Wow... that sucks...

This weekend I had a "great" time in a pug with another guildie. I should have known better, but nope, not me... I joined. A shaman friend of mine just specced Resto for Kara so we were making our Outland instance rounds getting him used to healing again. He is was also looking for some healing "upgrades" to replace his elemental gear. We did well, and he picked up healing quick.

Mana Tombs... An easy instance for 2 70s and a pug right? There were two paladins from another guild, 1 prot (65), 1 ret (64). No problems yet right? There was this huntard... I mean hunter with us. Guildless. Wait... did I say guildless? Yep. Does not always mean a problem, I have rocked the guildless tab before and will do so again I am sure. Did I say huntard? Yes.

Somehow this guy got lead before I joined up on the Mana Tomb run. He was pulling, and wanted to mark. No problem. I did not feel it was needed, but gives him some practice.. knock yourself out dude. We start pulling, no problems. We kill some things... no problems. My shaman friend in a /whisper asks him to turn off his pets "Growl." Huntard does not listen, so no more heals for his pet. Pet dies. Pet dies. Pet dies. "Growl" turned off it seems. Message made, we move on.

I begin to notice that he is in Melee on every fight now. He fires once, runs back to where I am, then runs back in with his sword. Yep... huntard in melee now, and looks like pet is on passive. I am thinking to myself... "Self, maybe he is new to game. Perhaps he is low on ammo. No problem."

I send him a /whisper like this... "Hey man, why are you in melee? Are you low on ammo?" I honestly ask thinking we can take a break, he can hearth buy more ammo and I can summon back. No problem other than him being a n00b.

I get some expletives back in his response asking why is it any more my business. He is trying to conserve ammo costs. Let him play his toon, and I can expletive expletive shut up. Wow.. what? I try to respond, not to apologize but to "verbally poke" him. Nothing... I am now on ignore. At this point we are at the event in Mana Tombs.

I let everyone in party know that I am now on ignore for some reason and this huntard needs to stay out of melee and do his ranged job. We laugh and my shaman friend and the others try to get him to pass lead. Nope. No real worry, we have 4 manned it this far, why stop now. We are now 1 pull away from Prince and notice that the hunter is (A) Not with us and (B) Dead.

We laugh. He has started the event without us and has died. I then realize that my friend is no longer in the party but is standing in front of me. Then the others start to get kicked. Then I get kicked. Then the instance gets reset while we scramble.... Wow. I was pissed. I can not believe people like this. We need a new "I hate you" feature in wow that will flag you for a year.

Failure

Yep... So I failed. I did not make my post yesterday. No excuse just forgot.... Oh well. I blame in on the three day weekend, yep... that is what did it.

Party Makeup

Last night I helped a friend finish up his Kara key quest by doing Black Morass. It went well. It went very well. I started thinking about how different parties are just so much better than others. I have not done many instances in my WoW "career", Outlands or otherwise. I really do not like PUGS, and Final Fantasy Online left a bad taste in my mouth for groups.

I am not above helping out my friends though. Last night was one of these help times. I have never suggested my own group, nor have I tried to find a group. I do not mind joining a group to fill in a spot or just doing my own thing until the group is ready. Having said that, I have been in my fair share of groups, good and bad.

Last night and the night before was a collection of the good groups. I know I am in a good group when we clear an entire instance (Botanica) with no real trouble. We had to reset one boss, and wiped once, but that was more due to bad luck than a fault of the group. We rocked the Botanica, and we rocked it hard. We also rocked BM, and made it sooooo easy. Everyone knew their jobs and everyone did it right.

They do not like me...

I am goofing around this morning on WoW playing my level 15 Hunter, Drakhan, Horde side. I am not sure why but I like to go around to all the starting areas and gather up/complete all the quests. I have done all of the ORG starting zone and all of the TB starting zone. I then skipped the Barrens for now and headed off to BE land. I discovered something today. The lowbie zone (level 1-6) for BE do not like the horde. You are unable to go do those quests. They all refused to help me. I talked to everyone of them. I even created a new BE just to make sure my memory was correct.

I usually do this for ease of early questing, nice early gold from all that lowbie mining zones, and most importantly the rep. I like having all that easy to obtain rep. I have done this with every toon since my 1st toon, my paladin, waaaaaay back when. I have never had a problem with this before. Not sure why Bliz did this, or even if it was intentional, but oh well. The main city zone (5-13) is fine. I am able to do those quests and as of this post have most done already.

I am not sure where I will head next. I could go into the ghostlands (really hate that zone though) or I could travel over and knock out the UC area. At this point I will probably do the Ghostlands so that I never have to come back... except for Zul'Aman of course.

