Well, everyone else is doing it, and everyone loves a good PuG story, right?

With how much the blogosphere is raving about the awesomeness of the new LFG tool (“OMG I did like 11 heroics tonight and I don’t even need any loot!”), and how it’s the best feature ever added to WoW EVAR, it made me feel really nostalgic for random dungeons. So, I resubbed my WoW account (for one month only, just in case I get bored again by next month) and logged in to my level 38 dwarf rogue.

I was in Stormwind, and queued myself to a “Random Classic Dungeon” with the tool, and as it did not find me a group IMMEDIATELY, got on a gryphon to Stranglethorn, which is where I was last questing on this character during the free Thanksgiving week.

By the time I got to the northern flight point and went out to kill a couple of panthers (still trying to remember where all of my buttons are) I was informed that I had been placed in a random dungeon. Of course, it did not tell me which dungeon it was, as that would most likely convince people to just keep queueing for “random” dungeons and dropping if they get one they don’t want. I can see the logic here.

Upon clicking the button to teleport to the dungeon, I discovered I was in Scarlet Monastery: Cathedral. Immediately upon zoning in, a hunter’s pet dragonhawk aggroed on the first guard, and chomped on it for a bit until people got their bearings and ran over to help.

“Well, that was a good start.” says I.

To summarize:

Ret pally – tanking, with a two-handed sword. He said he had Righteous Fury on, and I’m not entirely sure if that’s true — I wasn’t seeing it on my bars, but I’m not sure if that’s because it wasn’t on or because there’s some bug or setting with Pitbull. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, since we weren’t really having any issues with aggro here. He was also remarkably alive despite his lack of shield, and the fact that he had never tanked before ever. Also liked to swear quite a bit.

Shaman – Healing, and actually specced for it, with visible cloth heirloom shoulders and some kind of dress. Constantly prodding ret pally, asking him why he’s only pulling one mob at a time, or why he’s cleaning every single trash mob out of the corners of the place. Rolled need on a BoE blue gun that dropped, stating “I have a hunter alt who needs it” and we argued “That’s not really how Need rolls work” but ultimately didn’t care, because although my rogue does not have a ranged weapon (it’s an heirloom bone bow that my hunter has equipped at the moment) I wouldn’t want that one anyway. What’s the point of a ranged weapon with no stats on it? It’s not like my rogue is shooting it for damage.

Feral druid – Me + the druid = 50% of this run’s total damage. Pretty much tied the whole time. Keep in mind that I have an all-purpose macro that spams /startattack and Sinister Strike, but I was also having trouble remembering to use Blade Flurry and Slice and Dice. We’d often stealth at the same time, both go after the same caster mob in the back at the same time. I have no objections.

Hunter – Was not only doing very little damage, but her pet seemed to be set on Aggressive when we started, and after we told her to switch it to Defensive, it still seemed to have Growl turned on. The ret pally was seriously annoyed, threatened to rip its throat out if it didn’t stop that.

By the time we got to the stairs, we voted to kick Hunter out and found a replacement within a matter of seconds…

Mage – Did a good percent of the group’s damage despite coming in halfway through. I think she was the reason I finally found a button for an opening move that wasn’t Cheap Shot on my bars and looked up to notice that Mograine was at about 10% health.

I got some nice boots off of that undead guy (yeah, I know they’re green, but this rogue was boosted some 10 levels by residual RAF bonuses and then left to rot in Stranglethorn as a cross-faction auction alt for a few months. Her gear stinks) and the bag I got from finishing the place contained a Tumultuous Ring of the Bandit, perfectly itemized for me, very slightly less good than my Aquamarine Signet of the Monkey, strange because that ring is 3 item levels less, but has 6 more attack power and 1 more stamina. Luckily, my other ring was just the Seal of Wrynn, so now I have two kickass rings.

I also ended up with the Aegis of the Scarlet Commander to vendor, since the paladin apparently didn’t see much of a need to correct his lack of a shield.

