Greedy Goblin

Monday, August 9, 2010

Now why would you go and do something like that?

Tobold wrote "WotLK only has a single raid dungeon!. Naxxramas and Ulduar are a memory for some, and unknown territory for the rest.". Well, not for The PuG:


We went to do all the hard modes of Ulduar. We already did all Siege, Antechamber and Keepers and will continue! Soon we'll have Ulduar HM cleared. Of course it's not such a big feat as it was with 219-226 gear. But it's not the point either.

The point is to do something just for itself. To see content, to do interesting and well-designed fights. It's not the loot that lured people to Ulduar, we barely put anything to use. We were here to play. So Tobold is wrong because you can do Ulduar. But he is right that not in most guilds. Hard mode guilds already did Ulduar, back when it was current. Social guilds? "lol 219 crap why wud u go there farm badges thats moar gs"

Ulduar was the best instance of WotLK, maybe even the whole WoW. It had many hard modes and challenging bosses even on normal. Being there again was awesome. And finally do what I tried 67 times but never succeeded back then: Firefighter. Now it took only 4 tries, more than Hodir speedkill.

The PuG, the guild without attendance rules, forced spec rules and retardspeak, where GS is banned, seems to lure lot of people who care for content. Besides doing ICC hard modes there are always raids running to Naxx, Ulduar and regularly ToC. It's easy to organize 5-mans where the tank is #4, small groups to do some BGs and so on. It's a place where no one tells you what to do besides "don't be an annoying and useless retard". Of course we have rules, exactly to keep the retards out. You can't imagine how many times I have the variants of the following conversation:
- can u inv me to guld i hav 5.5k gs
- Have you read our rules?
- lol
[silence]
- so can i get inv
- If you read the rules and accept them.
- m8 chill its justa game dont be so serious
- Sorry we mean our rules.
- u relly want me 2 read som site lol
- Yes please.
- nah i dont feel like
- Then I don't feel like inviting you.
- lol

If you want to participate in the runs and enjoy the lol-free guildchat, play without idiots nagging you to help them in whatever nonsense they can't do alone, join. We'll do Vezzax and Yogg this Thursday, if you transfer, you can be there, if you roll a new char, there will be another run sometimes. Also there will be place for continuing ICC HMs. Currently 153 accounts, no inactives and permanently recruiting. All classes, specs and levels.


PS: don't release spirit when others are alive! You might miss FL+4 achievement like me.

PS2: The conservatory of life is the biggest herbfarm ever. Herbs in huge amounts everywhere. Too bad they don't respawn after Freya is freed.

31 comments:

Numinous said...

Every time I read one of these posts I become so sad that The PuG is on EU servers.

nonameform said...

I have to agree with you about Ulduar. It is indeed the best instance in whole WotLK. Naxxramas is a decent instance too. However, since it was moved from EPL and lost what made it the hardest instance of vanilla WoW, it's almost impossible to appreciate all the work that initially went into it. ToC is crap no matter how you look at it, though Anub'arak 25 man heroic is still a very hard fight most guilds will never be able to do. ICC leaves me with mixed feelings, since some fights are good (Putricide and hard mode Lady Deathwhisper for example), but some are pretty lame (Festergut/Rotface + their identical models).

Of all the fights in Ulduar, only Flame Leviathan and Razorscale are the easy ones, though I've been in pugs recently that failed to kill FL with no towers for weekly. It's amazing to see yourself second on damage done while riding a bike in mixed 200-232 gear.

I believe I've mentioned it before, but my guild went to do "Herald of the Titans" in Ulduar after we have already destroyed half of the gear, but we never went back to finish ToGC 10 achievement, because people just couldn't be bothered with it, even though it's a walk in the park and we had almost all the gear.

Might reroll to your guild in Cataclysm, if it still exists. My realm seems rather dead (not only during the summer).

chewy said...

"The point is to do something just for itself."

In other words just for fun. I'm glad you enjoyed it, doing things for fun can be very enjoyable.

Leeho said...

And what about game related random things in gchat? Something like "i've just met a paladin without redemption learned in FoS, he was in 4 pieces of t9 farmed and yet he haven't done a low level quest". Are they allowed?

Gevlon said...

@Olga: that's NOT game related. That's GOSSIP, it's about a certain paladin, and not the game itself.

An example about game-related "Someone told me that Redemption is a bad ability. Is it true or he is just another dumb?"

Anonymous said...

A request for clarification:

Is this 10- or 25-man?

Gevlon said...

Everything is in 10 man unless 25 mentioned explicitly. We don't have enough people online to do 25-mans.

Denethal said...

"You killed him while we were outside?"

Now, that's funny. ;)

Kragnok said...

Where Tobold errs is where he calls it a design flaw. The content is there and it works just fine. The truth of the matter is the flaw is in the players who choose to ignore the older content. To the social it would be beneath them to do a raid below ICC unless it is a weekly.

