Paid for 90!

Controversial!
Game wrecker!
Death of wow!
Ruins leveling!
More idiots!

Some of the things found on the forums when this little sneak peak found it's way onto the Internet.

I have a few posts about what I want to do with my free boost to 90. With the likelyhood of the paid boosts as well it had opened up the foodgates of possibilities.
I could have my DK and pay for a Mage!

It's worrying that people think that the only way to know your class is by leveling. How many people got to 90 and stayed in the spec they were leveling in? Especially if it was their first char. I didn't. The only way to test out my new spec was to practice at the training dummies before I moved on to bigger things that could kill me.
Considering that the people who use the boost will be in gear that's slightly better than Timeless Isle stuff is not like they are going to be making up the numbers in end game raids.

Plus there is Proving Grounds. The whole point of that is to see how good you are. Go in, try it, tweak things if you want to, try again. Not to mention that the will have to go through another ten levels when WoD comes out.

People may use it to try out a class they haven't played before. Or are after achievements. If I want to try a class, I roll a lvl1 and see if I like it. The ones that are off my list include Rogues, Paladins and Warriors. (I'm no tank, I don't enjoy healing and not keen on melee)
I also don't enjoy questing anymore. I've leveled three chars and the last two I preferred zerging through dungeons than repeating the same quests over and over. Although if you could buy a constant 500x xp bonus that could only be used on one char then I might be inclined to change my mind. Otherwise, paid for will always win over graft...

Leveling fun

With WoD looming on the horizon and updates on what the next expansion will bring it was high time I gave my DK some love along with my other alts.

Xiionia is my trusty bank alt. I use her to stash items I don't need right now but someone might need in the future. Yes, I am a WoW horder...

As soon as I got her out of the starting zone and into Stormwind I left her there. She was my second char and at the time I hated her with a passion. I had leveled a ranged to the then max level 85 and now I was playing on a melee that I was just button bashing. I didn't enjoy it one bit. Fast forward two years and I had a Druid and a Priest. There is the prospect of insta-boosting a char to 90 which I was going to use on a brand new mage or warlock but the interesting twist is that if it's used on a lvl 61 or over, then the professions are instantly boosted to 600 too.
This changed the playing field. I had for my other two as literally my profession slaves. One to benefit my main and the other to make some gold. So now I was faced with leveling the dreaded DK to 61 at least so I could boost her when the time came to it.

I was also looking at actually getting Pazima and Emava to 90. Truth be told I find it easier on Pazima. She's ranged and it's not often that I'm out dps'ed on a boss fight. There was an interesting dungeon experience that really, no clothie should ever end up in the position I was in...

The dungeon was Throne of the Tides. One that is always going to tug at fond memories as it was the first ever dungeon I ever ventured into. There was the usual rag-bag group that you get flung together with when you roll the 'dungeon finder' dice.
There was a DK tank (who didn't have a guild), a Paladin healer, a Hunter, a Rogue and me. Things should have started to add up when the tank just stood at the entrance. After a while he zoned in and set off for the trash that awaited us.

He taunted one and then started just parrying. While the rest of us were attacking the tank just couldn't hold aggro. My portrait was engulfed in red as I desperately tried to kill the thing before it got to me. This happened again on the next set. 'Maybe they are trying a new spec' I quipped to myself as I got the full attention of another mob. This carried on all the way to the first boss. When it was just one we had to contend with it was great. The tank tickled the boss and then stood there. The Hunter misdirected him as much as he could to keep aggro on the tank and the healer just got confused as in turn each persons party profile turned red.

We got to a boss that looked like Medusa if she was an eel. Things got real interesting real quick.
When she went into her vortex thingy the tank kept trying to aggro her. We were left with two relativity small adds who we could deal with without a tank. The problem was the large lumbering add who was left to roam free and rip us apart as and when it chose to. I had positioned myself in the small sanctuary of the doorway, to leave the Rogue and Hunter to tackle the big add while I took out the smaller ones. When I was done the big add was still there. The tank had died, a lost cause for the healer as he wasn't doing enough to warrent being saved. I was left kiting the big mob around the room as the Hunter and Rogue kept attacking. The Hunters pet then became the tank and we ploughed through the remainder of the fight.

