Tuesday 24 July 2012

Queue-Griefing: No, Not the 'Tank is a DPS' Type

***This post contains coarse language and should be considered NSFW.***


There are many thing that while I do appreciate about the automatic random dungeon-finding tool, every once in a while (though growing more apparent each day for some reason beyond me) is that I am getting insta-queues with the healer or tank (usually the latter) literally clicking the rejection button so fast that I can't even move my cursor to just the damn box that pops up, let alone the 'ready' button. Sure, once or twice is annoying but you at least eventually get a *real* queue wait time going.

Ha! Sure, if I'm lucky that'll happen. I can spend anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes repeatedly going through this stupid loop of people just queuing JUST so they can decline. I don't know why the system doesn't ignore these people and move onto the next or maybe I'm just unlucky. I even wait a good 5 to 10 minutes in-between these sessions of griefing the LFG system because I figure either they'll stop their shenanigans or I'll be placed in such a way that I don't deal with that person/people. Hardly ever works.

I don't have all day and when I decide I want to just do a few dungeons, that's it. I don't want to do 'x' and 'y' and 'z' things while waiting for said queue to pop; I just want to frigging do the damn dungeons. I will alt-tab onto YouTube or something else and wait for the blaring announcement noise (I turn my in-game sound WAY up, just to be sure) that my queue is ready but I can't exactly be flipping back every second or two just to realize I've been caught into the same horrid mess.

I would estimate on most days I get this bullshit wasting my time, I average two, TWO, dungeons per 3-hour span. And to think, that's being GENEROUS.

There's no reason for it and I honestly believe that anyone who does this should be hit by a debuff that locks them out of being able to queue for anything (LFG, LFR, BGs, Arenas) for at *least* an hour. I'd prefer two hours, but Blizzard has a tendency to react to most griefings with a slap on the wrist, if even that. Too busy studying botting trends (they all do the same fucking things to teleport here, there, and everywhere; they all have set behaviour patterns when confronted; they are practically all carbon copies of one another so can you just ban them and get it over with?) and answering inane conversation pieces that eventually make their way to the forums so we can all want to strangle people for bumping back legitimate tickets.

The fun doesn't stop there, oh no! No no no no no no no.............then we have the bastards who actually ACCEPT the queue when it pops up and promptly leave. Gee, thanks asshat #34619548, I just spent a half-hour or more (specifically queuing instead of randoms is murder, upwards of an hour and a half) to get here in the first place and now we have to wait 10 to 20 minutes on *top* of that for that slot to fill.

Sometimes it prompts the others to leave, as well, especially if the tank leaves first and then healer (or vice-versa) and then since you're by yourself, you can't look for more since you need at least one other person with you. You have to start an ENTIRELY. NEW. QUEUE.

Fuck you. Fuck your mother. Fuck your dog.

Fuck. My. Life.

Fuck it hard; fuck it long. It's going to be a long *fucking* night!

I cannot fathom what sort of person honestly thinks that causing this is entertaining. I get upset, sure, I understand that an eerily-large portion of the internet is comprised of sadistic torturers who I could imagine flourishing in the criminal sector, given the right push (they already have the motivation, after all) but where does that come from? Were they sheltered all their life? Well-off and got away with treating people in real life, face to face, like complete shit? No conscience to speak of? Complete sociopaths?

I don't know.

I *do* know, though, that they are costing me real time and real money that makes me reconsider the idea of paying Blizzard for what is *supposedly* a game. Y'know, a game? Intended for fun, to relax, to derive some sense of "downtime" from the hustle and bustle of real life?

I didn't sign on to support masochist practices and I'm sure most other people didn't, either.

Monday 9 July 2012

Min/Max: Stop Harassing the Salvagers!

***Warning: this article contains a large amount of coarse language and should be considered NSFW.***


I don't like that I'm going to touch back on min/max stuff but unfortunately I need to.

