With The Fury of a Thousand Suns

Ah, Noblegarden!  The seasons are turning.  Spring is in the air, and it is a time to put aside the struggles of the world for a time, and celebrate not victory, but life itself.

Ah, Noblegarden!  One of the few in-game holidays without a PvP component.

At least... that's what they'd like you to think.

The truth of the matter - the sick, twisted truth - is that while there is no direct PvP activity during Noblegarden, the entirety of this oh-so-innocent looking holiday is designed to fill you with the seething, white-hot fury of a thousand suns, directed at your fellow WoW player.

Consider, please.  What is the primary activity of Noblegarden, eh?

Running around and collecting Brightly Colored Eggs.

So pastoral, yes?  So... so peaceful.

Until you show up in Dolanaar and realize that there are about a thousand other people doing the exact same thing.

Have you ever had a character who was a miner?

Have you ever, on that character, spotted a node, swooped in on it, and stood on the node while you fought off the inevitable slavering horror who lurked nearby?

Have you ever done so, only to hear, as you finished off your foe, a sound that simultaneously chilled your blood and filled you with a blinding, burning hatred?

"Tink... tink... tink..."

Yes... the sound that lets you know that, when you turn around, you'll be greeted by the sight of some inconsiderate jerk of indeterminate parentage stealing your freaking node.

Recall the times this has happened to you.  Take this thought.  Roll it around in your head for a bit.  Allow it to seep into your psyche, until you remember the feeling of incandescent rage that bubbled through your entire being, bringing all your thoughts to a roiling boil of distilled hatred that suddenly crystalized into a single, focused desire.

Nay, not a desire, but a need.

A need to kill.

Got it?

Now imagine that feeling washing over you every thirty seconds.

That, my friend, is what it's like collecting eggs for Noblegarden.

Two days, and I'm about halfway towards the 500 chocolates I need for Aeth's Swift Springstrider.  Two more days, and I suspect that I will be filled with a loathing of my fellow WoW player so blindingly intense that Deathwing himself would be taken aback.

If I could, I would cheerfully murder each and every person in Dolanaar.

Cheerfully.  Whistling a jaunty little killing tune the whole while.

Fortunately for them, my murderous rage is blunted by the sad, sad fact that one cannot simply gank members of one's own faction.

Believe me, I've tried.

That druid in flight form, camping two prime egg spawns?  If looks could kill, man, you'd be dead.  And not just dead - I'd camp your dismembered corpse, and sit and munch on Barbecued Buzzard Wings while I waited for the chance to kill you again.

Fortunately for you, Blizzard - in their wisdom - keeps me from this immensely logical course of action.  Which leaves me with a surfeit of vitriol, a desire to find another player and ruin their entire week, that I need to unload somewhere.

Now, where could I find that kind of catharsis?

If only there were some location - some battleground - where I could let slip the dogs of war and vent my pent-up feelings, even if it were upon some poor proxy for my despite!

Heh.

So, yeah.  Noblegarden?

Totally a PvP holiday.

Totally.

Thinking about PvP

Probably because of my humiliating pwnage by a miserable rogue last night, I've been thinking a bit about working on filling out my starting PvP set for Aeth, and possibly putting one together for Laen.

My goal here isn't to be an arena PvP monster. I just want to get myself to the point where I've got a decent PvP set for Tol Barad and other battlegrounds.

I'll have a more detailed discussion at a later date. For now, some notes...

A list of craftable cloth armor with resilience, but no spirit (ugh!) for Aeth. Looks like what I'll want is a mix of Emberfire and Fireweave items, trying to prioritize haste > crit > mastery.

Looks like there's no craftable weapons for PvP, though there is a craftable off-hand in the form of inscription's Battle Tome. More research needed here, obviously there's got to be something Aeth can use that won't require Arena play. Myabe?

There's a variety of trinkets purchasable with honor. Same for neck items, cloaks and rings as well. Yay! It looks like there's really only one or two items in each category that fit for a spellcaster, though, so this is less of a decision than what armor set to sport.

Gems are easy to come by, but probably won't factor into her initial set, except for a belt buckle and possible PvE gear gemmed for PvP use, if I have trouble filling a particular slot.

There's a variety of consumables (arcanums, inscriptions, enchantments) that are geared towards PvP. As with trinkets and the like, though, there's really only one obvious choice for a spellcaster in each category.

Or, I guess, I could just Ask Mr. Robot.

For now, I think I'll do my own research and thinking on the subject, and then see what Mr. Robot has to say on the matter.

