Of Griefing, Oddities, and Pyllgarr’s Mighty Banhammer

With the changes to LFR that came with patch 5.0.4, I’m pretty sure most people were as excited as I was to finally be rid of the constant loot drama and whining that came with every random raid group! But as I started running through with my various alts, I started noticing more and more griefers that just made groups (particularly on Fall of Deathwing) completely miserable. Many others have noticed the same, even mentioning that there are entire groups of people streaming griefing sessions on TwitchTV and the like. Navimie’s fictional story this weekend, Diary of a WoW Griefer, reminded me of a recent horrible-yet-bizarre LFR experience. In general, I usually drop group if there’s more than one wipe, and I’m never much for getting angry over pixels. Especially with random strangers! But this one time was like none other…

Our fancily mogged and H DS-geared (lol?) tank just WOULDN’T STOP BOUNCING…

Everything looked fine when Cyrelle (my shadow priest) zoned into the second half of LFR. There weren’t any flames flooding the platform, nobody was dead, and Ultraxion went down like a breeze. As the corpse was looted, the fanciful tanks dropped group and were replaced with less fanciful tanks, but all seemed to be ready to go for the next encounter. And away everyone went to board the lootship!

Ysera knew better than to stay on the Failboat…

The fight began without too much trouble, but halfway through the trash the tanks started dropping like flies and with them any aggro went flying out the window! Half the raid was dead within a minute, and it was a wipe. An eager shaman popped up and mass ressurrected everyone, but suddenly the DBM timers were showing on-screen and Twilight Barrages began again! With nobody ready, it was another wipe and many of the group released and ran back in since the whole group had the mass res debuff. As we zoned into Ultraxion’s platform, some ported onto the ship quickly, and about half of the raid sat on the platform to eat/drink and buff before going in. Before we knew it, the DBM timers went off again. Half of the raid (including the main tank) stood on the round platform, watching the portal shrink. Before we knew it I was watching all the little bars on my raid frames drop like flies, and soon half of my Grid was speckled with dead indicators everywhere!

Dash, dash, dash!

The main tank was super frustrated, and took the lead of the raid by saying that nobody should port onto the ship until everyone was resurrected and that the griefers were kicked. Names were thrown out and kicks were initiated, and we thought we were good to go. But before everyone got on board and was buffed, someone started again and it was another wipe! This happened at least five other times afterwards, and in the meantime a good half of the raid ended up spending 30-40 minutes on the Ultrax platform just messing around and waiting to identify the culprit(s). People dropped in and out of raid, and only a handful boarded the boat. Everyone else hung back with our tank before the portal. Looking back, I don’t know why I bothered to stay that long to do nothing but wait since I had such a long queue. But I guess a bunch of us were waiting patiently while goofing off and doing silly things: my priest was life gripping random, unsuspecting people and we were all dashing around the platforms with her angelic feathers. A couple other people took out archaeology toys and trinkets! I guess when it comes to silly fun stuff, my patience can be tested…

The raid group finally filled up, and we all buffed and started porting into the ship. And guess what? Before the main tank ported in, someone started again! But at least this sometime, many people in the raid identified a jerkwad of a paladin who kept doing it. Even more annoyingly, he was purposefully wearing all heirloom gear and started taunting people in raid chat with “ooh report me, I’m soooo scared!”  He was quickly kicked, but to our amazement LFR had dropped him back in our group a minute later! How weird is that? But by that time, I was kind of done and had things to do IRL, so I finally left group. Probably should have done that an hour ago! Before I logged, I filed a ticket about the situation with some chat log time frames. Many people from the LFR group were planning to file tickets, but I figured another one wouldn’t hurt and that hopefully some response would come about from them.

And indeed, when I logged on the next day there was a reply!

Greetings Cyrelle!

Thank you for contacting the World of Warcraft Game Master Department regarding the inappropriate behavior of the player _____________.

*Swoosh*

I heard there were shenanigans afoot and I came skipping as fast as possible! With no time to waste, I made sure I knew exactly what you were reporting and immediately sprang into action! Here’s what I did to ensure your report was handled accurately and completely.

Kapow!  *Polishes the Mighty Bann Hammer of Justice*

That’s the sound of digital justice, my friend. I have many fearsome tools at my disposal, but what separates me from the rest is how I use them. I can read over logs quicker than you can spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, there’s no place that the violating actions can hide from my watchful eye. I scoured the logs for this person’s reported actions and swiftly set their pants aflame! =O

I have to keep my heroic abilities a secret though, so any specific details about how I handled this situation were burned along with those pants. Despite how awesome my powers are, I’m still held to lawful standards.

*Listens intently*

Harassment in progress? I must go, my people need me! Before I fly off again I wanted to tell you something – We do appreciate you taking the time to make this report. We want to make sure that your experience has as little disruptions as possible, so rest easy knowing that your report was fully investigated into and that all actions regarding the situation were reviewed.