I logged on my semi-retired unguilded hunter in Naxx gear, and was hit up with a random raid guild invite from some "friendly" guys who's main selling point was that one of the guildies was a Kingslayer. I checked out the player to verify he had the title and asked about who he ran with to get the title, he mentioned the top guild on the server. I asked if he was in the guild at the time to which he replied no, he paid for the run and the title. Because he paid for the run, he was carried and since he was carried he recieved the title which in the eyes of the social makes him a good player.

WeekendWarrior said...

@Numinous and others who read these posts and think they would join if they were on U.S. Servers you have 2 choices.
1. you can create an EU account and join them or
2. you can join the U.S. version of the Undergeared project. I'm on the U.S. side and it would be great to have more participation. http://undergeared.omgforum.net/forum.htm

WeekendWarrior/Mythstaken

Gevlon said...

@Weekendwarrior: you are mixing The PuG and Undergeared.

Ulrik said...

@Kragnok

Having Kingslayer is actually a benefit in and of itself, no matter how it was obtained: It gives you acces to ICC hard modes, including such epic fights as Marrowgar hard and Lootship heroic.

That was what they were trying to sell, they as a guild had access to easily-obtainable ilvl 277 gear.

Shadowstep said...

So 153 "Active" accounts and there aren't enough people to pull a 25 man, something doesn't add up there unless the majority of your guild is made up of alts from upper level guilds and the "lol gs sux" crowd. Not to devalue what you are doing, but if you cant scrape a 25 man together with 150 people that are purportedly active it seems off.

WeekendWarrior said...

@Gevlon you are correct I did unintentionally compare the two projects. I think I was reading more into Numinous's comment than there might be, thinking that he meant doing content without overgearing it - enjoying the challenges of the instances the way they were meant to be done, instead of the grinding for badges and gear. And from that point of view then the Undergeared guild might be a fit for what he wants to do.

Anonymous said...

@ShadowStep

150 players != 150 80's. There is no lvl limit.

Anonymous said...

@Shadowstep: You'd be surprised how hard it is to get a 25-man up and off the ground in a regular raiding group that has an average of 30 players on at most given play times. (Or a regular 10 man, for that matter.)

Everyone has their own agendas. With the non-requirements (which are very alluring to a casual person like myself), it's probably even more difficult. Active-account does not equal "always on The PuG character".

Duskstorm said...

Ulduar was the best instance in Wrath, but Karazhan was the best instance in WoW.

If they made it today, with hardmodes, it'd be supremely badass.

Imraith Dos Santos said...

Okay.

Mr. Gevlon, I have been tolerating your sanctimonious insults for a while now, since
overall there is such great content in your blog that until today I have been able to do so.

But I guess I just woke up crabby this morning and now I find myself protesting your “M&S” slur at people who enjoy playing with language.

Language is fun! May I introduce you to you Mr. Shakespeare, who spelled imaginatively and invented new words at a wild rate? In fact, created words amounted to nearly 10% of his written works. Rather than WoW /2, of course, he was limited to the theatre of London for his audience; nonetheless, the principle remains. Language is a fluid medium, not a fixed.

Moar and lol are part of our language now, affixed by common usage and popularity.

Get over it and move on, sir!

LoL.

Anonymous said...

Let me get this straight. Are you now telling us FUN should be the motivator instead of gold/items? Do stuff just for the heck of it...?

Anyway, I agree with Tobold on this one. Most people stay on the PVE hamster wheel because of the rewards (items/achievements/status). There's really no other motivation to keep playing.
Gear inflation only makes this worse by reducing challenge to zero.
On the other hand, if the PVE part of WoW didn't hand out any rewards, hardly anyone would be playing it.

Gevlon said...

@Imraith: words must have meaning. If you claim that "moar" is a word, please define the difference between "moar" and "more".

On the other hand "lol" IS a word, and has a meaning, I just find this meaning repulsive. I think "lol" is like "nigger". They are words and they have their unique meaning. Just civilized person don't mean them.

Imraith Dos Santos said...

Thinking that perhaps I am unaware of a repulsive or offensive definition of 'lol', I took a few moments to seek a new definition on the Internet. However, I find none that does not refer to laughter.

I did find this definition that amused me at the Urban Dictionary site: "Originally found in Sumerian Tax Logs to define overdue fees (Late on Lamp Oil, some experts believe), this phrase has evolved through time. Shakespeare shunned the abbreviation, finding it impossible to rhyme with. Thoreau punched Jim Bowie in a local tavern for carving it on the table with his special knife, but Lincoln ad-libbed it in the original Gettysburg address during an uncomfortable moment in the Monologue. It meant "Laughing On Line" during the Internet craze of the late 20th…"

Personally, I find laughter to be necessary, indeed vital, to human life, and not at all offensive. Apparently you have a different definition, or at least connotation. I am exceedingly puzzled to see you compare it to ‘nigger’. I would be interested to learn your definition, if you care to elaborate.

