Tag Archive for 'rant'

The nice PuG

Published
by
Yashima
on January 8, 2010
.Tags: , , 0 Comments

The other day I went back to another really random heroic with 4 unknown players. I ended up in Azjol Nerub which I was relieved to see, since the last few groups I had been in were pure guild groups – despite LFG – and I had heard nightmare stories from others once again (h The healer who didn’t heal 2 dpsers in the final fight of Halls of Stone, let them die and left the group after the fight, letting them run back in … and my all time favorite the over equipped tanks posting dps meters )

Since I am pretty much beyond worries for Azjol Nerub having been there enough times already I was sure I would be getting my marks without anybody insulting me, my playstyle or my equipment.

Everyone got in, the mage placed a table (thx!) and we started. The fights on the first boss were harder to heal than I remembered – lots of poison. But nobody died, I didn’t have aggro. The dps DK pops the “25 Dungeon & Raid emblems” achievement. I congratulate him, rest of group follow suit and he confesses he only turned 80 that morning at 4 a.m.. A friendly bantering about not sleeping, working and holidays kept us busy while we made our way to the second boss, which we downed just as nicely as the first one.

All of a sudden we are standing in front of final boss. The fight took some time. We were quite slow – guessing low dps? – but I managed to keep everyone alive. Boss goes down. I thank everyone for the nice group, the others do the same and I leave.

I am guessing that most of these players were equipped much worse than my guildmates or myself or whatever I am used to. I had to heal a lot more than most heroics I run. It was fun, however the instance not being so trivial for me! We may have been a bit slower than some other runs, yet we still made it in about 20 minutes without much of a problem.

My point is: maybe these people were still needing some items from the heroics they run and they were not totally facerolling the instance and maybe we took a couple minutes longer than some overequipped group but they were nice and courteous and were not making disparaging remarks about each other or their equipment. I have much more fun when I am not continously made to feel bad … I actually had more fun healing with a little bit of a challenge! I enjoyed the thought of being able to get my marks and actually help others.

I read so many posts and comments about people being elitist and commenting on the terrible gear of others and how much DPS they do or don’t do and generally being asshats. Does it really have to be that way? After all the title given out for pugging is called “the Patient” … so maybe it would be nice if more people would live up to that title they often wear while they are everything but …

Bored Healers

Published
by
Yashima
on January 4, 2010
.Tags: 0 Comments

So I am reading this post in our guildforum where somebody is ranting (just a bit) about LFG. I know I know so do I.

I quote what I found among other complaints: “… resto druids who have specced tree form but don’t use it …”

Well for a few days I was healing in a Dreamstate spec ( I am back to a full resto / full cat spec combination ) and of course while having specced Treeform I wasn’t using it most of the time: it was a) not necessary because the additional healing was not needed and b) while not in Tree I can cast Moonfire, Insect Swarm and Wrath while healing … which is much less boring than Wild Growth + Lifebloom + Rejuvenation on the tank and “yawwwnn”

So just because some people do stupid things that are stupid, don’t assume everything to be stupid just because it is not what you expected!

LFG Impressions

Published
by
Yashima
on December 16, 2009
.Tags: , 0 Comments

So far I did not have much time to use the new tool. Here’s my rundown so far.

1) Needed 1 more dps for a run through the new instances on normal difficulty. Got one fast, was not overly competent and my hunter complained loudly (to me) about the random rogue also needing the epic gun that dropped and getting it – oh well, he can use it … to pull? Otherwise friendly player who seemed happy to find a group doing the initial quest through the instances with him. As for the instances: I enjoyed them a lot and I am happy there are a couple of new boss mechanics – especially the finale with Arthas …

2) 2 randoms including tank for random instance which turned out to be Nexus. Competent and friendly players who even laughed about my hunter always pulling adds because he is having trouble with tabbing and auto-attack, they could have complained but they did not! The random dps even thanked tank and heal (that was me!) for doing a good job!

