Did we or didn't we do these things?

One thing I've started to notice during my questing and during my first couple of dungeon runs since the Shattering is that Blizzard has moved the old world forward through the Cataclysm in a very inconsistent manner.

Let me explain what I mean:

Before the Cataclysm, the quest Lost But Not Forgotten by Misha Tor'kren in Durotar was about her son having gone missing. You end up finding his remains in the belly of a crocolisk, and while she is obviously very sad, she thanks you for providing her with a definite answer in regards to his fate.

In the new world she gives you a quest with the same name, but in it she acknowledges that her son has been dead for a long time and asks you for help with crafting an item in his memory. This basically acknowledges that the previous quest already happened: her son disappeared and she was informed about his death.

On the other hand however, we have quests like Fizzled, which asks you to fetch something from a character that you supposedly already killed for some guy in Razor Hill years ago. Apparently that quest did not really happen.

In the Barrens I saw the same pattern: On the one hand Mankrik is full of hatred for the quillboar because they killed his wife, alluding to the adventurers that he asked to look for her back in the day already having confirmed her fate.

Yet another character asks me to kill Kreenig Snarlsnout, another named guy that I already killed years ago. Likewise all those centaur leaders whose heads I chopped off back then are also miraculously back from the dead, pretending that the story of those quests never happened either.

Ragefire Chasm still has Oggleflint and Targaman the Hungerer, perpetually frozen in time, but the Deadmines are full of new bosses and no more Defias because we killed those and obviously things are different now.

I don't know, it doesn't make the quests any less fun to play through, but if you're trying to think even the slighest bit in-character, it's just odd. The way everything that you kill respawns after a few minutes has always required a certain suspension of disbelief, but at least I was never being asked to kill the exact same NPC twice while being told that this was actually happening five years later. Either the quests we completed in original WoW really happened and have had an impact on the world or they haven't, but acknowledging that some happened while pretending that others didn't just feels strange to me.

It's almost as if the developers couldn't quite make up their minds whether they wanted the Cataclysm to truly move the story forward or whether they just wanted to overhaul the existing quests and streamline them. I'm surprised that nobody pointed out to them how weird and inconsistent it would look if they redid some quests with the former principle in mind and some according to the latter.

A troll druid's first fifteen levels

I've decided to tackle the huge amount of new low-level content with (new) alts. I know that some people prefer to just do it all on their level eighty main instead, but to me that would feel cheap. All game content is much more fun at the right level, so I'll make sure that I experience it that way first, and maybe I'll go through it again on my main later on for the sake of being a completionist. Right now I just hate it when I try to do a low-level quest - and there's plenty of competition from other alts anyway - and some eighty decides to come breezing through and one-shots every mob in the area. Gee, thanks.

Anyway, the first alt that I rolled was a troll druid, native to Argent Dawn since I have no empty character slots on Earthen Ring anymore. And oh my god, troll druids are popular. I swear there were hundreds of them in Durotar last night, turning the place into the new Barrens chat. On the whole it was kind of fun to see all these different-coloured kitties bounding across the landscape, but there were certain "choke points" in the quest lines where the sheer number of players caused problems. For example the third quest or so that you get as a new troll requires you to fight a captured naga in a miniature arena, and this can only be done by one person at a time. When I finally managed to spam-click the NPC that starts the event before anyone else, someone else ninjaed the actual mob from me. RAGE! Even worse was a bit where you were supposed to kill a named guy on a hill and he had a respawn timer of five minutes or something. When I last left the place, there were no less than a dozen new troll druids camping the spot in hopes of getting there first with a well-timed moonfire. Not exactly much fun.

Still, on the whole I rather enjoyed the first five levels of new troll life, and I pretty much got exactly the opposite impression as Tobold, who thinks that the new troll starting zone is too complex and will confuse new players. I doubt many people who quit WoW before reaching level ten did so because they thought that the game was too complicated; more likely they just didn't find it very engaging or their kind of game at all. Personally I think it's great that Blizzard tries to teach new players important abilities (such as different ways in which a quest item can be used) from the start now. They might not get it right immediately, but the zone is very forgiving. You don't encounter actively hostile mobs until a few levels in (and unlike the sudden neutering of the old starting zones, having more neutral mobs actually fits the story here). When you do meet hostile mobs at last, a friendly NPC accompanies you and he's quite good at killing things, so an accidental overpull or mobs spawning on top of you isn't going to get you into any trouble.

