So, Love is in the Air, I hear…

But best hold your noses, because it’s more Pepe LePeau action

First, the good news.

If you’re trying to farm up enough Lovely Charms to make your 4 Lovely Charm Bracelets for the daily quests, it’s not hard at all.

The best, quickest way I’ve found is to get one of the “Battle before the Citadel” style quests from Argent Tournament that send you to joust and kill Lieutenants or Commanders. 

Why?

If you’ve got one of those quests, then the area has the right critters spawned for you… and the Skeletons that you run down on your mount, the ones that veritably explode underfoot, and respawn faster than a sheep running at the sound of a zipper, drop the Lovely Charms… a LOT.

I was able to get about 20 Lovely Charm Bracelets after 15 minutes. That’s 200 Lovely Charms. Your mileage may vary.

Oh, and my technique? As a Night Elf Druid, I have the racial Shadowmeld… so I run around, grinding the Skeletons up and spamming my Shield… as soon as they finally dismount me, I instantly pop Shadowmeld, drop out of combat, and then pop Flight Form and go straight up. A quick trip to wait out the 2 minute cooldown and a new mount, and I’m back in the saddle again.

So, now the bad…

Once again, one of the achievements is to get a drop off a boss kill, which CAN be done on normal mode.

There are three bosses currently that can drop Red or Ebon Roses, and only one player in a group can loot them each time.

The three bosses are Maiden of Grief in Halls of Stone, Prince Keleseth in Utgardt Keep, and Prince Taldaram in Old Kingdoms.

I went into normal Halls of Stone with two guildies, we three manned the trash to Maiden, killed, ran out and reset three times, no sweat. All done, all got the Roses.

I then queued up for a random heroic, and got Utgardt Keep.

First warning sign, of course, is that myself and a Hunter are the only new players queueing in. A healer and another DPS clearly bailed on the group.

I catch up, they’re only at the dragons before the first boss. Whatever happened was so bad, two players bailed before they even reached the first boss. And one DPS is soothing the tanks’ ruffled feathers… “No, no, you’re not that bad, they he was just a bad healer, you were fine, he was to blame.”

We clear to the first boss, and yes, he is that bad a tank. He sucks. A Paladin that just cannot hold aggro to save his ass, even WITH Righteous Fury.

That’s okay, everyone has to learn somehow, right?

We get to the first boss, good old Prince, and of course, the Roses drop. Everyone Greeds (I pass, got my Ebon ones), and then… after everyone else has chosen, the tank, good old cocksucker Mindaltering – Alexstrasza (US) hits Need and immediately drops group.

Thanks, asshole!

BTW… please don’t defend the prick to me. I don’t want to hear it. Need the Roses, Greed the Roses, I could care less. If someone really wants them, they can do it on Normal a few times for a guaranteed drop. But you drop group without a word immediately after taking them (or losing on the roll) when you never warned anyone that’s the only reason you came?

Then you are in my opinion a complete prick.

Mindaltering – Alexstrasza (US) you are not only a prick, but I want to make this clear… I saw your tanking, and you SUCK.

Let this be a reminder… the Roses aren’t the only drops people will want, what with new pets and rare mounts coming from the Holiday boss event in Shadowfang Keep. So be careful, don’t be rude but watch how it goes, and don’t be a victim of a prick like him.  

Hey Mindaltering, grats on your Roses. Maybe if you were competent, someone would give you Roses, and your hand wouldn’t have to buy them for you again this year.

What a tool.

In deference to the comments you left in my earlier post today, here’s a mini story… call this one “It came from the pug”.

In the comments, Naturalregis made an in-joke about Kings.

Here’s the story. 

The very first run I did in the series as a Pally tank this last week, the first resurrection of my tanking on him in months, I got Violet Hold.

I saw there was a Death Knight in the group, and I “know” (see below in the comments for more details) Blessing of Might gets overwritten by the Horn of Winter, so I made sure I had Kings set up for folks on Pallypower instead on the fly, quick buff and off we go.

Death Knight says, “Kings”.

“Shadow, Kings” (Because, as the only Pally in the group, there is confusion as to which Pally I think he’s talking to?)

“Kings”
“Kings”

Now, I use Pallypower. When you are in combat, Pallypower grays out (for me at least), meaning I can’t cast it on the fly from the Pallypower panel, I have to manually cast it by clicking on Party Bars and Spell Icons. At the moment, guess what, I’m in the middle of trying to pay attention and remember how to tank groups in a heroic instance and hold aggro from strangers competing for damage meters.

