Monday Random Thoughts

- Today is a long random thoughts post, but the end part I hope you find as humorous as I did.

- I was thinking a little about garrisons when something popped into mind, a question.

- Kind of hard not to think of garrisons when thinking of warlords.

- Not like they are adding anything else really.

- Oh boy, now I can do archeology with digs all over the world without flying, I am so excited, it will be so much fun, I just can not contain my excitement.

- For those that are not so great with picking up sarcasm on the net, that was it.

- Now to that garrisons question, after looking at the prices for the level one buildings in a screen shot, how the hell are people supposed to afford that?

- Mind you, I will have not problem with it, I know how to make money but I am one of the few it seems.

- I am guessing most of the people that stumble across my little part of the world here might have some gold reserves.

- If you went this deep into the warcraft world to find this, you have to be the type of player that tends to look things up which means you are better than the average player to begin with.

- But look at the bigger picture here.

- I asked exactly 86 people this weekend a few questions about gold.

- Guild mates, people on real id, people I waited nearly an hour with (all 6 of us that stayed) in the LFR as we sat waiting for tanks after they dropped (oh what fun that was, more sarcasm for those that did not pick up on it).

- How much gold was the most you ever had on one character?

- What do you usually like to have on you, just to get by?

- How much do you have on you now?

- I decided on a completely arbitrary number of 30,000 to be a number that would cover any and all needs, to be the number most people should always be walking around with at this stage in the game.

- Yes, that number is my opinion and I made it based on the fact most of my characters I do not play often, or at all, are near that number.  As I said, it is just an arbitrary number I am using to base things off of.

- Being I make no effort to make money on these alts, but do I loot everything on them and sell everything I can that they happen to come by, 30,000 seems reasonable.

- They made it with no extra effort other than doing quests and looting everything, so others can do that as well.  At least I would think so.

- Of the 86 people only 17 of them had ever even had as much as 30,000 at any one point.

- Of those 17 people 12 of them had more than 100,000 at any one point leaving me to believe that if you have even 30,000 you usually have more.

- Only 2, myself included, have ever had over 500,000 on a single character.

- This means that 69 people never even had at least the 30,000.

-  I would have figured everyone was walking around with at least close to that.

- 5 of them did not even have 1,000 on them when I asked what they currently had.

- 20 of them did not have 5,000 of them.

- 48 of the 69 had never even had 10,000 at one point, can you believe that?

- Seriously, it made me think if there was something going on in game that I did not know about.

- Was there some sort of crack addiction going on here and people were spending all the gold on drugs.

- And how come no one told me about this?

- I feel so left out.

- Either way, looking at all the data, most people, at least of the small sampling I asked, were broke most of the time.

- And using my personal number of 30,000 being what I think everyone would have, the numbers of people that did not have it was astounding.

- Now, back to the garrison images.

- We can, I am guessing here, get some of those building for free through questing.

- But if you do not quest and level through dungeons or some other way you can buy them.

- Just the few we see, at level one, will be around 30,000 for all of them.

- Which is, oddly enough, the number I was using as my basis for what a person should have or be around at a minimum.

- It was also the number that the majority of players have never had.

- So the question really is, who the hell is going to be able to afford to spend this much on garrisons?

- And remember, this was for the level 1 buildings, and not even all of them, not even level 2 and 3.

- You would figure, of the people I did ask, they would be the type of people that should have more gold

- They are people that found a guild, one in which if they ask, I and many others in my guild will be more than happy to tell them how they can make gold.

- They were people working toward their legendary cloak and were even willing to put in the time of waiting for a tank, without even complaining which was amazing, because they believe working toward something good is worth a little wait.

- These people I asked, the type of people that should be on the higher end of the gold scale, and only 17 of 86 of them had ever even had as much as 30,000 gold on them.

- The amount that would be needed to start just some of the level one buildings for the garrison.

- So that is what had me thinking, where is blizzard going with this?

- The people that will not do the quests and just dungeon their way to 100 are the lazy people.

- The lazy people are less likely to make money, because they are lazy.

- Trust me, if you want to make gold, just go quest.

- Not f'n kidding here folks, if you want to make gold, just go quest.

