Realizations

You don't need a tank to run an appropriate-level instance. Two pallies with 1300 hp and RF on is sufficient for SM Armory.

IRL, liberal amounts of candles will enhance any experience.

Non-Norwegians should mourn the fact that they don't have a source of bamsemums, daily.

Healing Stream Totem is a fairweather friend who shrinks back the second real work needs to be done; see above example on zero tanks.

I still dread Uldaman. I felt relief when I had to decline going Uldaman with my competent Armory group, because of time constraints.

Proof of magic in the real world: Newly made bed + good food late in the evening = 12-14 hours of unconsciousness.

Trolls wear both dresses and goggles best.

Aymee draws hunter t10 better than the game proper.

I Am Sugar.

Worst run ever!

I ran out of beverages halfway.

See, that's a semi-humorous poke, which makes you, gentle reader, assume that I actually had a successful run, and that the worst thing that happened was a drinks-related emergency.

Well, that's a lie.

I still have plenty of liquid sugar joy left.

No really, competent warrior tank, two lifetap-spamming hellfire warlocks, and I actually beat my healing stream totem. Fantastic run.

Since this does not make for good material, like any other of my many, many runs so far, let me hit you with a theory.


Now. Other people, i.e. friends and Internet Strangers(tm) will bemoan that their pugs suck, their loot never drops, their 0.34% miss chance always shows on their haunts/kill shots, they always disconnect during the important bits, they're always getting ganked, etc.

I'm not saying I never whine, but when I hear complaints that involve exaggeration (my loot never drops) or other statistical anomalies that are probably not true, I get plain mean. I've liked to think that this is because I am realistic, and that average stuff averagely happens.

I'm moving away from this theory in favor of a new one; Shit Doesn't Happen.

My roomie continually gets ganked whenever she sets her hapless feet outside Dalaran - this is a mild exaggeration on my part, but it gets the point across. Me? I just about never get ganked. I exchange emotes with hordies, or simply never see them.

Horror stories about pugs are easy to come by in my circle of friends. I can sit on the sofa with Payce or Ayms or Trix or Geg or Ayms' boyfriend - anyone - and say "pugs". Stories will commence.
Personally, as this blog may indicate, I'm having a hard time locating these "bads", and certainly never of severity or numbers to crash a run. Alt or mains, this holds true.

Loot? I don't know what to say here. I had a mediocre cloak, and then it got better. I don't find myself stuck with ilvl 200 Naxx10 gear on a "main" like some. Or, on Toes; I have a mixture of mail and cloth, as is expected for someone levelling as a caster shammy, I suppose.

Seperately, you could surmise that people are more wary of trying to gank a hunter in full pvp gear than a squishy clothie, or that they're reluctant to attack one of the three female dwarves on the server, perhaps? Perhaps I simply set the treshold for a catastrophical pug higher than others, or that I am so singularly awesome that a pug containing me cannot help but succeed?

No, truly, I believe that Shit Doesn't Happen. Occam's razor has spoken.

Sidenote: I dinged 34 and can now wear my pretty red dress.

Now excuse me, another doubtless perfect run awaits!

Branching Out

Due to much activity on my mains - I know plural is a crime to many, when it comes to usage of that word - and some other distractions, both the pleasant kind (Mass Effect 2) and the unpleasant kind (actual work needing to be done), Toes has been collecting dust recently.

Dust on my sexy tusks, combined with it taking a bit of effort to get out of the Graveyard-and-Library pit I am in, means very little postables on topic. Toes. Toespic. Topicoes.

Thus, you get unrelated news, congratulations, you're a winner!

I do love commas.

My warlock, who is L72 and almost as alty - and thus irregularly played - as possible, just created a runed eternium rod. It's immensely satisfying, the kind of thing that makes me sigh with relief every time I think about it.

Well, the first four times.

I've had the mats for it for quite a while, I've had the recipe for longer, and aquiring both was a very roundabout task as I got bad info, gave away all TBC mats (back in TBC, even). The final stretch, 350-375, was about six times more dust-intensive than I thought. Today I scraped together the last two stacks needed. I am at peace.


My priest and my paladin, two other alty creatures, sit on vast amounts of frost. This is my version of the pre-expansion blues: I can't decide whether to buy t10/other gear, or buy saro to sell.

