Weekend (4 Sep) - A Visit From a Game Master

Weekend (4 Sep) - A Visit From a Game Master

Happy was plying his trade on the Auction House Saturday morning when he got a whisper. Happy gets whispers frequently, mostly asking for cash, favors, or advice. Happy ignores the beggars most of the time - unless they tickle his interest or Happy just feels like talking. If the whisper seems genuine, though, Happy answers back. Why not? He can talk and make money at the same time.

Here is the whisper Happy received on this lovely Saturday morning:

"Good morning, Mr. Happy. I don't suppose you could answer a question for me, could you?"

Well, Happy doesn't get called "Mr. Happy" very often, ie, never. This could be interesting.

Happy, in the middle of counting profits from his latest sale, whispered back "fire away." There was a delay in his response long enough for Happy to consider sending him a second whisper explaining what "fire away" meant. Maybe he thought Happy wanted to duel and I'd scared the poor gentleman away. Of course he was a "he". If he were a woman she'd have called Happy "Hun".

He answered back, though. "I noticed that you always have a very large number of items for sale on the AH. Do you perhaps farm all these hundreds of items?"

With a name like Happyface, I guess Happy could get that kind of notice on the AH listings. Happy is not the biggest seller, though, not really even close to a half dozen other sellers who blanket the AH with page after page of their crap. Oops, you'll have to excuse Happy, professional disdain for his competitors, ya know.

Happy likes talking about his work, though, and explained to the nice fellow his market strategy, business plan, stock portfolio, and that account in the Cayman's (ok, he didn't mention that), all summed up with buy low and sell high.

"Well," he responded, impressed (Happy could hear the adoration in that single syllable). "You are very good at it, Mr. Happy, I can see."

Happy felt compelled to explain a little further, since there have been players who looked down on Happy's little business. Happy mentioned that he was quite excited about what he was doing, loved his job, and all his other toons appreciated his efforts.

"I'm sure they do, Mr. Happy. Thank you for being so kind as to respond to my question. You have a nice day."

We said our polite goodbyes, and that was that. Happy, of course, looked the gentleman up. "He" was in reality a "she" and was a level 68 blood elf protection paladin (the thought suddenly occurred to Happy that he should have tidied up the place). She was a guild master and there were only three other toons in her guild, all very low level, who were all likely alts. She was decently geared for a level 68. She has a world drop weapon (Crystalblade of the Draenei), but the rest of her gear was clearly from questing and dungeon runs. Was she a Game Master (GM) checking on us large scale marketers on the AH? Happy thinks so. Who else talks like that in World of Warcraft?

Wild's guild did not raid on Friday night. There was a last minute "can we get one together" kind of thing, but without the presence of the raid leader it was doomed. There was no sign up, so a raid wasn't expected, but Wild had still hoped one might come together. Didn't happen.

That gave some of the evening to BB, who went stalking in Warsong Gulch, which was this weekend's Call to Arms. WSG is a much different place than last week's Alterac Valley "five minutes and we're done" zerging. WSG is ten on ten pvp combat and those battles take a little time.

BB had taken the advice of Eowyn, revising his attack rotation. BB had also changed his talent spec from Blood spec to Frost spec. Not to put too fine a point on it, it was simply a personal choice. BB wanted the "On a Pale Horse" talent which greatly speeded up his mount speed, which made farming herbs a little faster. It also made him a candidate for flag carrier in WSG, but at level 60 in a 60-64 bracket, BB didn't get much chance to grab a flag. What he got in that first WSG was a whole lot of dying, and we lost 1-3.

The alliance team got better, though, and BB got better, too. Not good, but better. Tea was in game banging away in her own WSG bracket, and cheered BB as he got his first WSG achievements. BB's WSG record after that first loss went like this: 3-2, 3-0, 3-0, 3-0, 3-0. Five straight wins. The 60-64 bracket probably has more death knights in them than any bracket other than the 55-59 bracket, and there were always 3-5 DKs in BB's matches. As always with a Wild DPS toon, targeting was a problem. Being left handed meant a stretch to hit the "Target Nearest Enemy" buttons (TAB or HOME). I tried setting up a macro on the keypad to make that easier, but could not get it to work. I think I will hard code the Keybinding next time. The attack rotation worked very well. At level 60, though, there is a lot of dead time where all BB was doing was white damage. Staying in melee range of a target was also a pain, but that just takes years of practice (years for me, anyway). I want a spell called "Stick to Target".

BB did have some fun and tried to be useful. BB liked to suicide attack the initial incoming run for the opponent's flag when the battle first starts. BB slowed down their run and sometimes distracted a bunch of them for the several seconds it took them to kill BB, giving the alliance team some crucial extra seconds to capture and return the horde flag. BB also learned to love Death and Decay, the AoE DoT that even horde DKs never seemed to notice in the heat of battle. BB helped so many horde pvpers to the graveyard that way, lol.

Being a gnome, and quite miniature, led to some fun battles, too. BB's weapon is twice as long as she is, and she was soloing a horde level 64 tauren warrior in one match. The huge cow was laughing so hard BB got him to half health before he finished BB off. BB waved at him and hoped all those diseases BB had smeared him with would eventually finish him off.

The most fun BB had all night was with a horde shaman. We were up 2-0 and weren't trying very hard to finish (ie, farming kills). BB was running around and spied the shaman in ghost wolf form making for our base. BB Death Gripped him, Chained him, and started swatting him. He shifted form, broke Chains, and, already DoTed up with diseases, tried to escape. BB re-Chained the fleeing shaman multiple times, until he became immune to it. BB couldn't get into melee range, though, and could only use his ranged spells. BB Death Gripped again just when the shaman thought he'd escaped. The shaman could have turned and likely killed BB at any time, but he was so focused on escape by the time he'd realized it the DoTs had done their work and the shaman died. BB can be a real bulldog sometimes.

BB made level 61 Friday night and now has her Obliterate spell. She's looking forward to trying that out over the weekend.

BB and Eowyn later got in some dungeon work, heading into the Outlands and Coilfang Reservoir. We did the Slave Pens and the Underbog (one of them twice), BB picked up some new gear (including a second resilience piece) and made level 62.