Sorry about the downtime the other day, my internet hosting company has this odd habit of charging me for my domain renewal early, and if my credit card is declined (due to switching to a different card since renewing it last year), disabling my account before it actually runs out of time (since I purchased my domain name as a christmas present to myself, on my laptop while opening presents on christmas morning a number of years ago, it is not scheduled to run out of time until the 26th, but for some odd reason, my hosting that also works off a one-year plan seems to have a different expiry date) but my attempts to argue this point have never been successful in the past.

It doesn’t help that they never send me any emails to warn me about it. I remember that being the problem last year, when I was unemployed and extremely low on cash, and my website going down caught me by quite a bit of surprise. I argued with them that they had given me no forewarning that they would disable my website, and I know for certain that I updated my email address with them after that fiasco. I surely did. Didn’t I? Oh well. I’m gonna go do that now, just so I can look back at this post when they disable my website in early December next year.

But FYI, I’ve been thinking about starting up my WoW account, just for this month, to check out 3.3 and see if I can have a blast pugging low level instances for a while. I LOVE running low level instances, and if the new LFG tool works as well as they say, it may be less of a “sit in LFG waiting for a group for three hours while doing quests,” and more of a “hey, I wanna run Deadmines on my level 18 warrior a few times tonight, I think I’ll go do that.” We shall see.

I am not entirely convinced that I have not fractured my ribs from all the coughing. I googled it last night, and it is apparently possible to do this, though I really do try my best to not be a cyberchondriac. I tend to look up symptoms for the educational value, and then think to myself “oh, isn’t that interesting, but that probably isn’t what’s wrong with me.”

Kinda like when I had the flu and I looked up information on Swine Flu, it’s like “well, the symptoms are the same and it’s no more dangerous, and the only way you can tell the difference is a lab test, so it doesn’t REALLY matter….”

It is totally possible to fracture your ribs from coughing, because the diaphragm is one of the most powerful muscles in the body. Some people report that fractured ribs feel like a very dull ache (which this does) and that coughing hurts a great deal (which it does) and sneezing, in particular, is one of the most painful things you can possibly do, which I am inclined to agree with, though I have only sneezed once since gaining this pain, I am not likely to want to do so again. The coughing is bad enough.

Though pretty much the only information I gathered was that it could be either a hairline rib fracture, a torn muscle, or some other kind of torn cartilage or ligament (there’s all kinds of complex things holding your ribs together properly) and that the amount of pain and time to heal (several weeks, usually) are pretty much the same, along with the treatment. One person says basically “hairline fractures often won’t show up on an x-ray, and there’s no reason to get an expensive CT scan when the only treatment is time and painkillers.”

Though logically, I must say that it’s highly unlikely that I could fracture my ribs perfectly symmetrically so that they hurt in the same exact places on both sides. I conclude that it’s much more likely to be a torn something else.

They don’t even wrap your chest any more when you break ribs, did you know that? Apparently, the only reason they used to do it is to relieve pain, not to hold anything in place or anything like that. Since breathing deeply hurts, they figure if they bind your chest so you can’t breathe deeply, it won’t hurt as much. But then they noticed that people with their chests bound in this way rather commonly got pneumonia. Apparently the body needs to breathe deeply on a regular basis, even if it hurts, in order to aerate the lower reaches of the lungs. If you can’t, fluid collects and stagnates in your lungs and causes infections.

Which led me to (I think) a rather brilliant answer to why people yawn. When you’re sleepy, your breathing is often shallow, so your body spontaneously takes a huge gulp of air in order to ward off lung infections just before you sleep. Since humans are social creatures who usually sleep on pretty much the same schedule, our bodies are hardwired to trigger this yawn whenever we see someone else do it. It both aerates our lungs and reinforces the shared sleep schedule. Better than any other explanation I’ve been given. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Are the daggers stabbing me in the chest every time I cough worth learning something? That all depends, I think, on how much longer it takes to heal. My every effort now must be towards teaching myself to stop coughing entirely. The itch in the back of my throat makes this difficult.

Also known as “How I obtained a second invisible party member” or “People I kill need to stay dead!”