At the end of the zone, you get into a big boss battle (yes, at level five). Tobold criticises that the strategy to defeat the boss isn't detailed in the quest text, but fails to mention that instructions flash across your screen in giant letters during the fight, raid-warning style. How often have people pointed out that WoW's single player content doesn't prepare people in any way for what they'll encounter in dungeons and raids later on? Well, here we finally have an attempt at a solution to this, by giving people a taste of what a boss fight will look like as early as level five. And it's still very forgiving as far as I could tell, as the friendly NPCs that fight with you seem to be quite good at keeping the boss busy on their own, so it's no biggie if you can't figure out what you're supposed to do right away. I didn't check my combat log, but I got the impression that I was receiving heals as well.

As I moved on to mainland Durotar, I noticed that other random mobs had also been upgraded to be more interesting: human soldiers would heroic leap at me, others dropped bombs or traps at their feet, scorpids spat poison circles on the ground... they still weren't difficult fights, but again giving the mobs abilities that players also encounter in dungeons and raids later on strikes me as a good move on Blizzard's part, as it teaches people early on to watch out for bad stuff on the floor and to engage their brains to figure out whether they have any spells that can counter a particular mob's signature move. Dare I hope that this might make the next generation of players a little smarter a little sooner?

But enough of gameplay. Let's talk about the landscape, lore and quests. I'm actually a bit undecided about the new troll starter area in terms of looks, as I felt that too much of it was taken up by the training area - surely the Darkspear don't spend all their time preparing for war? Do they always have to swim to Sen'jin Village if they want to do as much as have a beer?

Lore-wise the conversation between Vol'jin and Garrosh was a bit of a shocker. I mean, I cheer for Vol'jin saying it as it is, but at the end of the day he pretty much makes a death threat against Garrosh there! I'm surprised that trolls are allowed back into Orgrimmar at all.

Durotar as a whole hasn't changed a lot, except for the western half of the zone having been partly flooded. It was actually kind of funny - up until I got to that part of the zone I was progressing very quickly, because things mostly looked the same, but the moment my kitty felt the (new!) long grass tickling her belly, I almost forgot all about what I was doing and just started randomly bounding up and down and wasting time in this wonderful new world that I had discovered.

The quests are pretty similar to the zone's looks in terms of changes, meaning that I was initially surprised by how little certain things had changed. The centaurs are gone and humans from Northwatch took their place, but the quest to destroy their attack plans is still exactly the same. Where you used to kill Kul Tiras marines you now get exactly the same quest, only with the mobs being called "Northwatch" something-or-other. Fizzle Darkclaw has drowned in the flood, but you're still supposed to get him.

But just like with the look of the zone, you might find yourself moving on quickly because you think that you've already seen it all... and then you suddenly run into something completely new and different that blows you away.

I have since moved on to the Northern Barrens, where I've encountered a similar pattern so far. Yes, there is still a Plainstrider Menace quest, but at least the quest giver doesn't pretend that they really are dangerous this time around, and you get to ride on a caravan kodo afterwards, which is quite fun.

Having reached level fifteen, I'm keen to try out some dungeons now to see how they have changed.

First impressions of The Shattering

I have to admit, I didn't prepare for the big changing of the world at all. All my level eighties are still sitting in Dalaran - I still have some ICC runs to do before the actual expansion after all - and won't change their hearthstones until I get around to it. I didn't log out in a special place. The thought of getting half the expansion in advance just didn't really compute for me. As long as it's not expansion day, no patch can be all that exciting, can it?

I logged onto my bank alt today as I do on most days. Somewhat unusually, I had left him next to the Orgrimmar flight master, as I'd been making the rounds around the Pilgrim's Bounty tables to level his cooking. When I logged in however, I wasn't greeted by good old Doras - instead there was water, some greenery and birds chirping in the background? WTF? We're not in Kansas Orgrimmar anymore, dear banker... except apparently we are.

Chat was filled with a strange mix of praise and complaints. There were comments about Orgrimmar's new look being awesome ("take that, Stormwind") but also unhappy voices that didn't like being unable to find the forge anymore or having to discover dungeon entrances before being allowed to use the dungeon finder. However, overall the mood didn't seem too dire - the latter complaint was eventually met with "LFM to discover Northrend dungeons" for example.