The crunch time came when we were going towards the right hand passage when you come in from the entrance. The tank wanted to go left. The Healer stood near the mobs and didn't move. The rest of us ran circles in the 'lobby' torn between following the tank and staying with the person who would keep us alive. Eventually the Healer said to go to the left and the tank went running up. And promptly died. Yet again I was tanking. My divine shield was in over drive. Thankfully in the interest of self preservation I had glyphed it to heal me and reflect attacks. While I wasn't able to pull off much in the way of damage, spamming my instant casts that I could while moving, healing myself and chucking a few out to others meant that I was holding the mobs attention well enough that the others could continue to do what they were here to do. The beast finally went down, the tank was resed and promptly went storming into the final pack of trash before waiting to be fully healed. 'I've only been tank ten days' he said. Needless to say, Blizzard seemed to overrule whatever the player was trying to do and just killed him. My tanking skills were once again put to the test. It was bearable with one beast but two was the undoing of our valiant effort. We killed one but succumbed to the perils of being thrown in the air by the remaining mob. It was at this point everyone decided that the tank should go. The healer also quit. Leaving just us dps. We then got a healer... The same one who left. After a few laughs we said our goodbyes and parted before or group had even got going.

I'm all for giving people a fair chance but when someone is completely out of their depth and not willing to learn from their mistakes in quite happy to say goodbye.
Throne of the Tides had been a benchmark for the acceptance levels of people. The was a run where the healer said right off the bat that they were learning. The tank took it slow and add much surprise even to myself I found my fingers typing the reply "it's ok, I can help" I've not healed as a conscious effort since that fateful dungeon where I was flamed by the elitist tank back at level 30 ish. Being in shadow means I have about four spells, none of which I am overly familiar with but the sense of acceptance for people who were learning I found myself in the position where I was more than happy to spam heals until my mana ran out to make sure everyone survived. I might be inclined to turn my xp off and just run this constantly to get some practice in as so far, touch wood. The players I've randomly encountered here have been cheerful, haphazard and best of all, tolerating.

Haters gonna hate

We unfortunately came across a post on the Haomarush forum from somebody posting on a lvl zero char to do some very direct bitching about the guild. Unfortunately, the actual post got removed and now the thread is locked but it is available to see in all its glory in a quote.

Not only was this person not even posting in our own realm forum, they clearly thought that everyone else needed to be warned about 'our untrustworthy behaviour' but they were not confident enough about their own convictions to post while logged in on a main.

It's a case of serious sour grapes on their part. Firstly it's clearly someone who has felt that we steal the best players from other guilds and then they also get pissed off and QQ when any mention of how well the guild is doing is mentioned. The link that they post is 'here'.



When you have people from the yet-to-be-merged-to-us realm of Spinebreaker wading in and not being impressed, it makes you wonder what possessed them to do it in the first place. Considering nothing has been mentioned to us in trade (which is the usually place you see people airing grievances). Also, not sure they really thought through the perils of posting on an alt...

There are a few ways to see who people are on the forums. One way is to use the little no-entry/stop sign to hide posts by the person. Ive used Bradderz as an example for what it looks like.



This is ok if you don't mind looking through other forums to try and find other hidden posts. This is because the account the person was posting on is hidden, not just the char. I tried finding other posts in the Dragonmaw forums but there were a lot of posts to look through, so I got an extension for Chrome. It shows you the names of other people the account holder has used to post things. I was hoping that they had used their main at some point, I was not disappointed...



Using Bradderz as an example again, here is what came up.

Deathmaster from Anomia. This person has some serious beef with our guild for some reason that they would not like to disclose to us but just spout venom onto the forum of a different realm...  and to top it all off, they are the GM... oh dear.

WoW in numbers

When logging into the WoW website there was a really great infographic. Just incase they ever get rid of the actual page the link directs to, I was sad and in awe enough to screen shot everything!

Seeing the game in stats really makes you appreciate how vast WoW really is. Enjoy!

Farming dungeons for valor

With the opportunity to run dungeons to get bonus rep for certain factions of your choosing and as a quick route to farm valor, they are now the playground of the end gamer.

One particularly obnoxious player, Avarilyn. A Pally from Argent Dawn sees the heroic dungeons as a quick 'pew-pew' and doesn't seem to care that some of the people running them may have only just dinged 90.

The other people in the group, besides me, were: Zhanhua, the healer (currently 480 ilvl). Laurutu, the tank (currently 547 ilvl). Freeswan, the Warrior dps (currently 542 ilvl). Avarilyn, Pally dps (currently 577 ilvl)

The other dps were running around in lfr gear (obviously apart from the pally) with the occasional heroic item. So their gear wasn't great which also meant that compared to our heroic clad elitist they were not going to do much dps. Still, this is the constant spamming we got during the run:



I gave up near the end. Didn't see much point. He had totally taken the fun out of the run and when he left, we (interesting note that the healer had a good old bitch as well and it turns out they knew the Pally) had a good old moan about his constant spamming. Which is fair enough considering he did it constantly to us for the entire run.

