They Say Memory is the First Thing to Go

I don't know how altoholics do it.

Really.

Just how do they keep track of all of their toons, and more importantly, what abilities their toons have?

I logged into Neve for the first time in what felt like ages, and tried zapping a few assorted beasties in Icecrown.

Tried being the operative word.

After I finally stopped hitting keys for abilities that hadn't procced yet, I finally started spamming Frostbolt, because at least I remembered where that was.  I froze myself in ice at least twice before I successfully killed my first mob, and yes, it really did take me that long.

I stared at my empty glass by the computer, and sighed.  "I'm going to need another beer if this keeps up," I mumbled and switched to Quintalan.  Surely I couldn't have forgotten how to play Ret, not after years of play beforehand.  But a short glimpse of the main bar later, I decided to just switch back to my Rogue and queue for a battleground.

Surely, I thought, it must be better on The Old Republic, where I'd gotten used to playing different classes on a regular basis.

Um, no.

After spending the end of Chapter One on my Sith Inquisitor, I switched back to my Commando and quickly found myself in a 4-man Heroic on Alderaan.  On the first pull the Shadow cc-ed an elite and I readied a Concussion Shot on another.  I hit the button and...

"Dammit, Ki!  What are you doing?"

Oops.  I'd hit Explosive Round by mistake, which had the side effect of undazing that elite.

We managed to DPS down everything, and I apologized to the group.  While they were accepted, I still smarted from my screw up.  This was something that I prided myself on not doing.

Clearly, a better method than "I think I remember where everything is" was needed.

***

Way back in her Pugging Pally days, Vidyala of Manalicious posted a chart she used to keep track of all of her Draenei alts' hair style and design.  While it served her purpose, I've begun working on my own version of her chart to keep track of keystrokes on differing alts.

Since I play more alts on TOR, I figured I'd start there first.

Ironically enough, one of the things that people complain about with TOR --the similarity between different classes on knockbacks and whatnot-- is perfect for my work.  Setting up my alts so that similar abilities are always on the same keystrokes will make it easier to slip into gear in each class.  Knowing that a toon's main attack is on button #2, the incapacitated attack (if any) is on button #4, and the knockback is on button #5 makes my life a lot easier.  While the details on the lesser abilities are different from toon to toon, the main rotation can be reduced to a level I can easily use to slip into and out of while playing.  Keeping certain abilities grouped together, like the Commando's various grenades or the various heals of a particular toon, make for good common sense.  It also makes for good common sense to keep them out of easy finger range, so that in the heat of battle you don't accidentally hit the wrong button and cause a wipe.

But for a game like WoW, where the abilities and rotations are so different from class to class, the challenge is much greater.  Throw in the transition from PvE to PvP, and the organization becomes much harder.

The way I attempted to organize my Cata-era Affliction Warlock --attacks on one row, DoTs on another, and interrupts on a third-- don't necessarily work for a Pally or Mage which are DoT-less.  Also, you have to remember the more obscure abilities in your class, because what isn't important in PvE suddenly becomes critical in PvP.  How many times have you had a Lock just get going on DoTs in a fight, only to have the mob and/or boss die on you?  Well, that inability to use DoTs effectively in an instance suddenly doesn't matter in PvP, because laying down DoTs is one of the primary ways a Lock can kill you.  A Rogue doesn't try to out tough a Warrior, it tries to surprise, stun and slash.  Doing that in a boss fight is suicide, because the last thing a Rogue needs is aggro when a boss is bringing the hammer down.

Therefore, I've kind of thrown in the towel a bit on WoW alts, and have been reduced to generalities.  I don't know what might be most important at a particular time, but I can guess.  It's just like switching poisons around; if you've got the time and you're closing in on a caster, get the one that zaps their spellcasting speed. Otherwise, go for the slow poison which works on everyone.  The spellcasting poison is a specialist ability, so it goes behind the more general slow poison.  Ordering up the finishing strokes is important too; you want ones that will give you the best bang for the buck to be the ones easiest to reach for, while others that work better on extended raid boss fights should be placed farther away.   But hey, if the Warrior you're sneaking up behind is focusing on another team member, use the DoT finishing stroke and then Vanish to reset yourself for another strike.