Ah, PvP

Cape of Stranglethorn, Gurubashi Arena.

Once again, I am reminded of how much - as a mage - I absolutely, positively loathe and despise rogues.

Mmmmmmmm....

Via Cynwise: a pointer to the add-on Healers Have To Die:

This addon looks through your combat log to see who’s casting healing spells around you; if it detects that a player has cast a healing spell, it puts a big red cross over their nameplate.

Yes. Yes. YES.

I didn't even make it through the entire sentence before I had this downloaded and installed.

I mean... holy cow! There are PvP add-ons?

I honestly have never, ever thought of looking for a PvP specific add-on. I've got a good 14-15 add-ons for questing, dungeons, raids, the auction house, crafting, and general play... but not once have I ever thought, "Oh, hey. Maybe I should go looking for an add-on to solve this problem I'm having in PvP."

No. I'm not bragging about my l33t skillz. I'm confessing that, with regards to PvP, I think that I've been a particularly dull and uninteresting sort of idiot.

PvP add-ons. Wow. It's like... it's like... just, wow.

Read the whole article - it's an interesting discussion of add-ons and the attitudes towards them, done very well (as Cynwise is wont to do).

Getting in the Mood

For PvP, of course.

Well, what did you think I meant?

"You can run on for a long time, run on for a long time, run on for a long time..."

Learn more at the WoW Wiki

Milestones

It crept up on me completely unexpectedly... my last post here was #200. Wow.

Another milestone of a sorts happened as I played Aeth last night. The battle for Tol Barad came around while I was finishing the dailies there, so I hopped into the battle, and had an absolute blast. A spell-stealing, slowing, polymorphing blast. I don't know what was up, but I was bouncing around and attacking and defending with glee.

Highlights of the battle? Following a running battle and managing to spell-steal every single buff from a half dozen Horde attackers - that was good. Sneaking up behind a healing shammy and keeping him locked down with polymorph and counterspells - nice!

Absolute best moment, though? Dying at the hands of an orc warrior twice in the same pitched battle for the Warden's Vigil. I managed to catch him alone on the road headed for the scrum, and while I didn't kill him, I whittled him down enough that another player was able to finish him off pretty easily. When he returned to the battle, he singled me out for punishment. Orc warrior vs. human mage? Yeah, not much of a fight there. What made it for me was that he obviously went out of his way - bypassing even the healers, for crying out loud! - to target poor lil' Aeth.

Apparently, I was a threat.

It was glorious.

We lost the battle, but even the losing was an awful lot of fun. Afterwards, I jumped on Aretae and continued working on leveling him in Northern Stranglethorn. Even without any heriloom gear, leveling is quick, and fun. I have to admit that I was not being very rogue-like while hunting the beasts of stranglethorn... I'd pop Running Wild, lope across the landscape until I spotted a target, and then leap and attack.

Watching my wolf-man run down a panther, then leap upon it for the kill? Oh, man. I think I could do that for hours without it getting old.

Oh, wait. I did.

And it was glorious.

Gearing Up

This weekend, I was having some fun leveling Aretae. He's made it to level 25 now, and leveled his inscription to the point where he was able to make a couple of Mysterious Tarot decks for Aetherna. The obvious goal there is to get him to the point where he can start producing Darkmoon Cards (350 base rep per turn in) instead of the lesser decks (which are only 25 base rep per turn in).

I've also dipped my toes into the LFD tool, with good experiences. Probably because I was running a regular dungeon that I'm more than geared for. It was a nice practice run in a regular, though, to help get me oriented and familiar for heroics.

I also spent a lot of time in Tol Barad, and finally won my first victory there. As a result, though, I've started to develop an absolute loathing of Troll hunters. One that almost, but not quite, matches my loathing of Undead rogues. I did discover that, if I can get the drop on a hunter, I can fill his life full to the brim with pain, so there was some consolation there. Call it a learning experience, in that I learned that (a) I can kill hunters, and (b) I like killing hunters. Well, Troll hunters named IcyFizzyPop or something similar, at least.

Unfortunately, with only one hundred and mumble resilience, my primary use in the battle was to spell steal, frost nova, and otherwise act as a distraction for the few seconds it would take a passing Hordie to turn me into a corpse. Yee-haw. I've been told that I should be shooting for about 2K resilience, so I went ahead and spent some of my hard-earned honor points to pick up a pair of Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Silk Handguards. She's already sporting the Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Cuffs of Prowess, so that gets her a whopping 277 resilience!

Ahem.

I see more battlegrounds in Aeth's future. A full set of Bloodthirsty regalia will get her to 955 resilience; with gems, enchants and a few other tweaks, getting to 1500 shouldn't be too difficult.

