The Cell Saga

[Zippyy]

I've been having a lot of fun on Twisting Nether, one of the new RP PVP realms. After the initial hubub died down I was starting to get more or less impressed with the lack of idiots, and I was growing complacent.

Until this Wailing Caverns run.

It got off to a slightly shaky start when our warrior, Carmex, said he had to relog because he couldn't see any monsters. He assured us, twice, that he would be right back. However, as soon as he logged, the group leader kicked him and invited a mage. I made it known that I thought that was a pretty knuckle-headed thing to do. The mage agreed and left the group. Then Carmex logged on again and was invited back. The leader said he didn't see Carmex's messages about coming back.

I didn't think any more of it, just being glad I didn't have to leave the group out of protest. I did make a mental note that the leader (a troll hunter named Bobow) wasn't the sharpest pin in the cushion.

Then I noticed Cell. An undead priest. At first, it was little things. He didn't seem to know where he was, and chatted like an AOL chatroom junkie. One word per line, you know the deal. Then I started noticing that he seemed to be casting PW:S on random people. He would cast it on me, a rogue, near the end of a fight in which I had taken (and was in no danger of taking) any damage. At one point he asked "anyone can give me brilliance?" which I thought was hilarious. I kept the irony to myself, however, and just said "Do you see any mages?" The group consisted of a hunter (Bobow), shaman (Morgoroth), warrior (Carmex), priest (Cell), and rogue (me, Riek). This greatly offended him and he said something to the effect of "plz turn off ur sarcasm i dont like it." I got into a bit of an argument with him, and ended up quoting Tolkein among other things. He was clueless. :(

The argument subsided and Cell said he wouldn't heal me. No proble, it's not like I was taking any damage. A few minutes later, Cell asks if anyone has anything to drink, because he was out. I give him some milk I had collected, but he is still too sore at me to thank me directly.



Not wanting to be impolite, I respond in kind.



He still isn't sending any heals my way, and not once did he use Renew, but the shields continue.

We take out the first boss without much hassle, but soon thereafter Cell starts mouthing off at just about everyone. It's really starting to grate on my nerves.



At which point he falls off a cliff, aggroing a bunch of monsters and dying in the process. I don't know the geography of WC very well, or I'd be able to pinpoint the location. This was my first run there.

The four of us shrug it off and continue. We've got a shaman, so we're fine, right? The next pull had a druid that we didn't notice who cast Sleep on the shaman, and we wiped.

A couple of minutes later, Cell arrives at the instance, at which point...



... he notices that we're dead. I don't know why Bobow chimed in there.




But he can't even find his way to where we are. I remember it being really close to the entrance, though.



Sure enough, not a minute later...



Everything falls to pieces here.


Followed by...

Is Bobow taking up Cell's... offer?

Bobow leaves the group, and I get appointed leader randomly. Gods be praised! It went something like this.

Riek: Bye Cell.
Cell has left the group.
Riek: That felt good.

The remaining three of us reminisce while I offer some parting words.

[Artega]

So the PvP-RP servers aren't turning out to be the Holy Grail of WoW servers, like everyone thought they'd be? :)

To be honest, it's not your fault. Wailing Caverns is a sorry excuse for an instance, and the only reason people even waste the time is because Wingblade and Crescent Staff are such excellent quest rewards. I'd call Shadowfang Keep to be the first true Horde instance :)

[oldmandennis]

Aww, I disagree.

Gather a bunch of friends/guildies who are at the same level and do WC/RFC, and if you rock all the quests, you will probably ding once in the instance, and once turning the quests in.

[Bolty]

Moments like these are the reason TO, and simultaneously the reason NOT TO, join pickup groups. It works both ways.

Last night I was stopping over at Nijel's Pointe to hand in a quest before heading over to Gadgetzan, when I see in general chat "LFM Mara plz help." Because I'm a sadist, and thus ignored the blistering giveaway of l33tsp34k, I whisper him and join in.

40 minutes later, we finally enter the instance after two players have extended afks and a 5th was added who had to fly out from Ironforge. Whatever.

Group makeup - me 49 (Priest), another 53 Priest (yeah, how rare is that?), a 60 Rogue, a 47 Warrior, and a 49 Rogue.

Typical for a pick-up group, the Warrior has no clue whatsoever how to tank and is perfectly content with letting anyone else pull. Highlight of the evening was, after spending 20 seconds performing /charges and /attacktargets while we all stared at a mob, I wand pulled a giant. Only to watch the Warrior BACK AWAY from the giant as it's approaching so that someone else could engage it first (the 60 rogue eventually did).

O.o.