***

One drawback to reorganizing everything is that it takes time.

Yes, I know there will be the reward of getting everything set up is that I can more easily transition between toons, but when you're looking at the tinkering involved that's not much comfort.  And when you throw in customization options, you could easily spend days of game time merely fooling around with your UI.

At times like this, WoW's customization becomes more a curse than a blessing.

If you've ever heard of the theory that with more options the more unable you are to make a decision, then you've got the idea of what I'm getting at.  With so many third party add-ons and scripts to choose from, a player can become paralyzed trying to decide how to set up their keys and/or macros.*  When all you really want to do is make it easier on yourself to play, it seems counterintuitive to spend all of your time tweaking your key bindings and setting up macros.

However, if you're expecting me to say that The Old Republic has it better, well....  Maybe, maybe not.

No, there aren't any third party UI tools available.  Yes, if you subscribe, you have full UI customization access --the same as every other subscriber-- so everyone (theoretically) has the same starting point.

But you still have to configure the UI to your liking.  And that takes time, and tinkering.  Lots of tinkering.

And each time you train, you may gain access to a new favorite ability, causing you to curse under your breath and try to figure out where to shoehorn that new! cool! awesome! ability into your bars.

***

Layers, Shrek once said.  Ogres have layers.  But he could have also been talking about tweaking the UI and keybindings in an MMO.

And I still don't know how a true altoholic can do all of this, keep it all straight, and be able to play well.




*Which is why Elitist Jerks and other sites are so popular; they take the difficult part of the decision process away.

Well, That Explains a Lot

Activision/Blizzard released their earnings today, and while they did make record profits, the surprise for me was that WoW subs dropped back to close to the pre-Mists release levels, with only 9.6 million active subs.

Now I know the true reason behind all the sales and enticement; Mists wasn't able to bring the WoW subs back to the heights of Cata.  In fact, Mists wasn't even able to sustain the release bump that they got.

That explains why it felt like the Ysera server was so empty, and even the CRZ often felt devoid of people.

To be fair, 9.6 million subs is probably more than the #2-#6 other MMOs combined.  Still, it looks like the Mists experiment hasn't quite panned out as hoped.  I doubt that means that Blizz will suddenly switch to a F2P format, since they're practically printing money with WoW, but I do think that it means Titan will move up to the front of the development lists.

The View from the Halfway Point

While it seems that everybody else on WoW already has multiple toons at L90 --their main, their primary alt, their secondary alt, their cross-faction alt, and their bank alt-- my main for this expac just dinged L45 somewhere in the middle of an Arathi Basin fight.

I've been steadily moving along, splitting time between battlegrounds and skinning, and playing about 3 days a week or so.  There have been many waves of players passing through BGs on new Pandaren toons, and we're now down to seeing more traditional BG compositions --with a few sprinkling of Monks, that is.

Once I reached the mid-30s on my Rogue, BG leveling slowed to a crawl and is only now starting to pick up with the unlocking of Alterac Valley.  I don't think this is by design, because leveling via BGs is heavily dependent upon your side's ability to grind out wins.  And since the Alliance has had very few healers in the mid-30s to early 40s BGs, the wins have been hard to come by.

The bots are in vogue too, I see.

Eye of the Storm seems to be the biggest place where you'll find bots, because their behavior is so obvious.  When a toon repeatedly:

• pops from a graveyard
• runs up to the nearest base
• pivots where the buff would ordinarily be (but isn't because it was freaking used already)
• races to the mid

you know you've got a bot on your hands.

I'd like to see Blizz be a bit more proactive in zapping bots, since they can't really be gotten rid of from a BG except by being marked as away, but I guess that's something they're going to have to come up with.  Making it easier to kick people from BGs could turn out to be a double edged sword, because people could simply vote-kick players who are on the low end of the level range just because they're on the low end of the level range.  I'm not sure Blizz wants to pay enough devs support staff to watch enough BGs to make sure everybody is playing nicely, either.  It's a conundrum that I don't have a good answer to.

