3 Things I Like About PvP

Even with the things I like there are things I dislike.  It is just a natural thing.  Nothing is perfect but there are some things that PvP has over PvE that PvE can not even hold a candle to.  I would love to see some adjustments made to PvE to get them closer to PvP in these terms, but for some things it is just not possible, never could be, as I will explain.

Gearing:

First I will start with the fact that I do dislike that there are different sets of gear for PvP and PvE.  There is no reasonably acceptable explanation why there should be two completely different sets of gear.  Sure we need to suspend belief often playing a fantasy based game but some things are just not acceptable.  While I am willing to accept the fact that I can stand toe to toe with a three story tall dragon with a talon larger than my entire body smacking me and breathing fire on me and I seem to live for some odd reason I can not accept the fact that you need to change gear from killing that dragon to killing a person.  Excuse me, I need to take off my dragon killing gear and place on my people killing gear before I can fight you.  I call bull shit.  My blade would strike just as true against a dragon or a person.

With that said, the PvP design for gearing is leaps and bound better than the RNG hell that is PvE.  You can not even compare the two, that are in different leagues, hell, they are different sports.  PvP is a system designed to reward participation and that is the best design you could ever have for any game.

When new gear comes out there is always a full set, as in complete for every single body slot, of gear that is craftable for PvP.  Sure it is not the best gear, but it is still gear and it is still for every slot.  All that and it even has set bonuses.  What does PvE get when new gear comes out?  Two pieces maybe.  Oh joy, I can make legs and a waist.  And I would not even want to use the legs because I would prefer the tier legs.  And I need top level crafting materials, and lots of them, and I need to kill current raid bosses to get those, and then disenchant those things and a lot of those things to make one single piece?  No thank you.  I'll go with the PvP design every day.  Every piece, everyday material, and you are ready to roll.

PvE can easily adopt the PvP design.  Just like I need 7250 honor collected this season to buy the honor weapon you could put I need 72 boss kills to buy the valor weapon.  That is good design, that is rewarding me for my work, that is well thought out and rewarding design.  Instead we just have to kill the same boss, once a week at that, over and over for months and hope luck lets us have a piece of gear.  How exactly is that fun or rewarding?  It is nothing but annoying.

The bottom line is that gear in PvP feels rewarding and gearing in PvE feels frustrating.

Performance and Replayability: (What you do)

PvP needs skill, more so than PvE does in many cases, but unlike it's PvE counterpart you can not hang your performance on numbers alone.  As a main damage dealer in PvE it just feels like no matter what you are always judged by your numbers even when your numbers no longer matter.  When you can down a boss with 150K and are doing 350K, like you would be now if you are a normal geared player, you still look at the end results and if you are 4th or 5th in a 10 man you did poorly.  You are still judged by numbers.

With PvP your numbers do matter of course, but sometimes, most times, nearly every single time, the little things matter more than the numbers.  There is something rewarding about dropping that CC just at the exact moment you need to, or peeling a player off your healer, or kiting that warrior with concussive, or disengaging the second a DK gripped you, or knocking off a pack of horde from the lumber mill my with explosive trap because of the glyph.  All those things matter just as much as doing 350K would, actually, even more.  The 350K might not really be needed to get the job done but getting that player off my healer is needed if we want to win.

With PvP it is more about how you play than it is about the numbers you throw around.  If that makes sense the way I am saying it.  It is not about completely raw numbers.  If I spend the entire skirmish protecting the healer my numbers might be lower, much lower, but it will be the reason we win and a PvPer will notice that.  At least a good one will.  So it is not just about your performance based on numbers, it is about your over all performance based on everything you do and I must say I like that.

Now to part two of this "what you do" header.

I've been hunting that trinket off shaman since, well, week 1.  I've been fully geared except for my heroic ToT trinket I would like that to replace for some time now.  This goes to the annoying gearing factor I mentioned for PvE but is meant to speak more for the playability of PvP over PvE.  When I was first "geared" and only needed that trinket I was probably pulling around 270K on shaman.  Not great but more than acceptable for normal, well more.