Now if I can just find that glyph of hunter slaying...

Cynw... er, I mean, Bloodrose on PvP

A Rose by any other name is still a... murdering little ball of gnomish fury.

War Games

I didn't make it to Tol Barad last night. Didn't make it to my dailies, as a matter of fact. Instead, I got swept up into a guild group, and we did a couple of rated battlegrounds.

We also lost miserably.

When you're talking 10v10, and the other side has 4 healers to your 1, there's a little bit of an imbalance there that's kind of hard to overcome. Meh! Whatever. I got to equip some of my shiny new PvP gear, I got to throw around arcane blasts, polymorphs and circles of frost, and we had fun :-) Next time, we'll kick their scruffy little butts. Really!

Afterwards, we split into two 5-man teams and played War Games, which is - IMHO - probably one of the neatest things I've seen in terms of WoW PvP. Form your team, challenge your opponent, and - oh, hey! You're in a battleground with a bunch of guild mates! No honor to grind, nothing to gain, nothing to loose - just a game of capture the flag. Nice!

I think that's the first time I've ever been on the winning side in Warsaw Gulch, which alone made it a pleasant evening. The lack of pressure was wonderful, as well. It was nice to take a break from the game and... er. Play a game? You know what I mean.

I think there may be more War Games for me in the future. A nice, low-pressure bit of capture the flag with a bunch of friends would be a great way to see how Laen and Aeven perform in PvP.

Cywnise is... well, wise

Or, at the very least, wiser than I am.

If you want to know How To Win Tol Barad, she's got the answers for ya.

I'm consistently impressed by the thought, experience and insight that Cynwise puts into her posts. It's one thing to lay out the battlefield, talk about strong points and the flow of battle, and give people the information they need to know in order to effectively attack or defend.

It's another thing entirely to write an article that makes your readers go, "Crud... I won't be able to try this for another 8 hours! Maybe I can put together a bit of a premade? I mean, there's that PvP gear I crafted and put up on the AH, but I could pull that off and equip a few folks in the guild and... and... I wants it! I WANTS MY PRECIOUS! TOL BARAD WILL BE OURS!"

Ahem.

"Inspiring" is the word I was looking for, I think.

Go. Read. Be encouraged.

Then go kick those arrogant SOBs out of your battleground.

Tol Barad

Last night, I finally had the chance to participate in a Tol Barad battle on Aeth. It was a tremendous amount of fun - I particularly liked using Ring of Frost and Flame Orb - and I managed to pick up the Tol Barad All-Star achievement. Personally, playing as an arcane mage, it was a blast. I enjoyed my new abilities, as noted. I was very, very, very happy that folks had to work to take me down instead of one- or two-shotting me. I actually had the option to blink or ice block or frost nova and escape instead of just standing in one spot, stunned and dying. Much more fun.

Despite a pretty good effort by the Alliance, though, we failed to win. At the high point, we managed to control 2 buildings, and were contesting a third, but we weren't able to pull it out.

Simply put, taking Tol Barad is just too hard. Defenders don't even need to take a hold a building - so long as they can deny one point, they can keep control. All other things being equal, in a 30-man battle, the attackers are always going to be facing a superior defensive force, because the defenders can - without risk - abandon one or even two points of defense, and mass at the third. In WoW, as in real life, defending a point already has advantages over attacking. Tol Barad's win criteria just magnifies this difference.

There's been any number of articles and blog posts written about the balance problems in Tol Barad. From my point of view, there's two real problems: the difficulty of gaining control, and the lack of incentives to gain control.

Let's look at the last one first. Lack of incentives? Why, yes. In Wrath, the big PvP area was Wintergrasp. Gaining control of Wintergrasp meant that you got access to daily (then weekly) quests in the zone. On top of that, you could collect Stone Keeper's Shards from dungeon bosses. It also meant that you got access to a special raid instance with high-end loot. Everyone - meaning both PvP and PvE players - benefited from their faction taking and holding Wintergrasp.

Compare and contrast with Tol Barad, where the winning side gets... access to a half-dozen daily quests, which reward Tol Barad Commendations.

Which you can get, just as easily (if at a slower rate) by doing the non-PvP related daily quests on the island.

Woo-hoo.

Why, as a casual PvP player, I should beat my head against the wall of Tol Barad?