Orgrimmar has certainly changed a lot. Garrosh has not only fortified its structures, but NPCs, facilities and whole buildings have been moved around. It took me ages to find my beloved Kaja, and she doesn't seem to be as conveniently placed as before. The zeppelins dock inside the city as well now, instead of in front of it. I was proud of myself for finding my way up the central rise and to the zeppelin tower for Thunder Bluff without too much difficulty.

The goblin lady that welcomed me looked slightly odd at first glance. Playable female goblins have been looking slightly different from the NPCs for a while, but I never gave it much thought. Suddenly seeing all the NPCs change to the new model is a little strange however.

Eventually the zeppelin arrived, I settled down at the prow and observed the landscape passing by under my feet. When was the last time I enjoyed flying this much and actually paid attention to my surroundings? I've never felt so close to being a newbie all over again. There is a whole new world out there that I don't know! Okay yes, I have an idea of the basic geography, but the details will be very different. I actually find myself wanting to take it slowly just to savour that feeling. Mmm.

Flying over the northern Barrens, I was surprised by how little things seemed to have changed, though everything looked crisper and clearer somehow. I don't know whether that's just my imagination, whether the patch actually changed my graphics settings without me noticing or if things really do look better. Then the zeppelin came to the edge of the zone and I saw this big crack in the ground with lava flowing through it. I actually winced. Deathwing, what have you done!

Arriving in Thunder Bluff, I found that very little had changed there, though that was fine by me. It's nice to know your way around at least one city. When I ran into a tauren paladin, I cheered at him.

I returned to Orgrimmar by wyvern afterwards and carefully peeked off the top of the central rise. Elevators are for wusses! I hurled myself down into the nearest bit of tarpaulin, where I almost got stuck - what a start to my day that would have been! To my surprise I survived the following fall to the ground... and ended up landing next to the new level 85 elite Gamon, who was being kited around by a couple of hunters and mages. I burst out laughing at the sight of it - some things never change!

As if to confirm that thought, I then ran into a couple of people duelling in front of the gates as usual and some crafty mages that were selling their portal services to the public for some gold. The world is alive and I don't know what awaits me... I couldn't imagine a more wonderful feeling.

Heirlooms - yay or nay?

So, the old world is going to be revamped in only a few days it seems. No additional character slots in sight, so I won't be making any new alts on my home servers, but I guess nothing stops me from making a troll druid, a tauren paladin or whatever on another server. They won't have access to heirlooms of course... but I'm starting to think that this is probably be a good thing.

Of the alts that I've been levelling recently, two have both heirloom shoulders and the chest to boost experience gains, one has shoulders only and two went entirely without any heirlooms. I think it's great that these items exist to give people the option of shortening their time spent levelling, but as someone who actually enjoys levelling I'm becoming more and more convinced that I'm actually better off without them.

How fast is too fast?

Faster levelling doesn't have to be a bad thing even if you do like the levelling process - after all everyone has zones and levelling ranges that they don't like as much and where they'd rather move on to something else sooner than later. In fact, at first I enjoyed the freedom of picking and choosing my favourite quests and zones on my heirloomed alts, but it soon became apparent that I advanced so quickly that I unintentionally ended up leaving content that I really liked behind as well. For example it felt rather awkward on my rogue when I realised that all the mobs in the Arathi Highlands had gone grey before I had even had an opportunity to get started on the zone, and I nearly missed my chance at gainful questing in Tanaris as well, even though I love doing the wastewanderer and pirate quests there.

It was even funnier when I quested in Silverpine Forest with my fully heirloomed mage. Silverpine used to be the worst of the 10-20 zones for the Horde because quests were so scarce that you couldn't really make it through the zone's level range without doing something else on the side as well... but on my mage I gained a full ten levels in Silverpine alone, with the last quests having gone grey by the time I got around to them. Overkill, thy name is restedness plus heirlooms.

In comparison the pace at which my Alliance hunter advanced through Redridge and Darkshire, with no heirlooms and not always rested, felt much more natural and "right". Considering that the revamped low-level questing is supposed to be so awesome that I'll want to see all of it and multiple times, I really see no reason to make my next bunch of alts rush to eighty(-five).