***

Since I've got 40 levels to go before I really purchase Mists, I've found it interesting watching the lures the Blizzard has been dangling out in the internet.  The free week in Pandaria, the Christmas sales, the recruit a friend, they're all out in force.  I have no idea how well the bait has been working, but the fact that Blizz hasn't stopped them yet is an indicator that they're fighting hard to get all of their lost subs back.  Or, perhaps, just to stay even with what they've got.

My own guild, however, hasn't recovered from Cataclysm.  In fact, while some people returned for Mists, others came back and have since disappeared.  Still others left the guild for other, more active raiding guilds before Mists dropped.  And there have been those who came back but not because of Mists, but because their work/life/whatever has finally allowed them the free time to resub.  But from the high point in Wrath where the guild was pulling in enough people to run 25s on a once-in-a-while basis, I've yet to see 10 people logged in at one time on any consistent basis, let alone raid.  There have been a lot of evenings when I've been the only one logged in.

"This server's dead," I saw someone type recently in Gen Chat.  Given that the crowds in Stormwind aren't very impressive --still averaging in the 50s on a given night-- I suspect that there's more truth to that than meets the eye.

***

Still, the game seems to be doing fairly well for itself.

Judging by the blogs I read (a subset of which is listed on our site), the most popular parts of WoW in its current state are a) Transmogs, b) Pet Battles, and c) Pandas.  Raiding, instances, PvP in its various forms, and the ongoing expac story haven't been very active topics in Mists.  Now, while people write a lot about Dailies, I can say that while the topic is popular, the activity is not.

I think it is safe to say that if Transmogs and Pet Battles didn't exist, then there wouldn't be nearly as many people excited about Mists as they seem to be.  I'm not sure about the staying power of either through the entire expac, but Transmogs at least seems to scratch the itch of a subset of WoW players well enough to last long term.  Of course, it also takes some pressure off of the Blizz art team to not repeat the BC clown gear, since people will merely transmog any "ugly" gear into something they like.

I'm not quite sure what to make about Pet Battles.  Judging by bloggers alone it seems wildly popular, yet ragging on Pet Battles is a popular topic in low level BGs.  I suspect that Pet Battles falls squarely into the love-it-or-hate-it category, with the people who don't really give a damn (like me) few and far between.  I suspect the Pet Battle mojo will last a lot longer --more than I anticipated, anyway-- by simply creating new pets as part of upcoming patches.  Pets are easier to design than raid or instance bosses, and don't need backstory like questlines, so they're incredibly easy to drop into a story as a carrot-on-a-stick for the aficionados.  "Run enough dailies, get a pet!"  "Go through this side questline, get a pet!"  This isn't exactly new*, but Pet Battles ratchets the desire up to another level entirely.

Whether that desire will flame out is the million dollar question, and I don't have an answer for that.  After all, I still can't explain the continuing fascination with Justin Bieber, and I have middle school kids in the house.




*The Miniwing quest reward in Terokkar Forest, for example.


EtA:  I thought "support staff" and typed "devs".  Sigh.

Chit-Chatting Away

Gen Chat is an interesting beast.

Some games, Gen Chat is overwhelmed with gold farmers hawking their wares.  Other games, its dead silent.  And on still others, it can be a cesspool.

WoW's Gen Chat is decidedly schizophrenic.  In the capital cities, Gen Chat is active and reasonably well behaved.*  Outside of Stormwind and Orgrimmar (and Northern Barrens), Gen Chat is notable for its silence.  Occasionally you'll see the guild recruitment posts, especially in the starting zones, but for the most part Gen Chat out in the world is merely a marker to let you know when you left one zone for another.  Given that so few people actually use Gen Chat, its hard to tell if Gen Chat actually transcends the cross-server zones.**

In this post LFG/LFR World of Warcraft, Gen Chat's utility has declined.  Yes, there's Trade Chat and the LFG channel, but once the queues came along a lot of in-game chat activity vanished.

