Filed under: Forum Post of the Day

Yeah, here at the WoW.com high-rise, we were all a little surprised by the announcement of the Pet Store and its microtransactionalized non-combat pets -- but seriously, it's not that big a deal, people. Hitch your bandwagons to that slippery slope fallacy all you want, but pets offer no plausible in-game advantage. The whole experience is roughly equivalent to buying a TCG pet off of eBay, just slightly more convenient and reasonably easier to live with.

Anyway, of course the forums are mad about it, or at least the incredibly vocal minority on the forums is. And they've made post after post about how the Pet Store has completely ruined WoW. Well, official forums MVP Palehoof has a rebuttal, and it's the largest green wall this side of Fenway Park.

If you want a rundown of just how many times WoW has been "ruined" by an addition, deletion, or alteration to the game, you can read Palehoof's post on the official forums.

Crawford of Gorefiend posted a pretty amusing post recently on the official forums: Dalaran Classified Ads. The post lists a variety of help wanted, services offered, and even personals ads from various personalities around Azeroth. There's some pretty amusing ones in the mix.

Inspired, I thought I'd come up with one or two myself:

HELP WANTED: Day Laborers for bridge construction. Must bring own tools, or recover stolen tools from Murlocs. Payment is 2 armor patches a week plus all the Sauteed Sunfish you can eat. Work hours very flexible. Contact Oslow at Lakeshire, Redridge. Projected completion time TBA.

It's not that great, admittedly, but hey. For some real good ones, check out the post.

Oldmaveric of Azgalor posed the question on the General Discussion Forum: are Big guilds on their way out due to easy WoW? He suggested that easier content on 10 man raids and regular content nerfs has led to the breakdown of some of the top guilds and caused players to quit the game.

Savvage of Spinebreaker quickly responded that big guilds have their place, but "People can now play in closer more tightly-knit groups..." For many players, raiding offers sufficient challenge while being more enjoyable than it once was. The raiding experience is not only more accessible, but also more fun. Smaller guilds can afford to be more selective of the online personalities of their membership, while still being able to to make progress.

Mellere of Wildhammer posted a brief lament about her guild leaders treatment of a Discipline Priest. The discipline priest was below a Retadin on HPS. Without understanding the role of mitigation as a healer, the Raid Leader told him to go holy to bring up his HPS. The OP expressed disappointment in the RL at this action.

Several responders posted that this is partly the fault of Blizzard as they don't take into account shielding and mitigation to healing scores in the combat log. Daerilla of Spirestone intimated that she did not want to see mitigation included in healing figures, because then people would take notice of how overpowered Disc Priests are in raids. There were some less-than-kind comments about the Raid Leader's competence.

Snaboo of Greymane shouted out to the Blizzard posters on the forums. He appreciates that they are being customer focused and social. This elicited positive responses from a handful of blue posters, except Bornakk, who's still grumpy.

Some posters disagreed about the attention the blues pay to the community. That they are slow to respond to "serious" questions or that they seem disrespectful of players. Crygil pointed out that in many cases there are several threads on a particular subject. The blues try to address at least one of them, but aren't able to respond in all of the threads on a single topic.

There are many different reasons for why we join guilds: to raid; to meet girls (well, not usually to meet girls). We also have numerous reasons why we quit guilds. I was kind of amazed by Oreooze of Dalaran's list of reasons for why he /gquit.

1. He wasn't congratulated on his achievements.
2. He doesn't trust people online.
3. He didn't get invited to raids.
4. He didn't want to get Ventrilo he prefers not to use voice chat.

It sounds to me that the OP was not terribly interested in being a part of a team. I have to admit, I would have a hard time inviting people to raids that absolutely refused to get into Vent. I'm sorry, my friend, but real time communication is very important to success in raids. It is positively infuriating when someone wipes a raid because they missed an important instruction. I'm sure that some guilds can get by raiding without voice chat, but it's very frustrating not to have 24 people who can listen in and work with the team.

Kyleface of Garona started a thread in the tank forums on Tank Haiku. It seemed that some of the responders prefered to write Haikus abut how they don't like Haikus:

Nancee of Dark Iron submitted a Haiku on Death Knights:

Death and Decay time!
Missing the cower-in-fear!
Hit with the nerf bat...

Avanaco of Misha added in a two verse lament on druid tanking:

Q Q warrior
At least you have some proper
Itemization

Your items may suck
At least you don't have to wear
Hunter and rogue gear

There are a few other little gems in the thread. Take a moment to take a peek at it.

Hi everyone, after a short hiatus for guild building and soul searching I'm back to writing on the WoW Insider team. Despite growth in my guild I still find myself picking up folks for heroics and some raids. I've had some good experiences and some terrible ones.

Abberforth of Shadow Council offered up a "Basic Assumption and Discernment System. this handy, though tongue-in-cheek guide to selecting members for a PUG. He uses simple assumptions in a players initial presentation of self to determine if a player is a good candidate for invitation. These guidlines warn players to be cautious of Elves, Death Knights, and folks with untypable or unintelligible names.