So to go on, this got me thinking about pug groups in general...

When you go into a dungeon that is there for people to gear up why treat it like your personal playground. Bearing in mind that four of us were there for valor, it is not where we belong. There was a thread on the WoW forums from someone who had encountered an elitist like this while leveling and had been kicked for 'low dps'. Why would anyone do that? It's something to expect in lfr and more so in the current content ones but complaining about people in a dungeon who are there for the main reason the instance is there... beyond belief.

There were comments on the thread for Blizzard to introduce options so you can pick if you want a quick 'faceroll' run and be put with similar people. As much as I don't like standing around after five wipes (it has happened) I don't feel the need to ditch the group and hope for a more adequate team in the next pug. Personally, it feels like a triumph when you do complete it after a struggle. Also people are less inclined to think you (and possibly your entire guild) are a knob!

 

Additional!

I've been blessed as you can see below with the Pally doing a bit of self googling and coming across this! (maybe I should armory link all the people I mention?)

Unfortunately, they weren't too happy with me using them as a yard stick of how not to behave in a dungeon and for it to lead on to the comments made in the WoW EU forums about pug groups in dungeons and how end-gamers who hide behind keyboards treat dungeons as something they own and indeed feel that if they are hiding behind a keyboard they can behave however they want to whoever they want because they are 'invisible'. It's been described by psychiatrists as 'playground regression' where essentially you're an ass to everyone because you don't get your own way.
It's also interesting to see the responses that type of person will give when they are hidden away and feel that they are some sort of untouchable God who can do and say what they want (My Facebook link is at the top of the screen, go nuts with that btw, I'm not hiding) It's this type of person who the forum posts about being able to opt in for faceroll runs are about. The ones you see in lfr every day... Unless you're very lucky like me and get tanks who go through the tactics before every boss to help out the people who may have not been in there before. Although when I stated my amazement and enjoyment of the lfr this happened in, I was accused of 'breaking the game' as that never happens apparently.

I must find the screen shots and name that Druid Tank in the hopes they see it as they were amazing!

 

Anyway, I digress...
It has come to light that the healer wasn't actually destined to heal this as it was a zerg. So happy unfortunate days for anyone who may have joined who actually wanted to experience this dungeon. Now I had no clue what was going on with this 'premade' nothing was said at any point (I've been through the entire conversation log as it was too juicy/bitchy to not keep it all for later) that it was a zerg through. Stark contrast to another dungeon where the tank and four friends were in there and treated me like 'one of their own', asking if I was farming anything for a mog, wanted to do achievements etc... I've been in dungeons with people who have only ever tanked or healed and are using it as practice for dps for example, and they have told everyone that they are new to the role and everything has been fine and dandy as people know what to expect.

I'm a patient person and believe that kindness goes a long way. So does clear communication about what to expect anywhere. I've been that person who is the 'end-gamer boosting a friend' compared to the others and no matter what the ilvl of the person was, I made sure they were happy with it being a quick run through or if they wanted absolutely everything killed. The healer of that group was a fresh 90 too, running with a friend and when they were not doing, what appeared to be, much healing the obligatory WoW comment of 'yo, you healing?' was asked from the fifth randomer. This time however, brains were engaged first and a sensible reply came forth of 'Sorry! We can slow down?' from me. I even started bandaging people when the healer went OOM trying to keep up. It was a zerg, people were informed, everyone was happy. Hell, people even asked if we were running another one as it was "such a good group". We did, just because they asked and because it's a shitstorm in a teacup if you get a bad group. So when you get a question like that if you say no it's like killing a puppy...

To cut a rather long post short, from a 'random spectators' point of view, and to get back on track about what this post was actually about before it was hijacked by someone complaining that they got called out for their attitude. I'm not going to 'defend' this post anymore. The comments speak volumes about that same attitude that was chucked about in that dungeon.
It is that kind of attitude, the elitists who think they are the be-all-and-end-all, that ruin things. Regardless whether it's in lfr or a dungeon pug, whining about people, kicking people, spamming shit is not what people need to see. The idea about having a 'faceroll' option for those who do want to encounter this type of crap is a good one. I myself would be quite happy with a normal pug where you meet people who are running it for the enjoyment of it, not to suck the life out of it.