- I used to joke I was making 5-8K a day when mists first came out just from doing all the dailies and selling all the junk I would get to the vendor or the auction house if I were lucky enough to get something good.

- Funny part of that joke was that it was no joke.

- Just spend some time questing and you will make gold.

- Then it occurred to me, like a bolt of lightning from the sky, that is what blizzard is trying to do.

- They are pricing them cheap enough so that people like me that actually play the game can afford it but it will not make us broke, but high enough that it will get others out there so they have to start playing the game.

- Being garrisons is all warlords has to offer, people will need to do it, and to afford it, they will need to go out in the world, and with no flying, they will spend more time out in the world.

- It is an amazingly complex and really intelligent idea and unique approach to getting people out in the world.

- I like it and I think it is a quality idea blizzard.

- Bad news for you however.

- I like to grind, I like to do quests, I will go out even if there is no flying, I am looking forward to building my garrison, I will do whatever I need to do to get it done.

- I am not most people blizzard.

- Most people will quit, or buy gold from a gold selling site.

- Simple as that.

- Heck, I have the gold and I am already thinking of buying gold from a gold selling site for this.

- It took me a while before I figured out where blizzard was going with garrisons, and it was their effort to get people out in the world, either to do the quests to get the plans for free, or to make the gold to buy them.

- Killer idea blizzard.

- It won't work.

- And people keep asking about PvP for garrisons.

- No, just no.

- I paid for this game, not as a PvP game but as an RPG game.

- I choice a PvE server, because I do not want to PvP all the time.

- I do not want people to be able to attack my garrison while I am sleeping.

- What to know why blizzard.

- Because this is not a PvP game.

- I did not buy a PvP game.

- I do not pay a monthly fee to have access to a PvP server.

- For an extremely odd reason you might not understand but I will explain.

- I do not want to PvP and even when I do what to PvP I want to do so when I am online and I am the one doing it.

- I do not want the work I put into my garrison to be destroyed while I am offline because you allowed someone to attack it.

- No blizzard, just no.

- Do not even entertain the idea of PvP in garrisons.

- Don't even joke around like that.

- Or feel free to send me a refund for my warlords preorder because that is not the game I paid for and I will just quit.

- I pay to play an RPG.

- I already am forced to deal with people I would rather not deal with and will have to do so more in the next expansion because you took out valor gear.

- Don't press your luck.

- I and many like me already have one foot out the door.

- Forced PvP would be worse than the forced LFR you are pushing people into now.

- Speaking of forced PvP I finally won two battleground on one of the 7 characters I continually lose on for that part of the legendary quest line.

- Not only that, but I won them both back to back after having 11 losses in a row.

- Because I finally got a group that had a clue.

- Two times in a row.

- The odds of that as alliance is like winning the local lottery.

- I was on my bear, got mines, did what I do on my bear, and that is completely control the entire horde team.

- It took 9 of the 10 horde to take me down.  I was on them the entire run of the cart.

- I knew I had no prayer of taking the cart, but they kept calling for help and more horde kept coming to help.

- And I am unkillable on my bear, to some extent at least.

- Unlike most groups that are stupid as sin, this group understood what I was doing and was escorting carts while I kept the entire horde team busy.

- That allowed them to take control of the game.

- When the horde cart landed a switched out of bear form and let them kill me.

- Why you ask?

- So I could get back to the center faster than they could.

- I then did it again.

- They did manage to take me out this time with a little better of a concentrated effort.

- 9 on 1 when the 1 doesn't even have 1 piece of PvP gear, they should have taken me out sooner.

- But the damage was done for the horde, me keeping them busy for so long, and them getting such a hard on for me, allowed the alliance team to take the lead, one they would not lose.

- Even if right at the end it almost seemed like they were trying to lose it.

- See, what usually happens is that the alliance see all the horde in one place and go to attack them thinking "look free honor" instead of trying to win.

- This time the group saw all the horde in one place and said, cool, let the bear keep them busy while we win this.

- It is extremely rare to see an alliance team adapt like that on the fly.

- But get this one, it gets better.

- And what makes it even more amazing is the group for temple did not seem like a partial premade, even if it could have been.

- No people from the same realms really.

