Timelessly Flexing Verdict

Timeless Isle

I admit it: I gave up on the Timeless Isle pretty fast.  Actually, really fast.  I would’ve given up on it even sooner if it hadn’t been for Cav, who insisted we kill some things and at least do some of the quests.  It’s not a “I QUIT THIS FOREVER” sort of thing.  As others have said, it’s a great way to gear alts, and Gawd knows I have a lot of them.  It’s just that … there are problems.  WRA is a high population realm, so what with the coalesced business and everybody and their mother being at the new Isle, I didn’t have a sense of “THIS IS AWESOME” so much as I had a feeling that was like, “holy crapbuckets, all the lag!”  I had maybe 10 FPS at best.  Elegon, is that you?  Oh wait, no, there aren’t any sparkly star people around.

It’s Either Determination or Stupidity
Since I could click on a flagged Alliance instead.

Problem number two: sure, seeing others in an MMORPG makes you think that the game’s still alive … I guess.  It’s just that, there’s practically nothing left alive on this island … oh wait, there’s a yaungol right there!  Nobody’s tagged it!  I’ll kill that!  Well, that turned into “OH CRAP FIRE HELP OW BAD,” especially when three more yaungol spawned right there and aggroed on me.  I guess that’s why the yaungol are still alive but hardly anything else is.

Problem number three: HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING FROM THE COMMANDERS IN THE BARRENS, BLIZZARD!?  For eff’s sake, I am SO SICK of trying to loot and having to wait for like two minutes while everybody else does the same, because “That object is busy.”

Problem number four: I am also sick of specialized currencies and charms and crap, enough so that I’d shove my Timeless Coins in somebody’s eyeballs if I could.  You want how many of these damned things again?  Oh, I’ll give them to you, all right.  IN THE FACE.

So basically if I’m going to keep my sanity, I gotta wait until the place cools down and becomes less “OOOH SHINY NEW” to people.  Or go there at like 6 a.m.

I’m quite behind on the legendary questline (hey, at least I got my 40 trillium bars even if I haven’t done anything with them yet), so I haven’t paid much attention at all to the latest and greatest installations of it.  At least, not until all my guildmates started showing up with WEIRD SHINY WINGS.  Crap, man, weird shiny wings!  Now I GOTTA finish this.  A cloak alone is like, eh, even if the item level IS really high.  Insufficient motivation there.  A cloak that gives you WEIRD SHINY WINGS, though?  Oh yes, oh yes, I’m interested in that!  (FYI, if you are a tree, your wings will be on sideways.  Sorry.)

Flex Raiding

The guild started the flex raiding for funzies, and we pretty much facerolled the place until the third fight.

Immerseus
Lightning Shield + Water = Volatile Toaster-like Goblin

Immerseus: easy as hell on Flex, although probably a nightmare on normal mode.  I really don’t like mechanics that force healers to heal NPCs (in this case, good, purified, innocent and happy blobs) in addition to their team.  I feel like, what with the sheeyit-ton of damage a raid dishes out, healers got enough trouble to deal with without having to nurse some NPC back to full health.  Give me more than 300k mana, and then maybe I’ll change my mind.

Fallen Protectors
All the sads, not feelin’ ’em.

The Fallen Protectors: harder than Immerseus, but still not bad on Flex.  I dread this fight on LFR, because you really do need to coordinate targets based on their HP, and Gawd knows that LFR’s not really all that hot at coordinating.  In any case, we wiped them all out uh, I mean, we released them from their suffering.  Right.  I know that I’m supposed to feel bad about what happened to the Golden Lotus.  But I don’t.  It’s possibly the goblin in me saying, “You had it coming” for all the times they tortured me.

One of the things I like about this guild is that one of our raid leaders is British, so you get to hear him give commands/curse/whathaveyou in what is possibly the best accent ever.  Getting told to target This Thing or That One becomes twice as awesome when it’s said in a British accent, trufax.

Amalgam of Wait, What Just Happened?
We were facerolling so well.

Norushen Amalgam of Bad Things:  Oh man, I do not look forward to this one on any mode ever.  EVER.  I really don’t know why they say you’re fighting Norushen here, as he just sticks you in a shiny box that he may or may not blow up if he determines that the Amalgam is Super Bad or something.  You’re actually facing the Amalgam and the adds.