She who has everything misses out on a lot of upgrades

Another supposed advantage of heirlooms is that they scale with your character's progress, meaning that you'll always have the equivalent of a blue quality item of your level equipped in your heirloom slot and will never have to worry about upgrades. This is particularly nice for melee classes, who are heavily dependent on their weapons for good damage output. If you've ever outlevelled your gear by ten levels or more without noticing it immediately, you'll know what that's like.

On the flip side however, half the dungeon drops and quest rewards that you'll see on your way to max level will be completely useless to you. This didn't seem like that much of a problem to me in theory, after all I still had plenty of other gear slots... but as it turned out, the vast majority of instance drops seem to be things like weapons and chest pieces. I actually found this quite depressing on my rogue after a while, seeing yet another dagger or sword drop and going: "Oh, rogue weapon! Oh wait, I got the heirlooms..." There's something very fun about receiving gear upgrades, and being "stuck" with the same chest, shoulders, weapons and whatever other heirlooms you may have is actually kind of sad and a bit of a fun-sucker. Which leads us to the third point:

Looks do matter

I don't know about you, but the first time I got heirloom shoulders for one of my low-level alts they felt extremely cool. Usually you wouldn't get any shoulders at all until around level twenty, but the heirlooms can be worn from level one. Likewise all the other heirlooms borrow their looks from old level sixty gear and thus look a lot shinier than anything else a low-level character would usually wear.

The problem is, this gets old really fast. Again my mage was the most striking example. When I bought him the heirloom cloth shoulders, robe and caster staff in his teens, he went from looking like a ragged farmboy to a truly mighty mage. This was cool for about five minutes, until I started running into other people in the zone I was questing in and every other mage, warlock or priest looked exactly like me. That's beyond a fashion faux-pas, that's a disaster. And I mean, it's not as if you just happen to look the same for a few levels like people often do in Hellfire Peninsula, you'll look exactly the same for the entirety of your levelling process. How sucky is that? I'm not expecting to be a unique snowflake all the time, but levelling the 147th clone trooper is no fun either.

In summary, I don't think I'll be interested in buying any of the new heirlooms in Cataclysm, but I'll keep using the ones that I already have on the characters that have been using them for a while, because once you start using them it's kind of annoying to go back to normal gear, as you might not happen to have an appropriate chest, shoulders and weapon lying around to replace them...

Now that's what I call an invasion!

I've said before that I wasn't too impressed with the early phases of the elemental invasion event (or at least that it didn't feel like much of an invasion to me at that point). However, things have really picked up in the last couple of days and I'm having a blast.

Firstly, the ongoing quests have been updated with Thrall moving to Nagrand to consult the elementalists there, breaking the introductory Mag'har quest line in the process. At least Blizzard seems to have had the foresight to change some things around so that you don't actually need to be friendly with the Mag'har anymore to start questing in Nagrand, otherwise the whole zone would have been broken as a result of that small change.

I remember when I first heard about Thrall handing the Warchief mantle over to Garrosh, I couldn't believe it because... well, why the hell would he do that? His conversation with the elementalists in Nagrand provides a hint at least, as they are urging him to abandon his warchief position and to devote himself completely to shamanism. Considering that he's worried about Azeroth getting torn apart and really wants to soothe the elementals, I can buy that. Garrosh as Warchief or the destruction of an entire planet? Kind of a lose-lose situation there, but one's got to pick something.

Poor guy also gets criticised for his "martial" outfit conflicting with his shaman identity. Have these guys seen any of the shaman tier gear?

Meanwhile, Azeroth really is being invaded this time, with elementals taking over Ironforge, Orgrimmar, Stormwind and Thunder Bluff every two hours or so. Why they are not interested in the other capitals, I don't know. I guess it makes sense from a game-technical point of view, because players would get spread too thin if they were to defend a total of eight cities, not to mention that Silvermoon and the Exodar would be under siege non-stop because nobody would bother to defend them. Still, story-wise it makes me wonder.

I was vaguely aware that this phase was coming, but I didn't know any of the details of how it would work. I just saw someone announcing the elemental invasion in chat while I was checking the auction house on my banker and immediately decided to throw myself into the fray on my main.