- We start out and get our two orbs, horde get their two orbs, and then as if there was a script that popped up on screen the entire alliance team went after the same orb carrier.

- Okay, we got lucky right?

- No, this was more than luck, one player did not come down to fight, he ran the the where the orb would be returned, as if he knew it would be back there by the time he got there.

- And it was.

- So seconds in and we are up 3 orbs to one and the rest of the fight was us battling over that 4th orb, which I eventually took.

- And just like the bear god that I am when I am on my druid, I destroyed anyone that came close.

- Within a couple of minutes of the match beginning it was over.

- Us four held the orbs and the horde stopped even trying to get them away from us.

- All thanks to a beginning that looked as if it were scripted.

- I can not believe that guy ran to the orb platform and got to it the second the orb returned to it.

- You can not make that crap up, that is just too perfect.

- And that won us the match within the first few seconds.

- Well, with my PvP done and my druid being a tank and me not tanking the LFR it was back to never getting the things I need again.

- Poor bear has been so left behind.

- I did not get enough sigils in the start, was missing 3 if I recall, when ToT came out.

- They did not drop in ToT (that is new for anyone that did not know) so I never moved ahead until SoO came out and they dropped there.

- So I guess I could just tank SoO each week and do it that way.

- Just no LFRs, LFRs are bad, LFR are evil, we do not want to tank LFRs.

- The might bear god only fears one thing, and it is not chuck norris, it is having to deal with the jerks in LFR.

- Not so much a fear, more of a "these people do not deserve me helping them" feeling.

- So I decided to switch to healing on a whim.

- First time since wrath.

- I dropped healing on my druid the moment it was announced that druids would not longer be trees in cataclysm and never went back.

- Now with the glyph I could be a tree again, so healing again was once more an option.

- If I can't be a tree, I don't heal on a druid, kind of simple right?

- I had 5 or so pieces I got from siege that I look for "just in case" I ever wanted to heal as no one else needed them.

- With some timeless pieces to fill in the holes I switched my offspec to restoration.

- After about 2 hours setting up my mouse over macros for everything, setting up my healing addon, reading a few things online and seeking out some of the best druid healers online for some pointers I headed over to the proving grounds.

- I had no intention of doing well, just an intention for getting a feel for my mouse over binds and heal bot clicks.

- Like I said, only one trinket, no gems and no enchants, but I did quite well.

- In my opinion of course.

- And it was with the most over powered class for healing in the healing grounds, so take me doing well with a grain of salt.

- It really does not mean anything.

- Bronze was no big deal, did not even notice I was healing, it was a nice introduction and allowed me the breathing room to look down at my heal bot to see which click did what and to try and remember which mouse overs where bound where.

- After bronze I noticed a few things I wanted to switch around and did so then went after silver.

- I managed silver, but not without some effort.

- I went oom so fast and I did not have as much time to double check if I was clicking the right thing.

- Had the tank in trouble a couple of times where I was waiting on a clear casing proc to cast regrowth that just never came and had to blow mana I really did not have, but I managed it.

- It was fun and mildly exciting thinking I will not make it but knowing with some luck maybe I could.

- I was running on fumes the last two rounds thanks to a few wasteful heals and no doubt feeling the missing second trinket that would have been heaven if it were something that helped regenerate mana.

- Before trying gold I made a few more changes.

- Innervate on cooldown, absolutely, I will need it if I was stressing for mana on silver.

- I was cruising through gold no problem and did so much better with smarter healing choices in the earlier rounds.

- Needed to pull out all the stops for gold using tree of life and tranquility, something I did not need for either bronze or silver, and I knew I had it.

- Then the hunter decided that he did not want that to happen and he just stood in crap.

- While I was doing better with mana this time around I was just not capable of keeping him up while not losing others.

- Everyone was taking damage but I could keep them all up, all except the hunter.

- After stabilizing the group with only one mob left I went into full on heals on the hunter giving it everything I had, spending all the mana I could muster, because I knew this was it, the second that mob died it was over, I just had to keep him up.

- I couldn't.  He was taking more damage than I was capable of healing.

- He died, I did not get gold, all because the damn hunter would not move.

- Now I am not bitter I did not get gold on the first try.

- I was using it to learn, not to "prove" myself to a broken system.

