Stupid dailies are stupid

Yes, another rant about badly designed dailies. Deal with it.

Ok, so the Sons of Hodir is a faction pretty much every physical DPS class has to grind for the enchants. They also have various other niceties that people want, like the recipe for the Mammoth Mining Bag for Leatherworkers. SoH is one of the factions that cannot be championed by wearing a tabard in heroic instances. The rep must be grinded (ground?) through daily quests. Per usual, each reputation level brings additional quests.

You start off having to kill Revenants for ice thingies which you then throw at smoldering iron scrap thingies, then collect the cooled iron scraps. Need 5. Not so bad unless there’s some AOE idiot who is gathering up all of the Revenants so no one else can do shit. Still, a pretty easy quest. It bugs out for people sometimes, where the ice scrap doesn’t hit anything and disappears, causing people to have to kill more Revenants for additional ice thingies.

You also get the horn quest, where you have to go to the frozen graveyard nearby, kill 5 forefather giants and 5 forefather little guys, then click on their corpse and blow the horn, sending their spirit to Valhalla (or wherever dead Hodir go). Again, not too tough, except when more than 3 people are doing it. The little guys are a dime a dozen but the giants are a bit harder to get to. Especially with asinine druids who can instantly shapeshift to quickly fly and tag the next one before anyone else gets a chance. (Seriously, Blizzard, WTF? Why do druids instant-cast shapeshift while the rest of us have to take forever to mount up? WHAT THE FUCK? Fix this shit please to be fair to everyone.) They’ve recently upped the spawn rate of the big fellas, but its still a pain to do with more than a few people in the area.

Then there’s the polish the helmet quest. Go to a cave, kill oozlings and collect oil. With a 100% drop rate, not too tough, right? Except there’s only like 7 oozlings that spawn in the small cave, along with a bazillion worms wanting to take your face off. Again, when more than a couple of people try to do this quest, it becomes really tedious. “Competition” for oozlings causes people to behave badly. Still, the quest is quite doable.

Next we come to the worg quest. Use the tooth you are given near the corpse of a worg laying in the middle of the valley. It spawns an ethereal worg, whose mission it is to seek out hidden Stormforge Infiltrators. This quest is a pain in the ass! First, how many of you have run off chasing someone else’s worg because they are all identical? I know I’m not the only one. A better design would be that you can only see your own worg, everyone else’s worg is invisible to you. As if that’s not bad enough, you have to chase your worg (if you can find it after chasing someone else’s for awhile) while he searches for the hidden dwarf. Back and forth, hither and yon, you chase after this retarded worg who can’t seem to track shit for about 5 minutes, which of course makes you run into every single worm in the valley that wants to eat your face. Do this 3 times. Argh.

Finally, the worst of the worst badly designed dailies. Thrusting the Spear (yes, they all seem to have sexual connotations – polishing the helmet, thrusting the spear, blowing the horn…) Throw a spear at a dragon, ride it and kill it without falling to your death from a considerable height. Some people find this quest doable, I and others I’ve talked to find it makes us want to throw our computers out the fucking window. I died 11 times on my first attempt and vowed never to do it at all. Which screws me out of a HUGE chunk of rep, meaning it will take a least an extra month of grinding the other dailies for me to hit exalted.   The quest information is very vague and the tool tips for the controls once you spear the dragon are very badly written. This quest isn’t the least bit intuitive. Unless you find others that explain what to do, you will fail miserably as I did. Very badly designed quest imo.

If we are going to have to grind out dailies rather than be able to champion them, is it too much to ask that they be fun? Or at least not a huge chore? Sheesh!

The writing on the wall…

Its been coming for awhile now, but I am currently unguilded. I made some good friends in Exodus but unfortunately, I also made a few enemies among my fellow officers.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, although in this particular case, she wasn’t exactly scorned. Not sure why she got so pissed at me. We were doing a run through Utgarde Pinnacle and they wanted to do the gauntlet achievement. Fine with me. I’d done it more than a half dozen times. So the tank asks me to explain what we were going to do. I told them. She decided to do her own thing and not listen. We end up wiping, a few times at that. So how is it my fault? Dunno, go figure. Since then, she’s taken every opportunity she can to make snide comments to me in ochat, getting others riled up at me, etc.

Then a couple of days ago, there was an incident with another officer. He was putting together a group to do the 10-man pvp boss. Asked for people in gchat who wanted to go. Lots responded. He cherry-picked the ones he wanted and blew off the others, telling them to wait, he wasn’t doing invites yet, although he already had. Then started trashing one of them in ochat for being upset that he was snubbed. So I called him out on it and told him that was rude and inconsiderate and you don’t treat people that way. He admitted he blew people off but just shrugged it off, then he jumped on me, she jumped on me, and a couple of others joined in for good measure. Then there was a minor incident two nights ago when I questioned something and got slapped down by them all.

