Don't Tread On Other's Fun

Instancing in WoW has always been a bit of a love hate relationship with me ever since I started running them back in BC. Sometimes its incredibly enjoyable, others you want to just log out for a month and see you feel after. For the past week or so while dealing with some personal issues IRL I have been working on my alliance guised hunter to keep my mind of things and over all its been a blast running instances I never did on Edy herself since I didn't have a need to bother with grouping until I hit Outland. Most of the groups I have gotten have been fairly efficient when we ran, not a lot of tanking over pulls or dps doing stupid things that killed us all, just calm easy runs with a few chats here and there. Even with the bad groups it wasn't anything that ruined the mood for me. If the group broke I just re-queued and hoped for better the next time. Today seemed to be the build up of all the bad groups I've missed so I could have back to back irritation as I made my rounds.

Now its not like any one thing is worth complaining about with most runs. Some were just groups that didn't have a shot to begin with but I will say that running heroic Halls of Reflection twice and not getting the first boss down on either go of it was not a good way to start out. The next run on Eddey (night elf hunter) was kinda like salt on the wound. Normally I can deal with bad groups and it was very obvious from the start this was a bad group as when I got in the healer promptly decided his was to go was better than the tank's so the tank and another party member who followed the priest died and the tank left soon after with the healer running ahead of him the whole time. That was, ok. That kind of thing is relatively normal these days though I am a firm believer in "follow the tank" as he is the one that gets beat on so that we may kill the baddies but what do I know? So the shammy and dps warrior who seemed to know each other talk it out and the warrior begins to tank as we wait for one in queue. Now I am not a tank nor do I profess to know how to tank other than the "oh shit" tanking I do as a hunter when things get bad or the aggro gets a little loose but I would assume if you are tanking multiple mobs as a warrior you would need to thunderstomp and the likes to get aggro so they don't go all over the place like marbles that have pointy things. I, as I have learned will be part of my job in the lower level dungeons, had to hunter-tank (not my favorite past time) nearly all but two of any given mob no matter what I did. Again this didn't bother me. What bothered me was in the middle of this chaos the damn shaman decided to inform me I was supposed to be survival and then went on to explain how he was right and I was wrong because he had an 80 hunter and that made him king genius.

[P] Shammy: You should be SV
[P] Eddey: I happen to like BM
[P] Shammy: but you get more dps as sv
[P] Shammy: i got a 80 hunter i would know
[P] Eddey: thats nice, I have an 80 hunter as well and have played all the trees. I find SV irritating and MM boring.
[P] Shammy: but sv is better
[P] Eddey: you play your way I play mine how about that?
[P] Shammy: geez guy no need to be mad

"No need to be mad," he said. Considering he was the lowest dps and I was at about 40+% of the damage done, was tanking, and doing what I was supposed to be doing in general I'd say I was pretty ripe to get mad. Don't get me wrong I have had plenty of people try and "tell" me how to do my hunter thing. Most I just let roll on by but this guy had to have picked the worst time to say something so stupid. I also might want to clarify that we were in Sunken Temple and in our damn 40s. There is very little difference in specs at those levels to be honest and God help me if I ran with tanking like that in a spec other than Beast Mastery.

I don't nor have I ever believed that somebody should be forced to play in a manner that they do not enjoy no matter how well or sub par something preforms. I have been blessed enough to run with people that are not obsessed with Elitest Jerks and crunching number, or just do whatever people say they should cause its the it thing. In general we play to have fun and perform where we should. When I switched to SV it was to help cause I didn't feel like feel like I was pulling my own weight at the time. I hated SV so I gave MM a shot and liked it better. When Cata hits I will most likely be raiding BM again depending on how I like it. Why? 'Cause I have a genuine love of the spec and how it works. Would I bitch at somebody in an instance because I think all hunters should be BM? Hell no. I even have guildies that raid BM right now and I am completely cool with that. Why? 'Cause its fun for them and when you play a game, damn it, that's what supposed to happen. We wouldn't have choices if we were supposed to do it one way.

As for the end of my run with that group, well things were pretty much ruined for me once that idiot started. We got a new tank but he was just as bad as the warrior and couldn't hold aggro. I snapped at him but apologized and left. It probably could have been a fun run too but I just couldn't get into it anymore. So next time you feel the need to give advice on spec and what not in a 5 man and you weren't asked to just stop, think about what you are about to say, then don't say it. Its a damn 5 man instance. Its not life or death. Its not 10 - 25 people running around in circles for hours. If its a random, these aren't people that logged on to the game to have you berate them for doing something in a manner that you wouldn't. Just shut up and play. Its more fun for us all that way.

Glad I Got Beer For This

I was going to use this song with another topic but hell with all this Blizzard bombshells this week I figured why not, does kinda go with things. *cough* Anywho, unless you have been living under a rock for the last few days I am sure by now you have at least heard of Blizzard's brilliant idea to make our Real IDs the way we use the forum. So fairly soon there will no longer be the privacy of having a fake name to post under but instead your first and last names displayed for the whole internet to see. They say its for trolls, I think its more somebody hasn't really thought about just how violating this really is.