This may seem elitist of me… but do we really need to be spazzing over Kings on the first pull of a heroic Violet Hold? Can we truly not wait five damn seconds? Is your extra 15 dps REALLY make or break for the srs bsns of VH?

Really?

This Death Knight is damn near chanting “Kings” in chat.

“Kings”
“Kings”
“Shadow, Kings”
“I need Kings”

Now, I’m getting pissed, and I’m also getting distracted and losing mobs and split pulls are flying all over the place and I’m getting frazzled and upset, I’m desperately trying to do my job and also figure out why he’s not getting Kings and what the hell is going on, and it just SUCKS. 

Why am I letting this get to me?

Because stupid ass that I am, if I’m not doing MY job and giving him the right buff, I want to fix it.

Then I stop, pulls or no, and scan every. single. buff. the Death Knight has…

He has Kings.

He HAS Kings!

The little worthless son of a bitch has Kings already! He had it the ENTIRE F’ING TIME!!!!

I type in chat, “You HAVE Kings, damn it! Shut up!”

There is a pause.

“Gimme Might”
“Might”
“Shadow, Might”
“Might”

ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!

I said, “You don’t need Might, your Horn overrides Might.”

He replies back, “Do you see me using Horn?”

Then he resumes the chant.

“Might”
“Might”

So I replied with one word.

“NO.”

I actually, in real life, mimed a hand gesture of taking a rolled up newspaper in my hand, and swatting the Death Knight on the nose as I said it aloud to myself, drawing it out the way Lewis Black does…

“NO.”

Then I put him on ignore for the rest of the run.

I related the story in vent later that night… and now, SOME people won’t let it go. Ahem, [Regis], ahem.

Yes, I know, the post title is silly, and only vaguely relevant if you know who the Saints are. And I don’t mean St. Jude and St. Peter, either. I don’t think they play on the same team.

Hey, if you think it’s that easy to make fun new post titles for over a thousand posts…. you’re probably right, but I do the best I can with what I’ve got under the hood.

I have an amusing story to share with you. I think it illustrates a few telling things about what we can get used to, and what we expect to see, and how we can sometimes ignore things until confronted with the one when you expected the other. 

Now that I’ve vagued that up for you as much as I can, I’ma gonna tell a story.

Once, last night, on a server very, very close to home…

There I am, continuing my experiments in tanking comparisons.

I’ve been tanking on my Druid, followed by tanking on my Paladin, mostly in PUG situations and comparing the general feel between the two. A post on that might go up later today, more likely tomorrow.

This has, by necessity, required me to actually tank a lot with both characters. To run a lot of things. To test a variety of instance situations.

It’s been lots of fun.

Whenever possible, I prefer to only run with friends, but I wanted to run several things in the shortest possible time so as to really hammer home my impressions of the classes while they were fresh. Also, I was testing the ease with which strangers without restraint could pull aggro off of me. My friends are actually smart players, so they don’t do dat. To get idiots and out of control DPS meter chasing freaks, I had to resort to strangers. So, that means running purely random pugs.

I love Gnomeaggedon, and I’ve tried to follow the ‘be positive’ meme he started, but I’m just gonna have to warn you; there might be some mention of asshattish behavior on the way. Sorry, I know. 

I know!

Over the last week, I’ve run a few things.

I’ll make one observation, which I swear is relevant to the story.

One thing that I’ve noticed as a key difference between pugs and playing with friends, is that in pugs people whom I’ve never met before will announce what the group will do. Not ask what the rest of the group wants to do, or make a suggestion as to what they’d LIKE to do. Just flatly announce what will happen. ”We will be doing X on this run.”

I’ve noticed it mostly because I wasn’t used to that approach in groups of players before. It’s by no means unheard of, just not something I was used to seeing consistently myself, unless from the tank, and even then it would be about 50/50 phrased as ‘what we will do’ or ‘what I like to do’, which is a slightly gentler way of saying the same thing, but leaves you more open to counterpoint. 

I can’t speak for other people’s experiences, but to my mind it’s unusual behavior in a group environment among social equals for one person to dictate to the rest. It stands out as rude, an attempt to remove the power of choice of other people by putting yourself and your own needs first, and requiring an awkward confrontation if someone else has a different idea.

