posted by
Lathere on the 16th February 2010
Do you have and enforce an Asshat Clause in your guild?
I’m sure you’ve heard of it, and chances are your guild has one:
We don’t care how good a player you are,
if you’re an asshole we’ll boot you.
I have to admit I’m a bit of a softy and take pity on people with poor social skills. I prefer to work around their ineptness by ignoring them as much as humanly possible. For the first time since I started raiding I was tempted to /gkick a raider in the middle of raid even though we were already short a member and really needed him.
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posted by
Cassandri on the 15th February 2010
The Pick Up Crowd, the /wave folks, gather at Eventide
By Raiding Alliances I don’t mean “LOL lets go kill the Stormwind Auctioneers!” I mean, when people talk about being part of a “collective” or a raiding group bigger or outside of their guild, how does it function?
How many people are in it? Do raids run at scheduled times? Is everything just /roll-ed on? What’s the incentive to join a raiding collective over a regular or casual raiding guild? Do they have a website?
And, most importantly, how the heck does it differ from your typical Pick up Group?
I sincerely hope that you didn’t come to this post looking for answers, because I have none. I’m hoping that some of our readers might be able to fill me in. Read More »
posted by
Cassandri on the 13th February 2010
An opportunity to start yet another new character that I'll never play again? Ps the Oceanic server option has disappeared entirely - they're all Offline.
I think I’m going through a why-am-I-playing-this-game-again? phase.
Raid nights, especially on Wednesdays after Tuesday evening maintenace, have been write offs for several weeks. Last Wednesday we gave up after wiping on Lady Deathwhisper – we hit the enrage though. The healers were seriously upset “I swear, I’m just spamming my heals, they should have come through…”, the DPS were pissed “I can’t exactly interupt with this shitty lag” and the casters were upset “WTB autoattack”.
Personally, I spent a good 2 minutes of the fight staring at Cassandri’s back wondering if she was still casting without raising her hands in the air (as she normally does) and if I would make matters worse by mashing my Mind Flay button too frequently.
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posted by
Cassandri on the 11th February 2010
Mistake #1: Using an AoE spell when there's only 1 or 2 mobs left to kill.
Lathere is a healer. I am a damage dealer. But we both have alts at level 80. And we’ve both tried to swap roles, with little success. And watching Lath fail in her new role… is actually pretty satisfying. That’s sisterly love for you.
I do a lot of 5 man healing as my Priest. I’m okay at it. Not great, but okay. I believe that’s because I spend so much time playing the Priest that I’m “comfortable”. I’m not a good healer. I don’t know exactly what the difference between me and a good healer is, other than years of experience, but I know whatever I’m doing wrong, I’m not a great healer.
In the last couple months I’ve also been healing as my newish Resto Shaman. I’m okay at it, just. The only thing I’m good at with the Shaman is totems because I know the dungeons pretty well.
On rare occasions I’ve been given the opportunity to play as Elemental as the Shaman. And not only is it pretty easy, I’ve impressed people with my DPS based on my gear. A friend of mine once advised me: the difference between mediocre and great Elemental Shaman is the ability to factor Chain Lightning (on a cooldown) into a single target fight.
Is that it? Read More »
Ensidia's world first kill of the Lich King (25) was declared invalid
It seems that so many of the extremely difficult boss kills this expansion are being declared as invalid or unfair by Blizzard. Because the guilds in question discovered something that turned the encounter in their favor and used it. Exodus’s world first Alone in the Darkness was considered to be an exploit because the guild discovered they could seriously confuse the spawned Guardians in the final phase by a Holy Paladin messing around with brain portals and threat.
A lecturer once told me the following story: His company had been commissioned to develop an educational game which would teach teenagers about the effects of drugs and alcohol on the body. The simple game they developed gave the user a virtual character named Bob and the game would show you what might happen to Bob in different situations.
The developers carefully produced different outcomes based on x drug+y situation = z. Then they put it into user testing and were completely surprised. What was the first thing the game users tried? Drugs? Alcohol? Cigarettes? No, the users tried to do it all, and all at once and waited to see if Bob could survive. They went to the extreme to see if the game could cope with a completely unrealistic, and unintended, situation.
They weren’t trying to understand the effects of drugs and alcohol on the body. They were trying to understand the game itself. Read More »
Staff, Dagger and Mace. In case you missed it: none of them are swords.
