Bizzul's Demise: Noxn (as Lipstick) gets the better of a fellow guildie

It’s almost Christmas and if you’re anything like me you’re way too busy to squeeze in much time playing World of Warcraft. So it’s just a very short post today, featuring two videos, but I think you’ll enjoy them as much as I did.

Noxn, an Undead Shadow Priest (who also plays a Dwarf Shadow Priest and Blood Elf Death Knight) on Mannoroth, has created two great World PVP videos. In the first video he griefs a guild member as his Alliance Shadow Priest. Unfortunately the guild member has no idea that Lipstick is Noxn and the guild chat included in the video is priceless. In the second he stalks a Night Elf Druid with a bounty on his head.

Video 1 – Bizzul’s Demise

Download Bizzul’s Demise by Noxn from Filefront

From Noxn’s blog – The 8 Steps to Making Friends on WoW:

Step 1: Don’t be a downy when it comes to PvP.
Step 2: Have an 80 character on the opposite faction.
Step 3: Double box your main and your opposite-faction alt.
Step 4: Pay attention to guild chat and spam your “o” tab, figure out where people in your guild are and what they are doing.
Step 5: Find someone in an open PvP area.
Step 6: Eliminate them swiftly.
Step 7: Listen to them cry about it in guild chat, not knowing it’s you.
Step 8: Make a video out of it.

Video 2 – Furtastic‘s Demise

Download Furtastic’s Demise by Noxn from Filefront

When Furtastic, a Night Elf Druid, posted a message on the Mannoroth forums to say that he would kill anyone who dared attack him, he inadvertently put a bounty on his own head. The first reply said succinctly:

I guess Noxn took up the challenge. And this video is even more fun than the first because, well, Noxn describes it best:

To scout him out, I stuck to my strengths: manipulation and lying. Unfortunately, not everything went as I had originally planned, but they were pretty close.

By the way, the Death Knight in the video is Noxn (Pidgen) as are all the other various Alliance characters that conveniently strike up conversation with Furtastic throughout the video. Noxn is everywhere!

You have entered Contested Territory

There is an attitude out there in the World of Warcraft player community that goes like this: If you play on a PVP server and get ganked you deserve it.

Frankly I am sick to death of hearing this response, no matter how it’s phrased, and here is why.

Once upon a time, 3 years ago in fact during the Halloween event of 2006, I walked down the road to EB Games and picked up this MMO I had heard some of the guys at work talking about – World of Warcraft. My partner and I had just finished watching the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy over a rainy weekend and somehow as a spur of the moment thing we decided to go out and buy a copy and give it a whirl.

At that point in time I may have played the occasional Age of Empires map or gone through some of the Heroes of Might and Magic campaigns but playing games was something I enjoyed only if I had nothing better to do. I didn’t buy my own copy of World of Wacraft right away. I decided to just use the 10 day free trial, expecting to get about as much play time out of this game that I had out of other computer games. So I let my partner choose the realm during the character creation process. And he chose to play on the realm that his work mates played on.

This is where I first heard the concept PVP and PVE. I had no idea what this meant in reality. We made the choice that we were going to play horde of Frostmourne because my naive boyfriend had been told that PVE is stupid and nerdy all the good people play on PVP.

Perhaps it was fate, I’m not sure, but Frostmourne was so full, with horrendous log in queue times, we were unable to create new characters straight away. I wonder where I would be if I had ended up playing as an Undead Rogue on Frostmourne as I originally intended. Things would be so different I’m sure! So while we waited we went to the server Blizzard recommended: Barthilas. And created some Alliance characters. So we could still tinker around temporarily.

Tiantha the Warrior and Lutherin the Mage were born. And we had a blast blundering around in Elywnn Forrest getting freaked out while stealing candles off Snobolds in a spooky cave we didn’t think we could ever get out of. One night we were wandering about and came to a crossroads between Elywnn Forest, Redridge and Duskwood. We accidentally crossed the border into Redridge and the alarming message came up on the screen:

You have entered a contested area.

We were scared! The spiders were huge and level 19 to boot, we scampered back to the relative safety of Elywnn wondering what the hell a contested area was.

My first experience with ganking was when I was about level 23 and had wandered into Redridge Mountains because that is where the Westfall quests took me. While successfully looking for a necklace at the bottom of the lake I swam back up to the  surface to find the town being demolished by 2 horde who were sitting on the roof of the Town Hall obliterating ever player and NPC in their range.

It was pure chaos and I was terrified. I tried running to the Inn thinking I could hide in one of the upstairs rooms but I didn’t stand a chance. I was one-shotted before I made it  to the front door. Eventually some level 60 alliance players arrived and the horde ran off through a mage portal while the rest of us picked up the pieces of a shattered town.

So this is what contested means.

Perhaps I should have realised that this point that ganking was entirely senseless and that things would not get better as I leveled. I didn’t. All I could think of at that point was the awe I had for these level 60 horde and wished I was at max level so I was that powerful.

A few weeks later I ventured into Stranglethorn Vale for a quest and it was a nightmare.  In fact the ganking was so bad, I got tired of being picked on and spirit running, that I ended up not completing my quests in STV and surfed the net for an alternative questing zone. I then hitched a ride over to Desolace which was basically deserted and quested there instead. I wrote Stranglethorn Vale off as a bad area to quest in and still didn’t realise that ganking would be a part of life while playing on a PVP server.

