The constant refrain in the recruitment channels (ie. Trade) now on WoW tells the story of the game's progression. If you are not in a raiding guild, you have to resort to PUGs (which are plentiful nowadays) but PUGs have become far more picky about their membership now that they are armed with the tools to measure prospective members. Achievements and Gear Score. Now, of course, I could simply lie about the Achievements and link other peoples, but that would be deceitful and it doesn't feel right for me. So what to do? You could run dozens and dozens of heroics to get Emblems, but I have done that before and they are all pretty much dull now for me. Mindless and unchallenging.
Well, one question would be why do anything? Without access to raid content, you are gearing up a character to do what exactly? Stand around Orgrimmar and whistle? That has happened before when my lack of time commitment has jarred against raid requirements and it is essentially frustrating.
The answer to these questions came from the most unlikely of sources - the random battleground feature. This is a new PvP feature for the game which does for battlegrounds what the Find Group function did for instances. And its brilliant! The queues are lightning fast - under 5 mins max - and the rewards are plentiful. The bonus honour combined with the recent reworking of the PvP equipment system means that with a little application you can rack up some decent equipment pretty damned quick! In three days I have snaffled three i232 and i245 items (shoulders, bracers and legs) which are the equivalent to the stuff I could get through emblems but so much faster.
The battlegrounds are also quite fun. The asshole contingent are diluted now and I'm seen all of the new battlegrounds that I had missed before. Isle of Conquest is pretty dull but Strand of the Ancients is excellent and now rivals Eye of the Storm as my favourite battleground. Moreover, now when I play, I am improving myself for a purpose - to become deadlier (well, lets be modest, more annoying) than I was before.
I'm enjoying it - a lot - far more than I ever thought I could enjoy PvP. I'm even considering chancing my hand with arena somehow...but that might have to wait until the future!
9 comments:
The apocolypse is nigh.
The first sign has been seen.
Neil has expressed an interest in PvP....
AFTER I'VE QUIT THE GAME NO LESS, You horrible person, you know how long I've wanted a PvP partner to deal death with?
Tsk, tsk. ;-)
May I enquire if it's the 41 yards of long range death dealing PvP that you are partaking in... or the stealthy stunlock of doom clothie killer Rogue stylee?
D.
41 yds of lovingly crafted high explosive death.
The highlight of the weekend was me and another hunter at the stables in AB, with our own personal healers. We were like missile turrets, mowing down the Alliance as they came at us in waves of suicide. I felt sorry for them ... and then I noticed my honour gain and all pity was washed away in a sea of avarice.
There are some downsides. It took AGES to get a win yesterday, for the bonus honour. I think the Bank Holiday weekend just brought the random people. I did lose one EotS 1598/1600 which was painful...
Its good stuff. I'm about 10k off my new belt now.
Neil
Don't...
I've quit....
Nope, quit....
The other addicts aren't going to draw me back in....
;-)
More seroiusly, I've just completed playing the methadone of Batman Arkham Asylum, awesome, awesome, amaziong game which I can highly recommend. Even with your dis-like of Batman Neil.
Damn you, now I am tempted to form a Hunter/Demo lock death squad with you and tempt Dave to come along as our personal healer and re-live the AB glory days.
Remember, all claims of usefulness in PvP have the normal Neil caveat of 'I'm not actually very good at this game' added to them.
But yes, that would be cool. Its something else to do in Cata.
Hehe, I make no claims of being any good. I am in fact terrible at pvp as witnessed by our 2 man arena team of complete fail.
Personally I much prefer BG's as they are a bit more chaotic and there is less CC then you die going on (except for rogue stun locks of course).
STOP IT ANDREW! :-)
Thats something I'd definately return for.
Maybe after the viva.
:)
And then you get nights like last night. Popping on to get my bonus honour and arena points, it took me nearly three hours to fashion a win through nearly a dozen battlegrounds. Even by my low standards, I have never seen so much fuckwittery in my life. I did an AV where no-one was willing to tank the boss. I did two WSGs which nearly had me punching the screen in anger as the flag carrier kept trying to do some sort of lap-of-honour. I did a Strand of the Ancients where every rogue seemed to come with their own personal druid and everyone had a bubbling priest. I swear I was pummelling this rogue for all I was worth and his health bar wasn't even flickering!
Finally, in an Isle of Conquest (a terrible BG imo) I finally lost my temper as they all forgot to defend and took it upon myself to lead the defence by verbally abusing a shaman into remembering where his healing buttons were and then CC'ing their raid with traps, Wyvern Shot and Concussive Shot enough to distract them away from their target and buy the noobs the chance they needed to win.
I was not impress ... but on the upside, new hat tonight!
Neil
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