In the end, the gold will be devalued by time, the gear will be obsolete eventually but enjoyed to some degree, though they are not played often.

Well okay, so it's about vanity. I like some of the cloth non-tier frost loot.

Damn that's a mouthful.

Also: That's what she said.


I've never played a single "main" for this long without switching before. Usually, boredom or guild situations makes me change which character I bring to raids as my first option with semiregularity. I'm still trucking on my hunter at the moment, the tank/healer/dps makeup of my current guild is stable, and I'm neither bored nor anxious to switch for any other reason.

That's not to say I'm decided to keep this character for Cataclysm, and level it first.

I'm severely addicted to ginger-haired female dwarves though.

New tag.

As will be evident at the bottom, I've devised a specific tag just for this kind of blog post.

I write this here not just as a pre-post "I'm sorry, I think", but to remind myself that these kind of overthinking tendencies where my take on the game ceases to actually be a game, but becomes a conduit for philosophy etc, are what has made previous attempts at a regular blog crash.

Fewer words: Overthinking bad.

I'll have a similar readers digest version of the entire post at the very end, too.


If you TLDR'd the previous post, I noted that I wasn't too happy about that warlock getting kicked. Despite praying fervently for him getting kicked all the damn way from the first spam.

The first thing that makes me uncomfortable with it is because I'd rather give people the benefit of the doubt than be a forum-level asshat about things. Hence, when I see someone caps-spamming in broken English, I don't want to think that they're stupid, nor that I'm being trolled; In this case, I'd assume the warlock was young, new to the game, and/or bad at English.

Heck, perhaps weeks, months or years of playing a game where everyone around him speaks a language that he barely understands, he's gotten very fed up with it.

And has a broken leg.

Point is, when you face someone who's annoying, in most other situations in life, you can of course walk away or obviously ignore the person, but it's hardly socially acceptable. If you're at a party, and a person who speaks far too loudly and acts a bit inappropriately, you can act politely and try to be inclusive, you can try to downplay his part in your evening, or you can outright ignore the person, turning your back to him or walking away.

You'll rarely see the last of those, except in extreme cases, am I right?

Hell if I know, I don't party a lot.

The warlock was one such. We were three people who enjoyed eachothers' company, with one onlooker, and he came around and started being annoying. He did not disrupt the party very much - only for himself, really - and in the end, people threw him out.

All these analogies have their limits, and there are quite a few counterarguments, by all means; Why should you put up with elements like these in a paid recreational service? Is this truly a social event? This person is a total stranger, and being kicked from a party has far less impact on that person*.

I'm not gonna handle all these arguments back and forth. I'm not trying to preach here. My goal is not to try to convince. I think.

Come to think of it, I rarely know what my goal is as I write.

Anyway; The problem may be that it's too easy. I understand why the ignore function exists, and the same goes for the dungeon votekick - it's there to prevent people from pissing on your fun. What worries me is what this means with the rising standards on all fronts across the World of Warcraft.

First you formed groups by inviting people who asked for an invite. Back in the days of Strat and Scholo 10 and UBRS 15, the expectation that a run would be a full clear was not an absolute.
Soon, people would ask if you knew tacs. Then "link achi or no reply." Now it's 5k GS or less.

I don't blame people overmuch, especially not right now in the last content patch of an expansion. We've been given tools to facilitate the process of finding a skilled member with ridiculous ease.

The advent of LFD continues the trend that expectations and standards rise, and I'm not talking about the built-in minimum gear requirements for certain heroics. Those are just good sense.

Noone will feel unfamiliar, if they have a L80 char, when I say that the expected time to clear on a random heroic is ridiculous. When I'm on my bear druid, I make a point of trying to kill the end boss before the dungeon lockout timer expires**. Not only is it fun, but people are gonna start bitching the second I stop to pick my nose.

I don't pick my nose, by the way. I'm a gentleman.

Back on topic, I have to wonder; Would this partymember have been kicked a year ago? Two? Four? I'm not a doomsayer looking for signs of the wowpocalypse, I just think the current incarnation of the kicking tool is dangerous.