I just got out of a Drak'Tharon Keep run on an alt of mine and by the end of it I had literally every other party member on ignore *and* I was shaking like I was having my own personal earthquake. In fact, I'm STILL shaking, making this difficult to type because of a) erratic movements, b) anger clouding mind so I apologize if I should have worded anything differently, and c) I honestly am flabbergasted (oi! look it up) that anyone could be this unreasonable, if not just plain ignorant.

Okay, let me set the scene for you: party members actively talking about min/max stuff and clearly having no subtlety whatsoever. In fact, the thought of racing to max level and getting everything prepared for only max level play is circling around their heads, correcting what people should and should not be doing.

I didn't check gear because I feel it to be rude, invasive, and completely unnecessary since everything is going smoothly. We finally get up to King Drek and the caster staff drops, me rolling 'Need' on it and winning since I rarely upgrade anything and when I do it is ALWAYS a massive boost. The healer complains that I, as a mage (yes, I suppose I forgot to mention that part), shouldn't be using spirit and completely ignores the fact that it's well-over twice the stat value (even without the spirit it has while there is no intellect or stamina on it) of my current staff.

Okay, before you tear into me for being a moron and saying that spirit is worthless to me, let me say: I AGREE WITH YOU.

However, if you completely ignored the part about it being an amazing upgrade for me, then I'll let you think on that for a bit now that I've pointed it out. Here we have someone who is so tunnel-visioned into reaching max level and will work tirelessly to reach that goal that they'd probably replace it in pretty much no time at all, rendoring it essentially vendor trash as opposed to a tool that will be appreciated and used for a long time. I level slowly on purpose AND I make things last far past their normally expected lifetimes.

I still use the goddamn GNOMISH ROCKET BOOTS, for fuck's sake. They're just that good and far, FAR more consistent than the rocket belt tinker. Kinda sad, that, isn't it? Mostly the latter point but the former one, too, I suppose.

I know in a couple more levels, I could do the Ampitheater quests but, y'know what? Probably not going to do it. No one of a higher level would DARE help a lower level without a nice tidy monetary compensation unless they're guildmates and even then only if they just happen to be on at the same time, happen to not be busy when the request is made, and just happen to feel comfortable doing it, the person asking for help having been in the guild an adequate amount of time. A lot of things that just have to line up and not everyone is so fortunate.

So then I'm getting bitched at from every angle up to the point where they start putting words in my mouth, claiming I said it was good for one reason or another. They kept changing their stories, so of course you can probably tell how fed up with this I'm getting. I said that it was good for my personal situation, explaining in simple words (I shit you not, they were posting '?' at the words "take into account that...", HOW do you not understand that if English is your first language?).

Anywhoo, a bit more back and forth resulted in me saying something that was a simple sentence that just *happened* to be longer than 4 fucking words and them doing the tl;dr and "don't need to post a book, bro" and even outright admitting to the fact that they were too lazy to read it.

I blew up. I started in with that being part of the reason I believe people should start beating children to within an inch of their life again: to learn some respect, manners, and actually put effort into something for once in their lives. This was not received by the "u mad, bro?" family, but rather by "philosopher of WoW, all up in this bitch".

What?

I had to take a moment because I really didn't see how that was relevant at all. However, I regained my composure and unparalled, seething anger/hatred.

I even went so far as to say, ahem:

"I'm angry because the stupid and lazy are breeding, only making me wish more George Carlins were alive, making people feel like they need to kill themselves because they are wastes of skin, space, and oxygen. No one is perfect but you people set the bar pretty damn low."

I got so flustered and wanting to cause levels of bodily harm (preferably through mutilation) that I was brought down to that level.

You happy, you fucking pieces of shit? Are you happy that you've made the world a little more dark and disturbing? Are you proud that what you've done is make yet another person wish they had the ability to wipe out the entire human race and pray that this fucking failure of a fluke mutation never repeats itself? Are you? ARE YOU?!

You make me sick.