Initially nothing seemed to be happening, some guards just shouted warnings about an incoming attack, and NPC citizens appeared to flee the city. At the start of the actual attack only a couple of non-elite elementals spawn, but don't let them fool you - they are not what it's all about. During my first city defence I had no idea what was going on and just kept smiting these random elementals, but what's really happening is that players have to erect barricades around the city, by picking up boxes and dropping them in marked locations.

Once all barricades have been placed, the event starts properly and elemental rifts spawn inside the city, just like they have been doing throughout the world for the past couple of weeks, except that these have more charges and spawn elite mobs. People are quick to form impromptu raids as being grouped up makes it easier to see where others are going, share buffs and dish out heals. Still, if you can't or don't want to join a raid for some reason or another, that doesn't actually stop you from participating. In fact, I had a blast on my druid healing people late at night just by turning friendly health bars on and targetting those who were getting low. It wasn't very efficient, but it was challenging and different, and those whom I saved from certain death more than once certainly appreciated it, shouting cheers for me and emoting love and hugs. Cairne Bloodhoof thought that I was awesome too. (I wouldn't recommend this method when it's very busy however, your screen just fills up with a gazillion friendly name plates and you won't be able to tell what's going on at all.)

There's also something about NPC citizens getting trapped in elemental prisons and people having to free them with totems from the Earthen Ring NPCs, which took me a while to suss out. Either things were so manic that I couldn't see a thing or other people were simply considerably faster at freeing them, so I never even saw any for my first couple of city invasions. It wasn't until I rode to Thunder Bluff's hunter rise early during an attack, which for some reason always seems to be the last place people go to, that I spotted tauren citizens all around that appeared to be stuck in cyclones. I assume the animations for different kinds of elementals look different though.

Famous friendly NPCs also make a an appearance and help you fight - in Orgrimmar for example Garrosh himself joins the fray in the Valley of Strength, Vol'jin helps to defend the Valley of Spirits, and Rexxar returns from Outland to help out in the Valley of Honor. Unlike during the Battle for Undercity and the Zalazane's Fall event they don't give you any buffs though - so people can and will die! I have to say, this is how I like my WoW NPCs best - not acting as buff-bots or holding lengthy speeches, but fighting! I might even grow to like hate Garrosh a little less for actually fighting for Ogrimmar with axe in hand instead of just spouting pompous lines all the time. Oh, and there's also an amusing bug going on with some NPCs where they will clone themselves for some reason. At one point I was fighting side by side with no less than three Cairne Bloodhoofs. Can't at least one of them survive the Cataclysm? Pretty please?

A lot of WoW's recent developments have worked to erode the server community and bring all players of a geographical area together instead, but this event is finally throwing the fans of server identity a bone again. Maybe it's because I play on a roleplaying server - even if actual roleplaying has kind of died out by now, at least on Horde side - but this kind of thing really gets people excited and involved. I guess if you even have a little bit of roleplaying left in you, it's hard to not feel compelled to defend your home city. I really enjoyed seeing people from different guilds work together and spotting a lot of familiar names that I hadn't seen in a while. Really made me feel at home in more than one way.

Incidentally, the rifts in the cities count for Tripping the Rifts, so the guildie of mine who said that he wasn't going to hunt down rifts because eventually the rifts would hunt us down was right. It's really easy to get the achievement now just by participating in a city defence.

For each type of elemental that you repel for good, you'll get access to a special dungeon boss for about half an hour: Crown Princess Theradras for earth, Grand Ambassador Flamelash for fire, Kai'ju Gahz'rilla for water, and Prince Sarsarun for air. On the one hand it's fun to fight "classic" bosses like the princess in a levelled-up state again, but on the other hand I have to admit it annoyed me a little that these all just show up again with no explanation. When we had to face Zalazane again it was at least explained that his previous "kills" had been trickery, but why are all these guys back?

I have to admit I was quite shocked when I found out that they all drop ICC-10 quality loot for a variety of slots as well as sixteen justice points a pop every time you kill them (which you can do over and over and over... for the thirty minutes or so while they are accessible at least). Whenever I think that Blizzard can't top their latest seasonal loot pinata any further, they go ahead and manage it anyway. Still, it's not as if it really matters at this point, it's just some more levelling gear for alts. Plus these guys are actually at least a little bit challenging, I've seen people die during these fights and even came close to a wipe once.