Anyone who has not seen the ending of Dragon Age and intends to complete it in the future should probably stop reading this now, this is your warning.

So I reloaded the confrontation with Loghain several times. I had already decided that I would force Alistair to marry Anora, but the first time Loghain attacked me in the court, he killed all of us and I had to start the battle over again. The second time, I defeated him. I had decided long ago that he must die for his crimes. In a silly, unthinking moment, I decided I would let Alistair kill the guy, since it meant more to him. I should have foreseen that Anora probably wouldn’t be too happy about marrying the guy she just saw kill her father. So I reloaded and killed the guy myself, and then the two of them were perfectly agreeable to a loveless marriage with me as the commander of their armies.

But then, when I got back to Denerim to go after the darkspawn horde and the Archdemon, an NPC asked me an exceptionally strange question. Well, the question was not so strange, I was being asked who should command my forces at the gate while my party went ahead and searched for the Archdemon. It was the answers that puzzled me. I was given three options. One of the options was the invisible dwarf I had rather gotten used to being there by now (and I had also rather gotten used to the times when the camera would go completely insane trying to focus on someone who wasn’t there for a few seconds and then proceed with the conversation as if nothing had happened) but the other option was someone who had just died by my own sword. It’s like the story writers for this game could not even conceive of a person who would NOT spare him by making him a Grey Warden, so they created the scene where I chop his head off and then proceed as if that was only a ceremonial beheading, he wasn’t really dead and there was nothing I could do about it from that point on.

All of my party members had one last thing to say before we went to the rest of the city. First my invisible dwarf friend, then the dog, then the french girl, then Morrigan, then the big ugly guy who never says anything, then a second invisible person. Who I have decided was the ghost of Loghain.

But someone figured out how to cast Revive, because as soon as I was done killing the Archdemon, we were at the coronation of the king and queen, and guess who was there? My two invisible party members — no longer invisible. Loghain was there asking me how I’m not dead, when I’d love to ask him the same question. I discovered that my dwarven ally has red hair and greatly enjoys booze (what dwarf doesn’t?) and I’m guessing that he must only become visible when he’s extremely drunk. I should keep more booze on hand.

But the best part? I left the building to greet my adoring public, and was shown the static text ending scenes that I have heard so much about. When it got to the part about what happened to my character, it was like “but that isn’t the last we’ve heard of her…” and then my computer bluescreened. A fitting ending to this bug-riddled game. I have to wonder if they did that on purpose.

Honestly, five years in the making, and this was the best they could do?

As much as I want to, because of Best Friend having a lifetime subscription, I just can’t get myself to play Champions Online. I love how customizable the characters are, but I hate so much more about it.

1. The Auction House. Not being able to sort your search results in any meaningful way dooms the economy to never settle — I don’t bother doing research on how much things are worth, because it’d be too time-consuming to try to calculate anything out and undercut the current people when the ones buying stuff probably aren’t going to take the same time to find the best deal. It doesn’t cost me anything to put items up and I’m mostly just doing it to get more bag space anyway. You end up with hundreds of listings, never normal stack amounts, just whatever people had in their bags at the time, put up for whatever they felt like at the time. Until there is some way to see price per item and sort by said price per item, the economy will never stabilize to have set prices for things.

2. Further, I have yet to find a single reason why I would want to buy anything at all from the Auction House, which is probably destroying the game’s attempt at an economy further. I find enough equipment while questing on my own that I’d never need to buy upgrades from the AH, and that same huge amount of gear gives me enough disenchanted mats for me to level my crafting as high as it can go and then sell the excess on the Auction House. But of course, if *I* have far more mats than I can use, everyone else probably does too. Especially since I’m only crafting things to level, I think there were only two non-bag crafted items that actually had stats that were any good for me whatsoever, and the stuff I was getting from quests was already better than those. I can make consumable healing items, but I can never remember to use the devices I have, since they’re all the way over in the corner like that.