It’s a negotiation tactic used to control a discussion and get your own way. If you make a pre-emptive strike to state what WILL happen, rather than phrasing it as a request and asking for consensus or other competing suggestions, than what you have done is forced anyone that does NOT agree with you to have to confront you publicly, to challenge you, and to face the consequences of bringing conflict and potential drama.

For many people… not all, but many, the easier route will be to simply shut up, keep your head down, go along, get the run done and move on. Maybe put that person on ignore, maybe not.

I don’t want to give the impression that I think being assertive is evil, or that telling people what you expect them to do is wrong. Not at all, I’m not some head in the clouds idiot. If you have someone over you in a position of authority, or you are someone who has the responsibility of seeing to it that things get done, then this is normal and welcome. Having someone responsible in charge providing clear direction, assigning tasks, or setting work priorities gets things done. They may be the wrong things if he or she isn’t open to learning and listening to the opinions and experience of everyone that is part of their team, but it gets things done. 

What I’m saying is that, in my opinion, when you’ve got a group of strangers who are all there for the same purpose, are there by their own consent to work together and offer their contributions to the groups’ success, and you have one person start tossing orders around and making unilateral decisions, it’s bullshit. Your mileage may vary. :) 

Okay, so there I am, running things on my Paladin. I’ve had a lot of fun runs, solid learning experiences, good times. Quite a bit of stress, but my studies and research are paying off. I’m using a Talent spec, Seal of Command and Retribution Aura along with Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous to optimise 5 person instance threat generation.

A word about that. I ain’t a Paladin tank expert. If you would like to learn more from actual experts about Paladin tanking, I direct you to Ardent Defender, Blessing of Kings, Honor’s Code, Righteous Defense, and Tankadin.com (my apologies to those I missed – Paladin tanks have a big blog community).

However, that being said… I am somewhat used to the concept of researching a class for myself, once in a while. I know what I wanted, to optimise heroic instance tanking and threat generation. I did heroic Halls of Reflection last night, and as they say about New York, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

I ran a few heroics with my friends Cal and Ely, as tank, heals, deeps. After each one, we dropped group to port out and then reformed to start the next one.

This time, after Utgardt Keep, I drop group, and Cal announces he has to go put some pants on.

I have to admit, Utgardt Keep speed run and guns are fun, but I know I’ve never had to go change my pants after running it. Still, best not to judge. (That’s a pally joke. Ha.)

So he’s off afk, and I go scurrying around farming some Titansteel mats since I want to have someone craft me the Saronite Swordbreaker plate tanking wrists, and I’m just 3 Titansteel Bars short.

After a bit, Cal says he’s back.

I queue up Looking for Dungeon, and as usual for a group with a tank, insta-form a group.

Boom! Halls of Stone loading screen forms.

I buff folks as usual, and right away the following pops up in Party chat;

• [player1]: We’re skipping the two optional bosses.
• [player2]: You pull as long as I’ve got mana.
• [player2]: I don’t run out of mana so you better not stop.
• [player1]: Let’s go, what u waiting for?

I pull the three dwarfs that like to pat near the portal entrance, we burn them down, and I’m thinking, “Wow, what if I wanted to do the two optional bosses? I can use the Emblems, myself. And what if *I* happen to be out of mana? Am I allowed to stop and drink? Do I need to raise my hand first and ask permission? Seig Heil!”

• [player3]: What are you standing there for, go!
• [player1]: Get moving, go, go!

Now, understand, the time sequence here is, 5 people appear in instance, I click the Pallypower buff button 5 times fast, then Avenger’s Shield the three dwarves and we burn ‘em down, then as I saw a third unfamiliar player name pop up in party chat, I paused for 1 second to actually LOOK at the names of who I was in group with, and what guilds they were from.

It almost takes longer to type that stuff out than I took to read the member names of who I was grouped with, and yet that’s how fast these were popping up.

What I was asking myself was, “How in the HELL did I end up with THREE asshats, when I joined group with TWO FRIENDS?!?”

Right about that time [player4] chimed in demanding I get my ass in gear.

That was when I realised the incredible mistake I had made.

I queued up in LFD without reforming party with Cal and Ely first.

Now, understand that I am actually IN VENT with Cal and Ely as this is happening. We’re chatting away, and I’m trailing off as it finally dawns on me that I’m all alone with these strange people, none of whom are guilded together, they are all spontaneously being making demands as I’m awakening to the concept that I didn’t intend to be available to join this group in the first place.

