A Hunter's Story

Haha, saw a video over on WoW.com and had to laugh. I thought those were some pretty accurate descriptions of PuG’ers. Also made me think about myself too. I realized that I have a little bit of some of them in me, but I do my best to hold them in! Lol. By that, I mean that as a tank, I really really want to run ahead and chain pull the thing. But I don’t. I want to, but I know it’s not good for the group, nor is it fun for everyone. So I do the nice things like making sure the healer has mana, wait till everyone’s R before we start the instance, and toss in a “r?” whenever I think necessary, but certainly not every pull. On my Hunter I really want to be the “Go Go Go!” but I don’t because that’s just plain annoying and accomplishes nothing. I want to say “Go or I’ll pull them onto you anyway” but I don’t. I seriously think about it sometimes though! LOL.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s ok to think some of those things in your head. Just make sure there’s a filter between your brain and hands or ventrilo. But then, there’s a lot of things that cross my mind that need that filter too, not just in WoW…

Ok, so I kinda wish there was a “Hold everything on my guildie’s account because it’s being hacked as we speak” button. Luckily for us, though, we did the next best things. Here they are, in case it helps you (and you happen to be Guild Master, can get the Guild Master online quick, or have ability to affect these changes):

1. Demote all of their toons down to the lowest guild level. That is, in general, the fastest way to restrict their access to the Guild Bank and other potentially destructive things.
2. Contact the hacked guildie if at all possible. We were able to text ours, and he was able to get on a computer, use the password recovery feature, and then log in, successfully booting the hacker.
3. Put in a ticket. Yes, this is pretty low on the list. Why? Because quite frankly Bliz is going to be the slowest moving part in this equation, and they have a chance at not even getting it right. To give them some credit on the time thing – they do need to investigate at least to some extent before they just start changing passwords, blocking accounts, etc. They will get to it – it just may take time, so do your best to stop the damage first, then take the time for a ticket.
4. Breathe a sigh of relief, and wait patiently for Bliz to return anything to the GB and to fix your guildie’s chars. Most of the damage was (hopefully) avoided.

Keep in mind, the lowest guild level may have some decent access, depending on how your guild set permissions. In all honesty, I recommend guilds make the lowest rank “Hacker” which has absolutely zero access. It’s easy to setup, you just have to remember to promote any new recruits immediately, lol.

But I realize I should probably note how we determined it was a hacker, in case that helps. In our case, it was a guildie that hadn’t logged on in a while. He hasn’t been logging regularly, but it wasn’t out of the blue to see him on. We said “Hey, how’s it goin?!” he didn’t respond. Then he logged off and swapped characters, so we figured he just didn’t see the hello. So we said it again once he was logged in. He didn’t say anything. Then he logged again on a diff char, and by then we were getting suspicious, so we immediately locked down the GB. Figured better to lock it down unnecessarily than not to. So we pulled out our phone & texted him asking if it was him. He said it wasn’t. So we put in a ticket, and he did the password recovery. He got in fine, put in a ticket and we figured we were good to go. Except for some reason, Bliz reset the password on our Guild Master’s account. That was a bit confusing! And they accelerated our guildie’s ticket, but didn’t tell him or anything, so even though his issue wasn’t resolved yet, he got a customer feedback survey request for how they resolved his issue. That was a bit confusing too, lol. But anyway, moral is keep decent restrictions on your GB not so much to restrict your guildies, but to mitigate risk of hacker damage, have a plan/process in place for if you come across a hacker, practice proper password protocols, and don’t sweat it – it’s just a game. Hope that helps!

And maybe someday Bliz will add a “Hacker!!!” button for Guild Masters & Guild Officers to use…

Vaca week. Should have more time starting next week. Final paper for MBA due this week, we’re starting our garden (now that the chance of frost or snow is finally nil) which means I spent like 4 hrs on a rototiller yesterday, and we’re doing like a million other things around the house. Whoever knew that vacation would be so tiring! And to think, I was hoping to have loads of time to work on the Insane! So anyway, maybe I’ll have more time next week and can get back into blogging more regularly. Or maybe I’ll take a break. I dunno. Stay tuned and find out? Hands too tired to type more cuz of the garden at this point…

Sitting in LFR to hope for a few extra badges. Spending some quality time fishing, hoping for a sea turtle. Finally get in a group for VoA-25. Wait for the group to fill up. Group fills, we start summons – I’m one of the first. I help summons. People start DC’ing. I get ready to hop in the instance, in hopes it’s just one of those random glitches when people zone/are summoned. I get DC’d. I check realm status, it’s down.

/sniff

So yeah, all that time waiting, finally got a group, and the server goes down. Why then? Couldn’t it have waited until after the raid was over? It only would’ve been a little while longer. But I guess before beginning the raid is better than just before or during the boss fight. Oh well. Still sucks tho, lol.

I’m impressed, there’s actually a pretty decent post about hunters on wow.com! Actually, their new author does a pretty decent job with many posts. But I like this particular post because he really hits home on the key point. And that main point is:

That’s true across the board, but particularly with hunters. We have so many different buttons we could push, so which ones do you push and when? Do you walk out of the green circle of death, or do you disengage out of it? Do you disengage in the right direction to position yourself for the next shot and not off the ledge or into a different mob? How fast can you change targets? Pull agro and then dump it on purpose at the right times?

Those are all things that a good hunter knows. Anyone can volley into a big crowd of mobs that the tanks rounded up, and see their DPS climb into 5 digits. But since anyone can do it, why would the group pick you, or invite you back? Regardless, the point is well made that it just takes a little research to determine a max (or near max) spec and gear set. The ones that constantly pull more DPS and are more useful are the ones who know what to do with that gear, and when to sacrifice personal DPS for the benefit of the raid.

I did think it funny though, that I had someone asking what my GS was because they were running with another hunter and thought our gear was about comparable. Turns out we had a pretty close GS and it just turns out that I do a lot more DPS consistently than he does. But that could be because I’m passionate about my character and he’s not. Or it could mean he eats while playing and has to finish his bite before pressing the key. But since the difference between he and I are consistent, it just helps go to show that it’s not as much what gear and spec you have, rather it’s more about what you do with that gear that matters.

/sniff… The Northrend kids week quest is broken. If you did it last year, you can’t get the other one. Guessing there’ll be a hotfix, but just wanted to toss the fyi out.