putzing around in The Barrens or Tirisfal Glades, working on low level quests. I swear that some people must think that I'm the reincarnation of Don Quijote, or that I'm banished by my guild into doing some sort of bizarre penance or something before I'm allowed back into raiding.
Passing through Tarren Mill after having completed a quest from the Hinterlands, I was accosted by a 20ish Hunter loitering around the Bat Handler. "Dude! Yr an 80!" he shouted. "LOL!"
"Yeah," I replied. "I noticed."
"U shouldn't be here!"
"I'm not going to be," I said and took the flight path to Light's Hope Chapel.
That didn't hold a Kobold's candle to the crowd that gathered around when I was in the Orc/Troll starting area, working on quests. I finished a quest and left Quint standing around AFK for a moment. When I returned, there was a crowd of about eight to ten L1-L5 characters surrounding my Pally.
Okay, I thought, this is weird. I mean, you just go up the road to Orgrimmar and you can see boatloads of 80s around.
I popped out of AFK, and one of them asked "Are u doing the starting zone quests?"
"Yep."
"Y?"
"I'm working on Loremaster."
"Oooohhhhh," came the collective response.
"Yr crazy!" said one.
"Yeah!" said another.
A third challenged me to a duel, which I declined.
A fourth chimed in with a "That's not hard!"
"Maybe not, but not a lot of people do it." I took that as my cue to split.
To be fair, the majority of the time I don't get a reaction at all, which suits me just fine. Other people are doing their business, and I'm doing mine. Since I'm the oddball high level character in these zones, however, I do try to make myself available should someone need some assistance on a quest. What's the point of achieving Loremaster if you don't share your knowledge?
I've even had this Loremaster mentality creep over into some of my alts. My mage, who is at L26, dropped into The Ghostlands to finally try soloing Dhar'khan when she found a L21 Hunter thinking the same thing. I asked the Hunter what she knew of the fight.
"Nothing. This is my first character," she said.
"That's fine," I replied. "Even though this is an alt, I'm still fairly new myself. We'll do this together."
I told her I'd pull the aggro so we didn't have the entire room on us, and then she could let her pet tank attack and take it over. The strategy worked, sort of --I held aggro better than I expected-- but the net result was one dead necromancer, and one happy Hunter.
"Thanks so much!" she said.
"You're welcome. Just so you know, you're about to be doing some traveling on the next couple of quests, so get ready to meet some of the leaders of the Horde."
"Cool!"
Ah, new players.
(Oh, the title of this post? That's simple, really: I'm officially halfway to Loremaster. I'm actually much farther along, but I've only dinged Outlands and Eastern Kingdoms.)
Passing through Tarren Mill after having completed a quest from the Hinterlands, I was accosted by a 20ish Hunter loitering around the Bat Handler. "Dude! Yr an 80!" he shouted. "LOL!"
"Yeah," I replied. "I noticed."
"U shouldn't be here!"
"I'm not going to be," I said and took the flight path to Light's Hope Chapel.
That didn't hold a Kobold's candle to the crowd that gathered around when I was in the Orc/Troll starting area, working on quests. I finished a quest and left Quint standing around AFK for a moment. When I returned, there was a crowd of about eight to ten L1-L5 characters surrounding my Pally.
Okay, I thought, this is weird. I mean, you just go up the road to Orgrimmar and you can see boatloads of 80s around.
I popped out of AFK, and one of them asked "Are u doing the starting zone quests?"
"Yep."
"Y?"
"I'm working on Loremaster."
"Oooohhhhh," came the collective response.
"Yr crazy!" said one.
"Yeah!" said another.
A third challenged me to a duel, which I declined.
A fourth chimed in with a "That's not hard!"
"Maybe not, but not a lot of people do it." I took that as my cue to split.
To be fair, the majority of the time I don't get a reaction at all, which suits me just fine. Other people are doing their business, and I'm doing mine. Since I'm the oddball high level character in these zones, however, I do try to make myself available should someone need some assistance on a quest. What's the point of achieving Loremaster if you don't share your knowledge?
I've even had this Loremaster mentality creep over into some of my alts. My mage, who is at L26, dropped into The Ghostlands to finally try soloing Dhar'khan when she found a L21 Hunter thinking the same thing. I asked the Hunter what she knew of the fight.
"Nothing. This is my first character," she said.
"That's fine," I replied. "Even though this is an alt, I'm still fairly new myself. We'll do this together."
I told her I'd pull the aggro so we didn't have the entire room on us, and then she could let her pet tank attack and take it over. The strategy worked, sort of --I held aggro better than I expected-- but the net result was one dead necromancer, and one happy Hunter.
"Thanks so much!" she said.
