One of the biggest changes to the game recently is cross-realm pugging. In my opinion and I know many share this, a fantastic and welcome change. Now that the system has been running for a few weeks the initial novelty has passed. Everyone has settled and many are undertaking endless badge farming marathons, the mobs in low level instances are receiving more bashings and hell even /2 has changed “somewhat”, so an all round success!
The interesting thing now is, some further light on the horizon of our battlegroup has been shed. As well as some new pugging trends!
New Trends (a.k.a. WTF?)
I have been away so I cannot speak from my own experience completely, so I decided to question some of the “marathon” runners I know on Horde. The general consensus was most of the runs have been relatively problem-free although the phrase “Wham, Bam, Thankyou Ma’am” comes to mind. All parties want some sort of a “happy ending” with no strings attached. However, the one thing a successful one night stand has that these pugs don’t, is that there is at least some verbal interaction!
A slightly disturbing trend, well as disturbing as things in WoW can be, is that suddenly people think rolling need on Frozen Orbs is par for the course. WTF? This would never have been tolerated pre cross-realm days at least on Horde, however according to one of my sources, he reckons 70% of the battlegroup does this and he does this now aswell.
Another issue that people I have spoken to have noticed, is some gear elitism in heroics. The person I was speaking to said he was kicked for wearing all “blues” He was a mage.I thought people were matched up with gear score? I can understand all “greens” but blue? Another WTF? On the otherside of the gear coin quite a few tanks are lining up not defense capped unable to even pull the simplist of trash packs. It seems like alot of plate wearing folk are just lining up as tanks to avoid the “long” wait regardless whether they can or cannot take the beating and avoid the others getting pulverised.
Now to get into specifics, our neighbours!
I wanted to know amongst my Horde colleagues whether any realms “stand out?” It seems the “bad ass” of our group is Al’Akir, to quote my source, “ full of preachy, elitist tools.” He was not the only one who noted the residents of Al’Akir. Some of these guys apparently still write out tactics for Ingvar the Plunderer and Keristraza even if the entire group is bedecked with badge sparklies. LMAO! They also are the type that explode if there is one tiny mistake and they are the ones that write “GOGOGO” while everyone is still buffing. Having a look at their forums to learn more about this “hell” realm, I noticed quite a few guilds are jumping ship, mostly Alliance, apparently the population is heavily Horde favoured. The reverse situation from what we have here, but more extreme. Realm Status gives the following figures Alliance 12.64% Horde 87.36%.
Some of the other noteworthy realms were Dragonblight, Sunstrider and Aszune. Pretty much the same story as Al’Akir, however with smaller doses of elitism and higher doses of childish behavior “Your Mum” jokes and CAPS tantrums. Interesting to hear was that the idiot factor was not exclusive to one realm type. I always assumed most of the people with questionable attitudes were from PVP servers.
On a positive note, I am glad some people remembered some “good realms” Doomhammer and Azjol- Nerub came up. People from those realms were all in all polite, efficient knew how to play their role and were a pleasure to group with.
For those that still don’t know which realms are in Blackout (we are one of the larger groups) They are :-
Agamaggan – PVP
Aggramar – Normal
Al’Akir – PVP
Arathor – Normal
Aszune – Normal
Azjol-Nerub – Normal
Bladefist – PVP
Bloodhoof – Normal
Bloodscalp – PVP
Doomhammer – Normal
Draenor – Normal
Dragonblight – Normal
Emerald Dream – Normal
Sunstrider – PVP
Twilight’s Hammer – PVP
Warsong – PVP
Zenedar – PVP
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I have to admit, I have been pleasantly surprised about how good most of the people I have pugged with have been. But they _moostly_ fall into the ‘very goog’ or ‘I’m out of here’ categories. I still see lots of groups who roll greed on the icy balls!
I have seen tanks in blues with low gear scores who kept aggro and (as a healer) were quite easy tro keep alive. I have seen tanks with ‘epix’ and significantly high gear score who do not understand that they need aggro from the entire group or the first heal I cast will pull all but their one target onto me. Likewise, I have seen ‘tanks’ with less health than me!!
But, the lack of chat seems to be growing. OK, so we’re all in an instance for a quick run through, but to not even say ‘Hello’? How much effort does it take?!
I have also been known to quit a group when I asked who the tank was (got no answer and it really was not obvious from gear, talents or aggro…. And ‘no’ the group did not overpower the instance) and also vote-kick someone when I asked ‘You know you’re wearing all pvp gear?’ and got no answer.
Dragonblight. Particularly mages from Dragonblight. For some reason I’ve never had a good one but the one who replied to my hello with
“I already have one friend, I don’t need another one, gogogo”
was a particular highlight.
