There was player vs player combat on Monday night as our two guilds brought their "A" games to the battles. On the Horde side was "The Order of the Dragon" represented by Lao and Melasahnd. On the Alliance side the guild "Tea Green" fielded Java and visiting newcomer Fin.
Lao was first in game and softened up the competition. Her description of the action captured the evening perfectly:
"Missed a good night last night, DER. Before anyone else got on Lao did a couple rounds of EotS. The first round I got pulled into did not look good. Alliance held three bases as I got in. Horde tied it up with two bases and held the flag while we tried to catch up on points by getting a third base. We won at the end by a good margin. The second game was even better. We came in and I pushed for DR right off and we caught three bases almost off the bat. Lao was quite the avenger and held 2nd in DPS behind a huntard… hunter. A shammy and I pretty much held DR solo.
Right as I finished this Wild shot a hello. I had not seen him come on. He seems to have a DK that I had no idea existed. He popped over to Philly to get a last stone for my helm, but it became way too much of a chain quest so he popped back over to.. hum.. well, not sure what her name was but it started with an M. Marissa, Manerva, Marrieane.. something.
We got pulled into an AV and set forth to destroy towers. Ms M was quite zealous in her quest against the alliance; you would thing that she had been pent up for ages aching to get out *Gives Wild a chastising look* Lao and Ms M got separated but in the end we, again, conquered. The down side is that it leveled Lao, so Ms M and she were no longer in the same bracket.
With a mad search I found a rouge (Fin) on the alliance side that could play with Javajoo the Invincible Pally. This rouge was a rather repressed rogue, since he never had even been in a battle ground. But I was a zealous clicker of all his buttons and he did not do too bad. He even capped a flag by some weird chance of fate. Java on the other hand was neigh unto invincible with his mighty pally heals, even got a few killing blows in. We won the battle in the end and even got Fin up one level for our effort.
Good times. Sin would have loved it. "
Lao was right about Melasahnd. She was one of the first born death knights when that new class of player was introduced. After that big send off the poor girl was all but forgotten, a level 62 DK reduced to helping out with small chores, such as helping Happy with the Auction House, doing a little herb gathering, baby sitting young family members, etc. Melasahnd had wanted greater things for herself, but probably felt that this was part of her atonement for the horror she and other death knights had unleashed on the world under the spell of the Lich King.
I thought it only fitting that that early chapter in Melasahnd's life be revisited and I am going to include that searing journey in the next post. It's quite long, but we should all be reminded now and then of the sacrifices it took.
I captured a screenshot of the final results of the Fin/Java Warsong Gulch match. Both did well, particularly considering the circumstances and the fact that they were pretty low level for that bracket (level 30-34).
Speaking of brackets, that brings up another change I wanted to mention. Battleground (BG) brackets have long followed a simple x0-x9 format. For example, the lowest level bracket is level 10-19. The next level is 20-29, and so on. Significant changes in how battlegrounds work are nearly always announced ahead of time and often are introduced in a patch. Less than a week ago a major change in the BGs occurred that went completely under the radar. No announcement, no explanation from any of the major sites that report on WoW ... nothing. Lao first noticed it and I did some research on it. There were many confused posts out there asking what was going on. DER came up with some information that clarified things, but as yet I've seen nothing official.
The change altered the brackets significantly. Instead of the x0-x9 format, BGs now follow an x0-x4 and x5-x9 format. For example, the level 10-19 bracket has now been broken into two brackets, levels 10-14 and 15-19.
There is both good and bad to this unannounced change. The smaller level brackets make the competition more even as there will no longer be level 10 players getting slaughtered by players nine levels higher then them. Four levels higher is still stiff competition, but the odds are much better. So the average match will be much more competitive. The bad is what happened Monday night, when Lao leveled to 65 and bracket 65-69 while Melasahnd, who also leveled (to 63) had to stay in the 60-64 bracket. Another more serious concern is that with only half as many levels in the bracket, queue times to get a BG going could become longer.
Look for "Melasahnd's Training Part 4" in the next post.
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