Are bots back?

With all the hub-bub over Blizzard's victory in the WoW Glider case, I was surprised in-game the other day with a bot. Not sure what time of day it was, but I was doing my Hodir daily quests on my hunter and ran into this Night Elf hunter running a race-track pattern in the area where the fire elementals spawn. The place where the anvil was before doing that part of the phasing quest(s). You know the spot. They drop crystallized fire at a decent rate. Prime bot'ing grounds.

I watched for a while in disbelief. I tried communicating with the character. No dice. (This is difficult on opposing factions, but not impossible.) I was thinking about attempting some griefing. Feign pulling. Mob tagging. PVP flagging to get it to fight me. I inspected the character trying to glean a little more info. The gear was terrible. +Strength on the bow. I could find no quest rewards. Finally, I'd wasted enough time and effort confirming my suspicions and summarily put in a GM ticket. I didn't just report it, I wanted to talk to a GM.

I had had a *horrible* experience with this same issue back in vanilla WoW. The various fields around Western Plaguelands were rife with this problem back in the day. I had a particular issue for an entire week in Felstone Field. I was rep farming myself and leveling up a pet from very low level, but doing it legitimately by actually playing at my computer. *gasp* This Dwarf hunter -- why is it always Hunters, by the way... as if the typical players view isn't already skewed to the "huntard" stereotype -- ran the same racetrack pattern. Back then, though, the bots were dumber. Or it was programmed poorly. For this one, you could tag the mobs and it would still come by an help you kill it. It was just set to a killing spree. Again... horrible gear choices. Just there to farm. I'm sure it pulled in some good scratch, too. This went on for a week. Every day I would report via ticket the behaviour and the next day it would be the same bot back in the same spot running the same pattern. Not sure if he eventually just got caught or if this was around the inception of Warden, but he finally disappeared a day or two before I was done with my reputation grind.

Back to the present, I had to log off and fully expected to get a canned response via GM ticket in-game. When I was able to log back in a couple of hours later, a GM hit me up almost immediately. (The new UI for talking to a GM works pretty well, by the way.) Well... at least I got to talk to them. They were very friendly and professional in that semi-extra-geeky roleplay way many of them use. He/she indicated they were still getting reports like this occasionally and would look into it. I neglected to write down the character name, but was 99% sure I had reported it correctly. This particular GM had a good sense of humor. After assuring me that they would take the report seriously and take action if warranted:

GM: "Is there anything else I can do for you?"
Me: "Can you spawn me a few dozen Everfrost Chips?"
GM: "I wish I could because I'd be exalted by now."

:)

Loot Niceties and Ammo

(This post started out as one about bag/bank management, but this story is better, I think. Maybe I'll get to the clutter post later.)

My hunter is eagerly awaiting the Great Ammunition Removal Patch of Awesome, so I haven't gone too crazy with him with bag management. I am lugging around way too much stuff, but I usually have enough room to do my daily quests, perform my skinning, and quest-at-80 for gold. Usually. When the hunter's lack of bag space and the ammunition issue comes into painful focus is when you get a weapon upgrade.

Case in Point: I'm just playing along Saturday night and across one of my guild alliance channels I see...

"Off-tank and one more needed for Naxx 10-man. Clear instance."

/whisper "Need another DPS?"

"Sure. Come on along!"

So... I hit the stable, grab the DPS pet (good ol' Humar), and head to Venomspite. We blast through the Spider wing in pretty good order. One-shot all the bosses in good time. I hate the Arachnid Quarter. It's well-designed. The fights are somewhat interesting and technical enough to keep you intersted. It's the loot tables I hate... at least as a hunter. I fully understand what Blizzard did, though. It's the wing most groups start with, so they loaded it up with plate tanking gear and healer/caster gear. No sweat. There are a few nice items, but I've been through Naxx-25 Spider enough that most anything that would drop in there isn't an upgrade. Still... I'm good... picked up a few badges and had some fun.

We move on to the Military Quarter. Interesting move. Usually people hit up Plague next. I'm a little nervous about Razuvious because I haven't seen the fight using the crystals. I have no idea what the loot lists are like. Check up with AtlastLoot. Oh... look at this shiny!