Doing it each week does have its appeal.  I've gotten better at it and have seen that translate with numbers.  Moving up from 270 to 280 to 290 over the weeks up to 350 and 360 all in basically the same gear, with the exception of maybe upgrading to a warforged piece, shows I am improving as a player on the fight.  But it is the same fight each week.  Sure I am getting better at it but who really gives a flying fuck if I can do 350K on a fight you only need 150K to down easily. Sure it feels nice to see I am getting better and I do like seeing that and trying to do better each week but at some point it just gets boring.  It is the same thing week in and week out.

It is why I needed time off from the game.  The prospect that I am already bored with doing the same fights over and over again and then blizzard is going to make me keep doing it for another 6 months or maybe more because they will not give us something new.  No thank you.  We need new content.  Or in this case, for me, we need PvP.

I can do a battleground, the same one, over and over again and it will never be the same.  Even if I do a million and one of them no two battlegrounds are ever the same.  Arena to some extent can be the same old same old if you match up against the same team enough, which I have had happen, but battlegrounds, not so much.  Each fight is brand new.  It is one of the reasons that PvP is better than PvE.  The shaman fight is the shaman fight.  It is why I have been able to work on it and get better.  It never changes.  But a battleground is different each time.

With PvP you are always learning, you can never take it easy, you need to be on the top of your feet at all times.  With PvE you can basically get to the point of just coasting.  I did the celestial boss the other day, auto shotting, just for fun, and did 106K with no buffs.  I was outside of the group.  If I hit a key here and there once in a while I could have did 150K no problem which is all that is needed for normal content.  See, you can get to the point of going on auto pilot in PvE at some point.  Try defending the flag auto attacking or maybe just randomly hitting a key once in a while.  Not going to work.  Not at all.  PvP just stays fresher longer and it is why PvP does not actually need new content, ever, because the people are the content and the people will not let you just stand there and auto attack them to death.  Well, at least the ones that are not AFK will not let you.

World PvP:

I titled this world PvP but it is not just about world PvP only, it is the concept of the anywhere at any time that comes with PvP.  Be it dueling in front of stormwind, having a skirmish in the celestial court or a knock down drag out brawl on the deeprun tram you can PvP anywhere at any time.

Sure it helps to have a group, even more so when you want to do things like rated battlegrounds or arena and that comes with setting times where you assemble to do such but you can PvP otherwise all the time.  There is always a chance to do it.  It is not like raiding when you can only do it at a set time.  Also raiding needs a chunk of time, not only is it at a set time, but you can not just do it for 10 minutes or a half hour.  It does not work that way.

You can grab one person, two people or go it alone and walk into a battleground.  You can just flag yourself and start attacking some NPCs to create your own PvP.  You can fight where ever you are in the mood to fight and be PvPing.  A raider can not just raid whenever they see fit.  And please do not say LFR, LFR is like dog shit on the bottom of your shoe.  You just want to wipe it off and forget about it and hope that the stink it left behind won't last long.  LFR is about as far from raiding as moscow is from new york.  Sure they are both places on earth and inhabited by human but that is about all they have in common.

The thing is that with PvE unless you are playing at the top of your game, which requires other people capable of doing it as well at a set time and you have a nice chunk of time set aside to do it, you are not doing anything or having any way to progress personally but with PvP even when there is no one else around you can still make some personal progression.  Even if you only do 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there.  Even if all you do are battlegrounds and all you do is lose them, you are still getting solid practice, you are still earning honor, should you need it, and you are still playing your game, even if on a lesser level.

I used to love running around on my priest flagged.  I would do it just to see who would attack me and it was fun seeing people pass me.  They would stop for a second, think about it, and then move on.  Or they would flag themselves and wait for me to attack them.  It was a game of cat and mouse.  Oddly enough no one ever attacked me when I was on my priest flagged unless I was already fighting, then they would join in, but it was almost as if they feared me one on one.  But I think everyone fears a disc priest one on one. 

My hunter has no such luck, my hunter is free kill city.  Even me as a hunter loves when I see a flagged hunter.  It is like they are wearing a sign that says "free honor here".  And in a way that might seem like a bad thing, but it is also a good thing.  Whenever I want some action, I get some action.  I'll flag myself and in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, someone is attacking me and I am PvPing.  Anywhere, any time.  It is one thing to love about PvP.  Just wish raiding was that easy.  If I wanted to kill garrosh on the spur of the moment I should be able to just go kill him. We need solo options for raiding too.

