In which well geared groups are happy to help a new 80 out, and everyone still hates the Oculus
I had set this afternoon aside to try out some of the new content – yes, our patching here in the EU was very smooth as I predicted yesterday and instances were up, but yet to see what things are like tonight.
I tried a few runs on my newly level 80 Death Knight (I think it was Stabs who asked why I was bothering with an alt – the answer is a) because I want to and b) I wanted to redo the Icecrown quests again before 3.3 came out to refresh my memory.)
Just for the record, my DK does about 2k dps at the moment. Which I know is plenty for the regular heroics. Still, for the sake of karma, I plan to run at least one a day on Spinks and let new 80s come along.
1. Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. Group ran silently apart from a few comments in what might have been Swedish. They didn’t seem to care that I died on a couple of the bosses in their hurry to speed clear the place. I ran along behind and picked up the loot.
2. Heroic Violet Hold. I zoned in just as they pulled the first boss. I also zoned in by the instance entrance which is behind the lockin. If you talk to the NPC there, she’ll port you into the actual instance but not while a fight is going on. So I apologised to the group for standing there like a lemon while they got me a badge. After the boss died, I was able to join them for the rest – they were a friendly bunch.
3. Heroic Oculus. As soon as we zoned in, one person said ‘fuck’ and two more left the group. I took the 15 mins deserter buff rather than waiting around in the instance.
4. Heroic Halls of Lightning. I zoned in, the rest of the group laughed at my blue and green gear (ie. lol DK.) I countered with the witty and well thought out argument, “Don’t be thick, you don’t need 5k dps to do heroics.” This apparently convinced them because after that we went on and cleared it effortlessly. I suspect the enchanter in the group was on a silent protest because although the disenchant option came up, he kept pressing greed and seemed to get all the loot. I actually think from earlier instances that greed and disenchant have exactly the same priority and he was just lucky. However, the rest of the group got annoyed and booted him (I didn’t vote! I don’t like booting people!) so we had to 4 man the last two bosses. It didn’t stop us getting some speed achievement so clearly I wasn’t dragging them down too much.
5. Heroic Halls of Stone. Quiet, friendly group who really just wanted to do the encounter with Brann and then get the last boss so everyone could get the instance counted on the LFG tool and then get out. At my stage of gearing, I’d have appreciated the extra badges and drops but since I think it’s a fairly dull instance anyway, I could see where they were coming from.
6. Got onto Spinks and queued up to tank a random. Sod’s law said it was Oculus so we zoomed through quickly and got the Make it Count achievement for people. People seemed friendly enough, knew what to do, and were (relatively) happy to be there.
So far, my first impressions have been very good.
Welcome to Spinksville! 
Despite the fact that our group got booted from Oculus while we were fighting Eregos thus keeping us from finishing the instance, my thoughts are pretty much the same. I tried it on my level 49 priest and had a blast, as well as got a very nice pair of bracers from the reward bag. Tonight I hope to run some more.
They’ve crippled the bosses in Occulus, you should be able to do it with a team of blind, deaf, mute, amputees jabbing the keyboard with their noses now. Anyone who /leave due to getting that instance hasn’t RTFPN
Yeah, that was my group yesterday and we took him down. 🙂
I really like the wrath model for instance rewards. In classic WoW and most of TBC there was little point in running an instance after you learned it, since by then you probably had all the rewards you could use. So every instance run was with four other people that didn’t know the instance.
Dailies and badges have turned that on its head. Most people know most of the instances and most of the fights, and find I have a good bit of fun running pugs.
I really like the new system.
One suggestion: queue at EXACTLY the same time as your guildies – chances are pretty good you’ll be matched together, especially during off hours. I did three random pug lfgs last night with a mage buddy and we queued up simultaneously and got in to the same group each time. I see AV queue-type addons coming!
Probably during more crowded times it will be easy to get dps into the same group, but harder to get your tank/healer in group with you. My guess is Blizz is simply using a list system for matching – first three dps, first tank, first healer to sign up…
You could just group with your guildies before queuing, that way you’ll definitely get in the same group.