I’ve basically stopped doing full pugs and only go when at least one guildie is with me, that way there are at least two of us to make fun of the rest of the group in /g and it’s much more bearable
Before I went on holiday, I think the patch had only been live for a week or so, the groups I personally experienced were all good. I think there was one tank that was chain pulling so fast we finished UK in about 10 minutes. Great!! though he never said a word
Regarding the orbs funny enough it seems its also becoming apparent in other battlegroups, glad there are some folk that still greed.
The funny thing I was trying to heal with my mini preisty in WSG yesterday and all the /bg whiners were from Dragonblight and Al’Akir! So I guess the behavior starts from baby levels.
Of Course, there are exceptions and I am sure there are plenty of nice people from the “bad” realms!
“I have also been known to quit a group when I asked who the tank was (got no answer and it really was not obvious from gear, talents or aggro…. And ‘no’ the group did not overpower the instance)…”
I ran into something similar yesterday on my DK. Wanted to run Nexus to do the quests so I queued as DPS (not going to embarrass myself tanking yet). Got a group and the tank was a Paladin. It soon became clear that he wasn’t able to tank… after about the second wipe he whispered me with ‘i don’t have tanking gear, do you have tanking gear?’
Turns out he was specced and geared for DPS. When we asked him why he queued for tank if he couldn’t tank he replied ‘i dont want to wait 20 mins for 1 instan’ which, naturally, didn’t exactly endear him to us. He left after another wipe (although we managed to get Grand Magus Telestra down, somehow) and a level 80 guildie of one of the group members very kindly came to help out, so happy ending there at least.
My pug luck in general seems to be pretty rotten at the moment.
Al’Akir is indeed a seriously annoying realm, mostly they have such greatness problems that they like to kick people out of HCs. I had this on my newly dinged paladin, the paladin is geared in mostly blue’s and the libram is green. Not much problem for a paladin since you can still cough up about 2000-2500 dps with the crappiest gear, But this warlock from Al’Akir was so fed-up with it that he tried to votekick me, the votekick didnt pass and I remained in the group (1-0 for social players that chat friendly). Next thing he tried was making me leave myself, he spitted his hate over me and was really trying to force me out of the instance (being Gundrak)!
So ofc I wanted to know what this fuss was all about, I inspected the lock and checked out his gear..
he was geared in full furious with some relentless gladiator offset pieces. Obviously I questioned him if this was the gear he was planning to PvE with. His reply: “Yes, Im farming badges” O.o WTF?!
/votekick the warlock
votekick succeeded
bye bye warlock
Tbh i never bother looking at the servers. And usually am pretty lucky with randoms, even if i’m pugging alone (i NEVER tank).
Weirdest one was a tank that got off after the first pull with this line: “sorry guys, too stoned to tank, sorry”.
Anyway, how can i define a custom avatar pic? Couldn’t figure it out and most of the time i’m quick at workarounds ><
Gravatar.com somehow I managed to get it to work, but don’t ask me how! Shell is the all things related to internet boffin.
stupid system, names are uniques and i can’t use Vogel. Meh
You don’t need a name, it goes off email address.
And Mogs, you don’t need to be a boffin to work the internet, leave me alone :p
Every Al’akir warrior is Bladestorm. They will always without fail charge into every group of mob, use Bladestorm, pull aggro and die. I’ve seen it over and over and over. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m getting grouped with the same guy cause I never remember names.
This was a good one.
I randomed up for a Heroic and got assigned Halls of Reflection. I teleport in to find a group already on the 3rd wave and me locked out behind the door >.>
Come to the boss, guy already dead, me locked out, the group wipes. DK has like 1000 dps. Group curses and swears at one another, much QQ, then everyone leaves the group. I’m now groupless with a 10 minute dungeon cooldown without ever having hit a mob…
testing avatar..
hmm doesn’t seem to be working <.<
Ive been running loads of pugs. Geared my badly geared druid from blues and a few crafted epics to complete T9 (resto) in 2 days and complete T9 balance in another 2 days (love instant ques as a healer). Mostly good experiences. Some pretty poor groups with people pulling below 1.5k dps.
Had a hunter in HoS today who barely managed 1500 dps in full T9 badge gear & decent gun. Most of his damage was from volley which he even used on single targets. The others werent much better and the warrior tank did the most damage (and highest dps) by about 20% compared to number 2 on the meters. Was pathetic.
Have noticed the rolling need on orbs – I just wait to see what people roll and if they roll need I roll need too.