3. Bags and Items. I am still doomed to have five completely separate bags, with no reasonable way to search between them for what I’m looking for. “Items” are mostly abstract things like “being struck by lightning” and “a mutation that makes your skin thicker” with names that really have no connection to what stats they have, and they mostly have generic, meaningless icons that I can’t really use to find “that one Secondary Defense thing I just got that had a lot of Recovery on it”. I’m doomed to search through my bags one at a time, looking at the tooltips of each item in turn, trying to find the one I’m looking for.

4. Combat lag. So here I am, doing this one quest I’ve probably had in my quest log since before I canceled my account (to be fair, it’s a quest that recommends two people) and I’m fighting these big named Master Villain demons. They’re Master Villains, so they’re not immune to my CC, so my strategy is mainly to CC them, burn down some health, then block and heal while I wait for my CC to come off cooldown. So I charge up my CC while the mob charges a big giant attack, but I get mine off first: “wait, why is the mob not CCd? It didn’t pop up a resist message at all… uh oh, there goes half my health. Oh, there, now it’s CCd. Oh, now it broke free of the CC. I should block so the next attack doesn’t take off the rest of my health. Hey, why am I not blocking? Block! Block! Oh damn, I hardly have any health left at all. I should heal! *holds down heal button* Why is my character using her energy-builder? I’m pressing the heal button! Heal! HEAL! HEAAAAAAL!!!! Oh, now my character is healing. But wait, the mob just charged up another attack… great, now I’m dead.”

5. No good AoEs. Any point-blank AoE attacks I find pretty much invariably have knockback. I don’t want to knock the enemies back, because then they won’t be in range of my AoE for me to hit them again. They’ll start hitting me with ranged attacks and I won’t be able to AoE them any more. I have to keep them in the tight group they started in. I think I’m best off trying out a frontal cone AoE, Gigabolt seemed to work pretty well in that regard. A knockback can be useful in some situations, but is less useful in day-to-day questing than an ability that simply does damage to all the low-health minions that are surrounding me. I would put points in an Advantage if it removed the knockback completely in favor of more damage. Sparkstorm was kinda neat for a while, except that ranking up its damage also increases the knockback range. What’s the point of that?

6. Retcons. I can’t go trying out other AoEs, because I wasn’t thinking straight the last time I used a free retcon, and the attack I want to replace is way down in my earlier abilities, it would cost me more gold than I have to unlearn all of them just to get down there. They specifically designed the Retcons to be as annoying as possible to do in-game to encourage people to buy them from the store for further profit. This is the problem with having both a subscription AND a microtransaction store: there’s no reason for them to improve a great annoyance if they can charge you extra to get around it. I’m fine with WoW having a microtransaction shop as long as it doesn’t go this route, and restricts it to vanity things like minipets and normal-speed mounts. But I don’t want to resort to the store, because I don’t need a full retcon. I don’t want to fully change everything about my spec to something completely different (which might as well be a class change as far as I’m concerned). I want to unlearn one particular power and replace it with a different one, but I can’t because all of the things I learned after that are locking me in. Why can’t I just replace that one, and pay the cost? No, no, I have to unlearn things in the order I learned them. Because the game says so, not because there are any prerequisites preventing me from doing it. It would cost me pretty much an entire respec fee just to change ONE ability. How is that fun? It really isn’t.

So in summary, I am sick of this game, and I don’t think any further patches are going to change the things that annoy me the most, as they are fundamental game mechanics. I actually spent more time playing WoW this weekend than Champions, because I got to use the Thanksgiving event to level my level 38 dwarf rogue’s cooking to over 300, and sit around letting people use me for Thanksgiving achievements (apparently I was the only dwarf rogue on the server at one point) and I even did a few quests in Stranglethorn! Too bad it isn’t 3.3 yet, I keep telling myself, because if it were, I’d love to spend some more time this weekend leveling my night elf warrior through dungeons as a tank. But as it is, I’m making a decision to not return to the game until Cataclysm.

I just want to know what worgen females look like already, so I can make a decision of whether I want them as my new main or to just stick to the draenei I love so much. The worgen males look pretty goofy, and their casting animations are truly awful. I only hope the worgen females are an improvement. I have to wonder why they haven’t released them yet.