Project Lore

As we all wait for Wrath of the Lich King, I've been doing a lot of achievement grinding. It gives me something to do other than leveling alts, and I finally got my Loremaster of Kalimdor achievement the other day. In order to complete it, I ended up having to do a few raid quests along with some rarely done quests in Silithus. I also had to nearly complete the Raene's Cleansing quest line in Ashenvale, which provided me with the awesome Rod of Transformation to turn me into a furblog. Luckily, I was able to stop at the final step and keep the rod, allowing me to transform into a furblog whenever I please. While grinding out the quests for this achievement, I've of course run accross a few low level horde who I would sometimes leave alone, but sometimes I would just have to one shot them. There's just something fun about running by, tossing an Earth Shock and maybe a Stormstrike, killing a player without breaking stride. If they're in my way again, they'll probably be scared that I might do it again. Hopefully that stops them from stealing my quest objectives. Now, Bastosa has wondered about the joy of ganking, and doesn't see the fun in killing low level members of the enemy faction, but I do. Part of it is revenge. I can't count the number of times I've been killed by horde because I was not on an even playing field with them. Either I'm half dead from killing mobs or 10 levels lower than the enemy, and I find myself dead. Of course, I won't waste my time camping some level 30 undead warlock, but if I happen to see one, I will usually kill them. If I happen to see them again, I may kill them again. If you're on a PvP server, that's what you can expect. I'm not out to ruin anybody's night, but to give you the experience of a PvP server. I dealt with it, so you can deal with it. While I won't just camp anybody unless they've done something to deserve it, such as corpse camping me, I can think of a few easy solutions. Here are a few of the things I like to do if I get camped. Get your friends. Especially during early WotLK leveling, lots of your friends will likely be in the area and willing to help. While you're at it, group up and blast through some quests together. A group is much less likely to get ganked than a lonely player. Go somewhere else. You can usually find another place to level. There are a lot of areas and subzones and more quests than you'd ever need to level. Move on to the next area and come back later. Log on an alt (or a main). Grab your other characters and get some work done on them. Or, if you're leveling an alt, take your main and do some dailies. Maybe play the Auction House game for a while. You probably won't get killed in the AH unless there's some sort of plague going around. Take a break. Make a sandwich, grab a drink, or get some errands done. While you're out getting things done, your campers are waiting for you to come back with no idea that you've logged out, balanced your checkbook, and beaten Little Big Planet. What are all of your strategies for avoiding gankers? Are you looking forward to ganking in Northrend? How often do you kill the lowbies that happen to be in your way?

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So I, like everyone else it seems, have been victim of Blizzard’s recruit-a-friend program. With TBC wrapping up, it seems like the perfect time to level some alts with a big bonus. So like many others I have made friends with myself and started dual-boxing. But I don’t want to talk about that today. What I want to talk about is my experience leveling again. Like my good friend Juggynaut, I too (against my better judgment) recently decided to bring my new toons into Stranglethorn Vale. Being that I rolled on a PvP server I knew the risks… but I also knew there were plenty of kill quests that were ripe for dual-boxing, so I went anyway. As I expected I got ganked, and ganked a lot. So much in fact that after about half a day of leveling there I ended up throwing my headset across the room, yelling some choice profanities, and swearing I would never go back. I’ll reiterate, I fully expected the PvP central that STV is famous for. The reason for my frustration was not one, but several 70s that thought it was great fun to come kill my poor level 35 characters over and over and over again. Not only that, but after they killed me they had no issues camping my body and waiting for me to res to kill me again. Now as I’m sitting there with my ghost hovering over my corpse waiting for them to let their guard down for just a moment, it occurred to me… how are these people having fun right now? I really don’t understand it. I enjoy PvP as much as the next guy, and understand what comes with rolling on a PvP server. But seriously, who enjoys camping characters 30 levels below them for hours on end? It just seems sick to me. Are they really that hard up to feel "leet"? There is no challenge for them, there is nothing to be gained, pretty much the only reason to do it is to be a huge jerk. Seems crazy to me, but its clear LOTS of people do it. So I ask, why? Do you participate in the STV scene, or at least have insights as to why this is fun for people? When I’m on my 70s, my priorities are elsewhere, just saying.

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