Random Tidbits and Interesting Things

[Bolty]

Just gonna bunch a few things up in one post.

1) A few weeks back I had an episode outside Halaa. Now, remember I play on a PvE server. Alliance *always* controls Halaa on our server due to a massive population imbalance. It's really difficult to get Halaa Battle Tokens as a result, so that makes things even worse for Horde - the moment any of them try *anything* at Halaa, 50,000 Alliance show up to destroy them in a mad dash to get tokens. I was on one such excursion when a Rogue decided to have some fun with me.

Staying stealthed, this Rogue continuously sapped flagged Alliance players at points in and around Halaa. Ok, no big deal, that's part of PvP. The problem was that he'd never get flagged for PvP by doing so, and thus no retaliation was possible. It was basically harassment - at times, I couldn't mount up, and I couldn't move much before he'd Sap me again. With me unable to kill him, he could do it over and over and over. Sure enough, when some flagged Horde arrived, they mopped up 2-3 people we had standing at a mount point and I was sapped the entire time. If I wasn't sapped, we wouldn't have lost that fight. An unflagged Rogue chain-sapped me to allow flagged Horde to win.

So I paged a GM. The Blizzard rep insisted that this was not a bug or exploit, and was intended behavior. The GM also sounded like he didn't have a clue what I was talking about, either, mentioning how the Rogue should not be "put into combat" by a Sap.

Was this Rogue exploiting somehow or does Blizzard really consider an unflagged Rogue being able to Sap a flagged player without getting flagged "working as intended"?



2) Nuff said...





3) Proving once again that you can still grief people on PvE servers and reminding me of why I don't play on PvP servers, this complete jackass griefed me last night on a simple Skyguard Prisoner escort quest. I was doing the usual daily bombing run in Skettis when I saw the Skyguard Prisoner in his cage. I swooped in and let him out, rejoicing in the quick extra 12g I'd make from the effort.

As the Prisoner was walking on the first bridge, in swoops this Druid.

"drop quest"
"please"
"i almost had him"

Me: "uh, grats?"

"drop quest"
"he's mine"
"do you know how long it takes him to respawn"
"stupid BIATCH"

Apparently this idjit didn't know that the Skyguard Prisoner spawns instantly when an escort is completed, and he spawns in three different locations. He also didn't know that dropping the quest would do nothing; the Prisoner won't "reset" for him. I say "apparently" because this human waste of space then griefed my escort quest for the next 20 minutes. The Skyguard Prisoner automatically attacks any mob he sees, whether or not he has aggro. So, this Druid consistently pulled mobs 1-2 at a time and dragged them back to the Prisoner, doing little more, so that the Prisoner could draw aggro off him one at a time and prevent me from completing the quest. He almost succeeded, with the Prisoner reaching 4% health at one point before I managed a quick DPS burst to get him to reset.

Eventually I called in a guildie (thanks Bun!) to provide more DPS to finish the mobs faster before the Druid could call more over. Naturally, I managed to do just that JUST as help arrived, so this jerk successfully wasted both my time and Bun's. The only reason he stopped was because I managed to get the quest finished.

Makes me wonder how long he'd have been willing to keep it up. Anyway, I reported him to a GM for harassment. An hour later, we had a talk. Apparently his actions are not considered harassment by Blizzard's policies. The GM sympathized and told me he'd be "written up" for offensive language (the "BIATCH" line).

Wow.



4) Why raiding is fun.





-Bolty

[Tuftears]

For goodness's sake. The escort could have been done 4 times in the amount of time that the druid spent trying to stop you from doing it.

Report the GMs you got, IMO.

[Monkey]

Those GM responses are so unfortunate. That kind of hands-off attitude is expected on PvP server, but it has always been my assumption that players on PvE servers would receive actual support. Heck, that first story even sounds like he was saying 'PvE Servers have PvP solutions,'--If he didn't think your story was possible, then he should have checked the guy out for exploiting.

[NiteFox]

Rogue Sap thing has always been that way, though it has been stated that it'll be fixed "Soon™". In fact it won't trigger any guard aggression if used in neutral outposts, so the sooner the better, really, since nothing is more fun than trying to get from one end of Area 52 to the other without being chain-Sapped every step of the way.

It is one of those irky little things. Sap doesn't flag players for PvP or triggers guard aggression, but Hunter's Mark does (Zero damage, zero aggro), ressing killed players does ("Hey man, I saw that warlock DoT and chain fear you to death while draining life to keep the guards from killing him before he could run away. Lemme get you back on your fee- ARGH, MY ORGANS!"), and healing does.

Generally though, GMs are clueless as to how to deal with Rogue Sappers. As it stands, it's a legit and valid gameplay mechanic. Hopefully when Blizzard gets around to fixing it instead of nerfing hunters out of Arena games, it will no longer be an issue.

Also, with regards to the Skyguard Prisoner quest: Man, that's fun. Knowing that he respawns in three places helps a lot, and I in fact use that little piece of information to get that quest done at the other two spawns other than the southernmost one (The two Skettis spawn in a very unfriendly position for hunters, while the northeast one is an absolute cakewalk).