This fight comes down to holy crapbuckets, puddles of something somewhere are hurting us bad but where are the puddles!?  CAN’T SEE AND WE’RE DYING.  Also, there’s an enormous rotating death beam, which is slow (and that’s nice), but which also seems to pop randomly, sometimes on your head (and that’s bad).  And adds.  Lots of those.  Oh, and for some reason you start off at 75% corruption, which reduces your DPS quite a bit …

You’ve gotta work out who soaks up the evil bad puddles of hurtiness, as well as who uses the shiny golden orbs to reduce their corruption.  Reducing the corruption means you do more of whatever it is you do, as well as enabling healers/tanks to soak up said crap.  We did get it down, but the fight was definitely a sudden stop to the facerolling party we had been having up to that point.

That said, Flex raiding is pretty much the difficulty I imagine “normal” ought to be.  But my standards are low and I like things easier than most, because I really don’t get what’s attractive about wiping 20+ times to any particular fight just because of one stroke of bad luck here or one bad choice there.

[Edit!  I want to add an illustration of bad luck.]

Example of Bad Luck
YEAH, LET’S STACK GUYS

I got a shiny ring, and I almost cackled with glee – until I remembered that I have like, 900 gold total after my LAST round of reforging/reenchanting/regemming.  It’s time to make all the alts donate every last spare piece of gold, man.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

AT LAST
I will now unceremoniously ditch them and refuse to answer their calls.

Even better, Cal is back!  Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

YAAAAAAAAAAAY!
Cal is back, and he’s a Marine now! Conga rats, Cal!

I haz teh happeh!

Today is not my day

First the water main breaks down the street and I haven’t had running water since 6 a.m., now this.

Needs more /shout

/headdesk

I’ll be fine.  Yes.  I’ll be fine.  This bleeding isn’t that bad, really.

I just have to keep repeating – it’ll all be over soon.  It’ll all be over soon.

Mental Battelz

Well, That’s Awkward
They kicked me onto a pole!

I’m about halfway through Revered with Golden Lotus, which means (of course) that I have had an allergic reaction to dailies and go into blogging fits when thinking about doing them yet again.  In order to preserve the sanity of my readers, I have deleted those drafts (they were all something like, “;laskfja;slkfdj Golden Lotusususususususa;lsdfkjas;ldfkjasdf” anyway).  In order to preserve my own sanity, I have pretty much stopped doing any and all dailies, though I hold certain pandabears responsible.  Think about these dailies, man.  Isn’t there something masochistic in running into a field full of swirling swords and burly pandabears who want to punch you so you fall into said swirling swords?  What sane person would willingly do that once, much less repeatedly?

I’ve even quit Tillering.

Pet Battling and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
… kind of.

In the meantime, alts have been crawling up the ladder of levels, as have my battle pets.  The Magic family is the last standing between me and the “No Favorites” achieve, where you level a representative of each group up to 10.  I have TWO (just two!?) magic pets, both of which are uncommon and therefore not really worth leveling.  So I’ve decided to go for “Going to Need More Leashes” and “Quality and Quantity,” because when I think about doing dailies right now, it’s just … not good. sal;fjas;lfjaw;leifja;sldkfjas!

Lag Baby, Lag
Unfortunately the battle just ends when your opponent lags out.
I was hoping for an easy victory.

Public Announcement: This Place is a Total Deathtrap

What sick, sadistic designer came up with the Serpent’s Spine quest chain for the Golden Lotus?  No, seriously, what the hell was wrong with that dood?

Let’s take Mantid Under Fire as the first example.  You’re supposed to go find a vat of boiling oil on the top of the wall and use it to hurl oil (and a torch, for extra fire) on the mantid at the foot of the gate.  Sounds good, right?  I believe the NPC who gave it to me actually called it fun!  It took me a little while to figure out when I had actually successfully oiled up a bunch of mantid (otherwise you will hurl the torch to no avail and everything – and I do mean everything – will magically evade you), but I was doing all right – until the game decided I apparently took too long in killing my 80 mantid.

Stunned but Not Silent
I wish I had a shot of me in mid-plummet, but I was too startled the first time and too mad the second.

