Memoirs of a Feline Bachelor: Part I

Hello valued reader it is a pleasure to get my time with you all. Edyion is a little busy (or not busy depending on how you look at it) and is a little bit of a low time in the game and after her great depression on the state of BM hunters flared again because of the hunter Q&A she decided that her precious Snuggles should step in and hold down the fort. I would like to take the time to give you all a better idea of the greatness that is Snuggs and a look into my relationship with my beloved mistress.

For starters, a formal introduction. My full name is a Lord Byron Snugland IV but for some reason (probably that cruel streak of hers) my dear Edyion quickly ignored my regal name and insists on calling me Snuggles. I suppose this could be worse. You all have met Woofles I asume. Moving on, I spent my early years in quiet dominance of Eversong Woods when this scrawy pointy eared creature began following me around trying to tempt me with treats and whispering sweet nothings into my subconscious. Well being a cat of high class I wasn't about to have this weird thing have its way with me. I've seen too many of my own kind fall to this kind before, however as I tried to chew her face off she never once put up a fight and well that left an impression on me. So I went with her.

My relationship with my dear Edyion even started out on a high. She took great care to feed me and make sure I got all the things necessary for my developement into the lean mean gnome munching, druid loving machine I am today. Never one to leave me behind she even willingly bit the dust with me to prove her loyalty. I could never serve another mistress for there will never be another Edyion in this cat's heart. As for how I feel about my stable mates...well thats a story for another time.

Come Get Some!

Well yesterday was a rather eventful day for the Ed. First off I rolled an alliance druid (yup I said alliance) Saemys, on Cho'gall after some coaxing by my friends Ruhtra and Eus and got her to level 10. Now I am sure by now a good few if not all of you have heard of the ratio issues on Cho'gall with the horde supposedly out numbering the Alliance about 7-1. Now if this was a PVE server I wouldn't even bat an eye at the situation, however, Cho'gall is PVP and those kinds of numbers are just too lop-sided to ignore (I should know I tried but a certain suicidal healer wouldn't let me). So after talking with Ruhtra about this realm he raised some interesting points:

1. With those kinds of numbers one can't help but wonder just how "good" these Horde are with the slim pickings of Alliance trying to hold down the fort.
2. The auction house should prove interesting as the listings are slim to say the least.
3. Come see how bad it COULD be and learn to enjoy Dagerspine a bit more.

So I caved and lil Sammy came into the world. I must admit its a bit surreal just how few allies there really are on that server. I think I was level 10 before I even came across another Alliance player and trade was just ...well...dead. Part of me likes that as it means less people bothering me as I level (though I did manage to attract the ONE stalker in the entire zone, go figure...) but after reading Gchat it really sinks in how bad off these people are. I haven't seen any Horde myself yet but the higher levels have been camped several times in the past day and a half I have been there. Hearing them talk about that and not being able to get Ed and do something about it takes me back to when I first started on the D-spine. So I realize the further I go with this druid until I reach a resonable level and learn how to PVP with a druid I am going to have a lot of bottled up anger. Which brings me to the rest of my day.


There hasn't been a "Code Red" in some time and honestly I am feeling the rust and as a result lost my desire to PVP some what (can only take getting it up the bum so much in arena before I've had my fill) and after dinging 10 I get on Ed to see if my services were needed. Who should get my attention but my own personally Harley Quin saying the usual crap is going on in Tarren Hell. Hell I was feeling froggy so I flew in to my death but only because of the 2-1 odds (give or take .5 I dont remember just how many allies were on my flight path but I know it was about 5 i saw) and the death of Eus as I opened fire. From there it got REALLY fun. Once everyone regrouped from the chaos we walked right over the rampaging Allies which quickly turn tail and head for the heals (cept for one idiot 74 druid but we shall not waste space on him as he seems to be wanting MAS to put him on the hit list but he bored us rather quickly with his one trick pony ways). At this point many an 80 are pissed off and at one point we build to a 3 group raid and proceed to clear out the town formally known as South Shore MAS style. The group of allies that fled finally came back with more guildies and we continue to kill them like dogs as they continually proved they had no real knowledge of PVP mechanics or the likes but who are we to turn away game 80s. I know we spent hours killing them all and they even made a comeback rally killing us all after we got a little split up but we are very patient pvpers and know full well you don't go guns-a-blazing back into the jaws of death and after a clean swept of TM they seemed to get the picture and moved on (cept for 2 rogues and that blasted druid but again they bored us so we moved on). Now I don't normally do this but I must salute for bring their guild out to play with us. Snuggles had much fun gnawing on your bones. Please do come back again. With me gimped on another PVP server I will be needing some people to help me vent fustration after all.

