Saturday, August 22, 2009

My Brain Aches From WoW

Not from Worgen vs. Goblin drama. Not from patch Three Point Two Point Cataclysm drama. I honestly don't really care about any of that crap. I mean, I'm excited about the changes coming down the pipeline, but Cho'gall is just such a dumpy CESSPOOL of a server I'm just embarrassed to play there, and am all ready to jump ship with three 80s and a bank alt.

This was originally going to be a late nite email to Hatch, asking him how his server is just so dreamy; but he reads my site, too, so let's just have a public discussion.


Cho'gall.

I'm over it.

It's a great server if you want to PUG Ulduar. It's a great server if you love achievements. It's a great server if you're in 5th grade, and telling girls they have cooties is OMFG SO BADASS RAD.

I was in a pug tonight.

Wait.. lemme back up.

I sleepwalked thru Naxx25 tonight, in a Zug Life PUG, which means I knew it was going to be a full clear with no drama. Bosses just fell over, and loot was rolled (or passed) on, and everyone went about their lives thinking that this was a normal day. KT fell over, and I ended the night with a few upgrades, a bunch more badges, and so I finally visited that fabeled Badge Vendor, and spent my hard erarned whatevers on a new necklace and pair of gloves to go with my new fancy trinket.

Everything was good.

There was a PUG forming in Trade. 25 man ToTC, please send tell with achievement or ignored, blah blah blah. I know the drill. It's Cho'gall. Ugh. I sent a tell, and decided not to invoke my super achievement powers (yet). Camele sent me a reply, asking if I had the achieve. I did not, but had read up on the fights. I was basically ignored. My addon fired into motion. I shift clicked Camele, and found she (more on that later) was a hunter in Dalaran. I tracked her down, lazily threw a few achievements together, and ran circles around her by the fountain, spewing lies about Agalon. I was suddenly invited to the raid.

Mission Accomplished.

I've had a few beers, and am chatty in raid chat, talking about this and that. A few people in the raid see me join, and give an "IXO!!!" in chat. I doubt they read the blog (I am famous only on these pages), but that feels good. I've been guilded with them before, or have healed them thru a Naxx or VOA. Whatever, they remember me. We catch up as the raid forms, and I'm having a few more beers. My wife and son are asleep in the other room. All is good.

Then comes vent, which I eargerly join, but it's a new install of ventrilo, since installing Windows 7. I'm not sure if they can hear me. I'm the Sprint Guy (Can You Hear Me Now?) for a minute or two, then end up not caring, because I'm just a healer. Who cares if I can speak. I'm here to heal, not influence the course of events (a.k.a I'm Not Tanking). The first few attempts go... good. I think. We get to phase 3 on the first go, and then die to the yeti.

Zone back in.

Try again.

Die again.

DPS isn't waiting anymore on the worms, and is getting gibbed after the aggro wipe, and Camele (our female raid leader) is getting flustered. Something happens at this point, and it is this point *EXACTLY* where the raid goes downhill to break up. We still have a good 4 or 5 attempts before the raid falls completely apart, but suddenly it's open season on Camele, and it becomes some juvenile thing in vent where the dudes are on one side, being way too cool for the raid, and there's Camele on the other side, just clamming up and not even giving them the luxury of anything to attack.

At first she yelled at DPS to slow the fuck down, and one guy (who obviously died because he has no idea how threat mechanics work) jumped into 'well fuck you, bitch' mode and basically just became the asshat on vent. Instantly, lines are drawn, and here comes the (other, dead, DPS) jerk-knob to back him up, and now there are two. Suddenly, waiting for a tank to get aggro is a total puss move, and real men die by one shot to the face and have the rest of the time to piss and moan on vent about Camele having the audacity to call them on being noobs.

At this point, I know the raid is going nowhere. At this point, I just want to ninja-logout and go to sleep (it's past two a.m.). But I stick with the raid and hope the dipshits can be filtered out, and we can get on with the raid, because this is still new content for me.

At this point, it's obvious, you have trolls in your raid. Congratulations, you managed to make it into the raid, suck at WoW, and then proceeded to complain about everyone who wants to finish the raid they're in. Way to go, boys. I've even gone so far as to write about it, so I guess you really showed me.

A more realistic scenario arises: Two fail douchebags hope to get carried to new loot, and when it becomes apparent they won't be handed such loot, they switch into crybaby mode to conceal their inadequacies.

Way to go, guys! You showed the other 23 of us!

The worst part is that PUGs are fragile card houses, and one tiny gust of wind is enough to set off the chain reaction of everyone calling it, and the raid disolves.

And so... Cho'gall.

I don't kid myself that life is better on other servers, but then I look back to my initial reaction of Kul'Tiras. A horrendous wipefest in VOA, but here was a raid willing to pick itself up, brush itself off, and throw more attempts at it, until they got it right. No fingers were pointed, and god forbid it was male fingers pointing at a woman. No fingers were pointed at all! It was a magical fairyland where... well, everyone failed... but they had a good time playing the game in the meantime!

Cho'gall is just a horrible server. I need to come to grips with that. Those who read the site with any regularity will know that I intend to storm the front gates of Blizzard in hopes of getting a job MAKING WOW. Like, very soon. It's almost a point, though, where on my own server I can endure it no longer AS A PLAYER, but will happily continue to reside in the world AS A CREATOR. I love the universe, and think there are so many interesting things that could be done within it, but I'm just tired of the assholes having free reign. If I can't make it, I certainly can't play it, at least not on Cho'gall, and therein lies my biggest issue with the game.

Lock me in a cubicle, and have my bang out quest lines for the residents of Cho'gall. I'll still exist there, just on the far side of the curtain.