By comparison, Gen Chat in Aion is very busy, but unfortunately most of it is filled with gold farmers.  I suspect there are conversations in Gen Chat that are worth following in Aion, but they are drowned out by the flood of gold farmer spam.  I never thought I'd say this, but in the worst days of WoW gold farmer spam (in Wrath), we never even came close to what I've seen on an average night in Aion.  As much as some people gripe about the miscellaneous topics in Gen Chat, I'd much rather have that than gold farmer spam.

I think the only world where SWTOR's Gen Chat isn't that busy is on Quesh.***  Between the LFG requests and miscellaneous talk, Gen Chat in The Old Republic resembles a pub on a busy night.  I'm not sure how much of this is due to people who migrated from SW:Galaxies, but it doesn't surprise me that a game built on leveling would have an active chat environment in the various game zones.

LOTRO doesn't have a true chat channel marked General, but it does have Regional and Advice channels, which are what a F2P player will mostly see.  Like everything else about LOTRO, the chat channels are mellower than most.  Yes, there are arguments that flare up, but LOTRO chat channels reflect the player base.

Some F2P games tend to isolate players away from the "subscribers" Gen Chat, so I can't say how much different the subs have it.  Age of Conan is a prime example of the 'isolate the freebies' environment, and I can understand why.  By keeping the F2P players in a separate chat channel, that eliminates a lot of the fly by night gold farmer spam in the regular chat channels.  Throughout much of 2012, the F2P channel in AoC was very much dead.  There were people playing the game --just going to Tortage would show people that-- but they weren't saying anything.  In recent months, Funcom has done some server consolidation, and the formerly dead F2P Gen Chat is now active.  Topics in AoC tend to remain tied to the game, since that is the only outlet available to F2P players, but also because AoC's servers tend to have a more global contingent than most other MMOs.  I'm not sure why this is the case, but I've seen far more "pardon my English, it isn't my first language" in AoC's Gen Chat than in any other MMO I've played.

***

Why are some Gen Chats more active than others?  I've thought about this a bit over the past few months, and I don't believe there's a single item you can point to that explains the differences.  That said, here are a few of the ideas that I believe contribute to the success and/or failure of Gen Chat:

• Some of Gen Chat's activity is due to game design.  A game like TOR, which has a lot of Heroic group quests in each planet, encourages activity by forcing players who want to run them to ask the old fashioned way.  A game that has a strong RP player base, such as LOTRO and the WoW RP servers, will have more activity as well.  Those players tend to be interested in the social aspects of the game, and will speak up more often.
• Some games encourage self-isolation, and for a social person that can be grating at times.  While it can be fun to group up in LOTRO, a lot of content can be taken care of solo.  The same with TOR and WoW.  Blizzard used to have a lot of group quests in the Old World, but the Cata revision streamlined zone quests and eliminated most group quests.  LFR takes care of the need to see end game content as part of a guild, and LFG is famous for silent dungeon runs.  With TOR, you can solo quest all the way to max level and complete your class story without grouping once.  And without a burning in-game need to join a guild, the outlet some people have is to talk in Gen Chat.
• The need to join a guild also factors into Gen Chat activity.  Sure, guilds are optional in every MMO, but being guildless makes playing some games much harder.  However, other games (like TOR) make it very easy to play the game guildless, and those games have more active Gen Chat than others.  It may not be a direct correlation, since there are quite a few WoW players who create a guild just to avoid being pestered by guild invites, but the games that have huge guilds and emphasize guild oriented activity are also the ones that have the least amount of Gen Chat activity.
• Finally, in some games the argument could be made that Gen Chat has been rendered obsolete.  Look at WoW, for example.  You have so many methods of communication --both in and out of the game itself-- that Gen Chat is more a method of last resort.  Additionally, the game design in Mists has been pushing people into doing dailies --lots of dailies-- prior to any raiding, and there isn't a centralized chat that enables players out and about in various regions on a server to communicate together.  The mentality becomes "get the dailies done and then get on to other things," which isn't very conducive to chatting away either.  The old "standing around and fishing at the Dal fountain" design just isn't there anymore.  True, this isn't the only time that Blizz has put a lot of dailies as a gatekeeper for raiding --Quel'Danas and Firelands come to mind-- but those patches came later in each expac, not at the beginning.  Starting an expac with dailies as a gatekeeper is quite different, and sets the tone for the entire expac.