P.U.G: Experiments In Socailizing

I've done my fair share of raiding in pick up groups and its always a crap shoot. Sometimes they are fantastic people (rare but it happens) and others they are a nightmare. The nightmare groups come in a variety of forms ranging from people not having the slightest clue what they are doing in the raid or on the toon they are playing to simple asshole-ish actions by various members of the raid. Any soul that has PUGed knows its a risk and sometimes you just have to know your limits and cut your losses.

Today was not a day to cut my loses as I did pick up a nice ring and some shoulders to play around with (that I doubt i will ever use but again they are to play with and nobody else wanted them). The raid itself was almost completely PUG with a few members knowing each other and the run itself was pretty drama free in terms of the group itself as all players were up to snuff and very pacient as we trucked along to down KT. So why have I made a post about PUGing if everything went so well? Well its the social part of the PUG that was my issue with the run and it wasn't so much fustration with the raid itself but more of one with the guys running it and the vent they used. The leads were nice enough guys and perhaps that was a bit of the problem.

I made the mistake of raiding with a headache but I was all by myself today and planned to take full advantage of that fact so I sucked it up and ran my run. Now my problem with the socail in this group was the constant chatter of a lower leveled guildy of the raid leads butting into our raid chanel and never shutting his trap the entire run. Now let me break this down for you valued reader (i know somebdoy has to read this stuff). First as we all log into vent the gemtleman welcomes himself into the channel and procceds to not do this only once but under several different names as to cause painfully loud feedback to all those in the channel. This contnued for a while and at the time it at least seemed like this was a consern to the raid leads as they quicky began to try and figure out which people where his (hard to do because many people do not use the name of the toon they are playing in vent so its kinda hard to know who the hell is who). They failed to shut him out but he left on his own taking the loud noises with him and all was fine for a while. As we got further in he did feel the need to return and give updates on his progress to 80 though only 2 people in the vent actually would have even cared enough to want to know how he was doing. Again though this was irriating it was not a huge problem. His activity really picked up however when another fairly annoying gent joined our raid to replace someone and began to chat with the guy and brag about how far he was in ulduar as we ran into problems with trash in arachnid wing. Now as the late mention warrior was a pain to listen to at least he was IN the raid and some of the time the things out of his mouth actually pretanded to the situation at had the other "genius" began making his own quips in random areas and sometimes in areas were he seriously could have messed us up.

Now this is by no means the first time I have had to deal with this but the guy was REALLY loud and with my headache getting worse from hours of sitting in this raid it really began to grate on my nerves. By the time we reached Sath and get ready to pull he even starts yelling in vent he wasn't ready almost confusing the entire raid. I am sorry but if about 85% of the raid dont know each other's voices it becomes hard enough to tell wahts going on without some ass adding to the complexity of the situation by throwing a new unknown person into the mix in which you have no idea who he is. We then have a bit of troiuble with people dying on the frozen bastard of a dragon and though I can not say for certain if he was at fault I am sure it didn't help with people's focus during the fight.

Nerd rage began to kick in on KT and the warrior semi flashing the raid with his e-peen also pushes my last nerve as we wipe twice on KT before downing him tearing down raid members ired from the long haul for mistakse that can happen when you are tired and a little too focused to get done and yelling at our melee for being frozen when the majority of our dps was melee (not smart for KT but I was not the one in charge). I have to comend them for not freezing him along with each other with that kind of crowding. This is not the end of the problems with the vent durning the fight. Not only is the warrior basically taking over the vent bossing people around but he and the raid leads began talking about the more random things when vent should be clear so we can cut down on ussless deaths. That at the end of the day was about my breaking point and raises a intersting question for a PUGer.