3) me and 4 randoms (3 knew each other I think) got dropped into Violet Hold, the tank complained he didn’t get any rage and I complained about not needing to do much. Nice group, nothing to complain, instance quick and way too easy.

4) me and 4 random players. I got into Heroic Halls of Reflection and immediately knew I was in for trouble because I had only been there once (see 1) on normal. I had no idea about the bosses on heroic. The trouble started much earlier than I had anticipated. We went into the first room with the ghost waves and the tank orders us into a corner. I manage to keep up everyone during the first wave … second wave wipe- no idea what happened. I – always ready to take the blame?! – say: “Sorry guys never been here on heroic!” Tank: “Well I already saw your equipment isn’t good enough for this anyway.” I offered to leave before they decided to kick me.

If a group thinks like that there is no way I am trying to finish that instance that late into the night. I complained in guildchat about it because I just felt terrible after that. What made it even worse in a weird way was that they kept assuming I was a guy and kept referring to me as “him”.

Ironically 2 of the people were wearing a title “the Patient” and I have no idea where it comes from.

I know once more why I hate to do PUGs.

So I asked the guildies if my equipment was really that bad. As a tree I have self-buffed 2250 healing power which is enough to heal Ulduar (10), any other heroic 5-man and Ony (10). Sure my equipment is not that of a regular raider and healing this instance was not going to be trivial, but surely not impossible.

I am used to my über-competent and patient guildmates … the answer in guildchat was soothing: “Oh your gear is good enough for us, you’re a good healer! We’ll go with you sometime soon!” Made me feel better to hear that :)

Still – that group … I guess this is happening to players all over the place … it’s the same as before when people were dissing you for doing to little DPS … sometimes I really miss the good old times running instances without everybody watching Recount/Recap/etc like a hawk. I wonder if there are addons that shout “Alert! Alert! You’re grouped with a low-equip person … provoke a wipe blame them and kick them!” ?! I really hope they did not find a healer too fast!

On another note: I am planning on hitting the 6k achievement points before Christmas. It is not going to be easy however getting the Merry Maker. I got all of 5 kills before losing my costume … just like it worked last year. 23 down, 27 to go, so … hopefully only 5 more battlegrounds :P

Need another Brew

Published
by
Yashima
on October 2, 2009
.Tags: 0 Comments

I am back in the game with a shiny new computer on which to play. After finally remembering to install the latest wine-beta everything is running quite smoothly now.

Except right now I am standing here in the middle of the night hoping against hope – yes we failed – that I will manage to defend the brewfest against the dark iron for another ten coins! I just found out that I need to rejoin the brewclub to get the 12th brew because for some reason or other I didn’t get it.

I did open a ticket and now I am hoping that I will either manage another 150 coins until Sunday afternoon – after that I will have no more access to the game due to vacation – or that my ticket will result in a single bottle of acorn ale finding itself into my mailbox … I find it really well – mean – to have this membership last exactly a year and then have the first beer not count just because I either handed in the brew club membership form late and never got the first one in the mail or because I just drank the first one before the achievement system hit the shelves :(

Either way I am disappointed I didn’t get the achievement and will maybe have to wait another year to get another few coins … which I could easily have gotten if I had found out a couple of days BEFORE October 1st.

Update October 2nd ca. 9:30 p.m.: I just went online to check the state of my ticket concerning the Brew of the Year. I am one happy little druid now. I found a very nice answer in my mailbox including a bottle of the missing Acorn Ale :) This is the solution I hoped for. One more happy customer!

No playtime

Published
by
Yashima
on September 8, 2009
.Tags: , 0 Comments

Ifraqis: Teno hast du auch nen Fallschirmumhang?This week-end my computer started breaking down.

I distinctly remember how I got it and was so happy when I could fly into Ironforge and it wouldn’t reduce me to 5 fps anymore. A few months later the Burning Crusade graphics update and the added polygons killed my fps again.

That is how I know how old my computer is. Actually I bought it to play Oblivion because I had enjoyed Morrowind so much. Only I never played Oblivion a lot.