I still have to give Blizzard kudos for trying to make Tol Barad interesting to the casual PvP and PvE player. Aeth has her eye on the Stump of Time - dripping huge gobs of hit rating, this is obviously PvE gear, obtainable through doing PvP content. I haven't looked, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that there's PvP gear that's primarily obtainable through PvE content as well. After all, that's how Aeth got into PvP in the first place - she won a set of PvP legs from Torvalon in Wintergrasp.

I don't have to participate in the Tol Barad battle to get it, though. Nor does my faction even need to control Tol Barad. Those things are nice, and would make getting my new shiny happen faster, but they're not essential. Consider how many people in Wrath were interested in Wintergrasp... asking who controlled it, when the battle was starting, forming up raids as the start time approached. Now consider how much effort and involvement you've seen for Tol Barad battles in Cataclysm. Really, nobody cares, because there's no reason to care.

So there's no real incentive there. For the amount of effort required, the reward just isn't there... at least for me, and other casual PvP players. If I just want the thrill of PvP, there are any number of other battlegrounds where I can get that, and still have more than a ghost of a chance of being on the winning side.

So, option one: Blizzard can up the incentives, making winning Tol Barad as it exists today much more attractive to each faction. Which brings us to option two: decrease the difficulty of winning Tol Barad to bring it into line with the current incentives.

I really don't have a problem with defending being easier than attacking - as I mentioned, that's the way things are. The problem is that the victory conditions for attacking side aren't just slightly more difficult than the victory conditions for the defending side, they're much more difficult. So Blizzard can either change the victory conditions, or make obtaining the current set of victory conditions less onerous than they currently are.

Some options for changing victory conditions. Reduce the number of buildings the attackers must capture to 2 instead of 3. Or require that the defenders actually defend all the buildings in order to keep control of the zone. If the attackers control all three buildings at the end of the battle, they gain control; if the defenders control all three buildings at the end of the battle, they retain control; otherwise, the zone is contested... and instead of the current crop of daily quests, players get a different set of PvP related dailies.

If we keep the current victory conditions - attackers must take and hold all three buildings - then we can still level the playing field a little bit by giving the attacking players some NPC help. Consider adding the following mechanic: if the attacking players are able to capture two buildings during the battle, then they gain the ability to "raise the vengeful dead". An artifact appears somewhere between the two buildings that requires 3 attacking players to do a 15-second channel. If they can manage to pull off the cast, one of the buildings they control is garrisoned by the vengeful dead: 20 elites friendly to the attacking forces, hostile to the defenders. This gives the attacking side a non-trivial bit of assistance, but only if they're able to (a) capture two buildings, (b) keep those two buildings, and (c) keep the defenders from interrupting a long-running channeling effort that takes away 3 players from their forces.

Something like this would force the defending forces to defend. If they hunker down in one spot and keep control of a single building, then the attacking force will win, period. Instead of being passive defenders, waiting for the attackers to come to them, they would have to make an effort to disrupt the attacker's forces.

Take it all with a grain of salt - I'm a casual PvP player at best, after all, and I'm sure that there's a hundred problems with changing incentives or changing victory conditions that smarter folks than I can point out. Even as it stands right now, Tol Barad is a fun battleground to play in. Long term, though, part of the fun of playing is winning once in a while. Taking that element of fun out of Tol Barad makes it an interesting diversion, and keeps it from becoming a core part of Cataclysm game play.

Where's the urban PvP?

I've been thinking about this a bit, and I'm wondering if an "urban" (or, rather, as urban as you can get in WoW) PvP setting wouldn't be a whole lot of fun.

Imagine a battleground set in a ruined elven or troll city. Lots of buildings with multiple floors, basements, entrances and exits, maybe even "secret" passages here and there. Roof accesses. Narrow alleyways. Twisting roads. Courtyards where LOS is broken up by statues and pillars. A joint Horde-Alliance archeological investigation into the ruins that went well, until there was an inevitable falling out... just before something went very wrong.

Now the opposing teams of investigators are trapped in the city with the creatures they've awakened. There are wandering elites who really don't care who you are, so long as you're edible. Creatures tough enough and nasty enough that having them pop up in the middle of a running battle with the opposing faction turns into a game of "who can flee fastest?"

Your goal is to rescue your investigative team, and prevent your opponent from rescuing their team. The various NPCs get assigned to random locations on the map - you need to seek out, find, and hold their location long enough for them to finish their work. Different NPCs on the team give different buffs when rescued - increased mobility, increased healing, increased resilience, increased stealth, etc. - but the buffs degrade over time from the start of the match, so your strategy will change depending on the order in which you find and rescue your NPCs.

