Patch 4.2 - Firelands, or "Too soon, Executus!"

(Note, I started writing this back in December or just before, so this will be well out of date, but I wanna finish it and get it done.)

So yes, I know we're into patch 4.3 now, yet I've been lax about tossing in my two cents about patch 4.2. Well, I'm going to fix this. Patch 4.2 saw some very big events come into play. First, the Firelands invasion, which consisted of the Molten Front and the dailies it gave, a compelling story that, for some of us, encouraged us to get involved on the basis of just retribution. Second, the Elemental Bonds questline which consisted of Thrall, Aggra, learning more about our beloved Warchief. Third, "The Firelands" raid.

Admittedly, Patch 4.2 holds some bittersweet memories for me, but for what it is, I enjoyed it. The Molten Front has some very nice upgrades for folks like Blacksmiths and Tailors and a couple of plans for Engineers that they really shouldn't pass up if they're close to getting them, even now, though to be honest, the quest grind, after days and days and days of unlocking does get old. If you did the Shattered Sun Offensive on Quel'Danas in BC, in prep for Sunwell, you understand.

If you haven't done Thrall's questline, I won't spoil it for you. For your first time, you'll do it for the story. Anytime after that, chances are it'll just be for the cape. I actually get a little sad when I do it because I'm a pseudo pacifist, and 'cause I miss certain characters. But I'm sure you'll know what I mean if you've seen it.

And finally, The Firelands. It was a fun raid for me, though I didn't get to see the end 'til after the nerf happened. Ragnaros was a fun fight for me, Fandral was a wuss, Alysrazor always causes amusement 'cause someone derps, it never fails, and then there's Beth and Rhyolith and Shannox too. Beth'tillac finally gave me her shiny shield. Twice! I love the model of the Ward. I still want a set of shoulders. Someday.

It was during 4.2 that I actually started my transition back to Bloodhoof from Silver Hand in terms of server preference. Things happened, won't go into 'em, but I learned my lessons, and that's why I still play this blasted game. Heh. Next post will be about Dragon Soul, patch 4.3.

Quickie: Y'ever Notice...?

It's no secret I read MMO-Champion often, keeping up on the news and rumors and such, plus finding out what's going on in the wacky World of Warcraft playerbase as a bonus. Some things I've noticed...

PvP servers and primarily-PvP players have horrible spelling habits and a lack of PvE knowledge, something I've discovered in great detail when I group with them of course, but reading their posts on MMO just make me shake my head. Note, I do PvP, but it's not why I play the game, and I don't care if you play the game to PvP, the game is based in a PvE universe. PvP is only an added bonus component, meaning you will always be second class, especially to me.

It's funny to read most blue posts being tracked. A great majority of them that have been locked have been started by an Alliance player who can't seem to spell/capitalize/punctuate/etc, and when I try to read them I get a headache because they're so horribly written, not to mention the fact the topic tends to be inane and pointless if thought about for 5 seconds with the use of common sense. Shoo, stupid Alliance players, and you too you Alliance transfers who can't form a complete thought. You can even take our bad Horde players with you. The Alliance transfers that legit-ly realized they started out on the wrong faction and have brain cells + maturity can stay.

And before this turns into a complete Alliance bash, as it's too easy to do as such, I'm going to stop here.

Okay, I lied. One small note - I don't mind if you're Alliance, if you don't want to kill me and don't have completely skewed thoughts and unfair bias against my faction's races. I can co-exist with a Nelf just fine, heck I'd like to chat with one, assuming they didn't hate my guts needlessly. I'd make my Draenei Horde if I could, considering I want to play him but can't stand Alliance. Hate the faction, not the races.

Edit 8-20 : I do realize that there are a lot of bad Horde spellers and such, don't get me wrong there. I guess when I read those posts from those Alliance folks I fat-finger-pointed out, the ol' stereotype pops into my head, about how only kids play Alliance, how they're usually underage and such, because we all know kids are the ones who netspeak liek dis and use 4 instead of for and go out of their way to skip using one or two vowels or consonants to make a word and so on. I kid you not when I say it tends to be Alliance folks that start a thread only to have it locked. 

4.1, the Return of the Trolls

(Yes, this is way past relevancy, but I may as well touch on it.)

So for those of us who played back in Vanilla and BC, chances are you got to experience good ol' Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman. The Cataclysm hit though, and ZG was abandoned by the Gurubashi, while the Amani stayed holed up in the Ghostlands.