The level 53 Priest was the typical "I'll just stand here and occasionally cast Flash Heal" variety I laugh at so much, having little to no clue how to contribute to the fight in any other way. He'd also start healing almost instantly - the moment the first player had 80% health or so, off went the heal and off went the monsters to get the aggro-loving over-healing fool. I'd pick up the slack.

So we get up to Landslide and take him down, while the Warrior and Rogues spent the entire fight attacking Landslide and ignoring the adds. The other Priest and I played ping-pong with the adds, using Psychic Scream, Fade, PW:S, and heals liberally to keep each other alive while the others ignored us. They even made sure to loot Landslide while the other Priest, too far away from the boss for the adds to automatically die when the boss did, was getting slammed around and almost died (he never thought to use Psychic Scream at all in the fight, while I used it as an offensive weapon to keep them off the tank at first, and off me from then on).

Fine, whatever. The group sucks, but we have enough firepower to take down Princess by sheer brute force, so I'll live with it. Then two members of the group decide to go for another huge extended afk. I considered hearthing right there, but I wanted a shot at an Eye of Theradras so I alt-tabbed and did other things for 20 minutes.

After 30 minutes had gone by and the other Priest hadn't yet returned, we moved on to one of those packs of silencing lizards. Again the Warrior just stood there, but as the only healer against a pack of silence-casting mobs, I knew better than to pull. After a full minute went by the 60 rogue decided he'd have to do it again, and went on in. All three players (Warrior, Rogue, Rogue) went after the same mob. I could see the wipe coming in the first five seconds of the fight, because I knew exactly how it was going to play out.

Sometimes, this foreknowledge is torture.

I wait as long as I possibly can and engage my first heal. Aggro's instantly on me from the other three lizards. I cast Psychic Scream to buy me some time. I then cast Fade to buy me some more time - by this time there were only 2 free lizards, but then again it would only take one to wipe the group. Out of options, the last 2 come back to me when the Fade runs out (remember, they were never hit once by the other party members), silence me, kill me, and kill the others.

I asked the warrior why he made no effort to get them off the only healer in the group. His response was "I can't taunt them when I'm silenced."

So, almost 2 hours after joining the group, we'd gotten only about halfway to Princess, wiped, and the other Priest was still afk up near Landslide's corpse. Plus, they were idiots.

Release, Resurrect, Leave Group, Hearthstone. Kthxbye.

You realize that compared to things like this, Lurker groups are positively boring? :-)

-Bolty

[Concillian]

I asked the warrior why he made no effort to get them off the only healer in the group.  His response was "I can't taunt them when I'm silenced."
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This is part of why I have a warrior myself. I can say things that amount to 'How did you get to level 47 without knowing how to play your class' because when they come back that I don't know how to play their class, I can say that I do because I have a level 50 warrior who rarely (if ever) has to use taunt, and can hold aggro of multiple elites like that just fine.

Either they will wake up and ask about how to do it (very rare) or they will get really angry and I put them on my ignore list. This way I can figure out if they are the type who are willing to learn or the type who are beyond help.

Ask Alram about Weath. Beyond help =).

The foreshadowing a wipe thing is an all too familiar situation for a priest. There just isn't much you can do but hope to stall things long enough that someone will start attacking them.

[Zippyy]

So the PvP-RP servers aren't turning out to be the Holy Grail of WoW servers, like everyone thought they'd be?  :)

To be honest, it's not your fault.  Wailing Caverns is a sorry excuse for an instance, and the only reason people even waste the time is because Wingblade and Crescent Staff are such excellent quest rewards.  I'd call Shadowfang Keep to be the first true Horde instance :)
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Obviously anyone who plays on an RP PVP server had wildly unreasonable expectations of what it would be like.

Thanks for alleviating my guilt, I was so worried that it was my fault!

[Watto44]

Ask Alram about Weath.  Beyond help =). 
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Sorry, I don't want to turn this into a personal attack on someone who, from my experience seems a pretty decent guy (terrible tank though), but I spend four and a half hours in AV (yeah, the alterac valley battles go on for at least that long on terenas) listing to that guy complain about the lag over vent. After being puzzled for the first hour (if he's having such a crummy time, why doesn't he leave? I asked myself) I spent the next three and a half hours laughing hysterically. Seriously, he spent over four hours complaining about the lag, it was great! :D

(Incidently, that's one of the reasons why I have a serious love/hate relationship with vent: it's a great tool, but mostly it's just a soapbox for great tools.)

As for pick-up groups, they can be terrible, and sometimes I don't realise until it's too late.

