He who travels with another

Henry David Thoreau once said "The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” Yesterday seemed to be the epitome of that quote in World of Warcraft.

After getting a group together for Heroic Trial of the Champion, we downed everyone except for the Black Knight. Just before we started one of our team members posted a be right back (BRB). Ten minutes later we were still waiting for him and the question of replacing him popped up. Ten minutes after that, we found someone to take his place, willing to down only one boss, and finished the instance. Later that day, I grouped with my guild to down the 25 man version of Onyxia. Everything went well until we wiped and one of our members went AFK (sort of like 'be right back' but not nearly as polite). After waiting for about 8 minutes we replaced this member and downed Onyxia.

One of my biggest issues is the AFK/BRB thing. We are a group of peoplewho have agreed to help each other achieve a goal. Not being there to accomplish that goal is disrespectful to the group as a whole because you are not just wasting your time, you are wasting the time of four to twenty-four other people. When you go BRB or AFK you have just stated, in my opinion,'My wants and needs are much more important than your wants or needs. Yes, I want to get awsome loots and be special, but only as long as I can do it at my convenience. You'll just have to wait while my nail polish dries or I get the brownies out of the oven.' While I like brownies, especially with nuts, I ain't getting any and I had to sit here twiddling my thumbs while YOU ATE MY BROWNIES!

Obviously I have issues with waiting, but I propose a solution to this. I recommend an AFK tag for raids. If someone makes the rest of the group wait for, say five minutes, they can be tagged with a debuff that only gives them half of the experience or if items are being rolled on, they can achieve a roll no higher than, say, 66. That way they still get benefit and will not leave the group, but are given incentive to being prepared to accomplish the group's goal. Let me know what you think and be sure to send brownies!

You Should Be a Warlock!

First of all, welcome to Over The Edge, a blog whose goal is to save my rambling thoughts on the World of Warcraft. As of this moment I am playing three characters in the realm of Draka. They are a resto/feral druid, an elem/resto shammy, and a beastmaster/survival hunter.

So, I was recruited by some friends to play World of Warcraft after I mentioned my love of Diablo II and the fact we could team play on it. Here is how the conversation went.

Me: Dude, Diablo and Diablo II were awsome! Blizzard makes awsome games!
Patrick: Dude, you should play World of Warcraft. It is so much better and you can group with me, Alicia, and Tommy!
Me: Sounds cool. What kind of character should I play?
Patrick: Dude, you should be a Warlock!

And that is how my first character in wow was a warlock. Now this was back in vanilla Wow and the first realm I was in was a pvp realm. As a noob, this was a horrible combination. I spent a week watching my imp die, running from anything that got within five feet of me, and learning that the silver and gold dragon circles on the bad guys were instadeath. And then, I was sent to the Barrens for my lock quest.... and proceded to get killed by the guards at the entrance, the guards at the battleground entrance, various rogues, warriors, hunters, mages, and shamans of the horde. I went back to my friend.

Me: Dude, warlocks suck! All I do is get killed and I can't wear anything but robes. What are you playing?
Patrick: Well, I'm a warrior, Alicia's a hunter, and Tommy is our priest. How about we help ya?
Me: I guess. How come you said I should be a warlock?
Patrick: Oh, well we needed someone who could summon us to the instances.

And that was why they thought I should be a warlock. No thought was given to my personal playstyle, helping me learn the mechanics of how to be a warlock, or advice on how to avoid the horrendous fantasies of horde members to slice, gut, and punt (not necessarily in that order) a lowlie gnome warlock.

Later on that afternoon, I rolled and a hunter, a dwarf that I still have to this day. And I love that dwarf hunter. He is my type of playstyle which is own the person while staying as far away as i possibly can. I understand the mechanics of send the pet to claw the face of the adversary and lay down an ice trap when i get the mob's attention. Feign death is my get out of jail free card.

Two years later, my sister decided that she wanted to play WOW also. This is how that conversation went.

Sister: I know you like playing Wow. You think I can play too?
Me: Sure, I can help you get set up, we can run some dungeons together, and chat with each other while we play!
Sister: Neat! I got the game and downloaded all the patches. What realm are you do you want to play on?
Me: Tell you what, I'll start a new character and we can level together. Let's go to Draka, it's a PVE server, which means only the bad guys can get ya, not other players. It's safer.
Sister: Cool, what should I be?
Me: You should be a Warlock!

So the lesson for the day is "Play the character that best suits your style because that's what you'll have fun with"