Until the Zandalar tribe, the highest of Troll empires, decided the time had come to bring all the Troll empires together with the belief that to survive, they had to work together, but not only that - to retake what other races had taken from them, they so believed. Only the Darkspear, led by Vol'jin, rejected this notion, this offer. Why? They had separated themselves from the other tribes because they didn't follow or accept the traditions and bad habits that had been taken up, and despite recent events, they were still loyal to the Horde. That said, they couldn't stand by and let the Zandalari simply do as they pleased. Alerting the Horde and the Alliance alike, Vol'jin spearheaded the efforts in ZA while Darkspear and Booty Bay members went to ZG. Only you know if those efforts were a success or a failure...

Personally, how do I feel about these instances, redone as they've been? I think ZA didn't change a whole lot, which is fine, though the Zandalar mobs added new challenge to it, and being someone who wasn't able to get a bear in the day, it's nice to have a chance to get another one. No, I still haven't gotten one, but it WILL happen... someday. Now ZG? That's another story. Completely redone, and in a lot of cases, tough, very tough, if you're not used to it OR are just having a clumsy off-night. It's also a good idea to have a good Archaeologist in the party to do the Cache of Madness, not unlike needing an Alchemist to make Gurubashi Mojo Madness in the old ZG.

The redone gear isn't too shabby either. If it wasn't for the gear, I wouldn't have found out Enhancement is MUCH better than Elemental for me, which makes my solo and Tol Barad questing efforts MUCH easier. Heh heh.

Unfortunately, doing either as a random tends to be... tricky at best. Sometimes it's smooth as silk. Sometimes it's like grinding yer face on a brick wall. A few nights ago, myself and a good friend were the DKs in a 2 DK, 3 Druid run, and despite the complete lack of CC and dispels, it was nearly a faceroll. It would have been completely, but Malacrass got to have fun with all those stolen Lifeblooms. We 2 shot him, no matter the case.

In short, it's a nice slice of the good ol' days. And along with the new Bear, there's also a new Raptor mount off Mandokir, and there's a new Panther mount to replace the beloved and often-farmed Tiger. So, if you have the patience, relive the old days, but if you're a new player, welcome to a crash course in how you REALLY do an instance. CC, patience, and situational awareness.

And with that, another post comes to a close.

Semi-OT but related - Rift

Alright, so, chances are that you have seen something about Rift, the latest MMO to hit the market, be it a banner ad, review, or what have you. One of the banner ads that I've seen on both Wowhead and Curse Client says "We're not in Azeroth anymore!" which obviously means to say "We're gunning for World of Warcraft, fear us, rawr." If you believe the mini movies and the banner ads and such, you might just believe they have a chance.

Honestly? They're not taking down Deathwing anytime soon. Does it mean they've got nothing? Hardly.

First thing to note, if you can trial run it, do so, both to see how you like it and to see if you can run the beast. In my case, my Dell Dimension 5150 with a Pentium D, 2 gigs of generic ram, and 7600 GT 256 meg video card ran it on the lowest settings. I didn't try to hike 'em up 'cause I had the second half of a weekend trial run, if that. Have 10 gigs free on your hard drive too. My DSL took around 16 hours supposedly, at around 140k a second for download speeds. And don't pause or stop it either if you don't have more than 10 gigs to work with. If you pause it and restart it, it will look at your current hard drive space, and if you are over its space requirement, it'll restart fine. If you're under, it won't, even if you have, let's say, 5 gigs finished downloading. Start with 12, pause with 7 gigs still free, nope, won't resume, gotta get past that minimum install threshold again. Lesson learned, have a free space buffer on your hard drive if you happen to be like me and have a stuffed drive.

So what about gameplay, anyway? What I really say? For the computer I played it on, the graphics were good, the gameplay was, I felt, a little numb, a little groping to get the proper things done, not unlike City of Heroes and Champions Online. Was it bad gameplay? Certainly not. If you get used to it, you're gonna be just fine. As far as things like gear and stats go, it's the typical, familiar stuff, a few vague stats and a few obvious good stats. One thing I did love was the talent trees. It was fun to figure out which combos work the best. In my case, I played a shaman, and I was makin' a mess of baddies. I forget which combo I was using, but I know druid was part of the trio. Since I started writing this a couple of months ago on my phone, the game has come down in price, extremely so. I'm seeing $20 prices in general, and I've actually got a price of $5 because of my former trial period. Since then, the friends I know have played the game have stopped or aren't playing at the moment, save for one, and those friends are still playing good ol' WoW. That said, it's not bad, but it's no WoW killer. I would play it again, but I don't really wanna pay to play when I play WoW and don't plan on stopping for the obvious immediate future.

