With just one minute to spare before the timer ran out, we won! (This is for my buddy Mike who is leaving in 2 days to train EOD for the Army. Just remember, no matter what hell they put you through, or how many bombs you have to disarm…  it will never be as painful as this was for you…)

Personally, I have plenty on both ends of the spectrum but as always, the “PICS OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN” rule applies here on my blog.

BEST:  I life-gripped, your death-grip, and gripped the grip on your grip, grip.

You are looking at the alliance roof in WSG. This is what happens when a deathknight deathgrips the enemy flag carrier (who was on the first floor), at the same time I lifegrip the deathknight. Although you can’t see what happened next, there was a bit of forward momentum on the enemy player towards us. Although neither of these spells can be cast while moving, if you time it correctly you can in fact pull an enemy back further than with just a mere deathgrip, or so it seemed.

WORST:  I fell off the boat. No, really. I fell off the boat.

Not just any boat. The boat that takes 8 years to arrive. The boat that you need to get on to complete the quest chain that opens up one of the portals. Let me preface this by saying, I knew I had a history of falling off of things, yet I still decided to press my luck and walk over to the edge so I could catch a better glimpse of Thrall. I wasted half of the afternoon with one. false. step.

(In unison) “Hi Michelle!”

I memory-laned through my in game screenshot folder tonight (everyone should do it once and a while) and came across this shot of my blood elf warlock after I had just killed 3 players at the Stadium in Helllfire Peninsula (back on my old server at the time that’s where people who liked to world PvP hung out to do their bidding).

These days though, whenever I do get those old pangs for my affliction warlock, I’m simply left feeling like a gimpy shadow priest with fewer tools, less burst, and a needy demon friend. It seems I’ve also lost complete interest in playing my death knight that I dropped playing my warlock for in the first place. Thankfully though, the priest class, even through times of being underpowered or just plain broken, hasn’t let me down yet. I think at this point I am officially ready to say warlock and DK, R.I.P. :(

(Partially in response to Jay who asked me what class I am loving these days)

I have to say when it comes down to good a combination, for me, there is nothing more fun than healing a skilled warrior in BGs. We killed like 8 people and barely broke a sweat. As a healer who is often at the mercy of someone to protect them, it’s always nice when you come across a random friendly, decent player who believes in teamwork. Thanks Torquè!

If only I were a rogue, I could totally kill that flag carrier.

Graveyard camping. I’ll admit it can be humorous to watch, or even quite enjoyable once and a while to be on the giving end, but when it comes down to it, it’s really just a broken mechanic that has been plaguing multiplayer games since their inception. Personally, I always found spawn camping especially frustrating in first person shooters due to the ability of being dropped by one single attack. Spawn. Snipe. Spawn. M16 headshot. Spawn. Asshole with a knife. So although this is a known problem across the board, there is no doubt it can still make your battleground play experience less than desirable.

Let’s take a look at a typical set up. As you can see, the rogue is clearly poking me in the ass, the mage has me on lock down, and their healers are safely in the back out of reach. Meanwhile, most of my teammates are saying we should just not release or rez so the horde lose interest and cap the flag. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. Calamity ensued for over 20 minutes. We tried jetting past our bodies. We tried backing up against the wall and running all together at once THIS IS SPARTA style. It was no use, we were sitting ducks.

So what’s the answer? Well, before we look at possible solutions the more logical thing to do is ask, why do people do it in the first place?

Of course everyone likes racking up honorable kills. I myself have gotten “wrecking ball” fifty times over in the low level bracket WSGs, decked out in my BOA gear, happily rolling over the opposing faction. But removing the honorable kill bonus from graveyard kills wouldn’t stop people either. The bigger issue here is just that it’s fun, and since you can never remove THAT element the only real way to address the problem is to do something technical outside of the player’s control to prevent it. Because let’s face it, this is Warcraft, not the Cub Scouts, and the honor code just isn’t going to fly.

As we know raising the terrain didn’t stop it, and while the obvious answer is to just hand out free immunity buffs, I think that opens up a whole can of worms of problems, and even worse, the potential for cheating or abuse. I also think it feels quite unnatural outside of a world PvP environment like say, what was implemented in Wintergrasp. 

Perhaps the answer is to remove the ability to target players (and the ability of the players to target others) who are in the graveyard safe zone. In other words it would have to go both ways. At the very least, I do hope at some point you won’t be able to press yourself tightly up against a mountain of solid rock (as seen above here in Twin Peaks) and be able to target people through it. My suggestion however, would be multiple random spawn points. Break the players up, and I think it would nip it in the bud. And if all else fails, the Blizzard designers can always get creative. Like say, after killing 10 players in the opposing faction’s graveyard you turn into a chicken (or turtle I haven’t decided) for a 35 second duration. No more. No less. And for people on the receiving end, players who are killed more than twice in their graveyards could gain an “emo rage” buff that doubled in strength each time. No one wants to mess with a scissor wielding emo-sub-specced rogue. Trust me.

In the end, it’s not a huge problem, but there is still no reason not to open up a dialogue about it. Happy camping!