Oh, did I mention that they’re all a happy little group of officers that don’t welcome outsiders, cut up most of the other members (and other officers when those officers aren’t present) in ochat and only do things with their own little group, screw the rest of the guild?

So yesterday without warning, the GL whispers me and tells me that he’s demoting me. Whatever. At this point, I really don’t care. However, when I attempted to defend myself and said it was really nice and considerate of him to discuss issues with me rather than discussing me behind my back with the others in his little group (I was being sarcastic, he never said a word prior to this), he told me to either quit or he’d kick me. So I quit. You see, if I had just shut up and accepted my punishment, all would have been well. But I had the nerve to speak up for my self and not go with the flow, so I had to be silenced immediately.

Meh. Since Fataleyes stepped down as GL and quit the game due to health reasons, the guild has been going to hell in a handbasket. Its really sad when another officer (not one of the special people either apparently) tells me that he has to pug 5-mans because he can’t get into any guild groups. That kinda speaks volumes, eh? Sadly, the peons of the guild are left to either beg for people in gchat to run stuff or pug because the special people have sent whispered invites to each other. Everyone else sees it and knows what is going on, yet the special people will deny to their last breath that there’s any favoritism or cliques at all. Sheah, right. Can’t say I blame anyone else for not speaking up about what’s going on and the decline of the guild. The vindictive retaliation would only have them booted from the guild for voicing an opinion contrary to the chosen few.

This is not the guild I originally joined. This is not the guild it was under Fataleyes. Regretfully, that guild is dead and gone. They make fun of him now in ochat but he was a good guild leader, one of the best I’ve known. He cared about everyone in the guild, not just his cronies. He treated everyone respectfully. He was the first to admit when he fucked up and he encouraged us all to be the best we could be. The guild at present could learn a few lessons from him, if only they weren’t so caught up in their own righteousness to see what others see. He had a hunger to be the #1 guild on the server, and he passed that hunger on to us. Now, they’re content to be third best, not really wanting to push themselves and each other, not wanting to strive to be better, content to be less than they could be and readily give up when the going gets tough.

All but one. The RL who, sad to say, is fighting a losing battle. I wish you well, my friend. You are the only sane, emotionally-stable, non-vindictive person in the special group.

For The Alliance!

After taking down Malygos in the 10man instance, a bunch of us decided to go on a killing spree. We loaded up the raid with random pugs who wanted to go along, and we headed out to do a few dirty deeds. I was rockin’ Recount at the top of the pack with over 6k dps, too!

Warchief Thrall:  Status – dead.

Cairne Bloodhoof:  Status – dead.

Lady Sylvanas Windrunner: Status – dead.

Lor’themar Theron: Status – dead.

Black War Bear: Status – MINE!

BOOYAH!

Malygos25 dead! Woot! More to come soon, doing Malygos10 now. I am now Khassie, Champion of the Frozen Wastes!

Edit:

So yeah, that’s a fun fight but kind of horrible in Phase 3 for people like me who get vertigo. He was nice enough to give up some phat lewts, including my new Blue Aspect Helm.

Malygos dead!

Things change so fast!

No sooner do I replace a piece of Sunwell gear then something better comes along.  I’ve spent a fortune on gems and enchants on gear I haven’t used much! lol

Last night during Naxx10, Maexxna was nice enough to drop the Wraith Spear for me.  Shortly afterwards, Gluth dropped another one that went to one of our dps warriors I believe.  Then Kel’Thuzad coughed up Anarchy for me.  Anarchy is such a pretty dagger, too.  (I also picked up Loatheb’s Shadow trinket.) Luckily, I hadn’t had a chance to get the spear enchanted, because today in Heroic: The Culling of Stratholme, Greed was in the chest! Ugly thing looks like I’ve jammed my arm up the butt of a dragon-dog, but after throwing an Exceptional Agility enchant on each, I’m ready to rock!

Oh, and I also won the roll in Strat for the Bronze Dragon mount! WOOT! That timed event is fun, but Arthas sure does love the sound of his own voice.

Sadly, I also replaced my Coif of Alleria from Kil’jaeden with the Plunderer’s Helmet, a blue item from Heroic: Utgarde Keep. *sigh*  I’m almost competely out of socketed items. Other than the new helm, the only other socketed gear I have are my T6 boots and Aviary Guardsman’s Hauberk, the blue chest from Heroic: Drak’Tharon Keep, which replaced my Viscious Hawkstrider Hauberk from M’uru/Entropius.

Message to Blizzard

If you are going to force us to do retarded dailies like Shoot ‘Em Up, FIX THE GODDAMN HARPOONS, FFS!

Shameless self-promotion

My latest column is up on Massive Gamer. And if you missed the last one, make sure you read it, too. Go. Now. Read. Dooooeettt! Don’t make me hunt you down and make you!

Loot whoring.