"You're welcome. Just so you know, you're about to be doing some traveling on the next couple of quests, so get ready to meet some of the leaders of the Horde."
"Cool!"
Ah, new players.
(Oh, the title of this post? That's simple, really: I'm officially halfway to Loremaster. I'm actually much farther along, but I've only dinged Outlands and Eastern Kingdoms.)
Fully Converted
Hello, I'm Mr. Goodie, and I have two shoes.
I am now the proud owner of three high level Alliance characters.
These last few weeks have been a great deal of fun! I'm a good guy! I'm all shiny and crap! I can take on an entire group of horde in WSG all by my lonesome (Ok, I've not tried that, but there's got to be some sort of appeal to it, as I saw a lot of Allies do that when I was horde).
I've been noticing and have been discussing with my guild the differences in the two factions. And I'm terribly interested in how playing one faction seems to sway your (you the player, and you the character)attitude while playing the game. It's the small things that you don't notice that influence your game play until you you've made the change yourself.
For instance, you just click an NPC and they don't want to bite your head off, instead they greet you nicely. And Jaina in the new ICC dungeon's attitude is completely different than Sylvanas' (well.. for obvious reasons). But the overall impression you get from her is sort of sad. They're there to kill the Lich King, but there's a sort of grief about it. Like they're still getting over the loss Arthas' father and the loss of even Arthas (there's always hope for redemption) - albeit he's a murderous sod who unleashed his minions and inflicted mass genocide on everything living.
It's like the Alliance has been pushed around by the Horde for a while, and they're just now getting back on their feet and establishing themselves. Which should be interesting, seeing as the new Stormwind King is rather confrontational.
But back on topic, it's interesting to just sit and read trade chat. Sure there's the occasional asshats that like to troll, but the majority of the talk is pretty decent. That was not the case Horde-side. I was absolutely boggled the other day by trade chat as a matter of fact. Somebody asked a somewhat noobie question and got a REAL ANSWER almost immediately.
I think this carries over to PUG groups as well. I've not seen too much bashing of other players. At least not as frequent as on the Horde.
I'm looking forward to jumping into the leveling group of players in the LFD and really seeing if my observations hold true.
I am now the proud owner of three high level Alliance characters.
These last few weeks have been a great deal of fun! I'm a good guy! I'm all shiny and crap! I can take on an entire group of horde in WSG all by my lonesome (Ok, I've not tried that, but there's got to be some sort of appeal to it, as I saw a lot of Allies do that when I was horde).
I've been noticing and have been discussing with my guild the differences in the two factions. And I'm terribly interested in how playing one faction seems to sway your (you the player, and you the character)attitude while playing the game. It's the small things that you don't notice that influence your game play until you you've made the change yourself.
For instance, you just click an NPC and they don't want to bite your head off, instead they greet you nicely. And Jaina in the new ICC dungeon's attitude is completely different than Sylvanas' (well.. for obvious reasons). But the overall impression you get from her is sort of sad. They're there to kill the Lich King, but there's a sort of grief about it. Like they're still getting over the loss Arthas' father and the loss of even Arthas (there's always hope for redemption) - albeit he's a murderous sod who unleashed his minions and inflicted mass genocide on everything living.
It's like the Alliance has been pushed around by the Horde for a while, and they're just now getting back on their feet and establishing themselves. Which should be interesting, seeing as the new Stormwind King is rather confrontational.
But back on topic, it's interesting to just sit and read trade chat. Sure there's the occasional asshats that like to troll, but the majority of the talk is pretty decent. That was not the case Horde-side. I was absolutely boggled the other day by trade chat as a matter of fact. Somebody asked a somewhat noobie question and got a REAL ANSWER almost immediately.
I think this carries over to PUG groups as well. I've not seen too much bashing of other players. At least not as frequent as on the Horde.
I'm looking forward to jumping into the leveling group of players in the LFD and really seeing if my observations hold true.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Class Attachment
So, as we're nearing the next expansion, I've had a nagging feeling lately to finish leveling my warrior. Currently, he's level 73. This guy originally started out as a level 29 Tauren warrior who was a BEAST in the level 29 bracket. This was back when having a "twinked" character was just becoming popular. I did so much Warsong Gulch with him that he earned the rank of Sargent in the old ranking system, while my main character was a stone guard.
My point being, the warrior has been around for a while, but has NEVER been at max level and doing end game stuff.
I've always had a sort of fondness for warrior tanks, as being a squishy rogue raiding Molten Core, I was amazed when our main tank could take up to two of the giants at the same time!
And not only that, but watching old pvp videos like those of High Warlord Pat, just gave me an awesome feeling. (It's funny, now, how small those numbers in the video are)
Warriors are raw, they fully commit to the fight or they die. There's no nifty get out of jail free card.
