After a World of Warcraft lifetime, mostly consisting of hitting things in with axes very, very hard, the end is in sight. Level 60 now twinkles on the horizon like an oasis city across a moonlit desert, promising riches, status, wealth and most of all, an end to the constant slaughter, and a quiet life in domestic retirement. My axes will be things I hang over the fireplace, and show to my grandchildren on winter nights…
Of course, I have to get there first, and I still have seven levels to go, and I’m now at that difficult age where I am a commodity. ‘c-"Warrior" 50-60’ is all it takes for some loot-hungry Instance-whore with ideas well above his ability to lead or organise, to get a list of potential Main Tanks for his farming run, and despite Warriors being one of the most common classes in game, they still seem to end up with my name more often than is fair. Probably all the other Warriors are smart enough to do what I seem incapable of doing; answering ‘No, I’m busy’ to the dreaded purple text recruiting tell.
For me, the persistent nagging that maybe the foam-nosed floppy-headed group-dependent muppets might be right is the killer; – what am I doing playing a MMORPG in which I never group? This time it’ll be different…this time will be an unforgettable experience! And, yes…it was…
My first clue was the invitation to join the ‘Raid’ – a new experience for me. Well, new apart from the time on my Alliance character when I didn’t understand, and ended up trying to lead a 12-man raid into the Deadmines, purely because we had too many people and I didn’t want to tell anyone they couldn’t come. I think we were all a bit confused that day. But this time it was the Blackrock Depths, a big evil-dwarf hollowed-out volcano city thing with all sorts of fire creatures wandering about the place, etc. Apparently, it’s intended for 10-player raids, of Level 52+
And so we ten became The Fellowship of the Zerg – ten muppets vs the volcano; two warriors (including me), a hunter, three warlocks, two priests, a shaman and a mage. I guess that makes me Boromir.
It took everyone about half an hour to assemble and begin, and I have no idea how long they’d been waiting while every other Warrior on the server turned the assignment down. It was a fairly balanced group, I think, but having only ever done five-man crawls before, I have no idea what a good 10-man roster looks like. Still, nor did the leader, who seemed to have just worked his way through the Who ’50-60’ list until the seats were filled. I'm guessing 'More Priest Plz' is the way...
So we gear up, buff up and begin. Already I’ve had the presence of mind to sort out with the other Warrior who was going to be Main Tank - standard routine. This turned out to be rather optimistic in the end, as the monsters seem to come at you in groups of four or more ‘Elite’ class enemies (i.e. intended for a group of three or more EACH), and despite knowing my role fairly well, I found it impossible to keep all four enemies focusing on me in the confusion. We lost about eight people in that first fight when a second group of four, patrolling, wandered straight into the fray. We resurrected the fallen, buffed up again, and tried again. And again…
Progress seemed to come at the cost of at least one dead raid member per fight, and the whole trip was basically characterised by its total and utter chaos- and no-one seemed that fazed by this! The fact that we were making progress at all seemed largely down to numbers – the classic Zerg tactics taught to our forefathers by StarCraft. There were so many of us all wailing away that most of us would sort of survive, and having both priests knocked out without soulstones (i.e. Total Wipeout) was just an unlikely statistic.
The fights degenerated into melee furballs almost instantly, no matter how carefully I tried to pull, as in their eagerness to be useful, the various cloth-classes would open up with huge artillery strikes far out-damaging me and the other warrior, who would often be busy pulling something else at the same time anyway. Despite being in a raid, I could still only see my own group’s health bars, so had no idea who I needed to taunt enemies off of, unless they were in my half of the team, so ended up just running about trying to taunt as many of the mobs as I could at once in a desperate attempt to stop some warlock getting the ever-loving snot kicked out of him, again.
Chaos breeds chaos, and after a while, when it became evident that thinking about it wasn’t going to make a lot of difference, I just gave up and joined the zerging, which seemed to produce similar results anyway: all the monsters dead, most of our team still alive. The Fellowship pressed on, and after a pretty despondent and extremely costly push, we ended up at some Evil Dwarf Bank. Let me sketch out the scene for you, D&D style:
You are in an ornate stone chamber with one exit, behind your party. Along each of the walls loom massive steel vault doors, each exquisitely crafted with runic script and baroque hingework, five to a wall. Each door has a large lock-plate in the centre with a keyhole in the middle. It looks like the big stack of keys you’ve been collecting from the corpses of the evil dwarfs for the last hour might fit in them. In the centre of the chamber stand four grim looking statues, of dwarven design, but twisted and malevolent expressions on their faces. Each carries a large stone hammer in both hands, and arms raised, as if about to strike anyone passing underneath. The eyes seem to stare bleakly at you. The air is arid and uncomfortably hot, and behind you, out in the main city plaza, you can hear the sound of distant alarms and the tramp of dwarf boots. What do you do?
Yes, you’ve got it – obviously, we run into the room, and immediately go for the vault doors. Well, I say ‘we’ – I didn’t, because I’ve played at least one game of Dungeons and Dragons ever and spotted Generic Golem Trap #7 right away. However, before I could type ‘Hey guys, don’t open the doors all at once, or until we’re buffed up and ready’, they’d opened all the doors at once before we were buffed up and ready. Nothing happened right away mind you, so I relaxed a bit, then once my guard was down, and I was wandering over to have a look at one of the doors myself, the room filled with angry evil dwarfs, and the statues came to life. Doh!
Bear in mind, everyone in that room will have most likely gone through at least seven distinct lower-levelled five-man instances to get to their current dizzy veteran-hood; what did they THINK was going to happen? Anyway, The Fellowship of the Zerg got their ass handed to them big-style at that point; completely blindsided and scattered, we died alone, one at a time, not only ‘pwn’d’, but completely ‘Kazad-Dum’d’ into the bargain. Clearly we didn’t have enough hobbits.
I lay there, dead, enjoying the rest and thought about the pros and cons of the expedition so far.
Pros: an anecdote for my website thing.
Cons: much less xp than if I’d just spent the afternoon out in Ungoro beating on dinosaurs, much less loot than if I’d just spent the afternoon out in Felwood beating on furbolgs, and much more equipment repair costs than if I’d just spend the afternoon out in the Western Plaguelands, beating on spiders, and most importantly, much more feelings of inadequacy than if I’d have done ANY of the above.
And then I realised the worst bit; this was my first ever raid, and post-60, that’s ALL there is to do, only its forty people, instead of just ten. I’m sure I’m wrong and a noob, but how is any kind of planning and teamwork possible with forty people all just charging about and beating on stuff? Teamspeak is not a magic bullet!
I think that was the point I decided to pull a Frodo, and carry the XP Ring to Mount Lv60 on my own, and thanks to my brief membership of The Fellowship of The Zerg, I now understand his real reasons for doing so…