In Naxxramas I fought a political war to gain the right to bid DKP for the Shadow Priest best-in-slot weapon. In Ulduar, I lugged around a Guiding Star, a mace which other Shadow Priests at the time were forbidden to roll on. For Trial of the Crusader I had the opportunity to get my hands on a dagger for a change and not just any dagger, my first weapon in Wrath of the Lich King intended for damage dealers.
What do the Torch of Holy Fire and Guiding Star have in common? Mp5. Mp5 has no damage-increasing value to a Shadow Priest. We have scads of mana regenerating abilities, passive and active, at our disposal. Trust me, we don’t need Mp5. Read More »
Jumping ahead while Pixii (Lathere) is falling behind
Caesandra (my Mage) and Pixii (Lathere’s Warlock) are actually the first two characters we’ve tried to level together. I started playing World of Warcraft about one month or two after Lathere and her boyfriend started and not only could I not close the level gap – I was always about 10 levels and two zones behind – I didn’t feel any need to. I think I can confidently say that I leveled all on my own the first time.
I started the Shaman, Xata, because my brother also wanted to roll a Shaman. We had a terrible time of the early levels and I honestly don’t think I could have done it on my own. We were codependent: we both tended to die ridiculously fast if we tried to go it alone. I lost interest around level 55 and eventually told my brother – level 58 and waiting for me to catch up – to just go on without me. That was the end of that leveling duo.
Caesandra is level 46. Pixii is level 42. This leveling duo is falling apart. Read More »
When the silence gets to you...
I once wrote that one of The 15 things You Should Know About the Dungeon Finder was
the less said, the more successful the run will be
Little did I know that would turn out to be the norm, not the exception. I hate that people are too afraid or too lazy to speak up and chat during instance runs these days. I hate that people only talk when something has gone wrong, someone has died, or someone is doing something seriously wrong.
When you run the same dungeons over and over again for a year (and counting) the only things that differentiates one run from the next is the group that you’re with. Some kind of chat also alleviates the boredom of healing. Well it does for me, anyway. I could sit here and complain that nobody talks during my dungeon runs and do nothing to change things. Fortunately, I’m not that kind of girl. Read More »
Would you jump? My queues are quick, but they're not that quick!
In this modern age of Dungeon Finder, Dungeon Finder, Dungeon Finder I can tell you who holds all the power: Tanks.
I know we talk about instant (insta) queues. I’ve seen tanks prostituting themselves and their skip-the-queue in Trade chat for the price of 50g. I’ve heard all about “Tank Roulette”: a game in which the tank stands at the edge of Krasus’s Landing, queues using the Dungeon Finder as a Tank, jumps off the edge and either:
- (a) ends up safely in a dungeon before they die a horrible death from falling.
- (b) or – there’s a small chance – that they might hit the ground before they are matched with a party.
I laughed when I heard about Tank Roulette. And I started waiting a good 20 seconds before accepting my invitation… *evil laugh*
But I figure tanking isn’t probably the most fun job in the game so, why not? Let the tanks get some kind of bonus for all the crap they have to deal with. Every time you’re waiting in a queue what you’re really waiting for is for a tank out there on your Battlegroup to say “ok, I’m ready to tank something now”. And that’s power. Read More »
Standing in front of the Staff of Prehistoria (used to summon Ironaya) in Uldaman
One of the nicest surprises the Dungeon Finder has given me has been Uldaman. Not the Uldaman of my past, but Uldaman without all the crap. Uldaman for fun and XP. Uldaman has a bad reputation, but most of it doesn’t really apply anymore:
1. Home of the only Artisan Enchanting Trainer in the world
Can you believe that once you reached a certain level of enchanting (225, I believe) the only way to visit the Enchanting Trainer was to trek into Uldaman. Even on your own at level 60 this sucked.
2. Getting to the instance portal is half the work
This is also true of Blackfathom Deeps and the Deadmines in my opinion. If you travel there, old school style, you actually need about 20 minutes to clear and find your way through a maze of tunnels to reach the instance portal. And there’s no flight path nearby either. Definitely a mood, and group, killer.
3. It’s ugly
The scenery is pretty bad – lots of dust and lots of dwarves. Read More »