Do Over...

This post is about named mobs. They are not always elites. They are not always rare spawns. Sometimes they are just quest mobs for quest you do not have. These mobs are in most, if not all zones. If you kill one, at least for me, that almost always means you are about to get the quest....

Last night a friend and I were out gold farming, quest style, in Netherstorm. There is this one quest where you have to kill these level 69 and 70 elite rock giants. After you kill these rock giants you get some crystal/rock sample off them. We are ripping through them no real problem, he is a shaman, I am the lock. There was even a time where we stumbled upon a rock giant pat. Panic mode kicked in for both of us and we prevailed, although Soul Stone was needed.

Side note... How in the world do those GIANT mobs sneak up on you? The Devilsaurs sneak up on you in Un'Gorro. The Fel Reaver has ambushed me in Hellfire Peninsula. Last night a giant rock ambushed me... How?

Well we do fine. We rip through the mobs and then this big named buy comes up. We decide to kill him. He does not appear to be a rare spawn, but you never know. We drop him and what does he have... nothing... 1 item of vendor trash. Bah.

We finish up a few more quests and then head back to do our turn ins before calling it a night. What do we discover... You can guess... Come on.... That is right! We now have the quest to kill that named mob.

There should be some way... Some log... some tracker... So that in a situation like this I can kindly tell the quest giver... "Look, dude... I just killed that guy. Just give me my stuff now. I killed him, he was elite... you are not... Do not make me get upset."

Mob AI

Wow.. look at here... two posts in a single day? I think I deserve bonus NaBloPoMo points or something...

I think Guards should get better AI. I have no problem with a town being raided. I think that is cool. If a group is willing to go out of their way to raid XRs, or Goldshire, or wherever then that is cool. However, I think the existing guards should work together. Perhaps put a priest in there with them to act as a healer? Make it a little more challenging that just riding up and picking off the guards one at a time. How about do something like is done with the Moroes fight. Make it a random group that changes "shifts." Perhaps 1 or 2 roaming groups for a small town and maybe more for larger cities?

On another note I think that "taunt" mechanics and threat reduction should have a pvp effect. Perhaps make "taunt" mechanics auto target whomever taunts you. I do not feel as though it should take control of your toon, just make you lose your current target. Here is an example...

Say we have 5v5 with the same makeup for simplicity sake. 1 Warrior, 1 Priest, 1 Rogue, 1 Mage, and 1 Hunter. Nothing special, just as an example. Now they go in with this in mind... rogue, hunter, mage crowd control.... warrior tank, priest heals. Easy. Now the rogue,hunter, mage are also of course our dps. Why would they hit the warrior? Take out that priest first.... However, lets suppose that the taunt now worked for pvp... The rogue gets on the priest and starts ripping in. The warrior drops his taunt and now the rogue has his target auto changed for him. He can still change his target back, but it gave the warrior / priest a few more secs to work with. If this were a paladin and not a warrior, now the rogue, mage, and hunter have to change their targets back.

On this same note, what if threat reduction did something similiar. You could pop your threat reduction and force your aggressor to lose you as a target. They could always retarget you, but again, it gives you a precious second or two for a heal, or pot, or just to run for your life.

Having put this out there, perhaps it should give an automatic 2 sec of "You can not target me". With the taunt perhaps force whomever into a 2 sec "You have to target me". I do not know how this would change things, but it sounds cool to me...

Zombies

Ever since I was a little kid I have always imagined "What if" stories about the collapse of all that we know. Movies such as The Postman, Waterworld, Day After Tomorrow, Night of the Comet, and Mad Maxare a few that help fuel this imagination. I plan out in my head what I would do if I woke up in the morning to find nothing, save myself... alive. Where would I stay? What would I do? How would I get there? How would I cope with the anarchy that would follow? Gunpowder weapons, or a bow?

I have thought it out quite extensively. When I was younger I even incorporated friends into this plan. We made plans together and assigned roles. In high school I even wrote a short story for a Public Speaking class that I titled The Prophet. In the story I cast myself as an apocalyptic survivor leading a small band of humanity through the trials that came our way. I was a quite individual that spoke little, but with wisdom. I wore a leather duster covered in hand written scriptures from the Book of Revelation and carried a shotgun, or Boomstick.

Recently I saw the new trailer for I Am Legend and it has sparked up my Zombie love. Often in my apocalyptic musings Zombies play a pivotal role. I love the concept of the zombie. Such a cool character. So many ways to portray it. So many zombie movies to draw reference from. I shall not list them all here as I would go on forever...

I had a point here somewhere.... I am sure of it... I guess my point was this... If / When the Zombie apocalypse occurs I am ready... Are you?