So some alt we geared up, decked out, and badged up for the last few weeks just tells me that my TPS is not good enough to be tanking Nightbane.

Not that half the raid doesn’t even have Omen installed and is going balls to the wall upon landing.

Not that with one healer alive I’m having trouble staying alive, let alone even getting back enough mana to keep Holy Shield up.

Not that I have done it perfectly countless raids before.

My TPS just sucks, that’s all.

/raidquit

/log on Alliance druid

/fun

Good times.

…Aggro on Priest, for we are that good, baby.

The warrior was in full S3, probably boosting the priest into weapon range or something. The priest was pretty failgeared, 250-ish resilience, sorta what you’d expect from a new 70.

And fail they did in spectacular fashion – if the warrior had gotten to Andersson he’d probably just own him in seconds, trouble was, he couldn’t. I popped stealth, racked up Cyclone DRs on the warrior, then racked up root DRs, then got bored and racked up Cyclone DRs again, meanwhile, he basically didn’t touch me at all. I was expecting at least an Intercept/Pummel in caster all the time and I was scared because I thought if he got on me, game over, don’t pass Go, don’t collect $200. But he just kept chasing, or trying to chase, Andersson in remarkable single-mindedness. And got a dead priest for his trouble, heh.

I think he was bad. Or arrogant. At any rate, we really enjoyed the 24 rating. Moral of the tale, don’t be bad, thanks, love, Andersson and Starlet.

EDIT: So I just learned that:

Two friends have logged on to my account.

Proceeded to invite themselves in my paladin’s 2v2.

And nuke the rating we built up from the 1300s with blood, sweat, and tears playing pretty much the most frustrating warrior/healer combo I ever ran across.

And they don’t see what’s so wrong with this, because “You weren’t playing your paladin anyway”.

I AM NOT FUCKING AMUSED AT FUCKING ALL. MAKE YOUR OWN TEAMS, KTHXBYE. Seriously wtf, who logs on to someone else’s account to actually STEAL THEIR ARENA TEAM? It’s not like 80g is a lot of money.

I swear, miserable fail doesn’t even begin to cover this one.

And definitely in style, baby.

I thought I’d try Starlet a little for this week’s arenas, seeing that now she’s past that 10k HP/350 resilience marks. Did some skirmishes with Severian’s rogue, and felt fairly useless constantly going up against full S3 characters – then Zilli came online, and we thought hey, let’s try some warrior – druid/rogue – druid games.

So. We made a new team. Was going to call it Starlet’s Stealth Sucks (because it does) but the name was taken, wtf? We ended up calling it Aggro on Priest, which basically…. goes back. Goes way back. I should probably stop here and explain this.

See, when I was leveling Elysiane, I pugged. A lot. Healers were damn popular back then, since they weren’t overpopulated (now that they are so good in PvP, everyone and their fish plays one, /sigh). So what happened was that I ended up in a lot of terrible, terrible PuGs. This caused the need for a macro, basically, one that said “/y AGGRO ON PRIEST!”. Everytime I got aggro in a group, which happened a lot with bad tanks, I would spam that and hope someone would help me.

But then, Elysiane grew up. Geared up. Applied for one of the best guilds on the server, and miracle of miracles, got accepted. And she forgot about this macro completely.

Alas, one fateful day would remind me of that macro.

Back then, I had a tendency to keep all my macros next to each other. That meant that this particular macro was jammed in with a lot of others I used frequently. Namely my shield self macro.

So one day, back when I was new in the guild, my guildies set up an AB premade. I’m sure everyone can see where this is going.

Much laughter ensued on Vent when all 14 of my teammates saw AGGRO ON PRIEST! repeatedly plastered across their screens, while I was trying to defend blacksmith under heavy attack and thinking I was spamming my Shield Self macro.

/facepalm

I earned the guild note “Aggro on priest” that day.

Anyway, back to the subject.

We played Zilli and Starlet at first, didn’t do too badly (think we about went even, which is good when the druid is as gimp geared as I am) but I felt I was very limited by gear and that the setup itself, warrior/druid, overall lacked “oh $%&! I need help, NOW” buttons. I really loved the ease of HoTing up my partner and going off to drink or focusing on CC chains, but it just felt like something was missing…

…and that something clicked when Zilli swapped to Andersson, his rogue.

