Thx and all

First, I would like to say thank you to all of the people who took time to say hi to me and showed support in the blog.  I have been very amused at the effort a few of you went through to figure things out about me.  A couple guys even took time out to talk to me in game, which was unexpected but kinda cute.

I feel like I owe you a bit more information about myself, but I will let that come naturally over time.

This last week has been an adventure for me.  I have been working at gearing my shaman (nothing like a never-ending grind of bg’s, etc.) so that I’m not face down in the arena in the whole 2 seconds it took rocking my s3/s4 gear.  Of course a 2400 mmr partner did not help.

Race to Glad in one week

One week with a goal of 2400+ in 3s.  One mage, one shaman, and one lock on a journey to the top, never mind their gear.

My house has been interesting this week.  The circle of people who I used to play with is all “getting back into the game”.  Now, I am aware most of you do not care at all for “scrubs” or for name-dropping, so I will spare you the details (there are links if you are interested).  I have had the pleasure of watching a MLS team (L&S sporting somewhat random gear) break the 2k rating in an attempt to get glad ranking in one week.  So much for the top 1% of players ever breaking 2k. 

Three days into the mix and aberererer has managed to break 2100.  Now, you may wonder why I'm bothering to talk to you at all about a team of under-geared guys making a vain attempt to get to glad.  The truth is, this is the fun that arena is all about.  I think I speak for a majority of people when I say this.  For 99% of players, that means you trolls, their characters will never be complete, their teams will never be #1, and most of all, they will never finish their climb to the top.  This is why I am having fun watching a couple of s1-4 glad boys do their thing and break in a new shaman.  (/sigh if only I had gear already)

Day four, and aberererer was disbanded in favor of creating a new team for a better record.  I am still unsure why the guys did this, but they are happily climbing back up the ladder on a new team. 

They have been playing all night, slowly grinding their way up the ladder, currently they are sitting around the 2100 mark.  I have enjoyed their spirit, despite the massive setback they imposed upon themselves by creating a new team.  (I had really hoped to be reporting a much better ending by tonight.)  It is also interesting seeing the confidence of their shaman grow as the team is progressing.  Moomooboom is experiencing his first serious team.  I have to say, just in the few days that he has been playing with the more seasoned guys, he is doing a great job.  He has gotten more confident and is making better decisions under stressful conditions.  It is this climb and camaraderie that I believe makes this game worth playing for all of those who never get to the point of making an e-sport out of wow. 

Then and now

(Speaking of mods)

There have been many articles written about skill>all.  This last week I have encountered more hate related to gear score than I ever expected.  First of all, as a few of my comments pointed out, I just hit 80.  As I am writing this, I have been 80 less than one week.  Now, that's not a big deal - it is expected that under one week I will appear to be a scrub (granted most scrubs don't rock full s4 pvp gear, aside from s3 shoulders).  But being removed from groups constantly based on a gear score is getting a little old.  I will limit my rant, but when a warlock is kept in a group over me (who happens to ask, "WTF is a summon stone?" mid summoning) I get a little irritated.

I will not refresh the old argument about pvp and pve.  That is, those who pvp can pve, or vice versa.  I also don’t expect my server to remember me or invite me to groups based on obsolete pvp gear, but there is a limit to what a gear score means.  In the three or four days this weekend where I spent time running various instances, I actually managed to collect a fair amount of starter epics, so thankfully I don’t have that OMG TBC shaman thing going now.

I guess what aggravated me so much was where I left off in the game.  I used to keep good company in wow.  At the end of BC, I was in the best horde-side guild as a pvp member.  When that guild disbanded, a few friends and I started a new guild (just before WOTLK hit).  I was co-gm and have to say, it was fun stomping through the content first.  I rerolled even, and geared up a ret pally in full t7-7.5 by the middle of January.  But it was boring.  I eventually tired of the game and left it sit.  By mid-February I had completely quit playing and logged in only to see where my guild was going and sometimes randomly played a bg.

Before WOTLK, I never spent much time tackling the end game content because I found the whole DKP and gear obtaining process confining.  I liked pvp for the freedom in playtime and the complete lack of an in-game schedule.  It was nice seeing my shaman on the log in screen, sitting there with his arena gear on.  Compared to my pally, memories of playing my shaman were so much more sentimental.  I may get into it one day, but when I was playing BC, I had some really bad things happen to me in my daily life.  As a result, I retreated into the game and obsessed about wow.  Perhaps this is why it took me so long to come back and level him.  I missed being on top of my game.

So now I’m back and I am staring at that log in screen, debating on if I want to go back down this road.  In my absence, a lot has changed.  I have horrible gear and most of the people I played with often are either gone or restarting.  I also know that no matter what I do in WOTLK, I will be months behind.  I realized that I won’t be doing competitive arena for a while and that it may not be a possibility on my server this xpac at all.

Back to the point I was attempting to make.  I have been forced to pug it most of the week and just hearing, “what’s your gear score?” within seconds of joining a group makes me dread the massive amount of wiping on Ony or VOA that is about to go down.  I miss the good old days when pug group leaders actually asked people about their class, play style, or other relevant questions that can help you predict if they are going to run into the adds (whelps, etc), ninja-afk, or otherwise fail at playing the game.  Pve isn’t hard as long as you stand in the right spot, hit your 1-2 buttons, and pay a small amount of attention to what the tank is targeting. 

Relying on a gear score mod just makes me wonder about how casual WOW has actually become.  This mod along with websites dedicated to posting gear score have actually allowed the casual player the ability to rant like an elitist *******.  I could go into the discussion I had with a guy about WOA and Mana Spring totems being able to be dropped at the same time (being that one is water and the other air) that eventually caused him to cop out and tell me my GS wasn’t high enough to run a regular 10 man TOC.

All in all, I am enjoying the game.  It has been fun so far.  I only hope that I can continue to enjoy it.

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