So what's holding me back from leveling it out fully? The frustrations I get when tanking. It has to be a world of difference once you get geared up, but tanking at my level (while I can do it successfully) seems to be more work than it's worth. It's not so much that you have to change targets and weave in some cleaves and a devastate or revenge here and there, it's feels like a constant struggle to keep everything focused on me.
Maybe I've been spoiled with my DK's abilities like placing an AOE anywhere I want to grab incoming enemies and having a spiffy pulling mechanic to get casters all lined up nice and pretty for AOE.
I'm thinking now's the time to at least max out level and wait and see how the DK revisions are panning out. I still love playing my DK, but with a reworking of the entire mechanic, a reworking of the DK talent trees to make blood THE tanking tree, and a reworking of the vital tanking stats, I'm afraid of another brutal balancing act by Blizzard. At least this way I'll have options once Cataclysm is released.
But this all raises an interesting question; and one I've been thinking about recently. What drives you to play a certain class? It is role choice? FOTM? One ability you love and can't do without?
My point being, the warrior has been around for a while, but has NEVER been at max level and doing end game stuff.
I've always had a sort of fondness for warrior tanks, as being a squishy rogue raiding Molten Core, I was amazed when our main tank could take up to two of the giants at the same time!
And not only that, but watching old pvp videos like those of High Warlord Pat, just gave me an awesome feeling. (It's funny, now, how small those numbers in the video are)
Warriors are raw, they fully commit to the fight or they die. There's no nifty get out of jail free card.
So what's holding me back from leveling it out fully? The frustrations I get when tanking. It has to be a world of difference once you get geared up, but tanking at my level (while I can do it successfully) seems to be more work than it's worth. It's not so much that you have to change targets and weave in some cleaves and a devastate or revenge here and there, it's feels like a constant struggle to keep everything focused on me.
Maybe I've been spoiled with my DK's abilities like placing an AOE anywhere I want to grab incoming enemies and having a spiffy pulling mechanic to get casters all lined up nice and pretty for AOE.
I'm thinking now's the time to at least max out level and wait and see how the DK revisions are panning out. I still love playing my DK, but with a reworking of the entire mechanic, a reworking of the DK talent trees to make blood THE tanking tree, and a reworking of the vital tanking stats, I'm afraid of another brutal balancing act by Blizzard. At least this way I'll have options once Cataclysm is released.
But this all raises an interesting question; and one I've been thinking about recently. What drives you to play a certain class? It is role choice? FOTM? One ability you love and can't do without?
ZOMG I CAN DO 28K DPS ON AOE TRASH I'M BETTER THAN YOU!
Ok, so this past week we had a new Boomkin join our guild. His gear was good, and at first he didn't really say a lot. Which I could understand since he was new to the guild and I guess getting a feel for who we are.
Last night in raid, we found quickly that it was a mistake to invite him. I should've known that someone with a gearscore as high as his that is unguilded is so for a certain reason, but we gave him a shot.
Now what I want to know is how someone who was able to get the gear he as not know what LoS means or not know to stop DPS when he pulls aggro off a mob the tank is not on... Not to mention why someone like this feels the need to whisper people asking for a mage table or tell them how to play their class.
After globally muting him in Vent, we continued our run. We get to Rotface and we decide to go ahead and take a 5 min break to wait for our Sated Debuff to wear off. What does this boomkin do? Hearths and goes to Orgrimmar... We didn't have a warlock in the raid last night so we couldn't summon him back.. /facepalm
He then asked us for a summon. Uhm... no lock.. so what does he do? Starts spamming trade for a mage portal.. instead of you know... taking the zep to Borean Tundra and flying over to ICC. No, I guess that would be easy... so we booted him from the raid and from the guild... and OF COURSE, I get the whisper from him asking why he was booted. It was explained to him that he was annoying everyone when whispering them about how to play their characters, how when a tank was trying to LoS a mob (scientist), he would start dpsing it and keeping the mob from coming around the corner... AND how when he pulled aggro on a mob the tank wasn't targeting, he wouldn't stop dps. Me and the other healer purposefully let him die because he continued to do so and I was sick of seeing the aggro indicator come up on his name.
It was then he decided to call Nate a little bitch and that he was the best player in our guild. No, sorry... when you do 6k dps on a boss and NEVER switched to adds when you're supposed to, have no situational awareness, and consistently annoy the piss out of everyone in the raid, you're not the best player in the guild. No one gives a fuck if you can do 28k DPS on AOE trash when you die 30 seconds into a pull.
I swear I'm a magnet for retards. This is why I added the question "Do you have Downs?" to our guild application.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
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:
Ah, what fun indeed.
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."
Ah, what fun indeed.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)