The NPCs also get involved again, with Garrosh helping you against Flamelash and the Princess, and Cairne accompanying you to Zul'Farrak and Ahn'Qiraj. I realised that I never actually saw Cairne fight in-game before; it was fun to see him break out the giant totem poles. And Garrosh doing fighting instead of talking again... I approve, and have to admit I'm already warming up to him a little.

They also give you a quest which rewards you with a bit of extra gold when you kill each of the bosses for the first time, but you better be quick with picking it up, because as soon as the tank starts the fight the two faction leaders will be too busy to talk to you, and unfortunately some people feel the urge to rush in as soon as they zone in so they can finish the fight quickly and immediately requeue some more until the timer runs out. I still don't like "gogogo"-ing, but I have to admit that in this case I can at least understand it somewhat. Even during my own first time fighting the bosses I just made sure to grab the quest quickly, helped with killing the boss, and then paused afterwards to read what the quest text actually said and check my chat log for what the NPCs had been talking about before the fight.

I can really see myself enjoying this phase of the invasion for a while - too bad that it's distracting me from any other pre-Cataclysm goals that I might still have had in mind, but what the hell! There comes a point where you really just want to move on and figure that if you really wanted to achieve all those things in the old world you'd already have done them earlier. Bring on Deathwing! Until then I'll be tripping rifts and picking up a few more pieces of levelling gear for all my alts.

How WoW helped me get a job

I don't like to talk too much about my real life on here, but this is a story that I've just got to share.

For those of you who haven't looked at my about page in a long time, I'm an Austrian who moved to England nearly a year ago now, to live with my boyfriend - whom I met through WoW, incidentally.

Since then I've been unemployed. The economy here is in a bad state, I'm a foreigner without any particularly fancy qualifications... you get the picture. With every unsuccessful interview I came to loathe those generic interview questions that Syl posted about the other day even more. I don't think they are completely pointless, but all too often they strike me as clearly conjured up by some higher-ups who have no idea what the actual job looks like or what kind of people will be interviewed. One of my most hated examples is "Name a situation where you worked successfully in a team." I used to work in retail, and we had to work together like a well-oiled machine all the time, what do you mean I have to name a "situation"?!

Anyway, to get to the point of this particular story, I had another interview for a retail job on Friday. I didn't think that there'd be anything special about it, even though I immediately took a liking to the manager when he appeared to express a dislike for generic interview questions as well. We chatted away quite nicely, and then came the dreaded team question once again. /groan

I gave my "well, I've always worked in a team" answer but he still looked expectant for more. I had received some interview coaching in the last couple of months and remembered that I'd been told that it was also acceptable to mention hobby-related examples in reply to questions like these if they were applicable to what's being asked.

Well, I thought, when the guild nearly fell apart this summer and we pulled together to save it, that was definitely a "situation" that required team effort...

"Okay, I play this cooperative game..."

Lamest and most awkward description ever, but I know that not everyone is into games so it would be presumptuous to assume that they know what I'm talking about. And of those that do know their games, not everyone might associate WoW with good things.

"Which game?"

Okay, he's one of those that really want to know. No way around it then...

"World of Warcraft. So I was..."

"Oh? How many eighties do you have?"

Huh, a real expert! Wait, how many eighties do I have? Hekatie only just dinged, so that makes... was it seven or eight now...?

"Eh, too many..."

No! Bad answer! That must sound like I'm playing so much that I can't even remember...

"Well, I have five myself."

Oh, he plays himself and has five eighties? That's... unexpected.

"Anyway, so my guild was falling apart..."

"Ah yes, mine's been pretty dead as well, what with everyone waiting for the expansion..."

And then we basically spent the next five minutes or so talking about WoW instead of actual job-related stuff. I have to admit, I struggled a little not to burst out laughing because the whole thing just seemed so absurd. Here I am, trying to be in super-serious job interview mode, and the manager is telling me about how his main is a paladin and he wants to roll a goblin in Cataclysm.

Eventually we got back on track and when I saw him hesitate over what to put down as my answer to the team question, I couldn't help myself...

"Hah, now you have to figure out how to explain that to someone who doesn't know the game!"

Oh god, could I be any cheekier? Yegads...

"Hm yeah... oh well, I'll just complete this later!"

Then he asked me the last couple of questions and sent me on my way. I did eventually burst into giggles once I was out the door.

During my many months of unsuccessful job-searching some people have told me that job interviews aren't so much about assessing your skills as they are about seeing whether the interviewer likes you as a person and thinks that you'd fit in.