When exactly is a PUG a BAD PUG? Its very obvious when the group cant even get in the door without about 10 wipes on trash in the first room or numbers look WAY to low for the people there or your raid lead is wearing greens, but is it a BAD run when you have this kind of organization issues in raid communications? Yes we had a good group of people in the PUG but we even had issues with buffing because people couldn't even hear what others needed as the vent was practically unuseable the majority of the run for useless chatter. The run itself ran probably about 2 hours longer than it would have with clear channels and communication as many wipes probably could have been avoided. For all the chatter going on I would have been about as well off not in the vent at all rather than getting irriated at the loud nonsense asaulting my ears. Even without the headache I would have seriously thought about leaving the PUG even though thing were still going fairly well. Had the group be a slight bit worse or not done as well in the early wings I dont think I would have been alone in wanting to get out at that point. Its a bit irresponsible to not control your raid's communication channels like that. Its irritating enough to deal with overly chatty raid members as is when they talk about random things in important areas but to have a guildy disrepect the raid itself because he couldnt "go" is way worse. WoW is a socail game. I might be thinking a bit much of the people that play but at some point you have to realize there are things you should and shouldnt do social situations. Perhaps i just expect too much from people. After all most act like this in there everyday life its just a bit more over the top in the virtual world I suppose.

The Low Time

So its been a while since I've posted here and with good reason. Nothing of interest to me to write about is happening at present. Been running Naxx 10 with guild with mixed results thought mostly positive but at current I have seen no reason to post about that. I haven't run anything for myself in about 2 weeks now, not playing low level alts at the present since (I'd rather wait for 3.2 to get the new mount pricing) and am just starting to bring Tytanya back into action. Is this saying I am bored with WoW. By no means there is just nothing pressing for me to write about, however I need to keep the habit up so lets see what I can scrounge up.

Patch 3.2

Overall this patch is mostly a disapointment to me but rather than spend weeks bad mouthing the changes here I am more interested in waiting to see what happens when things hit the live servers. Many things make little sense to me and at the moment seem to be making an easy game even MORE easy. Lowing mount costs yet again ticked me off more than the first time they did it but thats more killed my desire to work on alts than anything and if you think about it isnt really gonna make anything that much easier as people still have to earn the gold to get the mounts even if it is cheaper and at level 20. My hopes for beast mastery changes are dying pretty fast as the only changes coming are the very things that get us nerfed in the first place, buffing the pet more. Ret changes have me a little more happy as that pain in the ass Seal of Blodd is going bye bye and Seal of Command and Coruption are getting buffs as well as some changes to our mechanics that I am eager to see in action. There are some healing changes I haven't been playing a ton of attention to that I plan to look into soon. There are more mounts for me to work on getting Edy and more small pets to drool over. Blah blah blah. I am really just not that concerned with whats in the patch currently like I was in 3.1.

Guild Raiding

Since we started Naxx 10 as a guild weeks ago I have been pretty pleased with over all performance but that performance has a few kinks in it. As a whole dps is rather low but is being offset by me running Edy in her raid spec and 3k to 3.8k dps definately pulls up dps numbers to about where they should be in there. That sadly is my problem. There hasn't been any change in the people consistantly doing low numbers and it has nothing to do with the fact until last week we were only downing spider and nobody would try for later in the week to get more down. Naxx 10 gear is pretty equal to heroic gear however I haven't seen the low numbers doing there heroic homework either to improve their numbers and hinting they need to seems to not be working. So what to do? Well Ty needs gear and is very Naxx ready for dps and ok for healing (I have done both on her before) so I am thinking its time for people to see for once where they REALLY are and take Ed out of the equation.

Well there is your update. Other than being sad I could never get my worgen pet and never will there is only the same shit on a different day. Here's hoping things pick up.