By the time I had entered contested zones I was still a complete noob (I played a Warrior and chose to wear the cloth armor I looted because robes looked waaaaay prettier) but I had found a guild and also convinced my brother and sister to start playing as well. We played as a group and it took months to get up to level 40. There was no chance we were moving to another server or rerolling. It just seemed much easier to cope with the ganking than spend months doing that leveling again. From scratch. Besides, apart from me, the others all really liked the character classes they had chosen.

I get really sick of hearing people say, “you choose to play on a PVP server”. When you first start up this game with absolutely no comprehension of what the hell PVP or PVE is you get suggested a server from Blizzard and you just choose it. In my case there was no “choosing” whatsoever.

Before you know it you’ve made friends and found your niche on a server which has begun to feel like home. So, yes, you can pay extra money to move off to a PVE server but when you are a social person who has become attached to the people you’ve met in your travels you stick it out to stay with your friends and suffer the PVP because most of the time the trade off is worth it.

That does not mean we can’t get cranky at the stupid futility of teenage gankfests those few times they get really out of control. It is also my experience that the people who spout “tough luck” are either people who have never ever played on a PVP server OR are the types of people who find it hilarious to gank people at the drop of a hat and camp them.

Welcome to Warsong Gulch

I ventured into Warsong Gulch the other day and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Why? Well it wasn’t because we won, although we did. And it wasn’t the 11 minute battle duration timer either, although that was something of a relief.

I tend to pick a Paladin or Death Knight at the start of the small battlegrounds and latch onto them. If the partnership works they’ll give me some protection when I’m attacked, survive while I’m chain CCed and between the two of us we’re pretty much unstoppable (ok, so like 4 or 5 could probably take us). Pallies and DKs also tend to operate as 1 man fighting machines in battlegrounds and tend to wander away from the pack and need heals.

So somehow I picked this Death Knight who seemed to be proceeding at a swift pace towards the Horde keep the other night. It wasn’t until the two of us were alone, rushing through the tunnel to the Horde flag room, that I looked down and realised… he was a Gnome Death Knight.

And he was soooooo cute! His head was covered in miniature plate armor with a couple little spikes sticking out of it. And he could run really fast. Then he popped some Baby Spice and we danced.

Awwwwwww so cute!

Sure sure, strategically it’s great to be a really really small target when you’re holding the flag. Perhaps the player behind the character is some tough guy who’s just really dedicated to PVP flag carrying.

I hope I come across this guy again.

We won with 3 flags by the 11 minute mark, did I mention that?

Is that the tiniest flag you've ever seen, or what?

Lath has been very brave and taken up Arena in her spare time and does 2v2 side by side with her RL partner, Mardinas, as well as a bit of 3v3 and 5v5. But she’s got a bit of a problem – 0 resilience.

Wearing my new PVP gear

We (Lathere, Mardinas and I) got to chatting and I mentioned that I had a couple pieces of PVP stuff in the bank. You know, VoA drops that were going to be disenchanted anyway. Mardinas, a PVPer, was suitably impressed when I dug up out of the depths of my bank three pieces: Furious Gladiator’s Mooncloth Gloves, Furious Gladiator’s Mooncloth Leggings and Deadly Gladiator’s Cloak of Dominance. No enchants, no gems, nothing, since I’d dumped them in my bank to clear out my bags after a raid.

It turns out that you can just buy a bunch of PVP gear with Emblems so (after checking out, and approving, how the whole set actually looks) Lath took me shopping and we bought Hateful Gladiator’s Satin Hood, Hateful Gladiator’s Satin Mantle, Hateful Gladiator’s Satin Robe with some Emblems of Valor.

There was a small hiccup when I realised there was a choice – 2 sets of cloth gear (Satin or Mooncloth), essentially forcing you to choose between +Crit or +Spirit. Now in my mind +Crit is definitely the better of the two for Discipline in PVP or PVE. Yet we armory’ed a bunch of priests on our server and some had picked the Mooncloth, some had picked the Satin and most had a mixture of the two. Perhaps these folks were like me and were using items they’d won by chance in a VoA run? Or is, say, the Mooncloth shoulders significantly better in some way to the Satin shoulders? I feel like I’m missing out on something here.

I’m slightly disturbed by the ease at which I’d acquired a full Hateful/Deadly/Furious PVP set since I’m told you usually have to do well in Arenas to qualify for some of it. But I’m also happy that I found something to spend my Emblems of Valor on. It’s very nice not having to compare my raiding epics with PVP starting gear to try and find a balance of defensive stats without shedding too much spellpower.

Anyway, with gems and enchants these are my PVP stats (self buffed with Inner Fire/Fort):

• Spell Power: 2253
• Resilience: 489
• Health: 20,800
• Crit: 513 (20.18%)
• Haste: 108 (3.29%)
• Spell Penetration: 0
• Hit: 68

I’m focusing on Resilience and, to a lesser degree, Stamina with gems because I think that’s where I’m lacking at the moment. Perhaps some readers with PVP knowledge can point me in the right direction for a Discipline Priest at my level?

PS. did a Wintergrasp with a couple friends this morning and it was actually quite fun!
PPS. do you think if I do all my dailies in my PVP gear people will be less likely to attack me?