3 Things I Would Like to See Addressed in PvP

In an effort to get back into the game some I've decided to do something I don't often do.  That means some PvP.  The last time I had made any attempt to PvP seriously was back in wrath and I even practiced often and had binds just for PvP.  I never got into it because no matter how hard I tried I lost.  I am alliance, it comes with the territory, you have to learn to deal with it.

Player versus player battle has a lot of "just deal with it" moments that you have to adjust to if you want to do it.  That is really where my issues come from.  Learning how to deal with it.  Yes, it is a personal problem but if I want to PvP I am going to need to accept what I can not change, so to speak.

Some things are easier than others to accept.  Other things I would like to see blizzard make a concentrated effort to fix because accepting them should not be necessary.  To anyone out there that has never PvPed the first thing you have to learn to accept is death.  Even if you are the best of the best you will die in PvP and die a lot.  If dying makes you throw a temper tantrum or makes your face turn red and smoke come out of your ears or makes you easily audacious or nervous or upset then you should not PvP.  It was the first thing I learned to accept.  It was not hard.  It has even gotten to the point where there are times in PvP when I die on purpose because it helps me in the long run.  Dying is not a bad thing some times and it happens a lot like it or not.  Once you learn to accept that you can move on and start trying to PvP. 

There is nothing blizzard can do about dying in PvP and there shouldn't need to be anything done about it.  It is part of the game.  But there are some things I am having issues with concerning PvP that I wish blizzard would do something about, or at least I wish I would be willing to accept them as easily as I accept that you will die.  Often.

Faction Imbalance:

I have read many blog posts by many skilled writers, talented investigators, experienced PvPers and over all observers about why there is a faction imbalance yet none of them have ever even come close to touching on the reason I believe there is an imbalance.  Sure, it is only my personal opinion, but being it is my opinion based on how I decided to choose a faction I can speak from the position of absolute fact.  The fact that at least one, most likely many many more, person or people has made this faction imbalance by choice.

When I first started playing (the second time around) and I wanted to really get into the game I looked up online about factions to try and see which one would fit me.  No matter where you go, including this blog and any other place that has ever written about PvP, you read how the horde dominate player vs player.

Being I come from, and really enjoy, single player RPGs I am not exactly into PvP.  So from reading all I did about the game it became abundantly clear that if you want to PvP roll horde, if you want to PvE roll alliance.  So a night elf hunter I would be.

I did not choose the alliance because I wanted to be the good guy.  I did not choose the alliance because I liked blue.  I did not choose the alliance because I wanted to be on the pretty faction.  I did not choose the alliance because I liked their story.  I did not choose the alliance for any reason other than I did not want to PvP and the horde are the PvP faction.

This is the reason for faction imbalance.  This is the reason why I can go 10 battlegrounds in a row without a win on a regular basis.  This is the reason that horde are just better at PvP.  Because they wanted to PvP.  Anyone that wants to do something is going to be better at it.

Not sure what blizzard can do about this to make things balance better.  They could give alliance races better specials but then all the serious PvPers will switch to alliance and the others will slowly follow suit over the years and then it will become an alliance dominated game.

Not much blizzard can do without upsetting the apple cart.  However, I did mention something in my random thoughts that I think has some serious potential.  Just give the individual player an incentive to keep queuing up when they lose instead of getting frustrated and quitting.  Buff them, buff them well, for each loss and sooner or later, if they stick to it, even the worst team will beat a good team through overwhelming buffs they received from getting their asses handed to them so often.

This would be the hardest thing for blizzard to fix and I don't suspect they even care to try to fix it.  They have already proven faction balance means nothing with server merges.  Instead of merging an alliance heavy server with a horde heavy server in an effort to balance them, they merge horde heavy with horde heavy to make it even worse for alliance, as well as the other way around.

