Back to DW and WoW stuff
Feb. 9th, 2011 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
damselfishAfter the latest expose on LJ's bad behavior, I think I may make DW my home. Granted I still have to use LJ for all the people there and my communities, but I should bring this journal back into use. So here it is! If you have a DW account, add me, and so on. And maybe I should add more icons here. Hmm.
Anyway, on to the meat of the post!
Last night I had more fun in WoW than I'd had in ages. But let's start from the top.
So I've been bummed about WoW and not playing. My GM tried to set up some early Saturday night raids, but no one was biting, so she whispered me and said, basically "We love you dearly, but I know you can't make late night raids. Wherever you go, we understand. ♥" which... awwww. My GM is so nice the thought of leaving kind of hurts, after all the bullshit I went through in Wrath. I have a standing offer from a RL friend to join her guild, and I seriously considered it, but 1) the thought of switching guilds again makes me tired to even contemplate, and 2) their schedule doesn't mesh well with my current schedule. They run earlier (9-12 PM) but I have my long day after one night, and the other night I have to be up at 5 AM for my 7 AM class. Plus that's a lit skills class which means I need to do some prep the night before, so yeah, not so good.
There's no raiding on Thrace, and all he has left are pugs and finishing Twilight Highlands quests. TH quests suck. A lot. I've never been killed so often by questing, thanks to the fast respawns or the density of mobs-- I can't do a big pull and then handle the adds because if I try to kite, I just run into more mobs. So that leaves... pugging. Blizz has made a new change to pugs: a 5% buff every random person you have in your group, up to 15%. Cue "bawwwww Blizz is caving to casuals!" from the general populace of the various fora-- even the LJ comm succumbs under the weight of the whiners. I won't even link to mmo-champ, but suffice to say there are almost 20 pages of comments complaining about omg Blizz is caving to complaints from people who need to L2P, and I run with my guild so I never have to deal with this shit (so why complain about it if it doesn't affect you) and wah wah why not just hand everyone epics for turning 85.
This can only be a good thing. You'd be hard-pressed to call me a casual, and I've heard that I'm a damn good player, and I still find heroics hard-- they're nicely challenging in and of themselves particularly since I'm not all that geared yet (sometimes, the encounters are unnecessarily obnoxious, either for group composition reasons or just mechanics reasons), but it's the other people that ruin it. The dungeons require coordination and no one will tell you the strategy beforehand (hello, there are multiple strategies for many of these bosses, you can't expect us all to know which one you want to use) or if they do, someone will freak out because it's the wrong strat and doesn't work and the group has to spend some time either talking that person down, waiting to replace them when they flounce, or giving in and doing their strategy with rarely works. I have never dealt with such histrionics in my life. From the hunter who wiped the group when his pet ran after a mob and spent the next ten minutes howling about how it's not his fault-- literally yowling and cussing, you could imagine the spittle foaming on his lips-- to the tank who berated the group every time something went wrong and ragged on me in particular, the people are assholes. I have never finished a pug with the original group intact. Never, and for a long time I was doing daily heroics. But once school started, I couldn't find time for the 4 hour block you need. That's right, 4 hours-- 40 minutes in queue, then about 3 hours for the dungeon, much of that time spent waiting to cycle in the next person because the tank/healer/some dps left. Four. Fucking. Hours. That's if you finish the dungeon at all. I'll stick out dungeons for a long time because that 40 minute queue is the stuff of nightmares, and I know if I drop I won't do another run (and who's to say that one will fare any better than the one I'm in?), but... I just can't do it anymore. I can't dedicate that kind of time to something that may not even succeed. I try to run with guildies, but that's no guarantee either-- we usually can't get a full group (particularly at the hours I play), and the most abusive tank I ever dealt with was when it was 4 guildies and the pug tank who kept telling us about how much we fail.
So I haven't touched Thrace in a couple weeks. It makes me kind of heartsick to look at him.
Instead, I'm off on my old server, way back when I used to play vanilla, with some friends who I played in vanilla with. It's a tiny guild-- often I'll be the only one on-- but at the moment, I don't care that much. I'm playing a tiny worgen lock, and it fills the time perfectly well. Sometimes I tell myself "you could be doing something productive why are you wasting time on lowbie alts aaaargh" but I have to face it: by 8 at night, what else am I gonna do, really? By then I've had a 13 hour day. I'm done. My other option is to watch TV and TV sucks, all I watch is Being Human, Mythbusters, and Dirty Jobs, so that leaves a lot of time with nothing to do. May as well play a lowbie. Last time I tried a worgen, I hated her. Simply hated her. But I rerolled and... suddenly I really like her. I don't know what's different, their faces are still jacked up, but it doesn't bother me anymore.
Last night I ranted to Pocket Healer about how much it all sucks and uuuuugh gwar rar, and before I knew it, we had both rolled worgen and were a druid and hunter team. We blew through the starting zone and chatted over voice chat-- we talk a lot anyway, and this is an improvement over me pacing restlessly around the apartment while on the phone with her. We also learned a lot about each other's play styles: she said that she had never imagined me doing the things I do (like running up to mobs and muttering "whack! whack!") or grumbling at my dog, or whatever. I've never been very good at playing with someone else because I tend to get bored (I rarely focus solely on WoW when I play, I even surf the net while raiding), but having the voice chat is just distraction enough to keep my interest.
I am loving being on a normal server. The names! I've got Vexation back, now Erudition, and my hunter Perspicacity (she was going to be a warrior but those mastiffs just win me over every time I see them). And I'm a member of the Philosoraptors. It's by far the best-named guild I've been in yet. And I spent way too long looking at hunter pets, because omg eeee pets. I have always dallied with hunters just because I love the pets. I feel a little guilty since my characters in the guild are mage, warlock, and hunter. Shouldn't I do something useful? No, everyone else says. We have healers and tanks. "Go play DPS and blow things up like you always do," was the general sentiment. "Also look! Foxes!"
Thus, I'm messing around with tinies. I don't know what I'll do eventually, because the guild is small and raiding is kind of my thing in WoW. But at the moment... the tinies, the lack of responsibility, and the absence of heroics stress has greatly improved my outlook on the game.
Now if only I could get used to not jumping when I hear orc women die, or realizing that the forsaken are no longer my friends. Also, the human death cry is a bad sign, not victory.
Oh well. At least Darkshore's blown up, and the quests are vastly improved.
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Date: 2011-02-09 05:20 pm (UTC)I don't think I had you added over on LJ. I should mention that I found this post via network and that it drew my attention. Sorry for the confusion! :p
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Date: 2011-02-09 05:21 pm (UTC)Thanks for the rec!
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Date: 2011-02-09 05:23 pm (UTC)DW's network page is one of my favorite features. I've connected with people I never would have before because of it. It's pretty fun.
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Date: 2011-02-09 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 10:51 pm (UTC)