Some of the funniest as well as the most vile things I've read in an MMO came out of Gen Chat.  I once got into a discussion about the original Robert E. Howard short stories in an AoC session, and there was the "what events would a Star Wars Olympics have?" discussion during last Summer's Games.  I've learned a bit about theorycrafting in a WoW Gen Chat session, and I found out that some people who play LOTRO know far more Quenya than I do (which ain't hard to do, really).  The Gen Chat is the watering hole for an MMO, and when a Gen Chat turns toxic that's an indicator of larger problems in the game.

Here's to hoping your Gen Chat experiences are fun and interesting.






*Compared to Trade Chat, that is.

**It apparently does, but you'd never guess it.

***Okay, maybe Ilum too, but it's been a while since I've been there.

****The need to avoid being harassed also speaks to the importance of guilds in a game.

Where the Lowbies Are

Since my Rogue has made it to the L40s, I've taken to skulking around in the Old World while in stealth mode.  I still am working on leveling skinning, but the main reason why I'm constantly in stealth mode is because I pop out of BGs into areas that are frequented by the Horde.  I'd spent way too much time on PvP servers (and getting ganked in pre-Cata Tarren Mill) to not take precautions when entering enemy held territory.

I've also discovered where all the lowbie toons are:  Eversong Forest.

I kid you not.

When I crossed the Elrendar into Eversong, I was stunned by the sheer number of toons running about.  Yes, I'm aware of the cross server zones, but this was the first time I'd seen a cross server zone not called Elwynn Forest work as intended.*  Players were everywhere.  I even found a pair of toons working away by the eastern coastline, which tends to be overlooked as a questing area.

In the age of Panda, Blood Elves are still popular.  Go figure.

There were a few other trends I noticed:  a significant number of toons were Hunters and Mages, with Warlocks a distant third.  More interesting was that about half of the toons had titles already attached to them, indicating that a lot of these toons were alts.  And perhaps the most interesting item of all was that the ratio of female to male Blood Elves was on the order of 7:1.  I'd read somewhere that there were actually more female than male Sindorei played on the servers, but I don't recall the discrepancy being so wide.

One big surprise was that there weren't any Sindorei Monks around.  I know they exist, because I see them in Battlegrounds all the time, but there weren't any in Eversong.  I checked both Eversong and the Ghostlands, but nary a Monk could be found.

The few paladins I saw, however, were busy working away in the Ghostlands, fighting the Scourge.

***

Being a Rogue means that you occasionally scare the hell out of opposing players, even when you don't intend to.

For some reason, I really like the Ghostlands.  The eerie feel to the place, coupled with the fight of the Blood Elves against the twin fronts of the Scourge and the Amani Trolls, gives a new Blood Elf player a laserlike focus on the threats at hand.  The fact that the Forsaken have shown up to assist Tranquilien in holding the line on the Scourge, even before the Sindorei officially join the Horde, adds to the conflict.**  There's also the enjoyable interplay at the entrance to Zul'Aman, put in place in Cataclysm, between Ranger General Halduron Brightwing, Silver Covenant Ranger General Vereesa Windrunner, Chieftain Vol'jin, and a messenger from Silvermoon.  Finally, I really do like the elite abominations, Luzran and Knucklerot.***

I was sneaking around in the general direction of the Dead Scar when I saw a pair of L18 Blood Elves --a Blood Knight and Mage-- run up to take on Luzran.  Remembering how rough it used to be to kill him at level, I loitered around.  I'm not one to gank lowbies, but I figured if it looked like Luzran was going to win I could give them an assist.****

The Paladin charged Luzran, and the fight was on.

Luzran kept up a steady stream of attacks, gradually sapping the Pally's strength.  His healing simply couldn't keep up with Luzran's damage.  I made a quick mental calculation and began to maneuver into position.  If that Pally didn't have Lay on Hands available he was sunk, and that Mage was going down soon after.

