WoWeekend

I had one of those glorious weekends that didn't require that I go to work, so I essentially did nothing but play WoW. I mostly played my priest (who is now at 30), hunter (now at 44), and our paladin/shaman duo has shuffled along to The Barrens, now in the early teens.

Early on Saturday, I started looking for a BFD group for my priest. I was available on the LFG list for most of the morning while I popped around, questing in Ashenvale and Thousand Needles, and finally got a note from someone just after lunchtime. It was a name I sort of recognized, but he wasn't on my list of people to avoid, so I joined his group. Long story short, is paladin is on the list now. He screamed at people the entire time in all caps, calling them idiots and so forth. To be fair, we did have at least one person in the group who didn't know what they were doing. It was a hunter (I think people use the term "huntard" too liberally, but I think that in this case, it may have applied). Her pet ran all over the place, attacking things willy nilly. Instead of screaming, I asked her nicely to please turn off growl, put her pet on passive, etc, etc, etc, but she never responded in any way (not a verbal acknowledgment of the request even). When we got to the bit where we all had to jump across the platforms in the water, she did so without dismissing her pet, and so the cat ran all the way around, bringing a trail of murlocs behind it. Greaaaat. After this, one guy left the group, and I really wanted to leave, but it had taken so long to get a group together, I was determined to stay on.

We got a fifth person to join, and so the jerky paladin ordered me to come help him summon them and ordered everyone else to stay put. The hunter, of course, followed. Again, a rollicking all caps berating, but it did not deter the hunter. So, he told me to stay behind since this hunter was so insistent upon coming with him. Soooo... hunter got yelled at for the entire run back to the stone. The person they were going to summon must have taken this as a warning sign and dropped out of the group, as did the other guy who was waiting in the instance with me. So, I dropped out of the group and decided to try for another later on. (Oh, and why I recognized the name in the first place -- turns out he'd hassled my husband before about joining his group for an instance, though my husband declined and was spared the experience I had just had.)

An hour or so later (after this paladin had logged off), I put myself on the lists for SFK and BFD. I got a bite for SFK first, and it was easily the highlight of my weekend (pug-wise). I was a mid-instance replacement and I was the second priest in the party. They asked what my spec was, and I said shadow, but that I'd mostly been healing in instances so far. I said I'd be fine with either role. The other priest was lower level, and she suggested that she heal since I could deal out a lot more damage. "You'll probably end up tanking, too," joked the rogue in the party. Heh... anyway, it was a total blast playing in a group as a shadow priest, and I'm actually questioning now whether I'll respec her to holy later. Still plenty of time to decide...

After that lovely group finished, someone asked if anyone would like to stay on for BFD. (Hey, sounds like a story I told before!). I agreed to stay on, since BFD was the instance I'd hoped to do in the first place. Again, one person had to leave, so I crossed my fingers for an equally nice/competent replacement. While we were waiting at the summoning stone by BFD for folks to finish their training and repairs, one of the other remaining people left and were immediately replaced by another person from the rogue's guild. I wondered why they weren't added as a fifth. It came out shortly after that this new person was the one I'd replaced in SFK. Huh. And then, a level 70 joined the group. Grr...

I fired a quick message to the group leader, the rogue, saying, "Oh, so we're getting a walkthrough?"

"Yeah!" she said. "[Her Guild] is so AWESOME." Um, perhaps. What is not awesome is not asking everyone in the group if this is how they'd like to proceed. I actually like to play through instances. I want the experience points, I want the practice. But, I decided not to be a baby about it. I'd just do a real run later. (When you turn in one of the quests, they ask you to go back in again anyway, so, no big deal.)

Somehow, even though we had a full group now, it was taking forever for us to get started. The rogue was waiting for her dad to call her (for "just two minutes"), and so we were left to sit by the stone watching the new arrival (level 25 or so) duel the level 70. It was funny for about the first 10 minutes, and then I just started to get bored. Again, knowing that the instance itself would be quick, I tried to control my impatience. We finally got going and the level 70 totally blew the doors off the place.

Seemed unlikely I'd be able to get another BFD group together right away, and my priest had gotten to the point where all her regular quests were group quests, or quests she wasn't strong enough to complete alone (yellow quests can be tough when you're squishy), so I set her aside to play my hunter a bit.

The first thing my hunter did was trick-or-treat and get turned into a frog. I hopped my little froggy body out of the inn in Grom'gol and ran to the mailbox. As I passed by the bonfire, someone cast a buff on me and my giant cat, who was running behind me. They said the sight of the two of us cracked them up, that it was the funniest thing they'd seen all day. I said I was just grateful that my cat still recognized me...

I'm still a bit nervous about doing instances with my hunter, because I'm still not comfortable doing much beyond letting my pet tank for me. I know how to let the cat hold aggro and so forth, but I haven't played around much with traps or anything like that. BRK's videos have been eye opening. It's clear that there's a lot more to being a hunter than siccing my pet on a mob, waiting a few seconds, and shooting at it.

But anyway, I did run Scarlet Monastery (Cathedral) with my hunter, and everything went fine. (Well, except that everyone else in the pug thought it was fine for people to roll greed on BoP items, even if they couldn't use them. I can't wait until I get to a point where I can run more instances with my guildmates...)