The difference was vast. I suddenly felt I had a lot more escape options, a lot more panic buttons, and that we were more in control of the match in general. On-demand stuns, being able to get out of hairy situations with Cloak/Evasion/Shadowstep + a well-timed Swiftmend or NS/HT, the fact that two stealthies _can_ get better openers in and can get a better positioning where the other team is weak (when one of the stealthies is me, that is kinda shaky, but oh, well), and the fact that Zilli is just overall much better at being a rogue than a warrior due to sheer experience, thus making up for what I lacked in gear, made the setup click perfectly.

And if all else fails, we have Cheat Death. *shrug*

We shot up 100 rating from warrior/druid immediately, clocking over 1600 at the end of the night (I think our top rating was 1630 at one point), which isn’t bad for a setup we’ve never played. I’m terribly, embarrassingly inexperienced as a druid and some matches it really shows. I frequently forgot Nature’s Grasp, forgot Barkskin, forgot to Faerie Fire rogues, got popped out of stealth with great consistency, got caught in humanoid for 5 CP Kidney Shots, etc, etc.

Zilli’s massive experience and talent as a rogue pretty much saved the night, I’ve lost count of how many seemingly impossible 1v1 and even 1v2 matchups he won after I bit the dust. Hat off, I knew he was the reason we did so well in S2 as rogue/priest. /bow I think that’s one reason I enjoyed the setup so much, watching the display of sheer skill and thinking “There is no way we could have pulled that off as warrior/druid”, because on his rogue, he is THAT good.

Other than the stuff I consistently fail at, I don’t seem to have great trouble with getting away (unless two rogues are sitting on me in bear, then it’s GG unless Zilli hurries to take one down fast) or keeping people alive. Swiftmend is a really great emergency heal, but HoTs are usually more than enough to keep both of us going as long as I can consistently keep them up. I thought of going Dreamstate at one point, since it is rumored to work better with rogues, but my +healing is really gimp for that and I think I’d really miss Swiftmend anyway.

I manage to get lots of drink breaks especially vs warlock teams – we’ve got killing warlock pets down to an art, sapping pet owner, chain Cycloning the healer and bursting down the pet fast. They’re usually in panic mode by then, using up cooldowns, and we can delay the summoning of a second one by a good 30 seconds if we’ve distracted them properly, thus letting me drink up to full (scare them more and sometimes they end up forgetting to sic the pet on someone, free points thanks).

Speaking of warlocks, warlock teams are usually our easiest matchup anyway, no matter whether double DPS or lock/healer. I think we lost maybe two lock/healer matchups out of a good fifty matches played – we like killing the pet and immediately sitting on the healer while I go off, drink, rack up Cyclone DRs on the warlock and roots on the healer, /laugh at SL/SL dps, stack up HoTs and go drink some more… you get the idea. Rogue/druid against a warlock/healer setup of any kind is so forgiving of mistakes that we’ve had matches where both of us were repeatedly at 10% with all cooldowns blown and we still managed to win. Zilli’s able to catch up to and kill druids with great consistency as well, which makes the ever-common lock/druid setup even more of a free point fest. Double DPS I try to make myself scarce immediately and start up a Cyclone/Root rotation on the other DPS while Zilli has his fun with the warlock, it usually is over quickly provided I manage to get away.

Hardest matchups – I’d say mage/rogue is pretty much the anti setup, we’ve won very few of the mage/rogue setups we met so far. The amount of burst on me is silly, and we’ve tried everything. If I start in cat, more often than not the opposing rogue finds me while Zilli’s working on the mage, and being found in cat is… bad. It just really is. If I just start in bear, that’s like screaming KILL ME NAO and gives them the opportunity to open however they like. Cyclones and roots just eat a Counterspell, and with the amount of burst they have available, a 8-second lockout pretty much spells instant death in and of itself, no pun intended.

I guess I just need more gear to have more of a chance of surviving the initial burst. If that happens, we’re looking at a much better chance of winning because I can heal to full and we can reset the match, whereas they now have all their cooldowns blown and are in defensive mode.

I find rogue/rogue another hard matchup, as with mage/rogue, capability to keep me locked down by too long a time ruins it. I pretty much need to sit through two CS/KS durations in bear and when I try to get away, wham 2x Shadowstep.