So I need to learn to accept that by default I am on the side that loses, always loses, and being I have already learned to accept death maybe I can learn to accept losing.  Sorry, but I do not see that happening.  If I have no chance at winning I have no desire to play.  I am not about to go raid heroic SoO in a raid full of people in 430 quest gear that just hit 90 even if they are the greatest players in the world.  If I have no chance to win, I have no desire to try.  That is why faction imbalance is a problem.

Control:

I hate losing control of my character.  Probably more than anything else in the game.  It took a while for me to get used to death.  At first when I died I always thought it was something I did wrong.  That there was something I could have done better.  It was a learning experience.  And at some point it clicked to me, that is exactly what it is.  I started to accept death as something that happens and each time while I was waiting on the graveyard timer I would think about what I could have done better.  If I had trapped the priest or scattered the warrior or hid behind the tree, etc.  And I would go in there the next time knowing that while I might die I might also do a little better next time.

With loss of control there is nothing you can learn from it.  You are just at the mercy of what happens around you.  It is not a fun or enjoyable part of the game, unless you are the one doing it to someone else of course.  But one stun lock from a rogue and you are dead before you can move again or one 19 second fear from a lock where he continues to pound on you and the CC does not break and you are dead before the fear runs off.  What is fun about that?  What learning experiences can be gained from that?  It is not fun and there is nothing that can be learned from it.

I know they are making efforts to limit CC coming in warlords but they are not even touching the tip of the iceberg here.  A fear should not last 19 seconds and does not break on damage when my trap can only last 8 seconds at most and if I sneeze at my keyboard somehow it breaks?  How is that even possible.

And diminishing returns are a massive pile of horse shit.  There is no such thing.  I've been chain feared for over a minute yet when I am on my lock and cast fear on someone I get immune 90% of the time.  It is all luck, to which I have none.

Control needs to be fixed, really fixed in warlords.  Just like I learned to deal with death I can learn to deal with control but as long as there is something to learn from it.  If a fear lasted 2 seconds with a 30 second cooldown, you can learn from it when it lasts 19 seconds you can't.

They need to rethink control to fix more of a diablo approach where things last for 1 second, 2 seconds and maybe, just maybe, 2 and a half seconds if you are talented into it.  PvP is about fighting.  Casting fear and killing someone is not fighting, it is the exact opposite of fighting.

Blizzard can fix this issue.  Do not remove CC, make it last for a much shorter time and have a longer cooldown and let people fight instead of sitting in a chain CC that could effectively last for 3 minutes.

My trap should freeze for 2 seconds, max.  A fear should be for 2 seconds, max.  A poly or hex should transform for 2 seconds, max.  Make them all 1 second CCs and 2 seconds if talented.  There we go, we fixed CC.  It can be used to break the action and let you regroup.  2 seconds might not seem like a lot but it can be a lifetime.  And 2 seconds CCs can be learned to deal with, 19 seconds ones can not.

I should not have to learn to deal with this issue.  Blizzard can and should fix it.

Healing:

The only thing more annoying that being feared for 19 seconds while you continue to get beat on is to spend the better part of a minute in an epic battle working down your opponent and finally getting the upper hand and just as he is about to go down 1 second later he is at full health.

Healing is out of control in PvP.  It can take you 20 seconds of full focus attacks to get someone near death it should not take 1 second to get them back to full.  Seriously.  Healing is out of control, it is a full on joke.

Yesterday I was at the blacksmith with a paladin healer when a rogue, a warrior and a shaman came charging in.  I completely man handled them, without PvP gear on, all thanks to a good healer and the ability to peel off him when needed.  He kept me up through CCs, through all three on me, through burst, through steady flow, and his mana never moved and he was never worried about losing me.

One competent healer is all you need if you can keep them protected.  An explosive for the knock back glyphed of course, a frost trap, freezing trap, binding shot, scatter shot, concussive shot, you name it, I gave my healer some room to breath and he kept me alive.

I thank him for that and he was my friend and on vent with me so that helped, but there is no way that one damage dealer, doing damage slowly because they are not wearing their PvP gear should be able to take out three PvP geared players even with the greatest healer that ever lived.

If it takes 20 seconds to get someone down to 10% it should take 20 seconds for a healer to get them back up to 100%.  That would be a fair design to healing. As it is, healing is just over powered.

