On Fighting Against the Odds....and Winning

Before World of Warcraft, the words which made the sentences of my childhood were written with the red ink of broken syringe needles punctuated with the frantic key presses of console games one generation behind. My dreams were fueled by some arrogant notion I'd gotten into my head back then that I could be whatever I wanted to be, no matter the odds stacked against me. It didn't matter then and this remains true even to this day.

This week, my 2 troll Fire Cleave comp came up against a RMP. They killed my druid in less than 30 seconds into the fight. Did Sleaky and I give up? No. The rogue was at 30% life, the priest at about 20% mana but out of line of sight from his partner. I Lava Burst -> Frost Shock -> Thunderstorm (for good measure) and he dies. Elemental shaman/Survival Hunter vs Mage/Priest. On paper, there's no way in hell we're going to win this fight.

It didn't matter.

EVOCATE. Shock that ****. Hex. Ground the sheeps. Shock the frost bolts, that's the way we do it. LoS like ******* until your ****'s not on cooldown. Keep pressure on the mage. Alright. That's good. Priest just killed tremor. Redrop it and kite him away. Purge Mage clean. Sleaky just feign death'd a sheep. Ground the next one. Lava Burst. Over 9,000. Good. Drop another tremor and run the **** away from the priest. LARGE arcs. Large mother******. Keep grounding those sheeps. Shock the frost bolts. Priest is dumb. Just kite him with tremor totems.

Sleaky's sheeped. ****.

Make sure Frost Resist is down. It's down. Redrop it to maintain good aura positioning. Priest can't afford the mana to spam dispell and doesn't have much time. Ghost wolf and run away. Ruins of Lordaeron means you have the upper hand if you play it right. Come on baby, you can do it. Sleaky's keeping constant pressure on the mage.  Another Lava Burst -> Ghost Wolf away. Priest Penence on the mage. Shock's on cooldown. Cool. DPS him through it. Purge the Prayer of Mending, Renew and shield. Purge baby purge. You ate a fear. That's alright, trinket's up. Hex priest. DR shared with Wyvern Sting is a ***** but it's now or never.

Sleaky's no longer sheeped.

Explosive shot on the mage incoming. Priest is scattered. It's showtime. Lightning Bolt -> Lighting Bolt (LIGHTNING OVERLOAD) -> Chain Lightning. Dead Mage. Priest leaves before Lava Burst is back up.

Four points.

Going back to fighting games this weekend (against someone GOOD) reminded me of what gameplay is like when it's a chess match that goes faster a keypress approximately every 1.5 seconds. But just because it's not as fast doesn't mean it's simple by any means. In Soul Calibur you can go 15 seconds with you and your partner constantly ducking, dodging, parrying each other's attacks and it feels like an eternity. In WoW, 4.5 seconds means the difference between life and death.

After I began playing WoW in closed beta all the way back in 2004 my participation in other genres of games slowly diminished to the point where I all but neglected anything not WoW related. I find it fascinating that when we play other games it makes you that much better at the chosen game you've decided to devote the majority of your time to. It makes sense. In the old days, before the fragfest that makes up WoW PvP today, battlegrounds were fun because a well organized group ran in such a way that's not too much unlike a chess game. I'm not being nostalgic. Sentiment for something in a game that none of us will be playing 15 years from now isn't really my style. That's just the way it is.

Take Arathi Basin. 5 Bases. 15 people. Start with a 4 cap attempt at the beginning. 1 person take farm. Send 7 to Smith, 4 to LM, 3 to Mine. Adjust accordingly depending on where they send their people. Got your 4 cap? Cool. You didn't? 3 on D at each node you have at all times. Set up a swing team of 2-3 people at a strategic point so that they can respond quickly to incoming Alliance. Have druids/rogues ninja a 3rd or 4th. Once you have Blacksmith, Farm, Lumber Mill. Set swing team on the path where all 3 roads intersect. Wait. Or have your druids/rogues take another node. This is when battlegrounds were fun. Eating babies for 12+ hours a day for 11 weeks to get a pointless title in game was almost worth it.

It's when I think about games that puts you against other people the amount of thought that goes into the people calling the shots in both small scale and large scale. It's all a psychological game that's already been covered by such men with names like Musashi, Tzu and Caesar. With the regionals we saw the triumphs and failures of names we're all more than familiar with. Men with dreams and desires like us in an underrated form of competition.

As with anything, it's easy to pick apart things in retrospect and claim that you can do better. But when it comes down to it, when you're sitting there in a deep freeze, your trinket is down and you're pressing your wind shock key frantically because the mage is dumb enough to be in range and you can't do anything about it, I don't think there's a person in the world dumb enough to ask the question, "Well, why didn't you ground the deep freeze?"

I'm reminded of this quote:

"It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours bombardment unscratched. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck." - from All Quiet on the Western Front

As with life, there are some things you can't control and predict. I guess that's why I can't really stand out-skilling scripted encounters ad nauseum to get 10 more spell power. There's nothing more rewarding than fighting a DK, grounding his strangulate and raping him in the face. I can't do it every time, but damn. I feels ******* GOOD when I do it. This is the name of the game.

A bit of luck, a bit of skill and you earn those points while they matter.