Regarding your alt no criticism was implied, I’m the last person to point fingers at any alt-players. Sorry if it felt like I disapproved.
Sorry, didn’t mean it like that. Just while I was writing about this I was reminded of it. I actually haven’t been playing WoW much in the last few weeks — yesterday was a fairly lengthy session though 🙂
I made a long post about my first LFG experiences here. They weren’t quite as positive as yours but still good overall.
The one thing that worries me, also after reading this, is how quick people are to boot and replace someone now. Like the guy in your HoL had done nothing wrong, as greed and disenchant really have the same priority…
I keep ending up in groups consisting of people with server first achievements and full sets of heroic TotC gear.
It’s been pretty good to me.
With my warlock I got in a group with 4 people from different servers. we cleared the new 5 man. The healer had to go but the other 4 decided to do the next one together. The LFG tool replaced the healer faster than I could have whispered someone. And we cleared the second instance. Then a dps had to go and was replaced and we did the last one too. Very nice, that you can do multiple instances with the same people. Now, if there only was a way to invite them again another day. 😦
On the other side I’m probably not going to run any instance with my shaman anymore. The risk of not winning an upgrade and have it sharded is to big for me, that would be to frustrating to loose an upgrade because of Blizzards idiocy. That’s developing into a game killer for me.
One thing I do think we’ll see is people being less shy of rolling need on actual upgrades.
If you put yourself into the tool as DD and something you have a 100% chance of getting in as something.
That’s good because it gets more groups going.
What would be the right thing to do with my shaman? He’s enhancement (which is the spec I raid with 10 mans) and heal (to get into 5 man instances to farm emblems). I’d primarily like to get enhancement gear from the new 5 man. Only sign up as DD or sign up as DD+Heal and roll an enhancement gear?
—
But that was not what I meant. There is cloth and leather heal gear and I can’t roll need on that, even when healing. The groups will press disenchant. So I have a 20% chance to get the upgrade I’m after, if it drops. And if it drops and is disenchanted I would be really annoyed. That’s why I will just not care and not run the instance.
Not having a chance at an upgrade is better, for me, than losing an upgrade because of a “defect in the game mechanic”.
WoW was always about “better save than sorry” and did forgive about every error. You can buy items back, the 10 last things you sold. Try to do that in Guild Wars. 🙂 GMs even restore items or fix loot master mistakes. With that change it puts the game back in the dark age of game design. One wrong click by accident of any group member can screw you.
\o/
I was very amused by your first encounter with Occulus – I’m pretty sure the LFG tool is just going to constantly between Occulus and ToC and laugh at me. Thanks for the post, I haven’t logged in yet, so reading about is almost as good (possibly better, due to lack of bugs in my eyes…)
This makes me sad that my internet has been down for the past two days so I can’t get in any WoW time at all and try out teh new stuff. Frustrated… you bet!
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Entertaining stories, sir!
I did a couple of randoms on my main (priest).. first a Halls of Lightning, where we wiped once as the impatient tank ass-pulled the first boss as he patrolled. Then one of the dps went afk and never returned, but we four-manned the rest of it comfortably (it was the first day of the system, I don’t think any of us knew how to vote-kick). Then the next day I got Utgarde Pinnacle which was as smooth as could possibly be, tore through it with minimal conversation, everyone just knew what to do.
By the way, neither queue took even a minute to pop, with me queueing as healer/dps. Naturally I was selected as a healer!
And then I queued my level 75 DK, as dps, that queue did take about 10 minutes I think. Went to Drak’tharon Keep and it too was smooth, despite the tank being only level 73, and me forgetting that I was in my “tanking” gear (stam over dps, basically), whoops. It was the first instance I’d ever run on that alt, but I don’t think it showed. 🙂
Whoops, it has just come to my attention that “sir” was probably not the best term of address for you, Spinks. Sorry!
I quite like it 😉 I think I need to encourage my raid to address me as Sir at all times!