WoW Again, from Day to Night

So a few days ago I got a call whilst sitting around painting my 40k models.  “Dueg!” says Serae on the line, “3.3 is the tits!  Random dungeon finder equals awesome, badges for nothing rocks the cazba, you must play again!”  So I hemmed and hawed and made promises to log on again even though I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t do any good.  After a couple of false starts, I was certain I was done with WoW at least until Cataclysm hit, possibly altogether.

But I decided that I’d at least see what had happened since the new patch hit.  So I went about dutifully updating all of my add ons and did a little bit of research before logging in and taking a whack at finding a random group to heal with the dungeon finder.  It was a bit of a disaster.

I had forgotten all my “Oh Shit” buttons, I couldn’t remember the clique combos I had set up months ago, it certainly was pandelerium.  Though I did manage to muddle through somehow, that night I logged off in disgrace, unworthy of the name Holy Dueg and sure that I wouldn’t be showing my face again in the random group finder.

But I am nothing if not resilient and decided to give it another shot the next night, but this time as shadow.  And then it happened.  This is fun, I thought, I could certainy get used to this. And get used to it I did to the tune of about 2k spent on new gems and enchants in order to improve my dps and spending some of my new and old badges on dps gear.  And so here I sit, a shadow priest that can hit about 3200 on the test dummy and was averaging close to 2900 dps in dungeons last night.

So for the time being I’m back.  I’m sitting here at work and wishing that I were back home playing, so it certainly seems like I’m feeling WoW again for the time being.  Will I come back to blogging as well?  All I can tell you is that I won’t tell you for sure since I don’t want to lie again, but I will certainly be around for the time being.  Besides, I’ve learned my lesson on saying I’ll be back, especially when I got this in an e-mail:

Irony

But I do recommend keeping an eye on the site for more posts in the future.  I’d also like to take a moment to thank Nanuki, a relatively new blogger who was kind enough to send me a letter during the downtime to let me know how awesome I am, which are the best kind of letters out there.  Check out her new blog here.  Until next time, take it easy gentle jerkwads, and hopefully I’ll be back soon.

-Dueg

The Hodir Accord

Esteemed diplomats of the Alliance, honored elders of the Horde, welcome and salutations.  Thank you for coming here to neutral ground to hear me out, I guarantee, you shan’t be disappointed.  Now, I have called you all here in order to discuss a matter of grave concern, one that threatens to destroy what small, fragile peace is still out there.  Yes, gentle jerkwads, I speak of the Hodir Accord.

As almost anyone who’s level 80 knows, unless you’re a scribe there’s only one place to go for shoulder enchants.  In the Stormpeaks there’s a faction of ice giants known as the Sons of Hodir who will sell you the best shoulder enchants in the game.  The hitch?  Gotta be exalted with them.  It’s not as bad as the rep grinds of vanilla and BC, but unless you’re willing to spend hours and hours grinding out mobs for Relics of Ulduar drops or spend thousands of gold on the same, you’re looking at about three weeks solid worth of dailies.  Three weeks of boring, mind-numbing, soul shattering dailies… well, that dragon one’s kinda cool, but still.

So in other words, if you’re serious about raiding and min/maxing, you must spend about an hour everyday running from worm filled caverns to dwarf hiding snow drifts to ghost infested battlefield to a frozen lake lousy with elementals and back again.  No one wants to do this, no one.  In fact, everyone in my guild who has done it has complained at great length about the evils of this grind and the fact that it’s pretty much necessary if you’re a raider.

The point?  Stop killing people when you’re doing Sons of Hodir dailies. 

Listen: I get it, ok?  You like to PvP, in fact, you love it.  Nothing gives you more pleasure than watching some schmo on the opposite side of the faction fence slide off your sword/dagger/pointy stick.  Your philosophy is that if someone made a character on a PvP server, they should be prepared for PvP or transfer to a “care bear” server, and that philosophy is a-ok.  However, there is a time and place for it and since Blizzard seems unwilling to step in on this one, I have decided to step it up and use my considerable influence to settle this.

This grind is bad enough, everyone who’s there knows why everyone else is there.  There’s no mystery.  You haven’t stumbled across someone who wandered over to the area hoping to grind some exp.  You’re there for the same reason that other person is there and they want to be there as much as you do which is not at all.  However, they’re there and you’re there and now you’re stabbing them and now they’re dead, but you’re still so hollow on the inside.  That aside, however, you have now extended this person’s daily evil for no good reason except you happened to stumble on them while they were killing some mondo worm.  Congratulations, you’re a dick.

Look, let me say this in closing, PvP is fine and I am actually of the philosophy that if you’re on a PvP server, well, you’re fair game.  I actually enjoy it, the added danger of being out questing, seeing a red name floating towards you and not being sure if you should throw a pre-emptive strike or let him walk on by or the thrill of squishing newbs on a run through vanilla, it’s all gravy, baby.  But I find that killing people while they’re trying to accomplish something that they more or less need to (obviously they don’t NEED to, but you catch my drift) on level with griefing in that there’s just no good reason for it.  There not even supposed to BE there today!

So what have you, gentle jerkwads?  Will you sign the Accord and help to end the bloodshed?  Perhaps you’ve already done so in spirit or perhaps you are against any peace of any kind?  Either way, I will let my good friend Serious Dog close this post with a few well chosen words:

-Dueg