Zilli says he also doesn’t like anything with a shaman or a hunter in it, simply because with hunters positioning is so important and shamans are very hard to kill. Running shamans OOM is damn near impossible if they are under attack, most shamans have an itchy Purge finger, they wear mail, can ground/shock Cyclones etc. Although with hunters, it could be that most hunters we met tonight were in double DPS setups where it was harder to control them, seeing almost all of them were BM. In single DPS situations it probably is not that challenging (unless it’s hunter/druid, hello thirty minute matches).

I thought at first that warrior/paladin setups would be terrible for us, but we won most warrior/paladin setups we met. There was one particular very well geared team in which the paladin had his shoulders, all match they did nothing but sat on Andersson in Lordaeron (who happened to crank out some sick sick DPS on the warrior). Hot him up, Cyclone Cyclone Cyclone, swap Cyclone to warrior upon bubble, /lol, /bye. There was maybe a single warrior paladin setup who Justiced me and chased me around, and oh well, I’ll take the one loss if the rest of them are as stupid as they were tonight.

Mirrors. Mirrors were fun, we ended up winning almost all our mirrors because let’s face it, my rogue > other rogues. I’d get opened on, hang in there a bit, and either the other druid would die, or we’d die about at the same time and it’d be a 1v1 with our rogues. Nerve wrecking, but like I said, my rogue > other rogues, and he won pretty much all but one or two 1v1s (the losses were ones where he was at a bad disadvantage, low health, no cooldowns etc).

All in all I’m delighted with the setup so far. After playing for ages with the frustration that is warrior/paladin, turtling constantly, having to play extremely defensive, and sometimes just downright feeling inadequate as a healer, rogue/druid is amazingly refreshing. I love my newfound offensive power. I love being able to focus on things other than healing as a whole. I love being “adequate” even if my gear can’t deliver it. Looking forward to more games with the combo, and hopefully a higher rating – I’m going for 2set S1 as soon as possible, with that I should be hitting 400 resilience easy.

I reluctantly logged on yesterday – and found that I was bored with the game and didn’t really have my heart in it after the whole raid drama. Just then, Zilli came online, and I told him about how I sort of felt tired of the game. He said to just wait, he’d find us something to do.

Ten minutes later, he popped up with “How about going to Ironforge?”

Now, I love trips to Ironforge. There’s this thing about being at the heart of an enemy city and preying on unsuspecting flagged Alliance… who think they’re safe in their own Auction House. Anyway, I said something to the tune of “OMGWTFBBQ LET’S GO NAO” and off we went, he on Andersson, his rogue, and me on Starlet. Down to Gromgol, into Westfall following the coast, to Elwynn Forest from there, and into Stormwind.

In SW we messed around for a little, killing a couple of flagged lowbies, and I almost got unstealthed by a level 66 night elf again…. /facepalm I got away, though, and we got on the tram to IF, which is where the fun started.

As soon as we ported into the king’s room I ran through one of those little braziers and got unstealthed again which caused a little commotion (I swear, someday I will learn to play), but we ran back to the tram, dusted our feathers, and moved on. We started sneaking through to the AH, looking for flagged, lone people to gank, got a couple: A rogue, a few hunters, a resto shaman.

We got ganked a couple of times ourselves too – it’s easy to turn the tide of the battle in your favor when you can enlist the help of an entire city as soon as you get low on health, but I digress.

Eventually, I ran back from one death to find Zilli in one of those lava trenches, sitting around a campfire with a female Night Elf rogue from one of the big name Alliance guilds on the server, for a little impromptu RP. I unstealthed and joined the party. However, those who noticed us didn’t intend to leave us alone, and we kept repeatedly getting shot at/fireballed from above the trenches. Our helpful rogue friend enlisted the help of a priest from his guild to MC-save us, but even that didn’t help a lot.

Suddenly, Zilli said “I wish my other account was active so I could talk to that rogue” (we both have double accounts, one for the Alliance side and another for the Hordie side of our server, being that we play on a PvP realm). As luck would have it, I had just reactivated mine that day, and I said he could use mine to speak to her if he wanted.

So he got on my little Night Elf druid to speak to her, and apparently, she expressed a desire to go to Orgrimmar with us. Being such hospitable Hordies, we said we’d certainly accommodate her, and out we rode together.