The PuG, or, Why I Hate Randoms

*Blows the dust off his blog, and sneezes!* Ach, 'scuse me. *Pulls out an extra-strength Goblin hankie, and turns away, blowing his nose good and hard*

Eech, so yeah, long time no post, huh. I know, I know, sorry for being lazy. Lots has happened in my corner of Azeroth, heh.

So, like the title says, this is gonna focus on something we either suck up and deal with, or we avoid however possible - the PuG, or pick-up group for those who aren't familiar with the term. As of last night, there's another change coming, presumably with patch 4.1, called Call to Arms. In short, DPS is throwing fits 'cause they have to wait a half hour or more, most times, to do randoms, usually to do with tanks in short supply, so Blizzard's throwing the tank types(they say it's good for all classes, but...) a bone to get them to run randoms - a goodie bag with things like gold, flasks, maybe a rare combat pet, or even a super rare mount of some kind.

Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah. Remember The Oculus? The place in Wrath where you had to ride dragons, do sections of the instance, and so on? Back in Wrath, they put a goodie bag in the Cache after you beat Ley-Guardian Eregos. It had rare-quality gems, money, I think 2 extra badges, and a chance at a blue drake normally gotten from Malygos 10. The reason? People were whiny and lazy group-droppers because they didn't have the patience to do the place. Personally, it didn't bother me, but that's just me. So yeah, now it's happening again.

I'll be frank, it bugs the heck out of me. Why?

Lemme give you a short run-down of things that tend to happen in PuG groups, most often because of, who else, but tanks.

Example 1: Disconnects or abrupt group drops. Most often either a DPS or a tank, the latter especially as a pull happens, leaving the DPS to die, or after a boss fight where they're looking for something to drop and it doesn't. Personal admission, I've dropped group when looking for a particular item to drop and it didn't, but I politely said I was sorry for dropping and wished them luck, most recently as my Shammy.

Example 2: Rudeness. Ask a question or note something is needed from a particular boss, get flat out ignored, no response. DPS pulling mobs when they shouldn't be. Tanks or heals or DPS getting flippant with another party member or members. Tanks and healers from the same guild getting an attitude or simply trolling because they can. Parts of example 1 also fit into this, as do parts of the next example.

Example 3: Drops. Tank needs a tank item, DPS needs too, and wins over the tank. Or the DPS loses a DPS item to a tank. Or a healer rolls need on Tear of Blood, loses it to a Boomkin. Note, that happened to my shammy, heh. Or, getting an item, and then dropping group, whether it was needed, or a complete ninja. Or it's the hunter winning a strength ring. Don't laugh. I'm not kidding here.

And so on. You get my point now about this, I hope. The long and short of it is the fact that I am tired of PuGs being so God-awful, in attitude and in build. I don't want to deal with big-shot tanks acting like they're too good to tank for the rest of us, more than they already do. Don't give them rewards they don't deserve. I don't believe it'll improve anything. The 30 minute drop penalty doesn't avert anything these days, especially for the fact it only works if there's a drop before the first boss fight.

In short, this is simply a band-aid for a gushing wound. I will simply continue to prefer guild runs over randoms. If a call to arms needs heals, maybe I'll try it, but currently, it's always the tanks in short supply. And let's face it, people still complained about Oculus. It's such a vivid memory, I know that if folks were forced to kill every boss in Halls of Origination, they'd drop from it too. I hate skipping bosses most times, I really do. But naturally, I'm not the tank, so who cares what I think? If I play stubborn, I'll just get vote kicked.

Why yes, yes I do have some bitterness over random groups. Wait 30 minutes as deeps, get in, people drop, group fails, waste of my time. Go in and kill bosses, piece I want drops, someone else needs on it and doesn't deserve it, gets it, runs off. Advise CC targets or say "Mana, one sec", and get ignored. Clue by four, tanks, you're not the only one that gets hurt by Neferset Plaguebearers. And it isn't hard to clear the other pack by General Husam either, don't be lazy.

Seriously, Blizz, stop giving the trolls(not the blue two-toed Rastamen) more reasons to troll. Thanks.

And now, I feel my soapbox giving way. Getting this all out feels good though. And now... deep breath.

~RJ