And moar means precisely the same as more, of course, what else? And why not?

Gevlon said...

@Imraith: if "moar" = "more" than it's not a word, it's just a primitive mistake. A word must have a meaning.

About "lol": http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2010/02/lol-lo-m8y-gd2-hav-u-ddd.html

In short: saying "lol" is an attempt to abuse the target. The "lol"-sayer wants to create positive emotions in the target by imitating laughter, happiness to get some kind of reward. I see such behavior no less disruptive and harmful than blatant racism.

Imraith Dos Santos said...

Hmmm…read the referenced post.

It seems just a tiny bit over-reactive to me, but I will leave you to your suspicions (or paranoia, perhaps?).

Still don’t get the “nigger” association though.

Unknown said...

Comparing "lol" to blatant racism is the height of sophistry. Just because you put the two terms in one sentence and force an intellectual bridge between the two concepts, does not make them related.

Lol is NOT offensive. You can be offended by it, but its purpose is not to offend. Nigger IS offensive, because that is the purpose of the word.

Its amusing that a non-native english speaker would attempt to give us a lesson on the subject. 'Moar' is a word if people use it, its that simple. Much like 'leet' and 'pwn', they are a part of the modern english dialect. If you want to keep that kind of language out of your guild, either create a list of words you have arbitrarily defined as 'harmful' or set a date at which you wish to use the english language from (like most eastern block europeans, i would put that date at 1988)

Anonymous said...

@Imraith Dos Santos

You're playing the Shakespeare card? Just because Sarah Palin used it doesn't mean it's a good idea.

"Moar and lol are part of our language now, affixed by common usage and popularity."
No, they're not. "LOL" is popular enough that it could be considered part of English, but "moar", "plox", "plz", "m8", etc. are bastardizations of already existing words used primarily online by a young population. There's no evidence that they have any sort of mass acceptance.

As for "LOL" being as bad as racial slurs? That's of course hyperbole, but using hyperbole to raise awareness about the unintended consequences of social behavior is to be expected from Gevlon.

Magma said...

@Chris
Nigger is not "there" to be offensive. I, on a regular basis, hear black people constantly call other black people that. They use it like a term of endearment. Bashing Gevlon for not knowing, is amusing to say the least, when you think the word is ONLY offensive. Sure it can be used as a racist term, but that is not its only sole purpose.

Imraith Dos Santos said...

Sigh. I really need to watch the news now and then, I guess. I try not to, but then look what happens: I am compared with Sarah Palin. Not a good thing.

Still, the card was played here appropriately, although I have no idea what she did with it.

Unknown said...

Actually, Magma, the word 'Nigger' is a derogatory term. Meaning its purpose is to degrade someone. Just because people can use a series of sounds for other purposes does NOT change the meaning of the word. Wow, please learn your language.

PS. The word 'negro' on the other hand is NOT a derogatory term, and has meaning outside of the offensive, even though many people are still offended by it.

Other examples of derogatory terms that have been co-opted to be less hateful are: Bitch, fag, queen.

The phenomenon you are you describing actually highlights the evolution of language, as terms that were once offensive become common use and less so (breast, thigh of chicken for example, which were EXTREMELY offensive around 1890)

Anonymous said...

Chris, actually the word 'fag' has not been coopted to be less hateful. It was coopted to be hateful in the first place. It wasn't always a hateful word.

Anonymous said...

One of the effects of the habitual use of any jargon is to identify the speaker as part of a cultural group. This happens with all language. In WoW, it's "words" like plox, moar, lol, m8, etc. and has the effect of asserting a familiarity with the game, it's social memes and the common culture; it makes the speaker seem part of the in-group and therefore more acceptable for guild membership. By extension, the connotation is that the speaker is a competent player.

The PUG's rules are designed to undercut this assumption and reject the idea that this jargon identifies you as anything but somebody who is unable or unwilling to spell properly. Those same rules also reject the culture of boosting and freebies expected by lollers (see what I did there... that's how you use a neologism). The language used is a proxy for the culture expected; rejecting the former distills the latter.

Leeho said...

Well, that's why i called it random. To be honest, to know some certain things about this game there is a lot of resources - wowhead, elitistjerks, arenajunkies, worldoflogs, etc. If i want to know something about any ability in game, i will look up certain data - game description, tests, calculations, or i will do some math myself. There's no point in talking about things like this in gchat, as gchat is by far worse as information source than that sites. What can someone tell me that i can not google or calculate? So i never ask something like that, why bother people if i can look up anything myself, and why trust them when they could be wrong. Any time i see questions like "what is hit cap for enhance", "why are you gemming for haste", "what does this talent exactly do", "does your class have abilities for X or Y", i always answer them with "google it".
Not to mention that there's no good or bad abilities, there's abilities that are better or worse in certain conditions.