Outside, the rogue had one of the most famous warriors on the server waiting – a Night Elf in full S3/T6, MT of the top Alliance guild on the server and notorious PvPer in her off-time. She had also brought a guildie priest. We started emoting back and forth, and the three of them dueled Zilli and each other for a little. Then they mounted up for their journey to Orgrimmar, and Zilli and I hearthed back to Shattrath to start up our welcoming committee.

I logged on my priest to provide MC-heal help if needed, we recruited our GM into the group, and started camping out in Durotar waiting for them to arrive. Soon after, there they were: The warrior and priest from earlier, and another paladin and rogue from their guild.

They attracted a lot of Horde attention – those who wanted to kill them, those who wanted to duel them, those who just wanted to have a little RP fun. We’d make them aware of any impending danger via Zilli and they’d just gang up on anyone who planned to kill them, but never touched anyone else even though lots of us were flagged. They obliged to most duel requests, had emote fights, campfires were made immediately, and there was generally lots of fun to be had.

I must admit, the lowbie panic in general chat “OMG TEH ALLYZ ARE IN OUR CITY HALP” made it much more fun. And being able to ask them to kill any Horde that was being annoying – just that much better.

Eventually they had enough, and had to go – and it was us, a warlock we knew from their guild who also has a Horde account, and our GM again, around a campfire. We were having a chat and enjoying the quiet time after all the commotion, when Zilli said to come along, he’d take me somewhere.

I mounted up, curious, bid farewell to Rutjake the priest and Rageudder the warrior, our GM, and followed Zilli. We rode through Durotar, to Barrens, into Ratchet following the coast… my curiosity kept growing, and he refused to tell me where we were going. We finally entered Dustwallow and got on the road to Theramore, and by the time we were at the gates of Theramore I still hadn’t figured out where he was taking me. We hung a left, he one-shotted a random Alliance passing by (slash sigh), and ran into the water – that was when I took a look at the map and realised where he was taking me.

“That island ahead of us, that where we’re going?”
“Yes.”
“But what is there… oh wait, is that Alcaz Island?”
“Yes!”

I had heard of the island before but had never been there – it was one of those places that I’d always planned to make a trip to someday, but somehow never got around to. (It astounds me that after over 2 years of playing the game, there still are places on the map I haven’t been to.)

Anyway, we reached the island, with me excitedly riding around everywhere. “Oooh, what’s there up on that hill? In that building? Look at the sunset, it looks gorgeous from here! Ouch, I AGGROED HALP” Zilli took me inside one of the buildings and “introduced” me to Dr. Weavil (if you’ve never been there to see him, you’re definitely in for a surprise), came with me down into the dungeon for a little exploring, and went up on the hillside to check out what the view was like from up there. We finally settled down on the wooden dock to watch the sunset and RP a little, enjoyed the ending of the day and resting after the whole excitement and chatted away.

Going back to the title, I think this is precisely why I play this game. Not the big-name PvE encounters, not the battleground PvP, not for glory and phat epax in arena.

I play this game for the bunch of people who know that the game is not all about one of the above. For those who think that sitting around a campfire in Shattrath, making friends from the opposite faction, and trips to undiscovered corners of the map is still fun. For those people who still manage to think outside the box and realise the game is one big grind only if you choose to make it so.

If you’re one of the above, thank you. Everyone who made yesterday this much fun, thank you. Thanks for reminding me there are things to the game other than mindless repetitive grinds. You’re the reason I keep playing.

Much love,
Elysiane.

So, I have a guildie.

A guy that I really, really respect, like, and generally think is a great player and a great person. He knows his classes inside out and backwards, BT raider and 2k+ PvPer, and overall a sweet dude. He used to be our guildie with his main, then he decided to join another guild on the server to try his luck at raiding. No probs, he still has his alts with us, still does stuff with us, etc.

I asked him if he would come to Kara with us this week, as he has an alt that needs gearing up. He said he would inquire about his main’s raid’s lineup tonight then tell me. A few hours later he reached me saying he was in. We set the raid up and off we went.

Cleared Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, then moved on to Nightbane, when this guy suddenly says “My guild’s setting up a TK raid, if that goes ahead, I will leave this raid and go to that.”

Cue silence in the raid as we all internally go “…what?”

“Well, I have two quests there, and my main needs gear from there.” (For reference, he is in a guild that has just downed Reliquary of Souls.)