I think I may xfer all of my ridiculously geared Cho'gall toons to Kul'tiras, and harken back to what it means to PLAY WoW. Not suffer thru PUGs full of little men that resort to asking the female raid leader if she's busy on the weekend while wipes are in progress (oh, you're single? there's a shocker). Not rage quit fail PUGs that don't one shot everything in the game. One of the best guilds I've ever been in was a little 'family guild' called Dirty Laundry that knew every other player on a first name basis. I may need to get back to some of THAT, before I can take the next step in WoW.

Writing the questlines that no one reads. Designing the raid fights that Dicklips and his cousin Failsalot wipe raids to. I gotta get back to the roots. This game is killing me, otherwise.

My uterus hurts. I think I need a beer.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Had you thought of trying a RP server? I've always found the community better.

Rem said...

You identified both the actual cause and the cure yourself: it's not the game, it's the people, and what you need is to find some, well, reasonable people to hang out with.

Moron said...

WoW is a gear grindfest and I am not playing again until the next expansion. I want levels, not gear, dammit.

Like, how much gear is an extra level worth, like a lot right? Well, a level is just an artificial thing Blizzard can give you in a friggin second. Just a value in a database. Just makes you think, that's all. At least it makes me think.

Moron said...

Let me expound a little bit, maybe in case I am not clear. It really makes me think like when you get 5 levels win WOTLK, which takes like what, 2 weeks taking it easy, the stuff you used to fight 5 levels ago is like super easy to beat now, even if you got NO NEW GEAR. But you can spend 6 months improving your gear, just maxing it until it is perfect in every slot, and the stuff you fought 6 months ago is a little bit easier, but not like if you got like 5 levels over it. It is not that much easier.

So like in real life, if this scenario happened, where you were doing something easy and making decent reward, say money, for doing it, and there was another way of making money that was like super hard, like grinding for gear, well, the smart thing is to go the efficient way, not the hard way. But Blizzard world not let you do that. It is artifically crippling. It makes me mad and not want to play until I can progress by leveling rather than improving gear.

Maybe I should stick to progressquest. At least there I can progress and feel like I am not spending too much time. WoW is really alot like progressquest but it gives you more to micro.

Kyir said...

To respond to the earlier comment about RP servers: While the community is better in some levels, it's much worse in others. Good luck finding a guild that can actually do Ulduar, let alone find people that can pug it.

Kyir said...

Ways, not levels.

Excuse horrible word choice.

Hatch said...

I ended up on Kul Tiras by accident, back before it even occurred to me to shop for a server. It just happened to newly open on a week I was bored with Skylawl (my old alliance server) and looking to reroll. I had never tried horde, so I made a troll hunter. When me and the pseudo-spousal-unit decided we were done with ally, well, I already have a horde character over on Kul Tiras, so we went over there and leveled and focused on BGs whenever we hit a 9s level (back in the old vanilla system...my rogue still has an old pvp title)

When I visit other servers, especially older or pvp servers, they can seem so different. Like Chogall, where people are pugging the latest raid content and there are tons of misogynist assholes. I have also seen more female players on kul tiras than any other server Ive been on, and particularly more female raid and guild leaders. Also, the biggest guilds on the server (in terms of players) are family-oriented casual raiding guilds (Old Timers Guild and Dark Queen Lackeys), which I think tends to set the tone of the server. We only have 2 or 3 progression guilds horde side, while alliance side is much more hardcore with 5-7 of them.

The end result is just as you say: tons of fail players, but usually better attitudes and fewere trolls in pugs.

So are you thinking of shipping over the priest, warrior, and warlock to KT? Gotta see what my guild could use the most, because if you are coming over whole-hog then we'd have to pick you up. Though we do raid at what would be 4:30 your time, so that might be problematic for you.


It's probably time for me to ease off the anonymity and reveal my characters sometime soon. I don't really see the downsides anymore, and I've been feeling limited because sometimes I want to talk about my characters on the blog. What could really be the harm?

Silkworm said...

Get into a guild already Ixo. There are tons of US servers with large guilds.Look for a decent guild with 30+ aged members.Find an officer or GM. Speak to him/her on vent or skype. Face to face speaking is important. As long as he/she is a humorous adult like yourself, it will be easy. Oh another tip: everybody needs a good healer-any class.
If everything else fails there is even this. God bless capitalism.
http://wowgoons.zaphoyd.com/
Try at your own risk. Don't know if its the real deal.

Tesh said...

Ah, the bane of the student/professional. I'm trained to make computer animation, and I work in games, so I can't watch a movie *or* play a game without that reflexive itch to analyze, assimilate and critique. It really does stink sometimes, turning the things you enjoy into money makers, since that sucks a lot of the fun out of them.

Sometimes I do wish I could just be a mindless consumer, sinking dozens of hours into my favorite hobby of choice. (Notably, my recent interest in tabletop miniature gaming has changed from "that would be fun to play" to "how does this work and how can I make it better and make money at it" at warp speed. I can't help but be a little wistful at skipping that "this is fun to play" phase.

That said, *making* games is still fun for me, and it pays the bills, so that's gotta count for something.

Anonymous said...

We all gotta take a break now and then; maybe just a couple weeks.

I play mostly on Silvermoon, which is a launch server, but is very sleepy and backwater compared to the heavy PvE progression servers.

Suits me well.

Quaade said...

Unrelated:
I'm running Windows 7 as well and had the same problem with vent, won't work unless I'm tabbed out of WoW. You just have to set it to run as admin and it works fit as a fiddle.

Pierre said...

There comes a time in your life when you realize you are 35 and still playing with toys that were designed for toddlers. I have that feeling every once in a while when i play Wow.

It saddens me that there are less and less penalties for dying in this game, so the suicidal DPS is only likely to get worse.