Finding Joy in the Grind

For reference, I am an Alliance rogue. Your mileage may vary.

Evil things I like to do in World of Warcraft’s PVP Battlegrounds:

1. Kill warlock pets. This has become such an addiction for me, I’ll cheapshot, blind, sap (the miscellaneous stuns available in the rogue bag of tricks) the warlock, and let him stew for a bit while I kill the pet. That’s right, I’ll leave a loose warlock out there just so I can nail the pet. This isn’t even a tactical decision, this is me being a dick. (Thanks to Raster for introducing me to this mini-game within the PVP game.)

2. Turn on auto attack while a caster is backing up in my direction. Caster, meet the buzzsaw. Most of the time, I do this for my own amusement rather than out of necessity because, say, stealth or vanish aren’t available.

3. Allow the 5-combo pointed priest/mage to think he dodged a bullet. The priest or mage does his/her thing, I do mine — 5 combo points worth of mine. The mage iceblocks, the priest psychic screams (their AE fear), whathaveyou. I restealth or vanish, they back away, alt-tabbing wildly, looking for me. (When I have 5-combo points, caster, you don’t back away, you run away.) Tada! Surprise! See ya next fall.

4. I’m a bow-spec rogue … honest. I love the frost nova + blink combo that mages do. One of the few chances I get to haul out ye olde bow in PVP. I COULD vanish out of the frost nova (it’s a mage root), but it’s more sporting to bow them down.

5. Guard Alterac Valley’s Snowfall graveyard. Not really, who gives a shit about Snowfall once the Alliance has Iceblood or beyond? Not me. But sometimes there’s a shouting dude in the AV raid that calls everyone tards (or in their venacular, “retarts”) and shouts out instructions as if no one in the raid has ever won an Alterac Valley before. If we’re losing or falling behind, it’s never THEIR fault, it’s always the rest of us because they’re the smartest human on the planet. In our raid! The smartest! Talk about lucky.

Anyways, they’ll shout their Captain Obvious instructions and I’ll remind them (several times if necessary) /bg I’m on defense at Snowfall. Eventually, they take the bait and call me an idiot in the raid channel. “ABANDON SNOWFALL U TART! GET DOWN TO FROSTWOLF!” Did I say Snowfall? I meant the Relief Hut.

Imagining the bulging vein in their forehead gives me a great deal of pleasure.

Similar dickweed stuff I do to the shouting dudes in Warsong Gulch: /bg Hiding the flag in Horde base cuz they’ll never look for it here!

The Warcraft PVP Grind

World of Warcraft monster thread alert: Honor Curve and PVP Concerns, which discusses post-patch 1.12 (i.e. cross-server PVP/battlegrounds) PVP ranking, decay and how in the hell are we working stiffs ever going to reach the upper ranks? I didn’t have a lot of time to PVP last week, much as I was enjoying the near insta-queues and meeting new asshats from other realms, therefore, I wasn’t overly hopeful on making much headway on my PVP goal. Which was a good thing, because I didn’t. I ninja inspected the honor gains on my realm’s hardcores prior to maintenance, 600 – 800k+ was not uncommon — I was 143k for the week. (SHADDUP!) Looks like I barely covered the rank decay for the week with two PVP play sessions. This chick on my server, former guildmate, newly unemployed, zoomed past me in ranking like I was going in slo-mo. I’d inquire how much PVP time she cranked out, hell I’d ask our raid leader to inquire, but she’s not speaking to either one of us, which is another story entirely.

Important Gaming Lesson: Brothers are Evil

If we learn anything from gaming, it is this: Brothers are the shittiest humans in the world. It’s always brothers that are hacking, hijacking, botting, cheating and generally abusing game characters any chance they get. I’m considering adding the question “Do you have a brother?” to our guild application and I’ll just auto-deny anyone with a male sibling. I have an older brother myself, true, but I keep a sharp eye on him whenever technology is involved. Anyways, it appears that brothers are at it again, deleting Warcraft characters across the realms. Either brothers or a trojan keylogger — my research is incomplete at this point. There’s a few reports this is related to a poser CTmod site and/or a Best Warcraft Video Ever site, players are warned to download mods only from trusted sites and only .zip files rather than executables, bla bla, you know the drill. I’ll update this post with a few links when the forums wake up again. (Maintenance day, donchaknow.) The smart money is on goddamn brothers, however. UPDATE: Here’s the Customer Service forum thread seeking additional details from affected account owners.