Overall my experiences have been pretty good though. Few poor tanks here and there (and some who like to charge ahead pulling everything cause they think they are are so pro and dont stop to give the healer a change to get some mana). I told one the other day 3 times to stop and let me get mana. He didnt. So I just said “Stop and let me get mana because if you pull anything else Im just letting you die”. He pulled. I let him die.
I like going fast through instances – but some of them (like HoR and the trash before the tunnel in PoS) do take alot of healing and you do need a break!
Never had problems with the new LFG system, never had an annoying person or someone moaning at me. “OMG NICE PVP GEAR” “What’s ur rating?” are the things I often hear when I join a group, a whisp quickly follows about what setups I run and what tactics I use vs certain setups, I find this quite amusing and enjoyable
. I also grouped up with some RL friends that play on other servers and ex-emerald dreamers.
I like grouping up with strangers, one time I was grouped with the best rogue on the entire battlegroup! Shame u can’t duel in instances
It’s fun getting whispers like: “Does grieve still have a high pitched voice?” “omg still playing arena?” “Are you still in Mestaya?” “Does person X still play and is he still playing arena with person Z” and then find out it’s an ex guildie or ex team mate ^^
you are getting me curious Vinna…
but your name doesn’t ring a bell to me and I know allot of the ED PvPers, both horde and ally side.
Do you happen to know me? and what is your char name and class etc?
I love to duel and Im going to start taking arena serious in S8
u’re a newbie Vossie, shush :3
I am indeed a bit new ye, only played for about 1.5year.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I am one of the most well known and respected players on ED ^^
And cmon vogel, telling me to shush? you should know better..
its like telling fire not to burn you, nubcake
Vossie, think this may answer your question http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/player/EU-Emerald%20Dream/ Vinna (Vinnayo) is joint highest ranked on the server with team mate Sevani at the end of this season.
Ah yes, looks very nice.
mage/rogue is a pretty hard setup to play, requires allot of communication and synergy between both players. I havent been able to play the setup properly yet, most likely because Im a dueler (with the exception of some setup tries and baby steps into arena) so I still strugle a bit with working together.
In S8 Im going to try disc/frost as main setup. This setup doesnt require that much communication and if you screw up once it doesnt mean your partner gets 3hitted (wich is mostly the case with rogue/mage) so it will be a nice setup to start with arena.
anyways, keep an eye out for me since Im heading your way! ^^ or atleast trying to
I hate people like that who won’t wait a second to buff up or go to the loo, they just want to get through it so they can go to another heroic, I also hate disconnecting for 2 minutes and finding when I relog that I have been kicked without a thought.
Al’Akir are definitely the worst I’ve come across although it’s not terribly different from pugs pre-patch. Sadly there are elitist numnuts in ED as well with their link achievment demands.
I have to admit my Pug luck so far has been ok. I have had 3 or four bad runs and guess who the main culprits where…dah dah dah dahhhh Al’Akir!, Saying that tho, after dinging 80 on my shadow priest, grabbing the pre made epics and updating spell ranks I signed up for toc normal . I had a group from Aszune and I warned them that i literally just dinged 80, 20 minutes ago. waiting for the usual “ffs just what we need” or “I didnt sign up to boost the nub priest” reply, they /soothed me and said “no problem hun, we’ll see you through
” And they were lovely, a ring dropped and they insisted I have it and were really chatty and friendly. Found doomhammer players and Agamaggan players really friendly and laid back aswell.
Meh, the achievement link isn’t that bad..
it’s just a short way to check if everyone knows the fights.
you used to ask everyone how much dps they could do, if they knew all the tacts for all the fights and whatever, now you just ask for an achievement.
I think i have been pretty lucky with the lfg, had a few oo screw this im leaving and people rolling on everything. But the whole system came at a pretty good time for me as I had just dinged my hunter and was really wanting to make it my new main but gearing was going to be hard as I was so far behind and i didn’t want to be carried by friends… but the new system arrived so i just bit the low dps and bad gear bullet and did as many as i could.. i was also lucky i did a toc normal and the group were farming it also so we did about 10+ runs and all got lucky with the drops. I have to say tho i dread getting Hor because no matter what someone always breaks my trap on the ranged add. As im a dps and on horde i dont find the queues too bad and most runs are speed runs.. would be nice to have a chat (i talk to much as it is) with new people but i always say hello and ty for the run. One weird thing tho i have noticed, is if i join a grp on aly with some rl friends it always seems to go really bad but maybe its us causing it..I haven’t tried leveling a new char and getting the low level instances but i hear thats pretty successful.
A friend of mine and I are leveling via instances as a tank and healer! I ran my first couple of Ragefire Chasms and was really surprised how well those runs went. Everyone knew what they were doing, there was a newbie in one of the runs who was asking a couple of questions and everyone was really helpful. However there were still a few folk who felt typing “hello” was a bit much. Anyway looking forward to more lowbie runs
Vossie, what if it was me wanting in on one of my alts?