I said that it was basically telling us “Screw you guys, you don’t mean as much to me as other loot opportunities, you’re not good enough” and that I didn’t think friends should do that to friends.

I would understand if it was a total PuG, after all, you don’t owe PuGs anything, and I understand Karazhan just ceases to be entertaining after run number one hundred and twenty five, it’s just his general attitude I didn’t expect. Not “do you mind if I leave, I could really use some things from TK and got some quests to complete there”, just “I’m going to leave if that happens, letting you know”.

After all, most of us don’t need anything from Karazhan either, we’re simply doing it to have a happy “guild time” with people we like. No one’s obligated to attend, if you need the loot/badges, the more the better, but if you don’t, people still sign up to have a good time. We’re friends, that’s why we are there, not because we hold a gun to people’s heads telling them to sign up (well I do it to Zilli, but he is a special snowflake).

He whispered me after this, saying that he unsigned from his raid tonight just to be able to come with us. I think he meant that it somehow implied he wasn’t selfish, but again, we aren’t forcing anyone to come with us… if there is a prior commitment, by all means, fulfill that commitment instead of committing to another, we won’t hold it against anyone. I told him that we were all very disappointed in him, to which he replied by saying that he feels the same towards me. I don’t really understand what he expected, our blessings for doing something which, by all standards, is very rude to say the least?

The raid just wasn’t the same after that and we proceeded in mostly silence to clear the instance. Another week, more drama over the Light’s Justice drop, but what’s new – I don’t understand why everyone can’t grind S1 maces that are just as good, and get over it. Solo effort, able to do on your own time, etc, as opposed to depending on the dice roll and the mercy of others to get it. “But I’m too busy” “But 25k honor is a lot” Then you settle for the RNG, sorry peeps.

And to think this guy is one of the reasons we are reluctant to move servers as a whole (because of his guild, he doesn’t want to move, and seeing he is the best friend and flatmate of our GM, we don’t want to leave him behind). /sigh.

It has come to my attention that some Horde do some very stupid things in battlegrounds.

I think we all need to learn a golden rule.

IT DOES NOT MATTER IF ONE PERSON DIES. Unless said person was carrying a flag, solo defending a node, or was otherwise doing something that will ensure the team’s success, one person’s death means nothing. At. All.

Now that we have established this fact, let’s see its applications.

WSG, you’re all riding midfield to get the opposing team’s flag as a group. Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of you gets sapped/Cheap Shotted/Sheeped/Feared etc.

What happens?

a. A few of you dismount to help the teammate under attack.
b. All of you dismount, overpower the single attacker, get carried away by the even more attackers coming your way.
c. Everyone rides past.

Now, if you chose a or b, you are and/or your team have terrible tunnel vision or are just plain incompetent.

The opposing team used one or two people to split up your attacking force to ineffective numbers, or worse, delay your entire offense. They lost pretty much nothing, but meanwhile your flag grew feet and is probably midfield. So what if those one or two attackers died? Their purpose was to delay your offense, which they did exceptionally well… because you fell for the trap.

Setting: AV. Two of you resto druids are on your way in stealth to cap the DB bunkers. On the way a hunter unstealths one of you in a weak position, and gives chase along with 500 other NPCs.

What should the other druid do? Pop out and start healing despite being outnumbered and in a weak position, or just move on to cap the towers?

Yes. Move on. Move on. MOVE ON.

“But Ely OMGZWTFBBQ what about teamwork?!?!?!??!?!??!?”

That is not “teamwork”. An entire attacking team dropping everything they are doing to help a single person is not teamwork, it is getting on the slippery slope to losing.

Being a team dictates that sometimes, you take one for the team. Unless you are crucial to the team’s success at that moment, for example carrying a flag, the team is under no particular obligation to care what happens to you. The team is not there to look out for every member in every situation. The team is there to together accomplish objectives that are otherwise too hard to accomplish. That is what teamwork is.

Play smart, don’t think only of yourself (”OMG WHY DIDN’T YOU DISMOUNT AND HELP ME NOOBS YOU SUCK”), don’t look at the situation only through the eyes of your character. Always make an effort to see the greater picture. Don’t get tunnel vision.

That is all.

P.S For even more detailed articles on this, check out these posts.

So I’m in a BM group to get the world’s most annoying quest ever done.

Also known as the alchemy specialisation quest.