We believe it is the harddrive that is failing now. There are funny noises coming out of the computer and all the fans are working fine. Sometimes it is working ok and I can play a bit or sort through photos from the guild meeting.  (link to the public photos). Other times my computer turns itself off in the middle of an instance …

So I backuped all the data (mostly photos) to my usb drive and now I am contemplating buying new hardware. I really wanted to wait till next year at least when Cataclysm was closer. I would really like to have current hardware then, not now nearing the end of Wrath. I can live with having a mere 15-20 fps in Wrath (and that is outside Dalaran) …

Grmpf.

Still here, still playing

Published
by
Yashima
on April 28, 2009
.Tags: 1 Comment

It has ben rather quiet around here.

Just to assure those valiant readers of mine that this project is not abandoned: I am still playing WoW, though not really a lot. RL is taking up most of my time and in between finishing my big work project and preparing for the wedding in less than two weeks I find little leisure time.

Some of that leisure time has been spent on casual games instead such as DesktopTD and Gemcraft. Those are two time sinks nearly as addictive as WoW.

On WoW things though: I bought the dual spec feature for my main and was quite happy switching between Moonkin and Tree all the time. I even managed to remember to add glyphs to the Moonkin spec after not being able to rez anyone in Nax – at least not during fights. It’s the Glyphs fault – stupid Glyphs of the Tree spec made me not bring reagents.

Then came that second talent reset and I managed to use Talented to mess up thoroughly with just one click: wondering what happened to my talent points I didn’t realize that I had to be careful to put the Moonkin spec with the Moonkin Glyphs and the Moonkin buttons. Well a quick trip to the teacher and 15 gold later I corrected that error but not without spending half an hour offline pouting (after having been laughed at in guild chat – I may be a little thin skinned after a stressful day at work).

On my little druid who is nearly level 74 I am only one step away from completing the quest chain for Swift Flight Form. Just need a little help killing Anzu.

The guild put up a recruiting post some time ago and while nobody really reacted to that post we still had an influx of about 8 new members which is quite a lot – remember we are just around two dozen active players. And we had an old member returning who missed us so much and was obviously equally missed: she got a nearly instant re-invite. So the guild is looking good despite some of our old-timers taking playing breaks. We cleared all of Nax10 in one night a week ago – with the help of a couple of friendly raiders who help out now and then.

Well so much for my short status update, work is calling.

PS: still playing on Linux, still two issues – missing hardware cursor makes healing Nax horrible + logging out still takes forever!

Redefining a guild

Published
by
Yashima
on February 26, 2009
.Tags: , 0 Comments

With high activity around November when Wrath came out, things didn’t go on very smooth for our small guild. Around the turn of the year most people turned 80 and then many of us dropped into a hole. Activity is way down and when 3 of the most active members left for a raiding guild it didn’t take a day for the silent complains of many to make it to the guild forums.

The discussion did not end up in quite the usual troublesome manner with people trolling and flaming each other, instead people did get involved, proposed solutions and discussed them. People started taking action to save the guild from disappearing into inactivity. This is a great thing!

Sadly – but not surprisingly – there were also a few complaints directed at the “leadership”. When times are tough people always look for a scapegoat and “leaders” sound like the people that must be the ones at fault.  Meant were the guildmaster and I – the two of us are the only people in the guild with the authority to kick someone, clean-up the guild-bank (due to infinite operations – which is 500 in WoW bank terms) and do a couple other things. About a year ago we tried to place the responsibility for the actual leadership on the shoulders of all veteran members of the guild.

It worked out well for our application process for new members. It works without any one person being responsible for directing the process. It didn’t work for “all the rest”. Those complaints – as they always do – hurt. In a weak moment I declared I really didn’t want to be part of the leadership and I just wanted to be another normal member – nothing special – even though the guild is still my baby and I really care a lot about what happens to it.

I am just ranting btw. This post has no big or interesting point beyond trying to explain what is going on in my WoW life.