During that SM run, I was mildly annoyed by that warlock for perhaps twenty minutes, but I kept talking to him, mostly requesting that he stop hellfiring, but I kept thinking "this'd be fantastic if we didn't have that damn lock". Having another clever and chatty player in his stead would make it fabulous. But I didn't try to votekick, nor did I press "yes" to the votekick. The speed with which the vote was over, the others having pressed yes, was a little frightening.

And I think I know why, now. I may have the right to decide how I want to enjoy my favorite passtime. I've ignored a handful of people who've aspired to outperform all other asshats in the field of asshattery by a generous amount.

But I don't have the right to deprive others of their fun.

If that warlock didn't leave despite being harassed for his caps***, he was clearly getting some fun out of this. Be that xp, the promise of loot, or if he simply genuinely enjoyed playing, he was clearly in this run because he was getting something out of it.

The predictable counter is that I'm not responsible for his fun. And I'm not; I doubt he'll break apart crying that noone likes him if he's kicked from a party, but-

Okay, great. I guess there's always a chance, it's bound to happen from time to time with so many people playing. Great job, me, now I can't stop thinking about that.

But by virtue of some famous sayings about evil men, victory, and good men sitting on their asses doing nothing, I think the picture's a little more blurred. It's the same reason I attend raids if I'm needed even if I'd rather play Dragon Age. How's this different? I am more beholden to friends than strangers? Familiarity is the divisory line between duty and neglect?

I don't think I can accept that.

I realize this all makes me sound like a far better person than I am, but I'm far better at hammering keys on my keyboard than I am at acting up to my high ideals, so here we are.

Edit: Look, I even forgot the short summary. And I'm not going to add it. Ha!

*They even get their dungeon timer cleared, though I wonder if this will remain for very long as I've seen people try to get the group to kick them from Ocu.
**I usually run with a certain guildie healer, so that's not an issue.
***To this day, I don't understand why people make that big a deal out of caps. Yes, it's annoying, but some people completely rage out when they see caps.

Silence?

Not intentionally.

See, I haven't really explained to anyone, least of all myself, the rules of this little project. All the same, I ended up in a rhytm-like thing where I do one instance every day, possibly two. Even if I want to do more - something that pulling the Gnomeregan card out of the deck nowwadays completely ruins - I stop.

The goal isn't to ding 80 fast. The goal isn't even to ding 80 moderately fast by doing instances.

Come to think of it, there isn't any real goal.

Journey, destination, all that jazz. When Toesies dings 80, she has no purpose. I have a shaman on my main server, and since us poor alliance saps are stuck with one race for shamans only, well.*

So I'm taking it slow. The past two days have seen two SM Graveyard runs, one as normal as lowbie pugs can get sans for drama when a pally needed on BoE leather boots - quickly resolved by Toesies the Diplomat**, go me - and the second one containing 80% melee orcs who said absolutely nothing.

That latter run was actually kind of fun, watching a third of a dozen orcs cut their way through the instance.

Except for the part where I couldn't see anything, because when they stood shoulder to shoulder they formed a wall approximately two and a half kilometers wide.

*Plus, I'm using all my ten char slots.
**No. Slowly and painfully.

Jeopardytune.mp3

In lieu of waiting/pause music. Still need to work on them titles.

Having decided to limit myself to one (or two) instances daily, and no (or some) quests, it was a monumentally infinitesimal step to sneak into a battleground (or two). It would reduce the likelyhood of getting the instances I've already run quite a few times, and be the best way to get used to my new UI.

See, I wish I could write a post where I was either surprised or at the very least honestly dismayed by getting trod on by twinks. Sorry; I fully expected it, and almost relished that one time my healing made a slightly suboptimal twink beat out a seemingly perfect twink.

No, even that sounded whiny. I do not mind, damn it. And it's not like FROST SHOOOOCK ever gets old.

It was great for analyzing my performance in a, shall we say, quicker paced arena, though. Beyond interrupting 0.5-1.5 sec casts in dungeons, very little requires snap reactions.

Things I learned;

-Frost shock is fantastic.
-I love purge and press it whenever I have nothing better to do.
-I don't purge enough.
-Certain classes are in abundance and are, at this level, Okay at killing me.
-Frost shock has a nice icon.
-Using large copper bombs in pvp is even more fun than it is in pve.
-Heals are always one tenth of a second too slow.

Now where's that L27 haste gear.