The following conversation ensues:

Warlock 1: Can we do it on heroic? Plz plz
The rest of us: No.
Warlock 2: Oh can we do Ramps heroic?
The rest of us: No.
Warlock 1: Well I wanna do heroics!

THEN WHY WOULD YOU JOIN A NORMAL BM GROUP YOU %!^$ING MONKEYS?

But wait, the fun doesn’t end here.

Warlock 1 leaves because “he’d rather be doing heroics” (as if we held a gun to his head to join us). That’s cool, we find a rogue immediately, move on, do the summons.

Warlock 2: Does anything better than Hood of Oblivion and Bloodfyre Robes drop here?
Me, mentally: Fking download AtlasLoot and try not to ask questions in /p that shows what a loot whore you are
Me: No, not really. Those are pretty much the best you can get pre-raid, bar PvP items.

Never knew what was so hard about doing your research before you accept group invites.

10 minutes later we are settled inside and clearing trash.

Warlock 2: Can I bring my shaman instead? Ele gear drops here.
Group: No. We’ve already started and doing that takes time.
Warlock 2: But I need ele gear!
Group: (politely) No. We can do a second run after and you can bring your shaman then.

Tank goes momentarily afk and said warlock dies. One second later, what’s that? He has taken a spirit rez.

Warlock 2: Wait plz I will get my shaman.
Group: *collective facepalm* We. said. no.
Warlock 2: But I already took a spirit res :/
Group: …
Warlock 2: Brb, I need to respec my shaman.
Group: …..
Warlock 2: Mage portal me plz, I need to send my shaman money for respec.
Group: …….

Then when he came back… he was specced… wait for this… ENHANCEMENT.

Half resto gear, crappy green weapons, the works.

He dropped a grand total of zero totems throughout the instance.

I hate PuGs.

So these days we’re looking for a new server.

Pretty much tired of the low-popness of Haomarush and every bad thing that comes with it – zero PuGs available, especially for normal instances, on any given moment there are maybe 3-4 people on the LFG tool (I have yet another rant about how availability of gear from honor plus no further need for rep for heroics killed normal instances, but anyway), perpetual tank shortage (tired of having to spec Roch to prot everytime I want some badges, and my non-tank chars might as well give up unless I manage to get stuff together with friends), a pretty inactive economy especially for certain professions.

As far as PvE progress goes, it’s pretty bad. We had a single Horde guild who had downed Illidan, and a couple who downed him on Alliance side, but that single Horde guild and some of the Alliance guilds very recently migrated. Choices are very limited if you want a stable raiding guild with decent progress – Horde side there are maybe 2 guilds to apply to, beyond that you’re screwed. We’re one of the very few EU servers who still hasn’t completely unlocked the Isle.

And last but not least, we’re in a horrible battlegroup.

Okay, so this doesn’t have anything to do with the population issue – but if the realm wasn’t so bad, the battlegroup would have been bearable. As it is, I just want to get out of this battlegroup. Our problem is that Alliance heavily outnumbers Horde – this results in most matches aside from AV starting with numbers like 5vs10, 3vs15, etc, in favor of Alliance.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s silly to even put up a fight, especially in BGs like AB or EOTS where it’s hard to close the resource gap once it’s been widened. By the time Horde has filled up their team, Alliance has likely 4-5 capped, 1000 resources ahead, and is HK farming at the starting area. Most Horde at this point just /sigh, stop ressing, and resign to their single mark and 0 honor. I’d really love a battlegroup where I actually stand a 50/50 chance of winning upon entering a battleground, rather than “instaloss, here is your single mark, /shoo to AV nao”.

So our ideal server would more than likely be:

1. A PvP server. Because I’d like to have the option to transfer back, plus I don’t think I could live without random world PvP on a carebear server.

2. Medium to high populated, but not full. We want a healthy population and a healthy amount of activity, but queues to even log on and quest areas so cramped that it takes years to complete a quest are a big no-no.

3. Preferably no concentration of a certain nationality. Not sure how big of a problem this is on US servers, but on EU servers it is a big problem – to the point that not belonging to a certain national group can hamper your chances of ever getting in a PuG/guild. Haomarush is predominantly Swedish, to the point that they are now the butt of many jokes due to the constant “hi swe????” whispers from random lowbies needing boosts or money. So… a homogeneous server population please.