- But what is wrong with this picture?

- I've healed for many years, monks are the only class I never healed on at least in one way or another.

- Some day maybe.

- And do you know how I handle that situation 100 times out of 100 if I am in that same position of mana problems, one mob left, and I can keep everyone except the hunter alive?

- I let the hunter die, we kill the boss, I case revive.

- So how is it losing in proving grounds when someone dies?

- It is not realistic.

- If does not teach anything.

- And if it did teach anything it teaches the wrong thing.

- If any healer ever said, I was trying to keep the hunter alive and that is why we wiped, they would be kicked from the group so fast with a "learn to heal" tattooed on their ass.

- Let the hunter die so the group can live.

- Hard decisions like that need to be made as a healer.

- That is part of what makes a good healer a good healer.

- One that knows when it is worth the mana to keep someone alive, or knows who to keep alive.

- If the hunter was stunned in the bad, maybe it is worth spending the mana on him because it is not his fault being there as he is stunned but if he is standing in it of his own feel will, he deserves to die.

- Anyone that disagrees there has never healed before.

- Apparently, no one at blizzard that designed proving ground ever healed before.

- Because every healer you ask would have said the same thing.

- Can the other two DPS down the last remaining mob?

- Yes.

- Then screw the hunter, keep them up and win the battle.

- 100 out of 100 healers would say that.

- But proving grounds says, you are all wrong, healers.

- How do you feel about that?

- Blizzard just called any healer that makes the hard decision to let someone die to save the whole group a bad healer.

- Blizzard says you are only a good healer if you heal someone that is too stupid to move from the bad.

- THIS is how you are teaching people blizzard?

- Really?

- What are you making people prove in the proving grounds, that they are idiots?

- Well, back on task, after I got a feel for my abilities I figured I would try some LFRs even though I was already capped.

- I did not try gold a second time, in my mind I got it, it is just an error on blizzards part why I did not get the achievement.

- I went oom trying to save that idiot.

- I so wish I were a priest at that point, I would have just leap of faithed his ass and been awarded a gold my first time healing on that character in over 5 years.

- See, I do not mind LFR as a healer, just won't tank it.

- Make all LFR fights one tankable blizzard, then I might consider it.

- I did okay, not well, but okay.

- I did every single fight I could get a secret on and managed up getting 7.

- I ranged anywhere from 30K HPS to 80K HPS, depending on the fight of course.

- Getting a healing trinket, even if it was a crap one, bought my healing set up from a 458 to a 490, how awesome is that.

- Have to love going up 32 item levels with one piece.

- But that one slot was completely empty, so that might be why.

- I had mana problems with my huge 6K spirit to work with.

- I felt mostly useless and if the raid was ever in trouble I never felt as if I could really get them out of it.

- But each run, as normal, had at least one healer that WTF owned the place.

- Which was okay for me trying to learn I guess, I just went through he motions learning my abilities and where and when to use them.

- Not sure if having the power house healer there was a good thing or a bad thing however.

- I can't truly learn unless I am really tested.

- But I wasn't really in the position to do much if I were tested, so maybe it was best I wasn't.

- Picked up a flex 4 last night where a DK solo tanked all three bosses, it was fun.

- Doing it for heirloom weapon drops of course.

- Still have not seen one, but I do not do it often, it will come.

- I really need to start doing it on a few alts every week.

- There was a fully heroic geared feral in the group and I was looking forward to seeing what he could do.

- I have a feral in my group and with all normal gear and I can see what he does so I was excited to go against one in all heroic gear (minus two pieces).

- I knew I had no chance to beat him, but I wanted to see how close I could come.

- It is always fun to press yourself to do the best you can even when you know you might not be the best there.

- Well, for me it is at least.

- Like the one time I ran with a guy from supermassive.

- Him in all heroic gear, me in all normal gear, and I managed to stay within 20% of his numbers.

- Sure, he destroyed me, but I considered that a great success on my part to even get that close to him.

- The group was good, we blew through things as it should be.

- No voice chat, we were all experienced players, we all knew the fights.

- The feral druid however let me down.  He beat me on 2 out of the three instead of all three like he should have.

- And the ones he beat me on, blackfuse and garrosh, he should have beat me by a lot more.

