The Quest for 70
Boy, I’m starting to feel the fire – I’m at level 67, with about 20% XP left until I’m 68. This takes a lot of work, though. I’m in Netherstorm right now and getting ganked and clobbered left and right. It’s a little high for my level, but it sure is fun to see that XP bar moving up in big jumps.
My high “toon” [character] is my mage. For the uninitiated, mages have a nickname – “the glass cannon”. We do possibly the highest DPS (damage per Second) in the game – my personal best in a raid was 900 – but we pay for it by having little armor and even less health. I can dish out 10,000 HP of damage in 5 seconds – reducing most monsters to dust before they can even get close. However, I personally can’t take 8,000 HP damage without turning into a charred little crisp of bacon myself.
So a mages life is one of learning how to do lots of damage without generating too much “aggro". Aggro is short for Aggression – how much a monster wants to beat YOUR head in, rather than the warrior in front of him. Mages that learn to balance aggro do quite well. Those who don’t – die. Often.
OK, back to my three-times a week 30 minute WOW session.
Doc [Crushridge Server, high toon 67 Mage "Lorthon"]
Ganking
OK, so I've started this blog to talk a little about MMOs, from a perspective of one of the rarest of humans: a person who plays WOW on an occasional basis.
What's "occasional"? about 3-4 Hours a week, if I'm lucky. I have all kinds of things (including RPGBomb, but that's fun!) that call my attention away from it, and besides - I can only handle hack-and slash and getting ganked so often.
ahh - my first subject: ganking.
For those of you noobs (new players w/o a clue), ganking is the fine art of sneaking up on an unsuspecting, peace-loving member of the Horde (like me) and killing him for no particular reason.
There are three types of Ganks:
The fair fight: you see me trotting by, and decide to take a shot at me. I'm at full health and not otherwise engaged, so I now have to spend time killing you before you kill me. This sort of thing happens on PVP servers all the time. As long as you're not camping out waiting to kill passers-by, there's no real problem here.
The out-classed fight: You are walking around in Horde territory in your 70 Rogue, and see an unsuspecting level-20-something toon (like my Druid) and walk over and one-shot me. (killed after one attack). This is akin to the guy in Junior High who beats up elementary school kids for lunch money. You don't get much (honor), and you make life miserable to some poor schlep who's just starting out.
The Hit-em when they're down: This one burns me. you hide behind a rock or other obstacle, wait until the target is defenseless, such as an AFK (away from keyboard, usually shown by sitting down) or right after they just had a knock-down-drag-out fight with some big bad monster, and you jump on them when they have low mana, health, or both. This is what in sports is called "Unsportsmanlike conduct" - similiar to when the opponent tackles the quarterback AFTER the play is over.
SubCategory: The camp the corpse: People who do this are the lowest of the low. Basically, after killing me [almost always with the hit-em-when-they're down technique], they stand over or near my corpse, waiting for me to revive. [For you noobs, when you revive from being killed, you have to walk from a graveyard (sometimes a long distance!) as a ghost, and then you revive with only half of your health and mana, and NONE of the protective spells or abilities turned on.] When I see someone who's done this to me I go out of my way to kill them - sometimes bringing my level 67 Destructo mage to do an Out-classed fight.
Oh, and did I mention? Killing Alliance isn't murder: we just need to keep our pet Taurens fed.
Doc [Crushridge Server, high toon 67 Mage "Lorthon"]