I guess that explains why I do better on my priest.  As long as I get someone to peel off me I can keep them alive forever.  I held the orb in temple for nearly the entire match and as the only healer kept the entire team up for the whole run as we won.  I died 10 seconds before the end of the match.  I will never get that achievement, blah.  But that goes to show you, healers are too powerful.

Blizzard can fix this one, easily.  There is no reason I should have to learn to accept this as I did with dying.  This should not happen to begin with.  It is bad design and horrible stat inflation with no attention to the PvP aspect of the game that led to this happening and blizzard has made no real efforts to adjust it.  Sure, I love being that over powered healer, but it is wrong.  Healing should not be that powerful.

Those are my biggest issues with PvP really.  There are some other small ones but those ones bug me and I would love to see blizzard do something to fix them.  So far, it doesn't seem like warlords will adjust anything.  The CC changes won't mean shit if CC still lasts forever.  The healing changes might make some difference, I have to play it to see it.  But on paper, it doesn't seem like blizzard is doing anything substantial to help with any of these issues.

Next time, my favorite parts of PvP and the three best things I would like to not change.

Monday Random Thoughts

- I forgot to post last week and I had so much to sat,

- Well, not exactly.

- I have been doing some challenge modes with whomever I can pick up here and there when I do log in.

- Am I doing good?

- Well, not exactly.

- But with some people getting some experience with them I might be able to put together silver groups soon.

- Mostly we are missing silver by a few minutes.

- One we even missed bronze on.

- Sad right?

- Decided to get into a little PvP.

- It is something I have not done this expansion so might as well explore it some.

- And the gearing process is so much better for PvP gear.

- Too bad when you are starting from behind you are a punching bag.

- But at least when losing you still get honor.

- Thinking of spamming dungeons to convert justice to honor.

- Just so I am not so dreadfully behind on gear.

- Nothing is more frustrating than pounding on someone with everything you have and their health going nowhere.

- Seeing numbers like 8K and 13K pop on on even your most hardest hitting abilties and yet every time you get hit you see numbers like 160K and 200K.

- Heck, a lock put a dot on me and hit DoT ticks were hitting me harder than my kill shot can hit someone.

- This is one of the problems with PvP.

- Hopefully it will not turn me away from trying it out again.

- But getting your ass handed to you like that gets boring fast.

- Did 12 battlegrounds yesterday.

- Guess how I did.

- Great right?

- Well, not exactly.

- I went an amazing 0 wins and 12 losses.

- This is the life of an alliance player.

- Can't blame it all on me being PvE geared for the most part either.

- One person, even more so one damage dealer, does not make or break a battle ground.

- Yet with that said, my priest has done a total of 16 battlegrounds this entire expansion and guess what there win to loss ratio is.

- Decent right?

- Well, not exactly.

- Incredible would be more like it, my priest i 14 wins and 2 losses in their 16 battlegrounds.

- See, now a healer can make that much of an impact.

- But still, it is not all on the healer.

- You need to be lucky enough to have people protect you if you want to do well.

- Every time I had someone protecting me, I lived, which meant they lived, which means we won.

- Still need others that know what they are doing.

- So there is still lots of luck involved.

- My poor lock gave up on the legendary quest line after months of trying to win 2 battlegrounds.

- I would not be surprised if I had 30 attempts at each and still no wins in either.

- I swear alliance should get a buff just for doing a battlegrounds.

- +50% to all stats if your previous battleground was a loss.

- And stacking.

- So if you do 8 in a row and lost all 8 you would have a +400% to all stats entering the 9th.

- Sure, one person can not change a battleground, but at least this way losing will be more fun as you kill everything that moves even without PvP gear thanks to +400%.

- Seriously, I do think that is a fantastic idea to help address the imbalance between horde and alliance when it comes to battlegrounds.

- It is just insane that the horde has an over 80% win rate.

- I know the stats say it is closer to 50/50 but if it really is than there have to be a few alliance players out there with 100% win rates to make up for everyone else in the entire game that always loses as alliance.

- Maybe my priest healer is taking all my hunters wins.

- So if my priest is taking all my hunters wins, who is taking all my warlocks wins?