Once you've rescued a minimum number of your team, you can start the extraction. Call in a zeppelin or airship, and begin ferrying your NPCs to safety, with honor for each one on board when time runs out. When that happens? Big Bad Thing Under The Ruins comes out and eats everybody's face. Or maybe just the elite mobs start swarming the rendezvous areas.

The scenario could be entirely different... I just think the idea of wandering through a ruined city, dodging monsters and hunting the enemy, would be an incredible amount of fun.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

One of the achievements that I've been working towards, off and on, has been Gurubashi Arena Grand Master. When the time is right, I hit Stranglethorn Vale, pop up to the arena, and see if I have a snowball's chance of getting my hands on a trinket. So far, Aeth's managed to loot four, so she's 1/3 of the way to getting her trinket and achievement.

Last night, just before logging off, I noticed it was nearly 12:00 server time... just in time for a trip to the arena! A quick /who in STV told me there were only a couple of level 80 folks Alliance side, which looked promising... then I got to the arena, only to see a Tauren Shaman waiting at the edge of the pit.

Well, OK. This isn't going to be a freebie. Let's take a look at him and see what spec he is...

Oh.

Yeah. He was rocking about a 5500k gear score... in his PvP gear. Almost 25k honorable kills to his credit. More PvP achievements than I ever even knew existed. And that was before his pally buddy showed up.

I figured that if they were going to take the trinket, well then - I'd make 'em work for it. It would probably be, you know, more like taking out the trash than building a skyscraper, but it's the principle of the thing. So I gave them a /nod, sat down, and we waited for Short John Mithril to do his thing.

A minute or so later, John yelled out his challenge, and headed for the arena floor. I figured I might as well get things over with, and jumped into the arena pit and waited for him. Mr. Cthülhu and his friend jumped in after me, I braced for impact, waiting to see how they would open, and...

... we all just stood there, each of us at the point of a triangle, while Short John wandered down to drop his chest. I put up Presence of Mind, the two Hordies buffed, and we watched each other for a good 15-20 seconds until the chest finally spawned.

Then the gloves came off.

It really was no contest, even with another level 80 Alliance pally showing up. I harried the shaman, interrupted the pally a couple of times, did some damage and took a couple of tries at looting the chest. Died twice, and really, I had the feeling that I wasn't being much more than a nuisance... but I didn't die instantly, so for about 2 minutes I had a wonderful time bouncing around, spell stealing, interrupting, polymorphing and tossing off whatever damage spells I could find time to slip in.

No, I didn't get the trinket - don't know who did. Got some nice PvP practice, though, and honestly, the whole thing would have been a non-event if it wasn't for the prelude to the battle. The fact that we were there to fight for the chest, and that we all waited for the chest before starting to scramble, was... cool. Going into the fight, knowing that my opponents weren't there to gank, that they were there to compete (even if the competition was a sissy mage in pieced together resilience gear), made a huge difference in the fight, and I had an absolute blast.

So for that, Cthülhu of Kirin Tor and your pally friend (who's name I sadly failed to note) - I salute you. Unlike the rogue who tried to gank me (and failed!) when I was leaving the area, you were not only competent, but honorable as well. I'm not going to thank you for beating my sissy mage face in - that would just be wrong - but I appreciate how you managed to do it with style.

Dr. Strangedust: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love PvP

Over the weekend, I headed into a bunch of different battlegrounds to accomplish Dinner Impossible, and present my fellow BG players with a Great Feast... the last task I needed to complete to get Hail to the Chef. Done, and done.

While I could have just presented my feast, bailed, and been done with it, I instead decided to - you know - actually play in the battlegrounds I entered. What a concept. I was thinking back to my attempts to get Aetherna her Matron title, and figured that if I was going to enter a BG, then I was going to play in that BG.

Along the way, I was reminded, multiple times, of the fact that I'm not a 20 year old twitch-gaming guru (not that I ever was, really). Rogue? Death. Shamman? Death. Paladin? Death. Frost mage? Death. I think I even had a ram kill me in AV. Seriously.

I managed a few kills here and there, but overall - with the exception of Eye of the Storm, with which I have some small amount of experience - I think I pretty much flailed around wondering what was going on, trying to remember what I should do and where I should go. All while cursing the fact that I didn't have Ice Block and Every Man For Himself keybound, and generally leaving bits of eviscerated, flaming, frozen, exploded, and life-drained magey bits behind me like some sort of squishy breadcrumbs.

Until I hit Arathi Basin.