5 seconds have now elapsed without my moving, and as I let my friends in vent know just how incredibly dumb I’ve been, one of the pug group runs forward to pull the next group FOR me, to spur me on to action or something. 5 whole seconds! Omigawd, I know, right?

Well, that makes things easy for me. Incredibly easy. Every single one of the four players has shown the patience of a Mayfly, has been rude and demanding. I have two friends waiting to play with me, and I joined these morons by mistake anyway. My bad.

I grab the group that they pulled, take aggro and control them getting burned down, then grab a stack of Mana Strudel from the mage table, announce “You guys are on your own, go find yourself another tank to order around” and leave party.

I then spent the next 15 minutes of my random lockup hopping around Dalaran chatting. Cal went fishing.

For the rest of the night, every time I ate a Conjured Mana Strudel, I fancied I could taste the tears of selfish QQ flavoring the pastry… and it tasted delicious.

The moral of this story is, if I had zoned in to find out I was a dumbass for queueing, and nobody had said anything, or if people had done the customary “Hi! How you doing?”, I would have apologised to Cal and Ely for screwing up, but I totally would have run the entire instance.

If even only one or two people there were rude, or pushy, or demanding, I would have stayed and made the best of it. And it’s not like a tank doesn’t have a veto. As the tank, if I decide to run down and kill Maiden and get an extra Emblem for 2 minutes work, who’s to stop me? Is the rest of the group REALLY going to go on strike if the tank wants to pull a group of mobs? They may bitch, piss and moan, but are they really going to leave?

But when I zone in, and I’m greeted with four asshats… where is the incentive to care if I leave? Why should I endure your crap? What’s my motivation to be your bitch?

I hope you take away from this story three things;

1. I’m a moron. (Big newsflash there, huh?)
2. If people are friendly, even if it’s not what you intended to do, having fun with friendly people is the best part of the game. Why not stay and give it your best shot?
3. You don’t have to be anybody’s bitch.

If you join a group and are treated with abuse… then leave, RIGHT THEN. You do not deserve anyone’s abuse, and you do NOT have to take it. Whether in real life or in a virtual world, if you are in an abusive situation, do not be a victim. Do not suffer in silence. If you do not wish to be in a confrontation, if you cannot bring yourself to speak up on your own behalf… then leave. 

You, and your time, are worth more than that.

You’d think this was a no brainer, covered under “being an honest, ethical person”, but bloggers are people too, and subject to the same moral lapses that plague anyone.

Someone says to you, “Hey, if you tell people how much you loved my product or service ‘X’, I’ll give you something. Money, a free product, whatever. Something. A free WoW Account. Just… don’t tell anyone that you’re getting this. Just act like you loved it and wanted to talk about it all on your own, spontaneously.”

That’s wrong. It’s misleading, it’s unethical, deceptive BS, and here in the US, if you’re a blogger, it’s actionable.

Here in America, the Federal Trade Commission, also known as the FTC, published new guidelines last October that makes it absolutely clear that such deceptive endorsement practises aren’t allowed, even for bloggers on the internet.

You can always endorse whatever you want… but you have to admit up front that you’re getting a kickback for doing it. That you were paid, whether in goods or in services.

For us WoW bloggers, if you want to talk about how much you love a particular mouse, ventrilo service, headset, a Ferrari, book, etc… you have to be clear to mention whether or not you have received anything for providing your opinion in favor of that product.

Per the posting;

The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

How will this affect the Big Bear Butt going forward?

Well, it won’t.

Despite what people who email me sometimes think, I’m not paid by anyone to write here, I’m not given anything at all by anyone. I don’t have ads, I don’t have paid link throughs, I don’t do paid endorsements, I don’t get services, nothing.

I did talk favorably about, and review, the book by Christie Golden called Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, but I didn’t even get anything for that. I received an advance copy to read to review, and as soon as I was done I gave it away. I also was alotted a certain number of books to give away as part of a promotion, and I was happy to do so, to benefit my readers, and I thought it great fun.

Doesn’t matter whether I got anything or not for that, of course, since I was up front about the whole arrangement. :) I be good with the FTC, dawg.

I write here for fun, and as I’ve said before, the day it’s no longer fun is the day I close up shop.

If someone were to ever wish to hand over any money to me, they don’t even get to hand me money for nuthin’… they have to get something for it, by buying a shirt or mug over at the Cafepress Store on my sidebar. :) And even if you decide you don’t like me anymore, at least you’ve still got a shirt to cover your naked bod or a container with which to hold your hot, steaming beverage. That’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick!

