Category Archives: groups

groups, thoughts

World of Sneetches

22 Comments

So I’ve been doing random heroics every day. My goal with this is to be able to have enough badges to use them like candy when I pamper all my alts. And I have a lot of alts these days. I’ve actually got a pretty expansive list of the BoAs that I still need to buy. (Because I’m spoiled and now I can’t bear to level an alt without BoAs.)

That was the first bit of backstory for this. The second bit of backstory is that I’m currently sporting my “of the Shattered Sun” title. The reason is actually because a few weeks back I thought it would be funny to pull all of my level 70 gear out of the bank (I still have every piece– trinkets and all) and then add my Shattered Sun title and walk around Stormwind like old times. So I did. It only lasted about an hour before I got bored and put all the 70 gear back in the bank. The Shattered Sun title stuck around, though… because why not? I’d been using “of the Nightfall” for a billion years and I’d been contemplating switching to something else anyway.

So enter the random I did yesterday. We zone in and start the instance. All is well, right? It is, until two people from the same server/guild decide to start regaling me with such poetic and eloquent statements as “lol did ur mum pay for ur shattered sun title for u.”

I sized these people up– both are “the Kingslayer”, and honestly, considering the way they were acting and that we wiped on the second pull in the dungeon (did I mention one of these people was the “healer”), I am nearly positive that these people just got their Kingslayer like… yesterday, now that the 30% buff is out.

Anyways the group disbands due to sheer fail moments after this, and I am left wondering if any of these people ever read “The Sneetches”. Did you? Classic Dr. Seuss, this.

The summary is something like this: There is a species who are called Sneetches, and there are two kinds: those with stars on their bellies, and those without. The ones with stars proclaim themselves to be superior by right of this star, until a guy shows up with a machine that gives stars to un-starred Sneetches. The “original” starred Sneetches, horrified that they have to be on equal footing with these newcomers, decide that stars are now out of style and de-star themselves, because they need to find a way to differentiate themselves. And hilarity ensues.

It would be really easy to re-write this for WoW.

Then along came Blizzard McMonkey McBean
With a magical epics-bestowing machine
“Badges for all!” he said, “Do not fear!”
“Soon everybody will have the best gear!”

So they clambered inside and the Badge Machine roared.
It bonked. It clonked. It jerked. It berked.
It bopped them around, but the thing really worked!

They yelled at the ones who had epics from the start,
“We’re exactly like you; you can’t tell us apart.
We’re all just the same now, you snooty old smarties.
Now you can invite us to your heroic parties!”


“Good grief!” groaned one who had gear from the first.
“We’re still the best Sneetches, and they are the worst.
But how in the world will we know,” they all frowned,
“if which kind is what or the other way ’round?”

So Blizzard stepped up with a very sly wink,
And said “Things are not quite as bad as you think.”
The style has changed all over again–
Epics are Out, and Titles are In!

The Sneetches, of course, figured out how silly the whole thing was by the end– whether or not actual people are capable of the same has yet to be determined.

…okay, I’ll admit, this whole post was basically just an excuse to rhyme like Dr. Seuss (I’m a poet and I don’t even know it.) Now it’s time for Heroics again. Maybe I’ll be lucky and get a good group (you have no idea how badly I want to rhyme that with “soup”.)

Someday I’ll have all the badges I need for alts… until then, as a wise band once said, I wanna be sedated.

Twenty - twenty - twenty - four badges to go-o-o...

(As a side note, does anybody else think it would be hilarious to re-do the music video, but with dragons and demons and stuff walking around in the background, and your Heroic party of five sitting bored at the table? It would be the most fitting music video EVAR.)

groups, guild, instances

Instances and Groups

6 Comments

The other day I wound up in a partial-PuG and partial-guildies group for Steamvaults. This was probably not a wise idea for many reasons, including the fact that it’s a level 70 instance and we were all hovering around level 68, and as it turned out… the PuG members were rather… less than ideal.

I went into it really wanting to do a good job, because the healer whispered me and begged me to be a good hunter, he told me that the last five or so hunters he’d grouped with had been horrible. So of course, this is where Pike’s HUNTER-PRIDE ACTIVATED! And I told him not to worry. But it just wasn’t meant to be. We were wiping on every other pull, we were having issues with the PuG’d people, gigantic annoying plants kept blocking everybody’s vision, and overall it just wasn’t working. So we scrapped the run.

We still wanted to do an instance, though, so we said goodbye to the PuG-players and picked up people from our guild to flesh out our little party. This particular party now was one that we had all been in many times before– our usual tank, our usual healer, and I as the usual CC, etc. We decided to do Escape from Durnholde Keep.

How was the instance run? Well, by most standards, I think, it went pretty well. We had a couple problems and a couple wipes (one of which was entirely my fault, by the way; it involved me not paying attention and running blindly around a corner straight into a bunch of mobs) and a couple near-wipes, but overall the run went well; all the group members were fulfilling their role’s function to above-satisfactory levels and for the most part, everything went smoothly.

However, we all left the instance feeling sort of less-than-satisfied and thinking we could have done a lot better.

It was kind of odd, but then I thought about it and I started thinking: maybe it’s just the fact that our group has worked together so many times before. We’ve grown a sort of synergy with each other, and developed high expectations of each other, and acknowledge that there are high expectations on us as individual group members; so when a run isn’t 100% flawless, we sort of beat ourselves up over it. That’s my guess over why we felt so unsatisfied.

I’m still trying to decide if those high-expectations are a good thing for a guild or group to have, or if it might cause issues down the road if everyone is striving for “that perfect run” and it is always a little bit out of our reach. We are a very laid-back social and light-roleplaying guild, but we also have a core group of higher-level instance-running members and our expectations for instance-running people are pretty high. I hope that’s the right attitude to have and that it doesn’t cause problems later on. I can’t say, because this is my first time around, so I can really just hope.

Anyways, I hit level 69 last night. It’s very surreal how close I am to 70…

Oh, and before I forget: Escape from Durnholde Keep is the coolest instance idea ever. I ran around Old Hillsbrad for about a half hour after the instance was done, geeking out over the lore.