I don't know what happened there. Maybe it was the fact that it was a little slower paced, so lack of insane reflexes and a laptop trackpad weren't limiting factors. Maybe it was the room to maneuver, so that I could pick the ground I'd engage on. Maybe it was a good set of teammates. Maybe it was because I was finally able to play the two roles I like most, defense and distraction.

"Oh, no, Mr. Horde guarding the stables saw me! How clumsy and n00bish of me! Why, whatever shall I do? Perhaps I shall lead him on a merry chase... at the conclusion of which I will most likely die! Oh, woe is me! My only consolation is the knowledge that I lured the feckless idiot away from his post, allowing my team to cap the node he was supposed to be protecting."

Highlight of my night. Well, that and hitting a belf pally with an Improved Counterspell when he was trying to pop off a Flash of Light. "Oh, gee. You can't heal? Or bubble? Or do anything, really, except auto-attack for the next 10 seconds? Aww. My heart bleeds. Oh, no wait - that's not my heart, it's yours. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"

I'm thinking that maybe picking up a few more PvP achievements might be fun. You know, in a flaming ball of exploding pally kind of way :-)

Cynwise: the center of (PvP) wisdom

Cynwise has posted a number of good articles on the School of Hard Knocks achievements over the past couple of days. If you're like me - a WoW player who has managed to hit 80 without getting the battleground PvP bug - and you want advice on how to accomplish the various tasks, her blog is absolutely the place to go for advice.

Even before you head there, though, I'd suggest doing a bit more reading about the battlegrounds on wowwiki or wowhead. If you're unfamiliar with the battlegrounds, you might want to think about just diving in and playing them once or twice before trying for your achievement. If you get lucky and find yourself in a situation where the opposing team is cooperating (much more likely in AV or WG), then great - you'll get those out of the way quickly. If not, you'll at least have a chance to orient yourself so that you know where to go and what to do instead of wondering "Is this the stables? Do I click on something now?" (Not that I ever did that... more than once, at least.)

The sweet, sweet taste of victory

26 EotS battles... 6 won, 20 lost.

650+ honorable kills.

35,000+ honor earned.

One flag capture without my orphan out :-(

And one flag capture with :-)

Achievement Earned: School of Hard Knocks

Achievement Earned: For The Children

Title Earned: Matron

At the end of it all... yeah, I do have a sense of achievement. I generally run around on my mage lady with my Loremaster flag flying, but I think that I'll wear Matron for a while now. Because the flag that I got the achievement with?

I pried it from the cold, dead hands of the enemy flag carrier.

Yeah, you heard that right.

Oh, yeah, sure, there was a pally involved at some point - there generally is, in these sorts of affairs. He was quite a fine gentleman, too! Once we downed the flag carrier, he saw that I had my orphan out, and let me grab the flag. Then he and a few other teammates escorted me all the way back to the capture point. I picked up the flag about halfway to the Fel Reaver Ruins, and while I was running it back, we lost control of the Blood Elf Tower. So I ended up having to carry it all the way back to the Draenei Ruins to get the capture.

I was literally shaking the whole way. Popped Mana Shield immediately and kept it up the whole run. "Come on, come on... can't I run any faster? Who's behind me? Oh, they're on my team..." Fingers on my keys for Frost Nova and Every Man For Himself the whole way. Swiveling the camera around, wishing that I had thought to chow down on some Blackened Worg Steak so I could see exactly who was around me.

As I approached the Draenei Ruins, I spotted an Orc warrior standing just a few yard away from the flag capture point, and my heart skipped a beat. I just about screamed. So I gritted my teeth, made sure Mana Shield was up, popped Presence of Mind and got ready to break stun and hit him with an instant Polymorph, and ran for the capture point.

I don't know if Mr. Orc Killing Machine was distracted, or if he was less concerned with me and more so with the teammates behind me. Maybe he saw my orphan out and decided to be gracious. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and presume the last. In any case, he left me alone, and a few seconds later, I captured my second (and probably last) EotS flag, got my achievement, and ...

... immediately turned and ran to defend the Fell Reaver Ruins. Because they needed reinforcements, and I've learned that holding towers is what you do in EotS, don't you know? Yeah, I wasn't about to abandon the battle just because I got what I wanted out of it. That would be... rude and inconsiderate. So instead of breaking away to celebrate immediately, I helped destroy a warlock, priest and hunter who thought they had the stones to try and take FRR back from us.

Less than a minute later, the battle was over, the Alliance had won the field 1600 to 1593, and most importantly of all, I had managed to capture my stinking lousy good-for-nothing flag. Doing it the right way, thank you. Sure, I had a more than a little help along the way, but... hey. Teamwork for the win.