Why, in the name of Gawd, does the pot of oil insist upon ejecting you off the wall to your doom if you are unfortunate enough to take too much time to complete the quest?  I understand not wanting defenders (such as we are) to go AFK while manning one of the oil cauldrons when somebody else could use it, but why must I die without warning when I’m honest to Gawd using the thing and trying to complete the quest?

And why, in the name of Gawd, does the pot of oil insist upon throwing you off the gate to your doom if you click the authentic, legitimate “Leave Vehicle” button?  Why won’t it just let me step off to the side?  Why won’t the thing be satisfied unless it can hurl me off the wall to my demise, far, far below?

This was the first time I had gotten the quest chain.  Based on the comments I have subsequently read, you need to have the ability to see into the future to survive your first try.  With your psychic abilities, you will be aware of the violent tendencies of these pots to attack those manning them, and will wisely choose one of the pots on the ramparts where the wall is really thick.  That way, when the thing sends you flying – and it will – at least you don’t plunge to your certain death.

Nice one, whoever designed this quest.  Nice one.  You were angry or maybe a little upset at the time.  Maybe somebody said something awful on the forums, which they do a lot.  But why do we all have to suffer for it?

And while I’m at it, Along the Serpent’s Spine has caused me to hate the Shado-pan and the Golden Lotus in ways I never did before.  I’ve been told that the spawn rate in Mists is somehow smarter in that it magically increases when there are more people in the area killing the mobs in question, and decreases when there are less souls to do the work.  I think my friends who believe this are total fools.  They are also total dears and in many cases very experienced players, but they are fools for believing in this nonetheless.  Leaving fatty goatsteaks quest in the Valley aside, this quest proves it.

I was the only player in my immediate area, yet the spawn rate for the mantid on the wall was so Utterly Insane, my pet got utterly smashed to pieces and I had to Feign Death at a quarter health.  Thank God Feign Death lasts for up to six minutes so I could take a moment to wonder how the hell I was going to get out of there alive, since there was no one else killing these mobs in my vicinity and I was definitely still in aggro range.

All the while, the Shado-pan pandaninjas were running around the wall like chickens with their heads cut off.  Are they jogging to lose weight?  Are they hallucinating, seeing mantid in the distance that don’t exist?  THE SHADO-PAN, THEY DO NOTHING.

One of my tankytype guildmates (who, incidentially, ressed me earlier after one of my pot-of-oil-plummets) had to come help me out, because I would have aggroed without time to bandage up or drink a potion, which of course would have led to death.

Is this supposed to be realistic in the sense that OMG! THE PANDAS ARE BEING OVERRUN BY BUGS!?  If so, mission accomplished.  Objective achieved.  My conclusion is that the battle is utterly hopeless and pointless because even we big bad adventurers are going to get eaten alive by countless gigantic walking termites. Run away!

Give Us This Day Our Daily VP

The Ignored Benefit of Dailies is the Constant QA
Hey guys, got a typo here.

Some say dailies are optional, some say they’re not – but I think we can all agree that they are part of the end game experience.  I think it’s also safe to say that there are quite a few of them, and by quite a few, I mean a crapton.  It’s worse if you’re like me and you never actually finished that whole Firelands business … /cough  One of these days, right?

I could handle gaining rep by wearing tabards while grinding dungeons in addition to doing quests.  That’s generally how I level, anyway – switching back and forth when one option or the other gets on my nerves.  When I get in the dungeon mood, I can do round after round after round without breaking a sweat. (This is why I really hate locks on heroics/raids and on the number of times you can run low level instances. If I wanna spend the time and the effort to run one dungeon endlessly for one damn pair of boots, then what’s the issue!?  All the cool gear is soulbound anyway!)  What I can’t handle is spending maybe fifteen minutes to a half hour on each faction’s quests, because I only have a couple of hours in the evening to, you know, HAVE FUN.

I’m trying to turn off the corner of my mind that goes “YOU HAVE ANOTHER THIRTY MINUTES – GO MAKE THE KLAXXI LIKE YOU A LITTLE MORE” and take full advantage of the theoretically “optional” part.  This means I’m only exalted with the Tillers, because OMFG YAY WORLD OF HARVEST MOONCRAFT and BATTLEGOATS.*  (It’s also the best way I’ve figured out thus far of actually having a chance in hell of acquiring the needed amounts of Trillium and Kyparite for engineering things.)