Leave the salvagers alone. Not just in WoW. But in life, period. We don't brag. We don't feel entitled. We don't go out of our way to prey upon the emotions of others and their appreciation of having a bit of dignity, intelligence (be it logistics, observational skills, etc. the list goes on and on), and the idea that they don't need to rush through every goddamn fucking thing. Did I really need to be harassed about a single copy of potentially infinite amounts more of a digital item that would serve almost no purpose for most others but would be a great boon to myself, despite it not being the best of the best of choices?

There is no legitimate reason for why anyone should treat anyone else to the point where one is just outright ashamed to be a part of the human race. After all, if this is how we treat others in an online gaming experience, then what does that say about how we *really* want to treat our friends, family, co-workers, random people on the street?

Think about it. I have, and frankly, I can't get over how much I hate people as a whole.

As someone once said, "A person is intelligent; people are idiots."

Sunday 1 July 2012

Mist of Pandaria: Yet Another Continent

I'm excited for MoP; really, I am. I'm just finding it difficult to expect a whole new style of gameplay incorporated into yet another land mass on Azeroth. From what I've seen of videos and screenshots, I have no doubt that I'll enjoy myself.

However, the actual feeling of being somewhere I've not been before will likely not be there.

In the Outlands, you actually had to think about your surroundings. Admittedly, some of that had to do with the fact that flying was introduced and meant funny occurences in the Blade's Edge Mountains along with Netherstorm were quite prevalent. Many a time did I hear of someone flying from Hellfire Peninsula to Netherstorm and suddenly dropping out of the sky to their untimely doom simply because they ventured too far into the Twisting Nether.

I'm sure people have their own little stories with flight and being able to do crazy stuff, but the point is that there were possibilities opened. Now, we just take flight for granted and just go wherever we want and we'll have to deal with withdrawal symptoms come MoP because we'll be locked down again until about max level, if I recall correctly.

There's never anything *truly* new about being forced to land for a few levels. All it is would be seeing things up-close and personal again. Okay, maybe that's the point. But really, we've never had to actually think about what we were doing, regardless of quests, mobs, towns, whatever. Blade's Edge made me dizzy and questioning if I was going the right way because there were SO. MANY. SPIKES. that looked pretty much exactly the same, scattered literally *everywhere* in the zone. I have never had to check my map so many times in my playtime.

Some would say that is a bad thing Blizzard needs to move away from. What? WHAT? Actually having to think about things and not just go "la dee la dee lada la dee la la la..." is not what makes a new experience. It doesn't matter if Blizzard wants to allow less...err...seasoned, I guess, players more enjoyment. They still have that, no matter what argument you can pose. There are so many options open in the world that we're not forcing people to take part in what we should otherwise learn to adapt to, or at least take into account to some degree.

Why not have areas where you can choose to fly around up top and risk getting taken down by some sort of flying creature(s) if you can't judge your distance well enough or fly into certain protective auras that dissipate after a short while? Or, if you want, play it safe and fly under tree cover, but you have to avoid hitting obstacles like branches and whatnot? Lower to the ground there could be almost nothing in your way but you'd at least still be going faster than riding on the ground. Mind you, my mind is thinking in HUGE proportions, so don't take it to mean that you'd be flying a mere handful of feet off the ground. Besides, I'm just tossing out ideas here as I type, nothing being pre-planned here.

I could go on with more ideas but I'm a bit tuckered out. However, at least you have some idea where I want things to go.

Hopefully, though, such kinds of ideas will be expanded on in future releases. The next place I want to go to is the Nathrezim homeworld so if that were ever a possibility kicking around in the think-tanks of Blizzard employees, that'd be the perfect settings to adjust difficulty in not only combat, but even basic things like travel. Flight paths would obviously be exempt. No one wants to go afk and back to find themselves on a prompt for taking down an enemy that has boarded your wyvern or whatever animal it is *this* time to stop it from dragging you down to a crash-landing.

I'm not THAT cruel. Unusual, yes, but cruel?
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Anywhoo, on a separate note, I know hardly anyone looks at this blog but I'm more than willing to take suggestions and see if I am annoyed about aspects of various things others have a bone to pick with. Just leave a comment and I'll likely make a post all about it.