So while there are solutions in the works for many of the most pressing issues and we still have a very stable core of veterans, we are also facing one major issue that is not easily going to go away: the guild is three and a half years old and the charter is in dire need of being overhauled. We should really rewrite the whole thing.

Old and new members alike tend to look there if faced with a “guild rules” question. More often than not the game and times and practices have changed a lot from our original outlook and a rule that seemed to make sense back then is just plain nonsensical nowadays.

The most prominent example is raiding. Raids have changed so much from what they used to be technically and how they are being executed within the social framework of the game that even our “non raiding guild” has been raiding actively and successfully ever since we had 10 people with a Kara key (well not quite since then but it does sound good that way?). Of course our raiding is still different from many other guilds that raid since certain important parameters in our guild life are still there (RL > WoW being the main one) and we are still trying to do all this in an informal and casual way in many aspects – while we are certainly beyond ‘merely’ casual in other aspects.

We need to reform the guild with a new charter and a mission statement that reflects who we are now and not who we were 3.5 years ago. It is scary, but we want to – for the first time in the guild’s existance – actively search for new members and try to recruit instead of waiting for people to come to us.

So here’s what’s doing in my WoW life … tomorrow night we have a NAX-10 raid scheduled – wish me luck, so far I have only seen 5 bosses on heroic Nax, still missing all level 80 5-mans and done only a single heroic instance (this past Wednesday).

Not yet

Published
by
Yashima
on January 27, 2009
.Tags: 4 Comments

… back to WoW. We’re back from vacation however (photos?). We’re still wedding planning and … well watching TV Series (notably: Dexter Season 1, Heroes Season 1). I have not yet seen Twilight – it just started showing two weeks ago over here and I have not managed to get the girls together yet. Once all these important things are done I’ll hope to get back into the game.

I am not quite motivated to get back to playing … when taking breaks … the game loses significance extremely fast for me. I know I want to get back to it eventually. It’s just right now I am thinking: what will I do when I log on besides chatting and saying hello to everyone?

Of course there are still tons of quests open, we have 3 regions completely untouched and many instances are unseen. There are alts to level and there’s gold to be made and Horde to fight. So much to do, so much to achieve. The guild is doing Nax, even 25 with our friendly allies from BD. Where do I, where do we start again?We just turned 80 last time we logged in …

I don’t want to get back for any kind of treadmill (that part will sneak itself in soon enough). So right now it’s part missing motivation, part aimlessness and part being scared the game will suck me back in with a vengeance before I get the important things done the right way (not the “faster faster want to play WoW” way). Oh well give me a few days or weeks … I’ll be back.

The Unintentional Break

Published
by
Yashima
on January 16, 2009
.Tags: , , 0 Comments

As you may have noticed I am not blogging and I am also not playing. This is not a planned absence – it just happened. For me it is a sign that WoW has not taken over my life *g* it happens 2 or 3 times a year that I don’t play at all for a month or two because RL becomes too busy.

I have not played – not even done any auction, research s or transmutes as I usually do – since last year. So there was not much to blog about. The guild is busying itself in Naxramas without my help. It looks like they are doing quite fine. Sometimes they fill up with randoms or friends.

What I am currently doing is mostly wedding planning and a little vacation planning. We’re on a skiing vacation in Switzerland next week. The wedding takes up most of my time somehow. It takes more people than even an old-school raid, it takes much more planning, consumables and equipment than Naxramas 40-man back in the day (not that I ever set foot into Nax). But … I do have my “Robe” – I mean dress. But I am still missing a ring, a necklace, something to equip on the feet … and the head. I know which piece I want for my back but I have yet to farm the Badges for that.

You see it is like preparing for a raid ;)

And now back to work for 8 more hours.

Happy New Year’s

Published
by
Yashima
on January 1, 2009
.Tags: 1 Comment

Welcome 2009! I wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Our last deed of the old year was to ding 80 before heading of to a wonderful party with friends.

Now we’re off to a New Year’s BBQ with the neighbors (it’s freezing cold out!).