I’ve done all the fights on Nec but my achieves are on Nec. I can’t link his achieves from my Hunter.
And that is one of the reasons the “Link Achievement” system is flawed.
Nec hunny, I wouldn’t even let you in on your main.
Sometimes I think you need to look at things from a different perspective too. Having a tank that cannot hold aggro is of course inexcusable (to some extend) but if he dies because he is only wearing blues hardly is. If you think back to when you first hit level 80 and started running heroics pulling multiple trash packs and aoe’ing them down was not the easiest thing to do. Wiping on Anomalus wasn’t unheard of and surviving Loken’s Lightning Nova was quite hard – even the three spider packs before Krik’thir was something we wiped on more than once occassion. Right now we outgear it to a large degree, but people new to the game or people playing their alts need to catch up – and that is one thing the LFG system is good for and ment for.
Of course some people are going to work around and queue for a role they are unable to fulfil – since waiting in queue for 10+ minutes is not very fun when queueing as a tank garantees you entrance instantly. It serves a huge inconvenience for everyone else and you end up wasting a lot of time on banalities. I guess it would be nice to see people just levelling up something like 60-80 using the LFG system and be somewhat capable of pulling their weight in heroic instances – and I suppose it is even the fastest way to level in any regard these days – but unless they match people up with gear first and then instance difficulty later I do not see things change much any time soon.
I leveled my paladin from lvl 76 to 80 using only LFG because I got really sick of questing and they implented this system, you get an average of 10% XP from 1 dungeon so its pretty quick and I liked it allot better then boring quests + you get some nice gear and allot of emblems at the same time.
Have had a real mixed bag on LFG, during peak hours when the gear matching seems to work, have had great groups either when DPSing or tanking, people able to heal, not run low on mana and keep pulling quickly, with breaks where needed. That said, I find low dps groups, especially late at night, to be disappointing. I’m genuinely surprised how low dps some people can go, rogues and dks under 1000 dps at 80 is laughable and when I as a pally tank doing around 2k dps am the top damage overall, does make me wonder what some people have done from 1-80 if not just mashed the keyboard repeatedly.
I don’t look out for servers and have yet to ignore anyone but I do always feel a sense of foreboding seeing HoR on the random.
One thing I have seen and it was picked up on on the ED forum site was the lack of and unwillingness to use CC. We have CC for a reason, sure you don’t need it for a good group in UK, but in HoR on the first 2 bosses or in PoS on the way up to the gauntlet, it becomes so much easier, perhaps more so for the healer, if you shackle or use pally fear, avoiding CC is a rather sad indication of the desire to farm instances in 10 seconds and not savour the place.
My other complaint is the automatic assumption that everyone wants to skip half the bosses (Eck in Gund for example or caster woman/mushroom in OK), it’s fair enough if you say early and see what people think but sometimes you just need 1-2 badges and it’s annoying to then have to instance again as someone wants to save 2 minutes.
See, I have to say, speaking from the alli side only here, we’re [me, the mr, our guild] noticing more problems with Azjol Nerub players – or rather ‘azjol nub’ as we’ve started to freudian-ly slip into…
To the point now where we come into a PuG that’s got AN players in and actually go ‘aw crap!’ – don’t get me wrong, some are good. But the overwhelming trend we’ve found thus far has not been favourable to that realm at all!
It seems to be common issues with the players who are problematic too; having little – if any clue – of what they’re doing, while at the same time seeing fit to throw fits at everyone else about how they’re uber leet and know better ad infinitum, and the whole attitude of ‘im doing you a favour by just being here’. Ah, the joys.
Mostly though, I have to say I agree, I really like what the cross-realm pug system has done and think it’s really been a change for the better in the game
I liked the new cross realm lfg until recently, when the sheer amount of lazy people who skip as many bosses as possible just to get the 2 frost emblems is getting annoying. Especially when at the start people agree to go to all the bosses. because you join with a specific dungeon to do them not random. Then half way through you get a new tank, explain whats happening he ignores you and continues to head to the final boss leaving the 2 dps and healer stood still. Not being able to vote kick as you vote kicked the other person who was offline. 1 person vote kicked but the other 2 people are now not able to vote kick the new ignorant tank and the party leader not being able to remove said pleb. Therefore the tank and one dps manage to finish the dungeon, and exit after grabbing the loot. Leaving you and said friends stood there going >.< not being able to rejoin the instance queue as you are saved and completed it and not being able to finish off the fricking bosses!