Now... I've had a bit of a problem getting ranged weapon upgrades for a long time. If I'm in a group, either nothing drops or I'm outrolled by another hunter. I've been slowly getting there with my other gear, but weapons have eluded me. I think I have 10+ runs in UtK -- it's practically the *only* heroic I've done -- and still no [Drake-Mounted Crossbow]. It's become an in-guild joke at this point when people see me in there PUG'ing. *shudder*

We get to Razuvious and I say a not-so-silent prayer for the bow. Something along the lines of...

"Dear Mr. Razuvious... Please drop your bow... KThx, Annai."

The other hunter in the group had the Drake-Mounted already and I assumed -- yes -- that he'd not really be after a side-grade. This was an all-guild run with the exception of me and the off-tank, so I was mostly just along for the ride and the 10-man experience. I'm lugging around the ugliest iLvl200 gun in the game, the reputation reward from the Argent Crusade -- the [Zombie Sweeper Shotgun]. (As an aside... really Blizzard?)

Lo-and-behold, Razuvious went down on the second attempt. (Little miscommunication by the tanks on when to release the students caused a wipe.) And there it was! The bow. The other hunter *was* a cool guy, and passed on it. It really is a side-grade. Same DPS. Slightly different stats. Does look cool as hell, though. I almost wouldn't have been mad had he rolled. Almost.

Anyway... this is a long and drawn-out way to say "kudos" to this guy and suggest that others try to do the same thing. Loot comes and goes. In-game friends -- even those not in your guild and maybe *ESPECIALLY* those -- mean a lot more. I'm all for moving along faster in instances and not stressing out over loot, but take a few minutes either during a "brb" break or at the start to look around the raid. Know what the other players are packing for gear and know what that item you might want to roll on is a *huge* upgrade for them but only a side-grade for you. Eventually, if you run raids enough, the gear comes. If not through drops these days, through Emblems alone.

The other point of the post, is the pain a hunter feels when getting a weapon and not being able to use it. :) That bow had to sit in my bag for the rest of the raid, because I had a pouch full of bullets instead of a quiver full of arrows. (No warlocks and I wasn't going to ask the raid to wait for me.) Here's hoping they can make the stacks big enough in the next update to allow for this possibility. And they can work out the haste issue between quivers and pouches, too.

Never did get the 10-man version of Four Horsemen down. Is it my imagination or is that just harder on 10-man? I know a couple of bosses in there are like that.

Eat me, Sartharion...

Oh... wait... you did, didn't you? Multiple times.

I've mentioned my guild alliance before on this blog. Yes... it was probably a year ago, but the back posts don't disappear and the same folks are still around. Good group of people. We've actually had some members of my guild leave for this other larger guild with really no hard feelings. We're casual. They are more hardcore, but still like to have fun and joke around all while getting the job done. Usually. :)

Earlier this week on Tuesday I ran Naxx25 with them and we cleaned out two wings in about two hours. They basically have open sign-ups and when they're short a couple, my guild members are welcome along to fill the ranks. Unfortunately, nothing hunter-ific dropped the this night. Oh well... sometimes the RNG is your friend....

Thursday was supposed to be the resumption of Naxx, but since they had cleared it out already and completed Malygos, too, it was decided to make some attempts on Sartharion + two Drakes. I warned the raid leader that I felt a little undergeared for that fight and had signed up for mid- to late-Naxx, but they don't stress too much about that stuff and felt they had enough of the right mix of classes. I *did* come to the raid fully prepared with as many elixirs and food buffs as I thought I was going to need. (Little did I know.)

I figured the first hour would be pretty painful. Sarth + 2 is a difficult fight even if your entire raid is epic'd out the wazoo. We were not. Although much of the raid is well-geared, there were some newer raiders -- myself included -- still sporting some reputation gear (or worse).

The first few pulls went as expected. People dying to the flame walls. People dying to the adds. People dying to the void zones (which aren't really much more visible than they were before, Blizzard). On one early attempt, we managed to get the first Drake down before the second landed, but things quickly went into the dumper after that.