Just as I reached Luzran's backside I saw the telltale flash of light.  The Pally had finally used Lay on Hands.

I pulled back to wait.

The abomination wasn't going down so easily, and he very nearly killed the Paladin again before he finally dropped.

Using emote, I said "Well done.  Not bad for a pair of Hordies."

The two Blood Elves froze, and one said something (in Orcish) out loud.

After a few seconds, I realized they thought they were going to be ganked.

Oops.

"Don't mind me," I emoted.  "I'm heading to the Plaguelands."

The pair began to move around again, and I slunk away.  The Scourge surrounding Stratholme needed some thinning out.




*Why don't I count Elwynn?  One word:  Goldshire.  It attracts toons for, shall we say, other reasons.

**If you play Alliance, go take a Horde toon into Tranquillien and watch the interplay between Dame Auriferous and High Executioner Mavren.  Let's just say that Mavren is a lecher, and the Lady is not amused.

***You used to have to get a group of 3-4 L17s to take out one of them, but with the changes to the game since Wrath you can take them out with two.  A word of advice:  if you're out questing in the Ghostlands, watch your back.  Those two have an annoying habit of sneaking up on you when you're not paying attention.

****Besides, I like the sound that an abomination makes when you hit it hard.

Attack of the Ninja Looters

My oldest met reality last week.

Oh, it's not that she lives in fantasy-land; believe me, I get an earful about school/friends/the-uncaring-world when she comes home every day.  What I mean is that she finally met some of those people in MMOs.

I'd been cleaning around the house when I heard a scream of anguish from her.  "I'll get you for this!" she yelled.

"What did your brother or sister do this time?" I called down the stairs.

"Not them!  This.... this.... GUY!"

Uh-oh.  I came downstairs.  "What happened?"

She was moving her Elven Hunter all over a clearing, following some near max-level toon around.  "I was killing this dude for a quest, and this IDIOT came and took the treasure out of the chest I was supposed to open!"

"Ah."  I sat down and looked over her shoulder.

"I want to attack him so bad....  But I CAN'T!!"

"Well, you could challenge him to a duel --at least I think you can in LOTRO-- but you're L32 and he's L73.  It wouldn't be a contest."

"But I am just so mad right now!  I have to wait and do the whole thing again!!!"

I sighed.  "Yeah, I know.  You just met the ninja looter.  They're one of the asshats you'll meet in MMOs."

The mini-boss respawned, and the ninja looter attacked the mini-boss before my daughter could.  I swear I saw steam coming out of her ears.

"Look," I said.  "LOTRO is one of the best MMOs out there for learning the game because of the community.  But that doesn't mean that you won't find asshats out there in LOTRO, either.  You've been playing LOTRO for over a year now, and you've only run into a few.  I finally ran into my first really bad one in The Old Republic the other day.  It happens."

"Yeah, but it's so not fair!"

"I agree completely.  But there's nothing you can do about it right now, because he didn't do anything that you could sic the game admins on him."

She opened her mouth to retort, but I cut her off with a wave of my hand.  "This is why I won't let you play WoW.  You have to learn how to handle these sort of people before you play WoW, because there are a lot more of them on WoW than on some of these smaller games."

"But you play WoW!"

"Yes, and I'm a lot older.  The asshattery in WoW is minor compared to other parts of the internet, and you have to learn how to handle this maturely first.  It's just like my opinion on Facebook; you have to learn how to let things roll off of you, to filter them out, and not let them get to you.  And believe me, there are plenty of people my age or older who have trouble with that."

She turned back to the screen, crossed her arms, and fumed.

"I didn't say you had to like it; I said you had to learn to deal with it."

"I am," she replied.  "I'm imagining my hunter skewering him on the end of a flight of arrows."

I glanced up at the timer we use to limit the kids' computer activity.  "Tell you what," I said as I reset the timer, "I'm not going to count the time you had to wait here to finish up your quest.  This was something beyond your control, so it shouldn't count against you."

"Okay....."  Her shoulders relaxed a little.  "Thanks, Dad."