- Beat me by 80K on blackfuse, but what do you expect there when I did 3 belts.

- But only beat me by 35K on garrosh.

- I was expecting big numbers.

- Makes me wonder, how do people get that sort of gear if they do not know how to use it?

- I mean to have all heroic gear you needed to down a lot of heroic bosses right?

- He should have come close to doubling me.

- At least doubling me on blackfuse as I was on belts.

- There was another hunter in the group, had 7 warforged pieces, one heroic piece, so I guess he was more along the lines of who I should judge myself against.

- I just couldn't, because I only show the top 10 on my recount, and he was never on it.

- The healer in the group was awesome however.

- Disc priest pulling over 250K HPS and 150K DPS.

- She beat some of the DPS.

- She beat the hunter I said I should be competing against.

- Makes me wonder what people are doing sometimes.

- Are they even trying?

- That might be it.

- I mean, I was not trying my best so maybe they were not either.

- I was tying however, I was not phoning it in so to speak, but with this fill in computer until I get my new one I do not have all my addons.

- I am lagging a bit in large groups.

- And I have not completely set up my screen and binds to what I am comfortable with yet.

- Waiting for the new computer before I go all out, so I am not at my best.

- And I still pulled my own weight.

- Sorry, but someone with a 570 item level only doing 170K is not pulling their own weight.

- Sure, is 170K more than enough for flex?  Yes, by a county mile.

- But if that is all you can manage, you are not pulling your weight.

- The group tanked garrosh in a way I never did it before.

- We all stacked on top of each other at all times.

- Just killed the weapon with AoE when it came down on us.

- I wonder if you could get away with this in normal.

- Had never done it that way.

- Not sure we would be able to get away with that on normal anyway.

- It is one of those flex things, or when you come back to normal in heroic gear things.

- I do want to leave this random thoughts off with what I believe to be a very funny story.

- I decided to so some LFRs on my mage this weekend.

- He too has been languishing on the secrets part of the legendary for a long time.

- Figured I would do one or two and whatever popped up maybe I would get lucky and get a few.

- Didn't happen, but I did manage to experience of the most head scratching moments I have ever experienced in the LFR.

- Not once, not twice, not even three times, but over and over through three different LFRs.

- What am I talking about?

- My mages rune of power.

- I've been trying out the rune of power lately and all I can say about it is that it needs to be instant cast.

- However, whenever I would place it anywhere on the ground, people would move to it.

- I mean, like instantly.

- One time while waiting on some people before a boss I walked to the side and dropped my rune of power.

- Nearly the entire raid moved over to where I dropped my rune of power.

- The first thing I thought of was, I wish I could get the DPS to move like this when I am on my healer.

- People used to run from my healing rain on my shaman.

- Not kidding, I used to tell people that had to stand in it, that it was a good thing I put down.

- People seem to always run from crap on the ground.

- Well, some of them, at least, that are not hunters in the proving grounds, like to run from things on the ground.

- Yet through out a few LFRs I did, whenever I placed my rune down, people moved into it.

- I would place it on the other side of the room, as I knew I would be moving there shortly, and the three or four people standing with me would run over to it before I even got to it.

- Not on one fight, on all of them.

- Was some memo put out that said the rune of power is where everyone needs to stand?

- Does it offer some benefit to people other than the caster and there is just something I do not know about it?

- Were they just using it because they had no clue and the figured they would follow me?

- Did they confuse it with a healing circle?

-  I just found it weird that they kept moving into my rune of power, no matter where I placed it.

- I was on vent and started to play a game with my friends called, guess how many people run to me.

- I would place a run of power down and you had to guess how many people in the raid would be in the radius of it after 10 seconds.

- It was so funny.

- Maybe if it were a one time thing I could chalk it up to coincidence they moved as I moved or to the same place I moved to.

- Maybe if it only happened in one LFR I could chalk it up to perhaps a few people didn't know what to do or where to move and I made for an easy maker of who to follow because of the rune.

- But to happen in multiple LFRs with multiple different people?

- Yeah, that one will keep me scratching my head for a while.

- It was funny however saying on vent, "I am going to make them all run to the other side of the room."

- And then laughing my ass off on vent as they did it.

- Have a great day.