Do I have a better feel for PvP on my mage lady now? You betcha. Do I find myself longing to get back into the battlegrounds and litter them with the bodies of my enemies? No, not really. Though I may head back to EotS this week to help some other poor souls capture their flags. Turns out dropping a mage bomb in front of pursuing enemies is just what the doctor ordered for letting a flag carrier get those precious few extra yards.

Teamwork FTW, doncha know :-)

Feeling like the Pirates

Well, maybe not that bad. I did manage to go 0 for 20 in Eye of the Storm last night over the course of about four hours or so, though. I was a spell-stealing, slow-tossing, polymorphing, blinking, ice-blocking and arcane barraging little fiend. All of that wasn't near enough to get me close to a flag except for one time, when I had possession for about 15 seconds before a belf pally decided that I looked like lunch.

EotS is actually pretty fun to play (see? I *do* like PvP! Really!) - it's the whole "capture the flag when your class isn't designed for capturing the flag" thing that particularly sucks right now. I had a nice pally who offered to bring back a flag for me to cap in one match, but that was towards the end of the game so she never actually had a chance to do so. Que sera, sera, I guess.

I did my best to clue people in at the start of the matches:

"Achievement folks: capture towers first, stay to guard"

"A, B - take Draenei Ruins (DR) to the east, stay to guard"

"X, Y - take Mage Tower (MT) to the west"

"Ret pallies - rush for the Fell Reaver Ruins (FRR) across bridge from MT"

"Everyone else, control the center"

"Tower guards: watch and warn of for incoming"

"Flag carriers: if you don't need the achievement, and can drop the flag at the tower for someone who does, please do so - we'll love you for it and sing your praises"

"Oh - and kill the Hordies while you're at it :-)"

Here's what really freaked me out: for about a third of the battles, this was enough leadership that someone passed me the battleground leader position.

Me.

I mean... aside from one time I was in E0tS last year because I think I clicked on the wrong button somewhere, this was really my first time in the battleground. I must sound like I know what I'm doing, for some reason. I really don't - we lost every time I was lead. Well, we pretty much lost every time I wasn't lead, too, but all our wins were when somebody else was in charge.

Once it was obvious in any given match that I wasn't going to get a chance at the flag, I just cut loose and made life miserable for any Horde spellcaster I came across. Polymorph, repeated Spellsteal to strip them of all their buffs... then Slow, Presence of Mind + Arcane Blast to start whittling them down, then keep Slow up while peppering them with Arcane Barrage and Arcane Missiles when Missile Barrage proc'ed.

Best event of the evening: my mage-lady and two other mages taking back the flag spawn point from the Horde. Not just one guard, but about 6-7 of them. No, I am not kidding - we were in the groove at that point. There were sheep, penguins, and rabbits running hither and yon; there were healers stripped of all their buffs, then burned down by fire, frost and arcane energies; there were boomkins silenced, counterspelled, and turned into chicken fricasee in a matter of moments. When we were done, when the Horde bodies littered the ground, we looked around, and saw a lone pally watching us form their end of the bridge... and when we started heading towards him, he backed off.

Boo yeah. Go team mage! We lost the spawn point a minute later, but man, that was cool. Archmage Pants would have been proud of us.

Aside from that, I did my best to play a good supporting role. Flag carrier being pursued? Blink, frost nova, slow, poly... and yeah, I generally died from that, but someone got to capture the flag. By the end of the evening, I had something like 30 assists, and had yet to capture the flag myself.

The very bet match we had, when we were controlling the flag spawn and three towers, there was one druid who kept on capturing the flag, and absolutely refused to give anyone else a chance to do so. So, here we see the wonderful nature of the PvP player: we give him all the support he needs to win the battle, and in return, he repeatedly shafts us. Stay classy, dude! Hmm. I'll have to see if a battleground leader can kick people from the raid or not...

So I'll be continuing my mage-based EotS flag capture attempts tonight. I'm seriously considering putting together a group and offering a 500 or even a 1k gold bounty to the first person who drops the flag for me at a tower so I can capture it. Barring that, I guess I'll do my best to enjoy myself, rack up another 25k honor and 500 honorable kills, and maybe play around a bit and see if BG leaders can kick those uncooperative gits or not.

Since there's not much going on...

Well, OK, there's a lot going on. You probably just don't want to hear me nerd rage about BGs any more than I actually want to think about them, so instead, let's just go off to a happy place...

She put her hand into mine again. “Where now? Me bored.”

It wasn’t quite in me to protest again. The little creature was obviously mentally deficient, bloodthirsty, soggy, supernaturally full of snot and as alone in the world as I was.