"You're welcome."  I got up and retrieved my bottle of cleanser.  "Besides, someone will eventually decide to teach him a lesson with their guildies.  It happens on WoW all the time, especially on the PvP servers."

"I just wish your Rogue were on LOTRO."

"Me too, kid.  Me too."

I'm Sorry, You Confused me with Somebody Else

It's been one of those weeks.

No, not in a bad way, but in a "who did you think I was, anyway?" sort of way.

Like the Warrior who berated me in Arathi Basin for not pursuing a retreating Horde player and instead returning to the flag.  "Shoulda killed him," he said.  "Don't be such a pussy."

"My job is to protect the flag, not get HKs," I replied.

"She's right, you shithead," a Druid added.*  "You win by getting and protecting the flags."

The Warrior just wouldn't give up.  "But what Rogue turns away from an easy kill?  She's a wuss."

"I want to win," I replied.  "If it means fewer HKs, I'll do it."

"Chicken shit."

***

Or, like the group finder in The Old Republic, which had my Jedi Shadow automatically checked as Tank and Damage, and I only found out about it after I'd ported into Cademimu.  "Gang, I'm going to drop," I said.  "I thought I was queued as Damage, not as Tank."

"You sure?" the Commando marked as healer asked.  "I can keep you going."

"Not here.  I'm at the low end for this Flashpoint, and I'm not specced for tanking."

I'm sure the Commando could have given it a good try, but come on.  I've been in Cademimu as a low end DPS before, and even then I had trouble staying upright against bosses.

***

Or the people in Eye of the Storm who, when they asked what to do in this battleground, I replied "You get and hold towers, then worry about the mid.  Three towers will beat holding and getting the flag most of the time."

So what happened?  9-10 of our team went to the mid, 3 went to a far side tower, and there was one person on each of our regular towers.  While our side fought over the mid, the Horde swept in and took three towers.  As players died and respawned, we were slowly pushed back and away from the remaining tower.

So much for asking my opinion.

***

Or yesterday, when I was back on Taris with my Jedi Shadow, I got mistaken for a tank.  I was taking a break from the Alderaan push toward the end of Chapter 1, and I figured it'd be nice to smash a few rakghouls and clean out some old quests in my queue since those raks couldn't really hurt me.

So, when the call went out for a group to take on the World Boss, I waited until I was sure there was going to be a group pulled together and I whispered if they needed DPS.  I got an immediate invite, and I drove on over to the spot where Subject Alpha awaited us.  As I arrived, discussion centered on who would tank the giant rakghoul.

"I can do it," a Shadow replied.

"Tal," the Ops Leader asked of me, "can you be off tank?"

I was about to say no, but then I remembered I was an L30 in the land of L18-20.  "I'm DPS spec, but I can tank in a pinch since I've got more health than everyone else."

"O_o"

To be fair, there was an L47 Sage in the group, but I only discovered that afterward.**  Everybody else was L20-L23 and had half of my health.  I felt reasonably confident that if it came to me tanking, my lack of tank expertise would be offset by the Shadow's taunting ability and my extra health.  Sure, I didn't have any of the Shadow's tank spec goodies, but I figured I could hold my own.

Probably.

Maybe.

Once everyone arrived at the site, about five minutes later, the tank pulled and we began.  The main tank held aggro well enough that I hardly took any damage, and whenever the Ops Leader asked the World Boss to be turned around I taunted Subject Alpha to my side.  My lack of aggro holding extras meant that the main tank got the World Boss back, but given the amount of healing heading our way we were in good shape.  There was some nut who kept taking huge amounts of damage, but the healers in the group kept him upright.

After about 5-10 minutes, Subject Alpha bit the dust, and I didn't even have to worry too much about tanking dynamics.

Now why couldn't the Eye of the Storm run have ended so well?




*My Rogue is a female Night Elf.  I've decided that it's easier to simply let people believe what they want to believe rather than correct them all the time.

**That probably explained why she was assigned to heal the main tank exclusively.


EtA: Cleaned up a few grammatical errors.