A recent example was when we were 5 manning dead strat. We sort of stumbled our way to the baron's chamber like 5 drunkards, only wiping once on the dread guards (might be called something else, but you know the one's i'm talking about). Then out came the pearler from our tank and the group leader: "Tregor, you go cat form and kill the baron." I looked over my shoulder wondering how I hadn't noticed the priest that was going to heal through the fight. No, no priest. Just our shaman. Neither the mage nor the warlock are sure what they're meant to be doing. Are they on the baron or the skelletons? They both thought they were on the skelletons. What about myself and the shaman, are we healing? Who's healing who, or is one of us meant to be DPS?

One minute later, with no one having any idea what the hell they're doing or where they're meant to be wipage has ensued and I have to run living strat again to get another medalion of hope. ><

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: a strong leader will make or break a pubbie group. I've been in absolutely brilliant pubbie groups where a capable leader has just stood up and taken the reigns. And I've been in pubbie groups like the above example, where each of us were capable players, but our leader lacked the communication skills and game knowledge to get the group working together well.

But Zippy, that Cell guys sounds like a complete nuffie and well deserving of the /ignore. :D However, think of it this way, it takes about four hours of solid questing to make all that nice wailing caverns loot obsolete, but you've got an awesome story forever. :P

edit: accidently slipped some 1337 sp34k in there. :whistling:

[LavCat]

Not quite as good as your saga, Zippyy, but Tribade joined a Zul'Gurub group last night. Understand that Tribade has never made it past the first Zul'Gurub boss, and has little clue what is going on. On reaching said first boss, a number of us, including Tribade, note that there is but one priest in the entire raid, and perhaps attacking now is not the best idea.

Fortunately our soulstones hold, and we recover quickly from each successive wipe.

Finally, on the last attempt, the priest takes charge, assigns targets (if in a not quite comprehensible manner) and tells Tribade, a paladin, to shield and body pull. Meanwhile someone taps her foot while someone else is sleeping. Seconds later the priest expresses dismay that no one followed his instructions. Main Tank said he wasn't ready. The priest said Tribade missed out on Fortitude because she was PvP enabled. Which she was as she had been busy blessing twenty people (or what of those that were in the area).

At least she got to see her first ninja looter booted. Had never run into one before.

Fafner on the other hand joined a BRD group looking for a warrior. We died a lot but the communication was very good, and at least a couple of the people really seemed to know what they were doing. She got to see a lot of areas she had never seen before and finished several quests.

But the best loot of the night was Woad soloing by herself in Tanaris. In the last couple of days she has found Bonechewer, Assault Band, as well as Wirt's Third Leg.

[Savingsupertokyo]

I've had some horrible experiences.

Notably the last scholomance raid I ran. The raid thought it would be brilliant for me, the only mage in the party to AOE the room with the exploding corpses.

Bad idea, I tell them, but whatever. I can ice barrier and then get a PW:S from a priest, right?

So they pull. And I'm at half mana from the last fight. I sit back away from the mobs wiping them out and chuckle to myself as they all die and I live.

Noone ever wants to listen to what a mage has to say anyway.

[RTM]

I have yet to do a pickup group. I should do it at least once to test my true tanking skills, since all the Lurkers I've played with in the past know how to pace their damage/healing to avoid stealing aggro.

Some of the greatest WoW stories I've read are horror tales from pickup groups. Just think how dull the game would be without horrible players to gripe about!

[ima_nerd]

I wait as long as I possibly can and engage my first heal.

My WC experience:

"Tank" pulls 2-3 mobs but everyone only attacks one. With no aggro established on the others, I can't heal without getting slaughtered. So I don't. The "tank" dies and the Rogues finish off the mobs.

IndignantTankzor: wtf y didnt u heal me?!
Me: why didn't you tank?

While this brought a laugh from some members of the group, the Warrior got angry and left. We replaced him with a Shaman and proceeded to breeze through the instance. Shaman tanks ftw.

On the topic of Warriors, I've had at least 3 tanks in pre-SM instances who hadn't even bought Sunder Armor. That's the equivalent of a Priest getting only Lesser Heal.

[Zippyy]

I have yet to do a pickup group. I should do it at least once to test my true tanking skills, since all the Lurkers I've played with in the past know how to pace their damage/healing to avoid stealing aggro.

Some of the greatest WoW stories I've read are horror tales from pickup groups. Just think how dull the game would be without horrible players to gripe about!
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<tunes>
Everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Someone they can feel better than at any time they please
</tunes>

I think that song is supposed to point out that it's wrong to view anyone else as inferior, but I like to take it at face value as a fundamental truth. I mean, damn, if we weren't supposed to feel superior, why are there all these inferior people? :huh: So, who wants to go repress some peasants?

Just to clarify, The Cell Saga isn't supposed to be a gripe. I was laughing heartily throughout most of the run and it was really quite enjoyable. A waste of Riek's time, but certainly not mine.