Two hours in and we still didn't seem to be making much progress and I was out of elixirs. I really didn't expect to keep trying the "+2" fight after ten wipes, but they kept going. Weren't really getting by the first phase. I offered to give up my spot to a more seasoned raider. I was told I was fine and we kept at it. Eventually, we had to clear trash again (always a bad sign) and the grumbling started. We re-cleared, made a few more attempts, but then I had to log. Job and all. It was closing in on midnight for me.

The WWS was posted this morning. While my DPS wasn't stellar, I took most of my solace in being one of the last people to die on pretty much every attempt. I got killed by the flame wall *ONCE* by my count. The painful part, even after I left, was the final tally:

Sartharion 19, Raid 0.

Ouch.

Here's my short list of things to consider when participating in progression raiding.

1. NEVER, EVER, EVER (!) complain in raid chat or Vent about your repair bill! Firstly, if you have a high repair bill from dying, it's because you're all decked out in Epics. Boo hoo. I'm bleeding for you over here. I'm trying to earn some of my own epics. You bitching about how much it's costing to fix your shinies up is really grating. Secondly, it makes you sound like a whiny brat. If you don't like repairing, don't progression raid. Simple as that. Five daily quests and you've earned enough to wipe all night to a new boss. Or at least make the repair bill hit to your bank pretty insignificant.
   
   
2. Bring your bloody consumables. And bring enough to last a good long while. Elixir mats are not generally hard to farm up. I don't know how much they are on the AH (mats or elixirs), as I have an alt and a friendly guild alchemist. There's nothing worse than looking around the raid while waiting for buffs and seeing people who *AREN'T* either flasked or elixired (are those words?). It's even worse if you're wiping below 5% on something. Just a little more 'umph' from a couple more people using proper elixirs/flasks and the boss would already be dead. (This wasn't the case last night, but I've seen it before.)
   
   
3. Read up. If you don't understand the fights -- even the basic mechanics LIKE A GIANT WALL OF FLAME THAT YOU CAN'T GET HIT BY -- you don't really belong in the raid on nights when progression is being pushed. Don't sign up. Don't accept the invite. I was a little bit in this boat myself, but it's because I was expecting Naxx and got Sarth + 2. And I warned the raid leader of that. But if your guild has a known destination, take the time to understand -- at least in theory - what's going to happen in the fights. Some people can only learn by seeing, but if you've at least read up, maybe the learning curve is less when you've read *and* seen the fight.
   
   
4. Shut up. If you don't understand something, ask and then listen for the answer. LISTEN. If you don't understand the fight mechanics, you have no business offereing up suggestions and it makes you sound really dumb when your suggestion would basically wipe the raid. Don't tell the tank to stand in one spot when he's tanking to make your DPS job "easier". Umm... there are these giant dragons trying to eat him and walls of flame that he *must* avoid. Really. He's doing his best. And... your DPS is bad because you've died to the flame wall *EVERY* pull, not because the tank is the problem.

I'm probably forgetting something in that list, but those are the things that jumped out at me this morning. Coffee really hasn't kicked in, but the muffin was delicious.

Once more... with feeling!

It's time to crank this up again and try it ONE MORE TIME. If I fail to keep this thing updated, I'm just going to delete the whole mess and forget about this blogging thing. I think I have some things to say, but that will remain to be seen. I think I'm going to expand this to include my thoughts on guild issues -- hopefully keeping too much detail from seeping in so as not to piss anyone off -- but provide helpful insights for others. Maybe? Also, my warlock is on the back-burner and is currently on sit-in-Dalaran-and-receive-BoEs-to-disenchant duty. The bonus there is that my druid (who actually went to 80 first) is an inscriptionist, so he's been sending over Vellum on a regular basis. Very useful that vellum stuff.

So... here we go again. Don't think I'm going to give BRK or some other prodigious bloggers a run for their money, but maybe I can provide some useful info.

Thoughts on a Friday

Hydross HowTo: BRK has a new video out of HowTo the Hydross the Unstable fight in SSC. Still deciding if I'll devote the time to another transcription. BRK is actually hard to transcribe. He's got some voice quirks and sayings and speaks very rapidly. Makes for a lot of typing. I probably will, but it'll have to be a rainy day project. Too much yard work -- and Mother's Day -- staring me in the face.

