Now for another installment of Things I Should Have Done Sooner! I finally played a pick-up group. I know, right? It's only, like, the core of the game.
Basically my problem is I've been far too desperate to come across well. Not to ruin the instance for everybody. To not be That Guy.
The main issue being time. The other times I've tried to do this I've ended up standing around a meeting stone for all the time I had available and then having to apologize and leave. Mortifying. That problem is made worse because I had literally no idea how long it would take to do a run. An hour? Four? Several play sessions over multiple days? Who can say.
On the other-hand I'm resistant to the whole 'know the fights' mentality. I mean I get it and I understand the time and place for it but I want to treasure the exploration and the surprise value of the unknown.
So anyway, eventually the number of quest lines leading down below the Swamp of Sorrows just became too much and Katyana and our house guest went off to watch Culture (hoik-pitu). I knew I had the evening to myself and a group presented itself on the LFG channel.
I leapt into action, pausing on the way to buy wildberries so I could cast my group druid buff. The gang came together and we went in.
Now it wasn't a complete success. I got more or less drafted into healing. That's what I think will end up as my natural role and everything but it felt like a lot of responsibility straight out of the gate. There were a couple of Paladins there as well so they chipped in a bit from time to time.
Cards on the table, we didn't finish. We got a bit stuck when the dragon above wouldn't wake up. Nobody seemed to know what was going on and we did a bit of aimless wandering. Then our tank (and clearly the most experienced player) succumbed to either tiredness or tedium (it's pretty damn late for the Aussies when it's 10pm in Hong Kong) and the whole thing kinda fell apart.
We tried jumping through a hole in the floor into water which turned out to be inches deep. We tried a bunch of silly stuff but we knew it was all over.
Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's a product of all the content being new but I still call that a success. Having two-personned a bunch of stuff with Katyana it seems weird to me tha people would rather stand around or abandon completely rather than give it a shot with whoever's available.
Anyway, I had fun. I got my feet wet (in more ways than one) and I feel much more competent to try it again. Win.
4 comments:
Oh my God, you did the Sunken Temple. Dude, that was your first and only mistake. I'm being silly, of course, but it's an *awful* instance, it's unforgiving and full of quite tedious puzzles. You have to do in a set order that has be gruellingly learned - it's altogether a really bad introduction to PUGing. But all the same, grats on going for it, I think "meh" is the default PUG experience, as opposed to "woot" or "gah!" which are the other extremes :)
I suspect 'meh' was the more general result but one always remembers the first time... even if it's messy and disastrous.
Yeah, eranikus is a bit tricky to wake up, first you need to kill the six troll spirits around the upper outside ring to lower the shield protecting jammal'an the prophet, then kill him to awaken eranikus (make sure you kill ALL the dragons first!)
I really love doing lower-level pugs. It's a great way to meet people, plus you can often actually experience the instance instead of having a higher-level friend run you through it. It's a lot more satisfying to know you took down Eranakus with a level 50 group instead of an 80 facerolling it.
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