Now I don't wanna go worst case scenario, so I will just look at it from a common stand point. I simply don't want everybody to know my real name. If I did I would have made a damn toon with my damn name on it. My name isn't all that common I don't think it would be taken. I have been on the internet for years and managed to keep my name to the damn facebook account my friends talked me into getting as we were leaving college. And on the subject of Facebook (who blizzard seems to be copying) You dont even have to use your real name there if you don't want to. As little privacy as it seems Facebook does still have options to limit what about yourself people can see. Most importantly when you get a Facebook account you know you will have to give this information. That's what the site is there for. WoW is a damn game, when I signed up it was to play a game not give somebody another way to stalk me.

Next problem I have is the rumor Blizzard employees will not have to show their names. If that BS happens I smell boycotts. "They cant afford to have their privacy compromised". What the hell? So they are more important than everybody else that's being violated because they work for you?? So if some freaky dude gets cheezed off because I disagreed with him on the forums decides to look me up and track me down and does something to me its not a problem? The players have to deal with the same idiots and asstards (yeah I know I was trying to keep the profanity down but this word is needed) so why should you get any better treatment than we do? If they are going to punish the fan base like this we should ALL suffer, employees included.

*Deep breath* Whew I feel a little better now. Look its not like I am completely against every change Blizzard comes up with. I wasn't keen on battle.net but after a bumpy start thats worked out pretty good. I am even all for the Real ID system for cross game interaction. What I am not ok with is when you tell me something that goes against everything I have ever learned about internet safety. You NEVER use your personal information where others can see. A name is personal and you can find out a ton of things about people with only their name. I get they wanna stop trolls but there is a simple action they could use that would work the same way with none of the drama. How about they make us pick, oh I dunno, a user name. Lets see...ooo and that user name could be how we post. Wait a minute I have seen this in action before...oh I know, ITS HOW EVERY OTHER FORUM WORKS DAMN IT! God forbid they use something thats been around for years and works just fine and doesn't violate privacy. Until they pull their heads out their asses I won't be posting on the forums any more (not that I did often) which also means I won't be buying anything else from them as they have a less than stellar online shop that has a tendency to break down and *gasp* require you to post on the forums to have something done. If I get hacked again...well thats just that. If they tell me I have to post for help there then by God my account and Edy and the game just end there. Their isn't much they could do that could make me just walk away from WoW as I still quite enjoy the game but this very well could be the kill shot if this becomes the in game standard as well.

My name is Edyion in wow and here. My RL avatar has nothing to do with Azeroth as it is not her reality. She would like it if things remained that way.

Oh and yes I saw the new changes to the talent trees but after this kind of thing that doesn't matter. Game play changes do not effect my everyday life.

Rhumba Rhumba Rhumba

What's this? Edy is making an entry?? Has Blackrock frozen over??? No gentle reader, Edy has returned for the time being and she is bring random music with her! Ok so there is no real reason for the video other than I like the song and it was incentive for me to do a blog entry for the first time in ages. Did have the word rumba in it which, of course, is pretty much the name of a new hunter talent in the coming expansion. Fabulous as that spell is I don't actually intend on talking about the news given after the NDA was lifted this week. Why you ask? Well its simple, I can't get worked up every time we get new news. Don't get me wrong I am as giddy as a school girl about hunter changes as well as terrified (a good terrified though) its just between now and the time the expansion actually does hit the shelves and our hard drives, things will have changed, people will pout, the masses will scream "it's the end!" just like the do anytime something happens. That's tiring and I decided to sit this round out and just look at things that wont spoil too much for me. That said I will give you a little fun thing that happened when I noticed the NDA was gone. First thing I did was popped over to MMO-champion and looked to see just what all was up on there and I skimmed the hunter changes really quickly. About half way through my reading I decided to look at the talent calculator and see what was what first hand. Once I past how different things look I start popping in points then it dawned on me I had no idea how to spec. Now it wasn't like that was earth shattering in itself but it was the fact it's bean almost 2 years since I was that clueless about a spec (meaning BM, though MM and SV didn't take me too long to figure out how to spec). As I looked at the tool-tips there was just so much going on, focus regen out the ass, names of effects on spells we don't even have yet, and wondering various other things about what would be good to have from the other trees now. It wasn't a bad feeling to be so lost like that but it really sent it home that I really am gonna have to learn everything all over again. That feeling also made me realize I needed to back off the info surge and just wait it out, sit back and enjoy skimming things from time to time.

In WOTLK news M.A.S. has been semi-busy raiding for the past month or so. I say semi because we still don't have a completely stable core 10 (or core 6 for that matter) so its still a lot of switching and adjusting but even saying that we have been trucking along nicely with ICC. In general the runs have been fun, even with the starting like an hour late from the posted time. There are still a few rough spots but all in all the improvement has been great and we are presently at 7/12 bosses. We have also been trying to do Ulduar hard modes but those have been lack luster sadly. Its not all that great trying to P.U.G. people to fill runs that need coordination but the trying has been fun. I can't say that the consensus that Edy must be sacrificed to Flame Lev has me all that thrilled but once we get that one out the way I will be happy.

Still trying for my tiger from ZG (starting to think they have somebody monitoring me and laughing every time I go in there to try for it) and I am hoping against hope it will drop before Cata gets here. My warrior is up to level 80 and I must admit Fury is a blast to play. *taps forehead* Hmmm...well I guess that's about it for whats been up with Edy. Not really much to talk about but I think that's gonna change soon.

Oh yeah and if you haven't checked em out you need to hear the goblin and worgen jokes at http://www.wow.com. Most of them are over the top but they are funny and worth hearing anyway. Until next time, happy hunting.