- I gave up on even trying on my lock.

- I can deal with losing, it happens, but losing for 4 straight hours gets tired, fast.

- That is why I like my +50% stats idea.

- At least if I am still in fail groups I can at least start having some fun because I would be a wrecking ball.

- Dot the world and watch the ticks roll for 200K+ and everyone die.

- ~wicked evil laugh~

- Even if you lose you can still have fun with that.

- But I can see a damage dealer being able to turn the tide of a battleground if they are that powerful alone.

- Well, some of the battle grounds.

- I just need to find who is taking all my locks wins.

- So I can beg them to let me have 2 of them.

- My newest 90 got their first honorable kill this weekend.

- It was in an ordos group cross server.

- Hey, I'll take a free achievement.

- I'll be back to posting this week, at least some.

- Being I am making an effort to gear up for PvP I'll be playing again so I might as well post again.

- I can be all grumpy about PvP.

- And if you play alliance and PvP you know that there is a lot to be grumpy about.

- I did not wear my PvP gear which was mostly season 13 with some season 14 stuff when I went yesterday.

- I did play as survival, which is the worst PvP spec for a hunter.

- And I did not have a great deal of my PvP abilities bound in my survival spec being I only starting playing it more this expansion and I have not PvPed this expansion.

- But I am going to try and get some stuff in order for the long haul and trying to get better at PvP.

- It all takes practice.

- I was doing the things I should be doing, but in the wrong spec, with the wrong gear, few binds, and out or practice, I was a liability.

- I will not let that happen next time, not if I am going to really try.

- I was scattering players like a warrior doing a whirlwind.

- Which I won't be able to do next expansion.

- I pulled a pet off my healer with a distracting shot a few times.

- Which I won't be able to do next expansion.

- I was doing all the things I remember how to do, and I was doing them kind of well even if I was at a huge disadvantage.

- When it was all said and done I knew that even if I were not putting out the numbers, and I was more than a little squishy, I was doing all those little things that make a hunter great.

- And then I thought, why am I even bothering, blizzard is just removing all the utility that made me useful in that battleground.

- Fuck blizzard.

- Even when I try to find something to get into the game again I have to think, why bother, they are only going to remove it anyway.

- Why bother getting good at it when they are removing it.

- At least when you were lacking in gear you could still win with control.

- And they are taking that away.

- Yeah, whoever makes these decisions at blizzard could die in a fire for all I care.

- I would even throw gasoline on them so they burn faster.

- I called it months ago, heck even a year ago.

- When the time came to cut ability bloat they would cut the things they should not cut because they are not bloat.

- Someone should tell blizzard there is a huge difference between utility and bloat.

- They cut utility.

- Once again proof positive of what I have been saying for years.

- They do not play the game.

- Well, I will see you soon with my first post in well over a month.

- With the things I think need to change to make PvP more enjoyable.

- Have a great day.

Monday Random Thoughts

- Almost forgot to post today.

- While I am away from the game I do still read up on it.

- I want to keep this going, at least on mondays, until I come back.

- And I know I will.

- Actually logged on this weekend to do something other than raiding.

- A guild mate wanted to run some challenge modes so I said I would pop on and go.

- That is one thing I never got to get done and they are being removed soon.

- We did not exactly have a killer group.

- Managed one silver and one bronze.

- We had a good tank, who assembled and watched videos.

- Myself of course.

- An excellent healer that is more PvP focused but capable.

- The healer went god mode, they never even needed mana, not sure how that is even possible.

- A damage dealer that was "okay" as in you can drag them along for normals after you have them on farm and they would be an asset to help carry your alts, but is not actually a skilled raider you would bring along for a first time kill.

- Another damage dealer that is a PvP only player and has maybe joined one flex run all expansion.

- And he did not even stay for the entire run.

- Hey, pickings were slim.

- The one we got bronze on we wasted 7 minutes on trash on the pull and never reset to do it faster.

- We missed silver by 2 minutes meaning it would have been a solid silver had we not screwed up the start.

- And the difference between silver and gold was 6 minutes, so basically we "could" have missed gold by a minute.

