There Was This Guy

There was this guy.

An MMO industry guy.  And he made fun of a game on his blog.

A PvP game.

It had delays.  It promised more features than it delivered.  Key members of the development team frequently said things of questionable value or intelligence in public forums.

And this guy pointed these things out.

And, for the most part, we laughed along at his lampooning of the game and some individuals associated with it.

Not everybody, of course.

Some people were indignant or outraged in that way people are on the internet.  I have yet to find something in the world about which somebody won’t get indignant or outraged.  I worked with somebody who would get pissed if you said you were happy.  An angry person who took the happiness of others as an affront if she was not also happy, and she was never happy.  True story.

But I digress.

Fun was made of that game.  Even on launch day, and for days after that.

But it was an MMO industry event, and notable and worthy of comment just on that basis alone.

As the event passed, it became less newsworthy.

Eventually Warhammer Online settled down and was only mentioned by this guy when Mythic laid people off or revealed their subscriber numbers.

Then this guy, an MMO industry guy, made fun of another game.

A PvP game.

It had even bigger delays.  It promised features on which it could not deliver.  And, of course, key members of its development team said things of questionable value or intelligence in public forums.

And this guy pointed these things out, right up and through launch day.

It was, after all, an MMO industry event.

And some people who didn’t seem to mind when it was Warhammer Online being teased, even though they were very much fans of Warhammer Online, seemed quite offended when it was Darkfall on the block, even though they weren’t notable in their own support of the game.

All of which shouldn’t confuse me, this being the internet and all.  But it does… well, a little… okay, not at all, but I wish it did.

A Tour of the Deadmines

We were all lined up to do the Deadmines, my mother, my daughter, and I.

My daughter was up to level 19 with her hunter and had all the quests in place.

My mom had been playing some over the week, so she was already level 26 and interested to see the inside of the Deadmines.

And my druid… well, my druid wasn’t going.  To get the three of us through the Deadmines without the adventure becoming a route, I decided to take along the level 40 hunter I have on our server in order to clear the path.

It had been some time since I ran through the Deadmines.  The instance group last set foot in the Deadmines back in November 2006.

I did remember to follow the right wall along the caverns leading to the instance, even if I messed that up at one point in the interest of taking a short cut.

Once in, I found it easiest to just set my pet on aggressive for a while to clear out the early sections of the dungeon.  That sped things up a bit.  Bosses did not pose much of a problem at level 40.  The biggest problem I had was keeping my daughter with the group.  As the lowest level, she was the aggro magnet, and as the youngest one, she was prone to run off on her own.

Still, with my pet running amok and my hunter shooting anything that got on her, I was able to keep her alive for the most part.  The only time anybody died was in the foundry when we managed to aggro just about everybody on the ground floor including Gilnid.

It wasn’t a wipe though.  My hunter powered through while everybody else got to learn the lesson about not clicking release when you die on a boss fight, otherwise you might not get to roll for the loot.

Oddly enough, while the 3.0.8 patch added new graveyards all over old Azeroth, including in Westfall, when you die in the Deadmines you still come back as a wisp way over at Sentinal Hill rather than one of the closer respawn locations.  One of the problems going in with three hunters is that all you can revive is pets.

Once we got everybody back and together, we pressed on, experiencing no further deaths.

Blowing the Door

We got in a bit over our head once or twice, but were able to keep things under control.  The fight with Mr. Smite was amusing if only because it went by so quickly that he had to hurry through his lines.

We made our way around and up the ship, finally facing off with and taking down VanCleef, which finishes off the main quest and granted us all the Deadmines achievement.

Even with the deaths, we were through in about an hour.  The loot was the usual Deadmines assortment.  Probably the best item for the long term was the Green Wing Macaw drop, a rare companion pet you can only get in the Deadmines.

I do not know if we’ll make instance tours like this in the future.  I cannot see us treking through Wailing Caverns for example.   But it was nice to run through the Deadmines.  It is a good deomstration of a well done instance.