Copy LOTRO: The Skirmish

Hmm, log in, nothing really to "do", fellow guildmates with nothing to "do", what to do?

Well, we've been putting together a lot of old world raids and dungeons where a group of us will go in and blast our ways through and its fun because *sometimes* the mechanics of the encounters will still slightly apply so we do have to be moderately alert (like Arthas).

It's great fun though just casual group killing. This is why I think we should copy a page of out LOTRO's game book: Skirmishes. (Though the battle for Mt. Hyjal does get boring after the n'th wave)

What are Skirmishes? Oh great now I have to explain. Essentially when your toon reaches certain levels in the game you open up Skirmishes in your instance panel which can be run by yourself, or up to a full blown raid group of 12 I believe. Skirmishes are usually instanced and scripted fights where you have to fend off waves of enemies and sometimes do side-mini-achievements like "kill 6 archers", or "loot the explosive powder and blow up one of the enemie's towers". It's fun you go in and kill with no need to worry about bosses killing you or CC. What's the difference between the frenzied wrath style of dungeoning you ask?

Well..it's not really rushed. Sure there are lots of enemies and the bosses could still kill you if you're slow to react but you can generally survive and its all done in a relaxed environment. And at the end there's still slight progression. You get rewarded with various marks and tokens which you can use to redeem armor and vanity items.

What if WOW had Skirmish like instances? Well, we kind of do in the form of old world raids and dungeons but ultimately they don't provide us with "current" world progression. What if at the end of each instance we received 15 justice points? Or a "mark of the dungeon runner"? And it would take 150 marks to receive some 346 item? Or vanity items? Or just random junk items? What if Black Morass was changed to a frenzied Skirmish where you (or a group depending on how you set your parameters) had to fend of 18 constant waves of adds and at the end you got a little bit of Justice Points and a Mark of Time. You would be able to redeem these marks for say a little mini pet or maybe a trinket. Though if that trinket would become BiS at any point then that would defeat the purpose. See, the game is so designed around the fact that we CAN find out what is BiS...hmm...

Skirmishes are non-competitive. Screw your recount, just kill the waves and have fun! Every now and again a "rare" wave may spawn that drops extra marks or...something! Go play LOTRO, do a Skirmish then you'll know what I'm talking about! Rather than the methodical trap, aggro, pull, burn of dungeons a Skirmish is more like...PVE infused with PVP, adds everywhere (though they are still susceptible to PVE mechanics such as threat).

With all the lore of WOW we'd have at our finger tips essentially substance for any type of Skirmish.

- Help the mining monkies mine faster by warding off their oppressors.
- Defense of Auchinduon
- Survival mode: Kel'thuzad's Catacombs
- Etc etc

See, the current things that we can do to progress our characters are: Heroics, and Raiding. Both designed very well of course, but they involve a lot of BRAIN POWER. Sometimes, we just want to log in and do something that doesn't require much brain power. Like run some old heroic raids or whatnot. It's not that I'm lazy wait I take that back, I AM lazy, but I'm also not incompetent. If you want me to fear and banish then single target damage a boss while doging fire and adds mechanics and kiting a baby penguin while holding the hand of a trogg while whispering sweet nothings in its disfigured ears all while minding my damage, the heals and analyzing the group composition for damage and studying the rotations of other people through the recount parse and how the tank is performing and the amount of damage they are taking and how the healer is reacting...I'll do it! But not all the time!

Work Centric? Is our game focused on progression ONLY? Its kind of like a person who prioritizes work over everything else. Progression, advancement. What do they do on their downtime? Well unfortumately its probably trying to act busy checking their work email and working their work work work work!

No! Not everyone is like that, definitely not gamers like me who have a job and just want to wind down sometimes for some brain-less fun. (Not as utterly boring as Archaeology, that hit the wrong spot by miles and miles.)

Though I did get the hint that "fun" may not be the priority when I realized Eyes of the Beast had been removed from the Hunter spellbook.

tl;dr: How the hell am I supposed to remember what I wrote go read it dammit.
Truny the Skirmisher

Random Dungeon Experiment

I pugchecked myself at www.pugchecker.com, and as I had been complaining before, if my "Random" heroic dungeon is not Azjol Nerub it's Halls of Stone/Lightning. And recently, Culling of Stratholme.

Here's the count.

Azjol Nerub: 43
Culling of Stratholme: 34
Halls of Lightning: 29
Halls of Stone: 28

Every other dungeon is under 20 clears with almost 90% of them under 15 clears.

Since I only run one random heroic a day on Truny for the Only-Useful-Frosts, I am going to start keeping track of the names of the party members I see, because maybe I have been running H AN EVERYDAY with the same people without knowing?

It's funny, because even considering the high number of Azjol Nerub runs, the 28 Halls of Stone Stand In That Room With Lasers Event probably consist of the greatest amount of time wasted since 28 times that 5 minutes is like....what FIVE WEEKS?

Truny the Warlock

How Random of You to Join Us

Ugh Frost Emblems, we'll need over 400 of these things for our T10 crap save for the weekly Vault of Archavon Lotto where the gloves or pants will drop. Since one thing I would like to do is to collect the complete T10 in preparation for the killing of Spirit.

The daily frost random dungeon thinger is where its at. But okay let me ask, how random is this?

For the past MONTH the instance pattern that my Warlock has seen was as random as this:

Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Halls of Lightning
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Halls of Stone
Halls of Lightning
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Halls of Lightning
Azjol Nerub

I have 36 Anub'arak kills! This compared to 15 King Ymirons and I'm sick of Utgarde Pinnacle as well!

Point A) This is good, Azjol Nerub takes like FIVE minutes to complete save for the fact that Anub'arak has to burrow underground for about THIRTY MINUTES of the fight, what's the point? They should not nerf this part, but ramp up the difficulty, make it the same difficulty as seen in the ToC RAID, spikes will chase you and ONE SHOT YOU, his leeching swarm is stronger, and the adds hit harder and cleave. This place is BORING, I just set Blagroon the Felgaurd onto agressive and I just stand there waiting for to nuke down the adds. He also tends to burrow when Decimation activates, and re-emerges from underground at such low health that he's dead in one shadowbolt cast. Lame. Why not ramp up ALL five man dungeons to raid difficulties to force everyone to have a sense of awareness/alertness when in a group setting.

Point B) AGAIN?? Though, Point A trumps Point B since H AN is so short. The end.

Truny the Random