- There was one mid run wipe on trash, take that out and the 7 minute delayed start, and we would have had gold.

- However the one we got silver on we missed gold by less than 2 minutes.

- On the first fight the healer and two damage dealers died and the tank and I manged to finish the fight ourselves.

- I never took damage, as a good damage dealer should do when capable, and the tank was capable of healing themselves.

- If we did not waste that massive amount of time two manning the first boss we would have had gold.

- Now, my question is this, with a gold and a silver or 2 golds (as they should have been) with a crew that should not really be in challenge modes normally and has never played as a group together, did they nerf these things?

- I remember going in with countless groups and wiping over and over on trash.

- People would give up left and right.

- We did wipe a total of 4 times in the bronze run, all four on trash, 3 at the start one later in.

- In the silver we did not wipe once, but a few people died and had to play catch up.

- These seemed a lot easier than I recall them being.

- I was doing from 80K-120K on bosses mostly and the other 2 damage dealers were in the 40K-60K range.

- Seems that they must have lowered the DPS requirements.

- Either way, even if I did not get gold, I still had fun.

- Even if I was playing with 4 people I normally do not play with much or at all from guild, I still had fun.

- Even if this was a one time deal and I will not be getting back together with those 4 to finish them all off and get at least a silver like I want to, I still had fun.

- So maybe there is still a chance at finding some fun in the game.

- I just wonder why everything in game requires finding a group of the "right" people to do it.

- They need more content that can be done with just any able body.

- Heck, not even able, just with a pulse.

- I think that is the biggest problem with the game with, without people to play with, you can not do anything.

- And I am not really a people person.

- So I don't form my own groups any longer.

- So if the people around me are not doing something I do not have anything to do.

- And that is what kills the game.

- We need ways to gear that do not required raiding.

- We need challenge modes for solo play.

- We need choice, and for as much as mists said it was all about choice, there never was any this expansion.

- Don't get me wrong, I love mists and compared to cataclysm it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

- But nothing to do, and possibly more nothing to do until december, how do they expect anyone to enjoy the game.

- Unless they just happen to have a group to do stuff with.

- So while I did have fun, I will only be able to do that if others invite me to do so.

- So same as raiding, I will only log on when others need me.

- Otherwise, the game is current dead to me.

- Have a great day.

Monday Random Thoughts

- I logged in only one day this week.

- It was to raid, or at least attempt to since everything fell apart.

- I don't miss playing at all.

- I only played to raid and to hang with friends.

- Without raiding and with many friends taking time off, there is an extra reason or two not to play.

- The only thing I worry about is losing mail.

- Might need to log in two times a week so I do not lose any.

- Just to check.  I am a little OCD about that.

- Like when I clear my mail box and walk away I always have to walk back at least once to open it again to make sure it is empty.

- Please tell me I am not the only person that does that.

- I've lost my fair share over the years, some were even my fault.

- But my biggest loss was blizzards fault.

- When leveling a second tailor back in wrath I started bouncing frostweave between two characters.

- I had 2600 cloth.

- I always cleared out my mail box and sent them to another character when I had 4 or 5 days left.

- Just to be safe.

- Once when doing this I noticed I only had 1200 cloth.

- 1400 cloth disappeared.

- Being they were always mailed together, at the same time, if the 1200 made it there the 1400 should have as well.

- Nope, it was lost.

- I put in a ticket and the GM told me, politely, that anything lost in the mail is lost forever in the twisting nether.

- I asked if the twisting nether had a lost and found department.

- They don't.

- See, you learned something new today, the twisting nether has no lost and found department.

- And you reaffirmed something we always knew, the GMs are useless the majority of the time, even if they are sometimes mildly humorous.

- So how did my one raid night go?

- Not bad, could not try heroics however which sucks.

- One damage dealer was tanking, the two healers were new to that group and three of the damage dealers were new, two of them were, less than spectacular if I could be so kind.

- We cleared to thok, no wipes, it went well.

- Not sure if I should be happy to be raiding, or unhappy because this is the state of raiding I am doing.

- I should be clearing up to thok on heroic each week with my 2 hours, not normal.

- I guess I am not happy with what I am doing in game even with my in game time limited to one day now.