-- from "I Gerald, Chapter 3" at Righteous Orbs

See? It's not that hard...

Check out WoW.com for some happy stories about folks working on the School of Hard Knocks achievement. Really, go. It's sweet. It will fill you with a new feeling of unbounded hope an optimism for our wretched society. It will make you all misty-eyed, even.

Which is better than the tears of frustration you'll squeeze out when the rest of your team in Eye of the Storm lets the opposing side tear you apart without lifting a finger, and tells you "lol who care about your achieve".

Yeah. I guess I'll just continue with the EotS lottery this evening, until I get someone willing to take pity on me. New strategy: capture a tower, wait for the inevitable pally/druid flag carrier to show up, and ask them drop the flag so I can capture it for the achievement. Or hey, maybe I'll get really lucky and find a pair of teams cooperating. Stranger things have happened, and hey - it's for the children, don't chu know.

"The recipe calls for a full cup of PvP - is 3/4 cup OK?"

Well, no. For doing School of Hard Knocks, Blizzard insists that you really need a full cup of PvP. Whether you like it or not.

Now, I'll be honest - I do like PvP, or at least, like it as much as a primarily PvE player can. Just last night, I got my 1000 Honorable Kills achievement on my main, Ms. Arcane Mage. I've actually got a set of PvP gear; not the best, but it's gemmed and enchanted appropriately. I love nothing more than to spend some time in Wintergrasp, mining and farming. Wintergrasp is, in my mind, just the right thing for world PvP... a place where the rewards are a bit greater, the risks are a bit higher, and you get to dive into a bloody big brawl every couple of hours. Loads of fun.

In contrast, I absolutely despise battlegrounds.

Well, most battlegrounds. I haven't tried Strand of the Ancients yet, nor... um. Whatever the island battleground is in Wrath. That's how uninterested I am. While there's a decent chance that I'll drop what I'm doing and pop into Wintergrasp when a battle rolls around, it's an almost mathematical certainty that I will never bother to hit any battleground I don't actually have to be in for some reason.

The primary reason is the players.

I was in the Navy at one point. My first assignment, I was a junior officer in a very visible division. This was on board a ship commanded by a senior captain bucking for admiral. Nothing was ever done to his satisfaction, and he was sometimes... colorful... in letting you know that you were, in fact, made of fail. Repeatedly. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure we had a least one psychiatric discharge as a result of his repeated verbal castigations.

Dealing with him was pleasant compared to your average chapeau-wearing posterior in a WoW battleground. Seriously. You guys complaining about bad PuGs? Hit a random battleground and follow something less than an optimal strategy. Even better - if there are two possible things you can be doing (capturing a flag, capturing a tower), pick one. You'll be told in detail, with explicit references to your sexual orientation and practices, why you're an idiot for doing A instead of B, and how you're doing A wrong in any case. Oh, and how, thanks to the fact that you didn't do B, your side is definitely going to loose the battle, and it's all your fault.

Unfortunately, I had to spend 3 hours in battlegrounds last night to get the first three parts of the achievement. Fortunately, that translated into only about 8 or 9 battlegrounds... and while the first experience in any particular battleground was less than stellar, I managed to get lucky and and find cooperating Horde/Alliance groups in subsequent runs.

Even then, though, there were the inevitable "lol don care 4 your achieve ima kill horde n00b" mouth breathers who tried to screw things up because... sheesh, I don't know. Because they're immature childish idiots who get off on griefing others? In any case, their idiocy gave me another achievement. It's not one you can see in game on the armory; so you'll have to trust me when I tell you that last night a few fellow achievement hounds and I all got the "Applaud An Undead Shadow Priest For Melting The Face Off Of A Complete And Utter Dirtwad Of A Teammate" achievement...

Hopefully I'll luck out and find some cooperative groups in the Eye of the Storm tonight, so I can say goodbye to battlegrounds for a good long while.

On the plus side: since I couldn't handle nine consecutive battlegrounds without actually killing someone with my bare hands IRL, I ended up taking breaks after each achievement to cool down and let Aeven run around Searing Gorge. By the end of the evening, I had not only picked up 3 out of 4 parts of the School of Hard Knocks, I had also managed to get Aevern a full level! Yep, she's 54 now, and pushing into the end of the vanilla WoW content.

Of course, since I wasn't paying attention, I'm going to have to assemble a group by hand to finish up Marudon. That should be interesting. Aside from that, though, I'm happy that Aeven is sailing right along at nice clip, headed for the Outland.