4. Decent PvE progress – ie at least a couple of guilds on each side who kill Illidan on a regular basis and a few more who are working on it. This pretty much ensures a healthy economy as well.

5. A good battlegroup. By good I don’t necessarily mean a competitive one that churns out super high rated teams like mad – just one in which the queues are decent and one side isn’t overpopulated. Starting a match in equal numbers would be nice.

On another note, random PVP thoughts as usual:

Ban defending Galv. Seriously. Alliance is smart enough that once they realise Galv is off limits this match they move on to towers, while the “defenders” at Galv are shooting the shit in /bg about how awesome they are. Result, the entire map is blue, but it’s okay, Galv is alive lolz!!!11 Btw, more people to north :D:D:D

I am not amused about how easy it is for Alliance to win AV nowadays, amazing what a little QQ can do.

7k honor short for my first S1 piece that I’m getting because I’ve pretty much got nothing else to get and it’s a nice PvE upgrade as well. Defender tokens are in demand at the moment in the guild too, as the current alt situation shows, so it’s a good idea to have another out prepared.

I could save honor for the mini Last Stand trinket (which would also be a PvE upgrade because Starlet’s trinkets suck) but 30k honor is QQ, I could save honor and marks to immediately grab the belt and necklace as soon as S4 hits but we haven’t got the 2 week warning yet. And I hate “saving” honor. If I have honor, I must spend it nao in true girl fashion.Plus, it’s really not fun to keep grinding BGs in gimp gear.

Ugh, as soon as S4 hits I’ll need to regrind nonset epics for Elysiane as well, since she has the S2 ones… really not looking forward to it.

Lose is not spelled loose, and wipe is not spelled whipe. God. We even had a guild called Whipe. I cringed everytime I saw the guild name.

How many times have you heard this?

Oh, plenty. More often than not, this yell belongs to an irrelevant, non-stealthie class.

Sometimes, you oblige. After all, you’ve always wished you had stealthies on your side who’d go cap the DB bunkers before Alliance made the entire south half of the map contested. Sure would be amazing to have this great advantage on our side.

So you ride straight into DB and… what is this? Out of the 15 stealthies in the match, only 2 made it up here?

Cue spending the rest of the match capping and recapping in a futile attempt, waiting for the help that will never come because the HKs midfield are sweeter.

Case in point, the last AVs I was in.

Paladin yells “ALL STEALTHERS TO DUN BALDAR 10 TO GALV DEFEND TOWERS” etc. I promptly stealth to DB to find only myself and 2 rogues up there. Alright, maybe we’ll make it, stranger things have happened… DB South gets zerged by a 5man team shortly after, DB North also meets the same fate.

We wait for help. And wait. And wait. Then wait some more.

Next match, same paladin. “ALL STEALTHERS TO DB!!!” I start heading for DB, then think to myself, WTF?

“/bg Yeah, 2-3 stealthers to DB to win the game for you while the rest of you farm HKs midfield and call it defending.”
“/bg Screw this, go to DB yourself.”

Cue massive flamefest about how this is teamwork and how I’m not helping my team win blah blah. Even the lone rogue in DB starts flaming me. I respond with hey, why should I bother, the honor midfield is great and I’m sure there are other stealthers (read: bleeding idiots) willing to go cap DB bunkers for me. After all, why should I go and actually try to achieve objectives when others meant to be on my team aren’t helping me, plus are getting more honor than me for pretty much doing absolutely nothing constructive?

Spent the rest of the match farming HKs and flaming the rogue in DB, thanking him for winning the game for me, oh and the honor midfield is great, wish you were here. It was a sweet win, thanks, random rogue who spent all the match in DB. We owe you one.

Sometimes I really don’t understand people.

Take, for example, the people who queue for AV at 5 in the morning in my battlegroup.

I was in a series of about five matches where literally everyone turtled.

Everyone.

Imagine getting into the match, and ten minutes later looking at the scoreboard to see only Galv and Balinda are dead, with zero towers/graveyards contested. That kind of match. For reference, the average 61-70 AV in my battlegroup lasts 13 to 15 minutes with about 300-350 honor for both sides upon ending.