Mother's Day: Speaking of which... who the "F" schedules a raid for Mother's Day. Come on. Really? Our guild alliance has done just such a thing. I guess for some (many?) it's not that big a deal. It is in the evening, so many of the festivities will be over. For me, I'm cooking a meal (dinner) for my wife, sister, and mother and all the kids. 12 people. Not a huge crowd, but considering I cook about 10 times a year -- if that -- it's a bit of a task. :)

Wrath Preview: GameSpy has a ginormous preview of Wrath of the Lich King out. There are two fairly amazing new pieces of news.

Blizzard announced that the raid dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King would all have 10-man and 25-man versions, with substantially better gear available to anyone who could organize the 25-man.

...and...

...all the five-man heroic dungeons will be itemized completely separately from the lower-level experience.

That's some really good news. While I've had the chance to do a lot more 25-man stuff (Gruul, Magtheridon, and Serpentshrine Caverns) lately, it's not something that I can devote a ton of time to and I'm unlikely to be able to see the higher tiered raids before the expansion. Knowing that I'll be able to see *all* the fights in the expansion -- even in 10-man form -- is really welcome news.

Making the loot tables for 5-man heroics completely separate from the 5-man normal will breath some life into them, as well. Nothing sucks worse than going into a heroic only to see the same stuff drop. Makes the trip seem pointless and at the rate that badges are gained from 5-mans, that's not really enough incentive to do them regularly for me. I'd rather get 10-15 in one night of Karazhan than spend 3 nights doing heroics.

They also mentioned that most 5-mans would be tuned to allow completion in about an hour. That's pretty quick and welcome for those of us more "casual" types.

There's also more information in the link above including intervies, new videos, new screenshots and more specific and detailed information on things like the Death Knight, flying mounts in Northrend (level 77 to get the ability back), flying in the "old world" (short answer: no), and some other tidbits. Nothing else world-shattering, but a bit more information about most of the things we already knew from Blizzcon and past previews.

Oh yeah... TGIFF.

BRK "Stardom"

So down in my ToDo list in the previous post, I mentioned BRK. For those not familiar, BRK is BigRedKitty, a bit of a hunter guru. He's a well-spoken, big-time proponent of hunters, particularly those of the Beastmaster persuasion. He throws people off sometimes with his "we"-speak (BRK is the team of hunter and pet). He also throws people off with what some consider arrogance. I don't read it that way and enjoy his posts. He's not always right, but then again neither is any blogger. Or *anyone* for that matter.

A few weeks ago, I signed up for an open Serpentshrine Caverns raid being run by a guild on my server who my guild has had a really great allegiance with over the years. It was my first run in the place, and during my preparation for the night, I read up on the fights, watched a few videos, and then read up some more.

One of the best resources I found, was BRK's movie on The Lurker Below fight. While reading the comments for his blog post related to the movie, I noticed a reader towards the end had mentioned being hearing impaired, and while enjoying the movie, didn't get much out of it since she (I think it was a she) couldn't hear it. The movie is a hunter's guide to the fight, complete with where to set your pet on "Stay", what to attack, when to attack it, how to help on the adds, and lot of other good stuff.

I went about my raid and thought that I had performed great for my first time. I was in the top-5 (usually) on damage during the run, didn't pull agro or get anyone killed, and basically did my job. I also was able to snag the Ranger General's Chestguard. I was so happy with how things went, particularly with the Lurker fight and being able to use my pet throughout, that I wanted to say "Thanks" to BRK. I wasn't sure what. Then it dawned on me. Instead of just a "Thank you" e-mail or blog comment, I'd create something that would hopefully be of use to others. I decided to transcribe the video into text for that one person that couldn't get all they wanted out of it just by watching.

So... that's my 15-seconds of fame on BRK's website story. If you're interested, you can find the transcript here. It was just a text file. I thought he might convert it or blogify it, but he posted it as is. It's fine, but had I known it was going to go up directly, I might have sent it in HTML. It looks like hell in Firefox and the text doesn't wrap properly. Hopefully that one person who needed it found it, but if not, it's the thought that counts.

If you're heading into SSC or the Lurker fight for the first time, do yourself a favor and check out BRK's movie. You'll be glad you did.

Shall we try this again?