I’m doing fairly well with the Order of the Cloud Serpents, but that’s only because somebody told me that your cloud serpent will turn back into a baby if neglected.  I fear that my poor dragon hatchling will regress into a puddle of drool and scales if I leave him alone too long, and so I daily.  (p.s., why is it that every time I go to the Oona hozen area, my Flying Machine poofs and I plummet to my death?)

Golden Lotus?  Well, they keep giving me the same quests day in, day out, always in the same two areas.  I’m a bit surprised how little rep you get for completing them.  Seriously guys, what with the monotony and the repetitiveness, I’m kinda starting to feel like leaving those tormented panda souls there to suffer.  Golden Lotus is the first thing I dump when I run out of time because I feel like Exalted with them is going to take the rest of my life, but of course doing so makes getting to Exalted take forever.  I was excited a couple days ago when I finally got quests at the pond because yay I’m unlocking stuff and finding things out!  Sadly, I am not cool enough for anything else in the zone, because that was as far as the quests take me.

Why is that village empty?  I dunno.  Why are there Hozen over there?  I dunno.  What’s this big building thingie over here?  I dunno.  Why are the big stone panda statues there?  I dunno.  Why are the Mogu bothering to torture random pandas?  I dunno.  REP REP REP REP REP.  YOU NEED MOAR REP BEFORE YOU CAN COMPREHEND OUR MYSTERIES.

Also, that one panda can go get his own damn Mogu artifacts from the bottom of the pond.  Doesn’t he have ENOUGH yet!?  What does he DO with them all!?

I’m only honored with the Klaxxi because (and despite the fact that) I did all the quests I could find in Dread Wastes.  Shado-pan?  I’ve only been to Townlong Steppes ONCE, and that was to turn in the Claw from the Sha of Anger.  I don’t have time for ninja pandas.  Lorewalkers?  Yeah, that’d be interesting, but I don’t have time.  August Celestials?  What the hell do they do, anyway?  Doesn’t matter, though, don’t have the time.  The Anglers don’t exist for me, and the Black Prince is probably laughing his ass off at my predicament at this exact moment.

Well, whatever.  I’m not going to quit over it nor threaten to; I’m not pretentious enough to think that my individual actions will make one bit of difference in what Blizzard does.  (I’d just be back for more transmog anyway.)

Laughing from Hell
Since only Dogs go to Heaven

One side effect is that our guild raiding is getting off to a very rocky start.  It’d be tough anyway because OMFG THINGS HURT/learning the fights/etc., but we want to try raiding and we don’t want to wait for everybody to finish grinding rep, because we’re human.  Like many people, we’d rather avoid LFR entirely because of the probability of encountering total asshats or people less prepared than we.  Also, LFR has a reputation for not being the real deal, whereas normal is at least an “authentic” experience.

Another side effect of the whole rep grindy business I’ve noticed is that more and more of my alts are getting outfitted in more and more heirlooms of their very own because I don’t have a place to spend my JP (obtained by endlessly running heroics, by the way, for weapons that JUST WON’T DROP**) on gear that would benefit Thermalix, who is the raiding main.  This kinda sucks, because her 463 gear level may be enough to get her into LFR, but it’s not enough for her to help her guild actually survive the normal version of Mogushan Vaults.  Because you only get 5 VP per daily and I just don’t have the time or the energy for all of the dailies in Pandaria, I don’t have enough VP to spend on anything (even if there were something I could spend it on).  So, heirlooms for everybody it is!

* I refuse to do the cooking daily where you have to go get some fatty goatsteaks, because OMFG PEOPLE STOP AOEING THE DAMN HERDS OF GOATS and then when I finally am hair-triggery enough to AoE the damn herds of goats before someone else does so I can get one damn goat down at least, I’m past the point of paying attention to where I’m standing and I get knocked off the mountain.  Yeah, sure, we don’t have spectral flying when dead because the zone was designed for ground mounts.  Then why can the goats knock me MOSTLY off the mountain to the point where it’s a pain in the ass to find my body!?

** I ran heroic after heroic after heroic after heroic, of course getting the ones I didn’t need more than the ones that I did, but I can’t queue for the ones that drop what I need because you get locked out after one try (HATE).  I eventually just gave the hell up, bought some Trillium (because in all this time and all my obsessive mining, I still didn’t have enough) and made a gun, but for 12 Trillium bars, an item level of 450 is a poor return.