The entire Alliance was bottlenecking near Icewing and Horde at Iceblood, and anyone who tried to get past got dismounted and killed in short order. I tried to stealth past, but considering a LEVEL 9 GNOME saw through my stealth in Ironforge the other week… argh, don’t remind me. Still have no idea how that happened. I’m saying screw Thick Hide and respeccing into Feral Instinct. Anyway. I couldn’t get past. No one could get past. I eventually just gave up and joined the mindless killing group near Iceblood. Ressing, healing, dying, ressing, healing, dying over and over again. I think someone eventually won via reinforcements around 45 minutes later.

Why, oh why, would you join a battleground and insist on not achieving objectives? This is AV, it isn’t exactly world PvP.

And then there’s the people who yell “noobs go cap db bunkers lolololololkekbur you suck l2p” while farming HKs midfield, the people who dismount and chase you across the field (I had a moonkin chase me literally from Iceblood to Stormpike, he could probably have gotten 5 other HKs during that time with a lot less effort… but who knows what makes people tick, really), the people who put an entire set of dots on you while you’re riding past and collect their free HKs 18 seconds later, the people who cap a bunker and walk straight out while you just know that 20 seconds later you’ll read “The Whatever Bunker was taken by the Alliance!” in your chatbox…

…and of course the people with the retarded AFK mods reporting the entire battleground AFK.

Seriously. This deserves its own post. Because it’s maddening. In the aforementioned series of terrible AVs, there were quite a few of those reporting basically everyone AFK. Sort of like crazy old ladies eavesdropping on their neighbors and calling the police on every little noise they hear. Needed a bathroom break, took a couple minutes to get a drink? Reported. Did you stand still for more than a minute? Reported. God forbid, you’re stuck defending a bunker or a graveyard? Who cares, reported anyway, report them all and let Blizzard sort them out.

In those couple of matches, basically the entire defense consisted of a series of pink dots until they started begging in /bg for whoever was reporting them to stop reporting, because they were trying to defend. And still it didn’t stop. Those weren’t people in the cave, either – they were people in Frostwolf Keep who were recapping the towers and Relief. People who, you know, had to not do anything for a few minutes while Alliance regrouped for their next attack.

In one match I ran with the pack to Icewing, helped these two warriors cap it – then two mages came and we put up one hell of a fight, but the warriors were really poorly geared and couldn’t nail the mages before they got me. So I ressed at Snowfall and thought ugh, the run to Dun Baldar, I’ll just go grab a snack and come back. Raided the fridge, came back with a plate, and what do I see? Reported, and this one guy has spamwhispered me with “leecher”.

…wait, this is the warrior I just healed in Icewing….

/facepalm

What’s horrible is that you run into some battleground Nazis who think people should just AFK out if they need to go to the bathroom/grab a drink/take a phone call. I was reading a thread in the official forums awhile back, who suggested you should do just that. “If you are AFK for even 10 seconds, you are not putting 100% in the battleground and should be replaced with someone who should!”. Because battlegrounds = srs bznss. I wonder if these people regularly leave their raidgroups too because they need to respond to the call of nature. “Sorry guys, need to go to the bathroom, please invite someone else who can give the raid their 100% instead!” Oh wait…

My suggestion is to ban the use of any and all mods who auto-report people. While I agree that sometimes leeching gets out of hand (hello botters who botted their way to full S1 and nonset epics), this self-righteous reporting does, too. When your defense needs to speak up and say “hey don’t report us please, we are defending here” when it’s crystal clear they are defending, there’s something wrong right there. Everyone gets the occasional Inactive debuff – sometimes because they really deserved it, sometimes because they had to hit the bathroom/kitchen and some no-lifer with an itchy reporting finger decided they had to be reported for that. There needs to be a distinction.

Most importantly, there needs to be less stupid people. That would solve the problem all by itself, guaranteed.

In other news: Starlet landed herself a Light’s Justice along with the Moroes offhand tonight, and finally had enough honor to buy the S3 boots. Seeing a ~100 healing boost in one night is pretty sweet – 15 badges short of the PvP cloak, too.

Already bought all the mats for Boar’s Speed and most of the mats for a 81 healing enchant, though, and ended up spending around 300g on enchants in one night, which does not amuse me. Because lately I’ve just been spending like mad with no attempt to make it back. SSO dailies with a resto druid = Q_Q of the highest degree. Simply unpossible unless I manage to drag Zilli there with me. I haven’t even specialised Starlet’s alchemy yet (multiple BM runs, just ugh) so I can’t proc flasks to make some money. Dailies have killed crafting, anyway.