Ok, I’m not normally one to complain about getting loot, but jeezus, I loaded up tonight in 25-man Naxx!  Well first, we had two teams run 10-man Naxx yesterday. The team I wasn’t on had Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets drop and there weren’t any mail dps’ers with them. Luckily, they are BOE so tonight, we rolled on them. I was the only person that rolled so I won. (We roll on 10-man loot, loot council/bid on 25-man loot). They were a decent upgrade from my Thalassian Ranger Gauntlets.

Then Grim Toll dropped and I didn’t bid on it because I knew others would need it and I’ve had several upgrades already. But it dropped a second time from one of the next bosses, so I bid on it only if no one else did. The only others who bid were people it wasn’t very good for, so I got it. Woot!  I watched it proc during the Patchwork fight and my armor pen hit over 45%, with my Kill Shot hitting for over 10k damage! KS hit several times tonight for over 10k, so I’d say its a huge upgrade from my Berserker’s Call.

Following that, the Grotesque Handgrips dropped.  No one bid on them so I took them. It was either that or they’d have been sharded. And they were an upgrade from the Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets I had just picked up. And wouldn’t you know, the very next boss dropped Gloves of Calculated Risk!  Again, I said I’d bid only if no one wanted them, as they were yet another upgrade but didn’t want to keep someone else from getting them. No one bid, so I got another upgrade.

My final upgrade for the night was the Pauldrons of the Abandon. BIG upgrade from the blue Shoulderguards of the Ice Troll but once again, I was going to pass to anyone else that wanted them. Nope, no takers. So after a short foray into the world of blues, I’m almost entirely refitted in purples again.  I also got Final Voyage last week.

There are still a few upgrades that I need from 25-man Naxx but I think I’m doing pretty good. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten more upgrades than anyone else in our guild thus far, but there aren’t a lot of us mail dps’ers. Being a loot whore beats letting shit get sharded, right?

BTW, we could really use a couple of healers. If you are interested in raiding, send me a message, post a comment, throw up an app on our website, do something to let us know you’re interested!   We’re doing 10-man Naxx, 25-man Naxx, 10-man Obsidian Sanctum (Sartharion), 25-man Obsidian Sanctum, and have regular heroic instance runs going on.

An apology

I owe my guild mates an apology for yesterday’s rant. I’m not going to delete the post because its already out there and I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t say it. I did. However, it wasn’t about the guild in general and I should have made that clear and not indicated that it was. For the most part, the majority of them have been great to me, both in the expansion and previously. I appreciate them and everything they’ve done and allowed me to participate in. Without them, I never would have experienced the end-game content of TBC. And for the most part, whenever asked for help, they answer the call if at all possible. So to my guild mates, I sincerely apologize.

It was more about my friends, or those who I thought were friends. I’ve learned a few things over the last week. I’ve really learned how much some people mean to me, and how little I mean to others. Live and learn. Life goes on.

BTW, I hit 80 last night (well, this morning at 7:30 actually, after pulling an all-nighter). I’m proud of myself and can hold my head up high. I may not have been close to any server firsts, but I did it myself, almost entirely alone. No one carried me, no one held my hand. It was just me and my beloved pets. As it should be.

An epiphany!

Over the past couple of days, I’ve had several conversations with guild mates and friends about the beta and our experiences – with the game as well with others. With the maintenance downtime today, I’ve had a chance to do a lot of thinking. A dangerous thing, I know. But I had a few epiphanies, one of which I will write about today, saving the other for another time. I’m sure this isn’t going to go over well with people I know. *sigh*

We are a raiding guild. That’s what our primary focus is – we raid. On off-days, we do 5- and 10-mans, quests, etc., but mostly we raid.  So when the expansion date was nearing, we talked about our plans on getting back into raiding as soon as possible. We figured two weeks would be a good time period for most, if not all, core raiders to be ready to jump into 25-man raids. The plan was for those who could to push to 80 as fast as possible, then help out those of us who are slower at it due to work, real life, or just sucking at questing (this would be me). However, that hasn’t really happened.

Instead, it seems as those who managed to hit 80 already, and there have been more than a few, have forgotten about helping the rest of us peons. They pressure us, sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes more blatantly, to hurry up and get to 80 so we can move on and start raiding. But instead of helping us, for them its become all about doing quests we can’t do, doing instances we can’t do, and basically just doing what is good for THEM, rather than what’s good for everyone.

I understand that rep grinds need to be done for gear and enchants and whatnot, but you know what? EVERYONE will need to grind the same reps, which can only be done in certain ways. Wouldn’t it be easier/better if we could get more groups together to do instance grinds and/or daily grinds so we could all benefit instead of just a select few? I understand people wanting to finish content but why not help the rest of us catch up so we can do it together?

Are we being selfish and emo for feeling left behind and wanting to play with the others, or are they being selfish in thinking only of their own needs first? I’m not sure, perhaps both. But trust me on this, I may be the only one blogging about it, but I’m not the only one feeling this way.