If you still need to contact us, please feel free to do so! I want to make sure that everything has been resolved properly. I hope you continue to enjoy your Adventures in Azeroth and beyond!
<(^_^<)  ^(^_^)^  (>^_^)>  ^(^_^)^   *Pyllgarr Dances Away!*

Regards,

Pyllgarr
Specialist Game Master
Blizzard Entertainment

Too funny. This was quite a surprise in the little ticket answered box, as I haven’t been particularly impressed by my previous GM encounters — the last one I spoke with directly through in-game conversation was ridden with typos and spelling errors, and took 10 minutes between each of my simple questions regarding fixing my Sons of Hodir reputation issues, only to give me answers straight from WoWWiki. So this speedy and quirky response was quite a welcome sight in my inbox! But regardless of whether or not Pyllgarr’s Mighty Ban Hammer were true or just something they say to make us feel better, it sure made me smile. Plus, evil Cyrelle was only too amused by the mental images of setting said person’s pants aflame… ;)

But anyhow, I’ve been pretty happy with the changes to LFR, but I sure hope these kinds of instances don’t continue on into MoP. For people like me who don’t have time to adhere to a regular raid schedule, LFR has been a very fun (at times) opportunity to see some epic battles. And especially for those of us who have many alts, it’s an incredibly simple way to get some decent gear. It would sure be disappointing if people still ruin the fun come expansion release, because I honestly think the griefing is multitudes worse than any old loot system. Hopefully people are just bored by DS and are just antsy waiting for the launch of Mists. Just two weeks away…

Edit: Look at this neat item Navimie made me! Thanks, Navi! :D

*Kapow!*

Silverwing in the Mogolympics Pt. 2 and Wrap-Up

The Transmogolympics ended with a special closing ceremony this week, and I finally got around to catching up on some of the events that I hadn’t yet watched. In the grand finale, JD even announced the opening of the Transmogolympic Games’ very own official homepage! Every faction’s outfits are displayed together with specific scores. How cool is that?! Now if only I knew the exact pieces of some of those winning outfits… :)

What an exciting occasion it has been! Just from reading and watching all the fantastic commentary, slide shows, videos, and compilations of outfits shows how much time and work all of the judges have put into looking at each and every submission. And then the submissions themselves have all been excellent — everyone who entered has put a lot of work into the outfits, too! Congratulations to all of the winners!! But most of all, I think it was most exciting to see how energized everyone was about the events! It was my first time participating in a large-scale community event, and it was SO MUCH FUN. I definitely look forward to joining in on the fun stuff like this in the future!

To wrap up my outfits posts, here are the last round of my submissions:

Javelin shmavalin

Shoulders: Spaulders of Egotism // Chest: Tunic of Indulgence // Wrist: Vicious Leather Bracers // Hands: Pirate Sinker’s Gloves // Waist: Dusty Lasso // Legs: Shady Dealer’s Pantaloons // Feet: Grease-Covered Boots // Weapon: Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger-General

For the Javelin event, I knew I wanted a strong troll lady to be the model. It was hard to find a polearm model that I actually liked and much less a decent outfit. Plus, trolls have peculiar feet that seemed to make all the boots/shoes I picked invisible! I guess this was probably my least favorite outfit of them all. At least she was able to throw the javelin to 365ft, though!

Fencing with Bloodsail Admiral Caprice

Helm: Rifle Commander’s Eyepatch // Shoulders: Defiant Spire Shoulderguard // Chest: Mixologist’s Tunic // Hands: Heavy Earthen Gloves // Waist: Expedition Girdle // Legs: X-52 Pilot’s Leggings // Feet: Trogg Kickers // Main-Hand & Off-Hand: Electrocutioner Leg

My silly rogue, Caprice, was only too excited to model for the fencing event! I think she may like this leather outfit even more than the cycling one because it has pointy objects and PIRATES! ARRR, YE MATEYS!

Equestrian Event

Shoulders: Green Silken Shoulders // Shirt: White Common Shirt // Chest: Ivycloth Tunic // Wrist: Ironwood Bindings // Hands: Ruthless Gladiator’s Felweave Handguards // Waist: Keyton’s Sash // Legs: Duskwoven Pants // Feet: Saltarello Shoes

My lock, on the other hand, was none too excited to be modeling next to her despised Felsteed for the equestrian event. “Why are we doing this? Why am I wearing pants? Do Humans really wear this kind of stuff and ride around on horses??” I guess if I went a more warlock-y route, she may not have hated the more classic rider look I was going for. But never fear, she mogged back to her blue-purplish Tier 10 right after the event, faster than she can cast Incinerate…

Freestyle: Archaeology Professor M. Leakey

Helm: Eye of Flame // Shoulders: Necropile Mantle // Chest: Shadow Council Tunic // Wrist: Krom’gar Legionnaire’s Linen Bracer // Hands: Farshire Gloves // Waist: Sash of Arcane Visions // Legs: Legwork Trousers // Feet: Jormungar Galoshes // 1-H Mace: Shovel of Mercy // Off-Hand: Mistyreed Torch

Last but not least was perhaps the outfit I had most fun making — the freestyle event! Archaeology is my favorite profession in-game, and I wanted to make a fun NPC for it. I named her after a famous British archaeologist and anthropologist, Mary Leakey, who discovered some of the first humanoid fossils in Africa. As an in-game NPC, I imagine that she would be a higher-level Archaeology trainer that provides tidbits of archaeology lore when a player talks to her! :)

– – –

So that’s it, and we’re finished! Everybody should definitely check out the Closing Ceremonies if you haven’t already and congratulations once again to all of the winners throughout the events! A big congrats to Draynee over at Pretty Fly for a Draenei for being the champion of the 2012 Mogolympics! :D I hope more people will post their outfits and the different pieces they used — there were so many neat sets that I would love to farm or try out on my various toons. And last but not least, definitely check out all of the factions’ entries over at the Official Transmog Games webpage!