Folks still roll Need on offset. FFS

Short one – doing a 5 man for the valor, and the Druid healer needs on a Strength dps Neck item. Riiiiiiight. Druids need strength for what exactly? He then needs another item which could be his offset. Both well before anyone else has even rolled. Deathlordxtx for the loss.

It was not surprising that his name was also an ArthasZ style fiasco. Can’t these people re-roll Rift already? Somebody tell them that Wow is dead please.

I’m sick of this shit, so I’m calling them out. You want an offset item and wish to roll Need, then use the chat function BUILT INTO THE GAME to see who else wants it.

The new 5 mans in patch 4.3 are very reasonable

I’ve now played each of the new 5 mans in patch 4.3 a few times and they are very reasonable; however the player base and loot mechanics are still problematic.

From a pace and visual style the new instances is excellent. The tasks needed are obvious enough that you get the idea quickly, the mechanics are not difficult to follow, but they need to be addressed properly (interrupts, fire on ground, proximity, special kill orders feature strongly). All in all, good stuff. Worth waiting for, and certainly feature rich in terms of game lore that the characters get to participate in.

However the two same aspects of running randoms remain frustrating, and they are related. Morons and rude mongrels still populate the queues just as frequently as average players. Great players are still rare. I’m an average player overall, and I have a sixth sense in detecting when somebody is a mongrel, which of the handful of runs so far I’ve seen a typical spread of douche-bags.

When to cancel a raid?

Its the slow summer time of Warcraft, and many players are taking extended breaks, fooling around with partners, and generally not logging in. Some folks might have had lives in the first place. Lucky sods. So it falls to the folks who are still raiding to try to recruit, pug, or beg for characters to fill the ranks.

In these troubling times the Friends list gets a workout, and good players or even average players who are online, but only known in passing get a whisper.

(As an aside I’d like to think that the Trade Chat putrific swill had dropped off, but it looks about the same. Go figure that all the people who are taking breaks are not those in Trade presenting their lack of social skills…yup.)

This got me thinking that there must be somesort of threshold of pain, time, or frustration which causes the leadership (or which in my Guild I just recently because a participant officer) to just say, “screw this, lets raid hogger instead. Good night guys”.

But when and based on what type of scenarios? I dont have answers, I’m asking the question. When do you call it, and go fishing in Darkshire?

My suss is:

• I think missing more than 2 is a total non-start, and having 2 missing at any point after is just frustrating and the beginnning of the end. At best tell the ones you have to look around, give them all assist to invite, and say that you’ll look again at a kick-off in 15 minutes.
• Having low gear is as bad as no player at all, especially so when you get deeper into ICC.
• Having screen-lickers (see below) is a non-start too. ICC cannot carry any.

Could be cused by some of these factors:

Low toon numbers – make for bad runs, especially if you have no players with alt toons. So low toon numbers really means a lack of players. recruitment might help, but you need to keep the old ones, while the new ones get broken in. And adding any number of new players into a group is a mess.

Like adding a new cock in the hen house. Bloody, messy, and sometimes not worth the effort.

Poorly geared players – basically make a run with slightly less fail, but still fail when the challenge can’t be beaten by skill alone.

Which assumes you can get skill…

Screen-lickers instead of raiders – will make the GM and officers scxream murder, but hope they learm. This is probably worse than no numbers at all. Either way I think recruitment might help.

Lend me your thoughts on what measure you folks use.

What is the value of normal players? (rant)

I’d love to put some “uber-hardcore-1337” gamers into an exam and give them an essay topic:

Players that are not hardcore still add value to Warcraft. Discuss.

Most would not even get into the room, and those that did might suffer under the tyranny of pen and paper. 🙂 There is no way you’d give them a computer, as they’d just start logging in, or trolling the forums about it. But in all seriousness, the opinion and total subjectivity of what is normal performance, and who should get access to what content keeps coming up. The 3.2 token drop change only fueled the fire.

We’ve (the work wow’ers) chatted about this a while back at lunch, and they noted I’ve made some pretty extreme statements around performance expected from fellow guild-mates and other players, and I’ve sworn out loud many times when confronted by somebody that does not meet my standards. Shamefully. And then I probably don’t meet the standards of hardcore either. Probably the hardcore players would find my Priest a joke, and be hard on Mortigen’s progression. I’d be a token screen breather, and relegated to farming silver in the backwaters of Arathi Highlands.

From now onward (or until the next ass-hat drooler pug wipes us on simple trash in VH) I’ll try to ponder and absorb some thoughts on Normal players. And lets call them normal players, as calling them casual might be implying that they don’t really care or commit to gaming seriously.

So a few mantras and thought that I’ll keep foremost in my mind about normal players:

• a normal player is an ok thing (repeat this while doing circular breathing)
• they are more tolerant of the mistakes of others (in other words cool and relaxed)
• they might make a few mistakes themselves (still learning or juggling RL too)
• they are not elitist jerks, and might still have an interest in improving their game play
• they are willing to sacrifice being on the cutting edge of content in favour of other life choices

Lastly why do I like them so much? Because I am one.

My real life takes precedence over WoW regularly. I kind of like the fact that I can geek it up and still have social skills, a full time job, and a solid relationship. But damn me, I really love WoW too. Death Knights are 100% solid fun (please don’t roll one, we’re full), and the small percentage of things that Warcraft does not do right is totally blown away by what it does right. Especially so for normal players.

So beyond proping up the financial side of WoW, and providing an ongoing whipping boy for hardcores, what do they provide to you?

3 Stories, 1 Night, Much Swearing

A few days ago I had a day of WoW that was like playing Snakes and Ladders. Here are the three stories that made up another “learning experience”.

Story One: The BF PuG that couldn’t.

Cast: My Tankadin, Hunter-1, Huntard-2, SPriest-DC, Priest-Heals, Mage-Gone.
Started the night with a Heroic BF run.
– I pop into LFG and get messaged to see if I’m a tank and up for a BF run. Well as its the daily, so of course I say I’m keen, and I join group.
– Upon join we have Tankadin, 1x Hunter and a Heal and Shadow Priest. For BF thats not ideal as they have reduced AoE, but thats not an issue if we keep on the game. Having me as AoE tank is the real cheat mode for BF, so we’ll be OK.
– We are one dps short, but that should be easy to fill. I jump into LFG and start looking.
– The Huntard says he needs 10 minutes before we start, and his mate will join us. OK, free DPS is good, and 10 minutes is not a train wreck.
– Leave LFG
– So we wait, the time passes and finally after 15 minutes we have a new player. A mage. Well he pops in, asks a few questions and we get rolling.
– Summon everyone.
– Summon one of them again, as they are not ready.
– Except the SPriest disconnects, so we wait.
– Then SP is back, so we zone in.
– And the SPriest disconnects, and we wait.
– All on, and buffed, so I check in chat that everyone is ready.
– OK good, mark, and first pull.
– Skull and X make a quick beeline for me and start swinging. Nobody else has moved, Hunter then sends in Pet and Mage starts damage. Healer does sweet fuck all, and I go down due to 2000, 2000, 6000, 2000, 2000, plus some other hits. Dead tank. Group makes for the door.
– Priest survives and we get res’ed.
– Take two is better, I use a Sheep mark and the Mage does a perfect sheep. We drop them no sweat.