So, there shall never be any secret money-making shenanigans here at the BBB.

That being said, however… if anyone out there IS a Ferrari dealer and wishes me to endorse your product, you can reach me at tigerlordgm AT yahoo DOT com.

Just sayin’.

The Culmination of a Year’s Plodding (I mean Plotting!)

You may or may not know that, among the things I enjoy doing in game, one of them is collect neat non-combat pets.

I’m not a fanatic about it. No, not in the slightest.

I do not have most of the pets available from the Argent Tournament, although I did max out all reputations with Alliance.

I do not have any of the farmable rare Whelplings. I always wanted one, but never was able to spend more than a few hours grinding before my attention wandered away.

I’ve also never been any good with money, so I haven’t bought any through AH manipulations.

Still, I’ve been quite happy with the pets I’ve managed to get. I even reached over 75 pets a few months ago, and got the cutest little leaping baby deer ever, Little Fawn’s Salt Lick.

But there has always been that one pet.

The one which requires ridiculous dedication, patience, and above all else, luck.

The pet that is a menace to sanity if you can’t spend 12 hours sitting waiting for a single spawn, in the hopes it is finally what you want.

I am speaking, of course, about the Kirin Tor Familiar.

Yeah, after that lead up, I’ll cut right to the chase. Last night, I bagged the little bastard!

Isn’t he just the cutest?

I started my quest for this bad boy the first time Wrath of the Lich King was released, over a year ago, and visited Warcraft Pets (home of the wonderful Breanni), to see what might have been added.

Over time, Warcraft Pets posted a detailed strategy guide for what you had to collect (various specific books), where the various books spawned (all over Dalaran), the truth behind the deceptive fact that it wasn’t just ANY spawned book you needed at each location but only those with a specific title (The Schools of Arcane Magic: something something), that all sorts of other books can spawn in the same location as the one you want but don’t count, and that once anyone has read a spawned book, it would last for exactly 3 minutes for anyone to read before it went poof and vanished.

Yes, I wanted a pet, and Breanni did 100% of the work on researching how to do it. Thank you, Breanni! :)

I did very good on following the routes she proposed, and as I found the right books, I cut down on my route.

Eventually, I found myself needing only three; the Necromancy book from the second floor of the Legerdemain Lounge, and, amusingly enough, both books from the Violet Citadel.

Thanks to paying close attention to Trade chat (and didn’t that sear my retinas forever), I saw someone announce “Books up in 2nd floor of lounge) and I scurried my furry butt on up there just in time.

That was over two months ago. Well over.

Since that time, I have, when on Windshadow, made a point of ALWAYS logging out on the upper level of Violet Citadel, next to the bookcase, so that every time I came in and out I had a chance to see both books.

I saw a lot of books, all the wrong ones, but I bided my time. I was patient.

I became a lot LESS pleased with myself when I discovered, purely by chance, that if you’re standing on the balcony upstairs, and a book spawns downstairs, you can’t see it. You need to move your furry tail up and down the stairs to make sure you catch ‘em.

But then came LFD. And porting in and out of instances from wherever you happened to be.

That one thing allowed my chances of finding the right two books to skyrocket.

By standing in front of one of the spawn points I needed, I could do instances as much as I liked, and every time it was over, pop right back to Violet Citadel to find out if a book was spawned or not.

I tried addons, Higher Learning etc, but the timers never seemed to work on my system. Simply waiting, and logging in and out at the right spot, was what I went with.

That, and patience.

One thing I found was that, in the last major patch, Achievements you choose to track are persistant through logging. By tracking the Higher Learning Achievement and keeping it up all the time, it served as a constant reminder of my purpose… it kept it right up there and visible all the time. That really was a big help in staying focused and reminding me that, yes, after visiting the Auction House, I needed to port back to Dalaran.

If the Kirin Tor Familiar is a pet you have sought yourself, or if you ever wondered what it took to get one, I wish you luck and good fortune in your search, and I recommend you visit Breanni, bookmark her website, and pay homage to the mistress of pets.

She truly has the Higher Learning needed to get the quest done!

By the way, if you are pursuing the books yourself, and you have the great good fortune to find one, why not be a nice person, and call out in /Trade, “Book spawned right now in XXX location!”

I assure you, people WILL be watching, and will appreciate the help.