OK... so I'm sure I've by now lost the whopping two people who were regularly reading and commenting on this blog, but I need to write again. Instead of inflicting myself on my guild's forums, I'll start blabbering here. If anyone finds it again and finds it useful / insightful / mildly entertaining so much the better. I need to write. I like to write. I write good. ;)

Where was I? When was my last post? Yer kiddin'?

Here's a quick rundown of what's happened since I last updated this thing:

1. My guild has Karazhan pretty much completely on farm. I've really stopped going on most of the runs unless I'm needed/wanted. There are pretty much no upgrades in there for me and others need the loot / badges more than I do. Plus... I'm sick to death of Kara. There's only so many times in life you can slog through Moroes trash before you slowly go insane. I'm at that point. I'll go on the first night if they need me and pull my Warlock through there for drops once in a while, but my Hunter is my main and probably always will be. That's that.

2. My server is awesome. We've got some really good guilds with some really great open raiding policies. My guild has taken to co-hosting Gruul and Magtheridon runs on an every-third-week rotation with two other guilds. A fourth guild lends "fire support" in the form of some well-geared (T5-ish) players and we smack around some ogres, gronn, and the occasional pit lord every week. I've managed to get 4/5 on my T4 set. The bonuses are still aweful, but it's cool to have a mostly consistent look to your character and the incremental boosts to stats from Kara-level gear is great.

3. Have I mentioned my server is awesome? That "fourth guild" mentioned above also holds open runs for the Tier 5 instances (Serpentshrine Caverns and The Eye). I haven't actually been to The Eye yet, but I've managed three or four runs into SSC and *really* enjoy that place. The trash is a bit repetitive, but the boss fights have some interesting mechanics that I don't think I've ever seen elsewhere. Hydross' form-switching and Leotheras' "inner demon" spring immediately to mind. I never did 40-man stuff pre-Burning Crusade, so maybe these are re-used mechanics, but they're new to me and I'm enjoying the fights. Again... this guild is pretty well geared up so they bring along new people to introduce them to 25-mans. As such, they like to see gear used instead of turned into the guild's 200th void crystal in the bank. I've managed to pickup an upgrade or new item in almost all of the runs I've been on. It's greatly appreciated. I won't ever be able to be in a big-time raiding guild, but these guys (and gals) seem to have found a nice balance between progression (25-man) and casual-ness... is that a word?

4. At least one "major" patch has been released since December. The 2.4 patch introduced the new island of Quel'Danas, the new Shattered Sun faction, a new 5-man and 25-man, a slew of daily quests with wondrous gold rewards, and a new vendor selling T5 and T6-quality gear for Badges of Justice. The badge gear is among the best available in-game. Pissed of the "hardcore" pretty well, but who cares. Oh... they do. What everyone seemed to forget is that 100-150 badges for *ONE ITEM* is a lot of badges. Doing Kara and the occasional daily heroic might yield you 30 badges or so a week. That's over a month just to get one item. I dare say raiders running multiple instances a week are pulling more than one T5/T6 item per character from SSC/Eye/BT/MtH. Anyway... I got my spiffy new "Frozen Parrot on a Stick" and that pretty much exhausted my badge supply. The addition of badges for all 25-man bosses has helped get that pile back up around 50, but I'm still not sure what to buy or how long to hoard the badges.

5. Just this week, my guild took out the 2nd boss in Zul'Aman (pic above). We haven't been doing ZA much because we've had so much else on the schedule. Two Karazhan nights for badges / gear / alts. One night in SSC. One night in Gruul's and Magtheridon's Lairs. Doesn't leave much time. But... with our better gear from those 25-mans, we were able to take out that stupid Eagle avatar and finally see him eat floor. 'Bout time. We *almost* had the bear during the timer, but a free-running bear on the last trash pull did us in. Next time.

Anyway... I have a bunch of topics I'd like to talk about in more detail, including some of the above mentioned stuff, but I'm going to save those for more posts and hopefully more regularly update this thing. It's almost time to start talking about the new expansion, too. Here's a list of upcoming topics. This is more for my benefit -- since I'm thinking about them -- than yours.

- 2nd Account
- Playing with your family
- Moving from 10-man to 25-man raiding
- Guild Alliances
- New gear
- The expansion
- Blitzing
- BRK "stardom"

OK... that's enough for now.