This morning I got a call. I'm starting on Thursday.

I guess they were right!

Pugging Pains

Every cloud has a silver lining, and what goes up, must come down - or in other words, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my recent string of happy pugging experiences was quickly followed by a lot of awfulness.

My rogue finally hit Outland today, but before that I did some more pugging with him... and it was painful. I haven't actually had much fun since he outgrew Sunken Temple, except for one perfectly smooth Dire Maul East run and one BRD Emperor run where I ended up completing most of the instance with just a protection warrior and a disc priest, after we had booted some troublesome elements and it didn't seem worth replacing them.

It's not so much that anyone in particular acted more horrible than usual, but the overall standard of behaviour was just shockingly low. To give you an example, I think I had more runs with people ninjaing loot than runs where everyone used the need/greed system as intended. One or two ninjas actually stopped once I called them out on it, but most just completely ignored my comments and continued their random need rolls on everything. Only in one Dire Maul East run the tank and healer decided to kick the ninja after he didn't respond to my comments about it twice. More often than not the tank and/or healer were the ninjas.

A lot of people also just came across as incredibly impatient. Maybe we simply have very different ideas of fun, but I don't particularly enjoy abandoning every other instance halfway through just to start a new run. In one BRD group someone kept spamming us with attempts to requeue for a different dungeon halfway through the run (even though we were progressing fast and smoothly) and when he didn't get his wish he went AFK until we kicked him.

During my only attempt at Lower Blackrock Spire, our tank, who seemed to be the only one who knew the way, eventually dropped group and left us somewhat stranded. When we got a new tank and couldn't immediately find our way around, again the group wanted to start over with another random instance instead. I declined, telling them that I had queued for LBRS in specific, and got the boot before I could even blink. Not that I think that they didn't have the right to enforce the majority vote, but I would have liked to at least try to convince them or else leave on my own... but no, they had to requeue now now now. What is it with all these players having the attention span of a gnat? Surely actually completing an instance run is not considered too hardcore these days?

And then of course there were the ones doing plain dense and stupid things. Like the tank who pulled mobs until he died while the healer hadn't even zoned in yet and then complained about lack of heals. Or the tank/healer duo from the same guild that had zero communication, with the tank again pulling everything in sight repeatedly and then wondering why he died. One particularly stubborn death knight tank managed to wipe the party in exactly the same way three times in a row (by aggroing the Grim Guzzler patrons with blood boil spam) before the group disbanded. Generally a lot of players seemed to be completely unable to deal with anything that made "just AoE everything in sight" a bad strategy, and I saw healers catching a lot of crap when they got silenced or things got out of control otherwise, as if it was all their fault.

I'm not sure why I've suddenly had such a streak of terrible pugs, but I have some theories.

For one thing, I noticed that Blizzard has started to merge the EU battlegroups as well now (edit: found the official announcement), though I don't know whether they are entirely done yet. You'd think that one battlegroup is already large and anonymous enough, so that adding some more wouldn't make a difference, but to be honest I was actually starting to get a decent feel for Cyclone after a year. With all those different server names popping up in my pugs all of a sudden I feel like I'm completely lost at sea again. Maybe it's just xenophobia, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of these new servers really did have a higher than average percentage of annoying players. Maybe it's time to start taking notes again.

Part of my chagrin definitely came from being a pure damage dealer and feeling awfully powerless in the dungeon finder group dynamics. I mean, even when I pug with my death knight as dps, I don't have to take any crap from tanks because if it comes down to it I can take over the tanking role. But as a rogue... I'm nothing. I definitely can't tank, I can't even off-heal, I'm totally dependent on the mercy of the tank and healer and can only hope that they don't act like complete douches. As it was I'm surprised that I didn't get kicked more often for calling tanks out when they behaved badly.

Still, I'm hoping that things will get a bit better in Outland, because at least the instances there are closer to Blizzard's more "modern" instance approach than all the old level sixty dungeons. I mean, I can appreciate BRD's good sides, but I do agree that the corpse run back to the instance is tedious as hell, so I can at least somewhat understand why people are more prone to dropping group there if we wipe. Plus, Outland is where the loot roll rules get a bit stricter I believe, which might curb the ninjaing tendencies at least a little. We'll see.