Remember that this guide is for amusement only. There are several other factors that go into good PUG players- like do they run into Nexus when you invite them for Occulus?

I'm still moderately excited for dual specs on my level 80 characters, it should be handy for switching between raids/instances and dailies. Cvarto of Proudmore began a thread about poor implementation about only allowing level 80 characters to use this feature. He fears that players will level as a single spec and have to relearn the other options for their class once they hit level 80.

GC's reasoning is that MMOs are overwhelming for new players to learn without working with two specializations. Cvarto contends that it still more difficult to learn a completely new aspect of the game, such as tanking, at level 80. I'd like to add that most players have little patience for inexperienced tanks and healers at max level.

Today's forum post of the day serves a dual purpose: it brings up issues with raid timers and it demonstrates how not to make friends and influence people on the forums. Our hot-headed friend Phearing of Silver Hand is a mighty bit miffed that he zoned into a 10-man Vault run only to find that there were no mobs there. He was saved to the instance, and thus does not get another shot at it until the raid timer resets.

Nubbyzor of Whisperwind quickly pointed out that if the raid leader is saved to the instance you join their raid ID. This has happened since the dawn of raid timers. People have been mislead into joining raids in progress and cannot get a second shot at a heroic if their group is under par. Heroics aren't really a big deal, if your group fails, you can try again tomorrow. It's lame, but it's only one day. The week-long timer on raids makes this a little bit harder to swallow.

How much can you determine about someone from their guild tag? Andrys of Arathor believes that she should be able to rely on someone's performance based on the guild they're in. She's disappointed that she invited a low DPS player because of a guild tag. She then checked the armory profile to see that the player was ranked 8 in the guild, presumably a friends and family rank. The post finished with "Boot your friends."

I've been watching this thread for a couple of days, and am surprised it hasn't gotten more attention. Klepsacovic of Zul'jin pointed out that guild ranks are listed on the armory, and the OP should have checked there. Some people are in the habit of checking the armory for any potential groupmates? I am not, then again, I don't check guild tag either when PUGging. To me bad players can come in many flavors, tanks that don't pay attention to mana, low DPS that are not interested in constructive feedback, loot ninjas, unpleasant people, and anyone who refuses to follow directions or kill order.

I knew I couldn't be the only quirky person in WoW. Talonhunter of EU-Tarren Mill's thread on the general forums helps me feel a little bit better. He asked what people's "ticks" are, citing "Every time I engage a mob, I strafe a few steps to either side," and "When I have done a brief dismount, to gather something or likewise, I always run a few steps before I get back on my mount again."

There are some things that seem odd, but actually appear to be common. Some examples include jumping when charging or when summoning a flying mount, obsession with repairing gear, and checking out what every linked item looks like. I have some of the habits mentioned in the thread, and a few others:

Breaking news: a few people still play Warlock and many of them still drive healers crazy. Bravely posting on a Level 1 Alt, Suepah of Wildhammer posed the question, "Why do healers care if I life tap to 10% or so?" She says that even if she taps down when the tank is pulling, she uses a bandage and stays out of the way of the mobs.

Timing is a major key, life tapping while the tank is pulling draws attention away from the task at hand. It also draws away from the healer's mana. My healer gets very frustrated when a Lock takes over his mana pool. To the point where he wanted to take a third rogue instead of a Warlock in a PUG. Life Tap is a cool ability in extended combat situations, but Warlocks can eat or drink at the end of a fight just like any other class.

"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels."
- Faith Whittlesey

Kazug of EU-Defias Brotherhood is afraid that he will never be able to take on the role of main taink against Heroic Malygos. He pointed out that although tanks are relatively scarce in five man instances, there is fierce competetion for tanking slots in 25 mans. One out of five players must be a tank in five mans, whereas only one in twenty-five can be main tank in a raid. He feels that only the best of the best, the ones with the most time as he defines it, are able to take on the role of main tank.

Other tanks are left taking out the trash on single-tank fights. Several posters echoed Kazug's sentiment. Despite a dedication to tanking, they're relegated to the roll of picking up adds in most fights. Others indicated that their guilds rotate MTs or even have tanks roll off for main tanking responsibilities. For some guilds the MT is the MT and that's all there is to it.

Badeggplant of Hyjal is frustrated that Starfall will lose its random-proc stun effect from Celestial Focus in patch 3.0.8. In her eyes this removes the utility of the spell and makes it a poor use of mana with a long cool down. She believes that the damage from the spell should be increased to replace the missing stun.

What's interesting about this thread was Ghostcrawler's response. Blizzard is working to remove random proc stuns, such as this one, but also mentioned that Blackout will soon be on the blacklist. He claims that Blizzard is "waging a war" against random stun effects. Many are concerned that Impact will also be impacted.