Posts with tag cat-stealth

Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we go to pet our kitties and discover that they are not there.

I am going to take a short break from stomping Moore's music selections flatter than a Kansas prairie in order to include a Monty Python video, which I think we can all agree is a necessary sacrifice this week given both our subject material and the title that was guaranteed to result.

I had the pleasure of meeting a completely new player on my server not all that long ago. He'd rolled a rogue and was slowly making his way through both levels and the avalanche of bewilderment common to new players. I haven't forgotten what it was like to be tossed into a world of frequent acronyms and gamer parlance, and I spent some time giving him tips. Between making helpful suggestions like, "Wow, I guess you can't jump off the Thunder Bluff elevator at that point" and "Did you ever consider rolling a druid?", I discovered that he was in the habit of dying a lot.

For new players, that's not unusual, but it was how he was dying that really got my attention. Starting most fights from Stealth, he'd sneak up to a mob, most typically from the front, and then attempt to circle to the side or rear for a Backstab opener. A good 90% of the time, the mob would attack him midway through the process, which -- as you can imagine -- is a disconsolate state of affairs for someone who aspires to be an invisible ninja.

As soon as I saw this, I said, "Well, that's your problem right there."

"What is?"

"You are not an invisible ninja."