- I should just quit but I don't want to.

- I know I will come back when new stuff comes out and I would hate to feel out of practice or left behind.

- Yeah, that is a personal problem.

- So they released the patch notes for 6.0.

- And told us challenge modes are ending soon.

- Guess me taking this break means I will never get the challenge modes done.

- That sucks.

- While reading the patch notes a lot of things crossed my mind.

- I am going to tell you my reactions when reading them but not tell you which ones I am referring to.

- Why add extra lines, I already babble to much.

- You can guess.

- World of garrisons seems like it is even more world of garrisons than I said it was.

- Some nice looking updates there.

- Pet display and mount display is awesome.

- What the hell are they smoking?

- Serpent for survival only, didn't I say a change something like that was needed ages ago.

- Marks losing arcane for aimed as the dump.

- How long have I been calling for this one.

- They are doing this to make the specs different but they still look the same to me.

- No hunter mark is a good change, it is no longer needed.

- No hawk?  How will they patch in buffs for hunters now because they are amazingly incapable of balancing the class and keep needing to buff hawk all expansion long.

- Do these people even play this game?

- You are removing what???

- Why are there still 202 useless spells in game and the few that actually were helpful from time to time are all gone?

- These people are brain dead.

- Actually calling them brain dead would be an insult to brain dead people, they are worse.

- Leveling bonuses?  How about getting to max level is the bonus for leveling.

- Hey blizzard, want to make people enjoy leveling, tie flying to it.

- Put a quest that is part of a quest line so people can not jump right to it mid way though each zone.

- Have that quest give items.

- Have those items be needed to buy flying.

- If there are 7 zones you need 7 of those items to turn in for flying.

- If people "just" do those quests they will be close to max level if not max level, and they will have felt they were "earning" flying and not "leveling".

- It is like leveling is a dirty word.

- Now you get people in the world, you get them leveling, you get them earning their flying, and everyone is happy.

- Well, not exactly happy, but at least they have something to work with.

- Not having flying will hurt them.

- A lot.

- I personally do not care, I will run or take a flight path if I really want to do something, but I understand the frustrating 100%.

- You can not give someone a convenience and then take it away.

- Taking away flying from the masses is like trying to take away the cell phone from your teenage daughter.

- You can lose an arm trying to do that.

- This is not going to end well.

- Most of my thoughts when reading the beta kept going back to one thing.

- I hope and pray I get a beta invite.

- Because that is about the only thing that can keep me playing right now.

- Because everything I am reading does not sound good, fun or entertaining in any way.

- The only thing that can save the game for me is seeing it first hand.

- Give them a chance to prove the patch notes wrong.

- The patch notes remind me of a piece of cheese that accidentally fell on the floor and somehow managed its way under the couch and no one notice it.

- It sticks.

- Like we all should have seen it when the expansion was released, as it should have been, last month.

- Last month, at the latest, if they were going to keep up with their exceptional release schedule they had for this expansion.

- Up until now, when they lost every ounce of good faith they earned.

- It should have been out last month and we are only seeing the alpha this month?

- Yeah, blizzard screwed up huge this time.

- Did you see the art for the april fools?

- I wanted to cry.

- Out of horror and humor.

- They really made her a goat woman.

- But boy oh boy was she an ugly goat woman.

- They can do ugly "cute", look at gnomes.

- They are intended to be ugly, that is what they are.

- And they are ugly, in a cute sort of way.

- Of all the art work we have seen so far the gnomes have been the best in my opinion.

- It is because gnomes looked the worst to begin with thanks to their small size.

- All the problems with the old art would stand out on a small model more than a large one.

- But wow, that goat woman made me want to race change if it were real.

- And I do not mean race change to one, I would race change the two I had to something else.

- Wouldn't matter what, anything would be better than that.

- Geez I think I am going to have nightmares for months.

- But it really did stress the goat woman jokes with the furry butt.

- Just saying furry butt makes me laugh.

- Is it sad the best thing to happen to the game in the last 6 months is an april fools joke?

- A furry butt is the best thing they have released and will release for a full year.

- Sad.

- Shows you there is something really wrong in game.

- Have a great day.