WC PUG...LF....a clue.

A few nights ago I found myself playing Jolygreen with Shurshot tagging along for some pre-Stonetalon leather farming. I was helping in the killing while she did all the skinning, being the skinner. I see a call out for a group needing more to venture into Wailing Caverns. Now I LIKE WC. I think it is what all the dungeons at the lower levels should be.

Level Appropriate, between levels 19-23 a balanced group can have a cake walk.
Decent loot, Lots of greens and stackable grey for cash. Blues on most of the minibosses. Decent hunter/rogue loots.
Plenty of skinnable creatures, very good place for skinner.
Elite mobs, nice cash on the humanoids and excellent exp for level appropriate.
Winged structure, you get in and can go left or right depending on time constraints and what investment you are willing to give.
Quests, of a sort. A few kill quests and collections. The pinnacle being the druid awakening after killing all the bosses, very cool since it gives meaning to clearing the place.

Now I will admit to being confused the first few times I came here. It’s just like anything else. I cared about it enough to learn the layout. Hell I still get lost in BRD and I have run that place numerous times. (Though I have yet to kill Bael or the Emporer. Sad I know)

Anywho. I see the call for a group to go to WC so I ask the wife if she would be up to a quick run in there. We are at 21 at this point. Midrange for this place. (With a 3rd person, tank or healer, we could blast through it ourselves. Hell with pots and enough ammo we could take it duo, more on that later.) She agrees to go for it. I msg the guy recruiting and he sends out the invites, sorta. He can’t seem to get the spelling of Shurshot right. Takes him 5 times to figure it out. Then I had to explain how to do the /invite command. We happened to be right next to the caverns as we were killing the lions for skins. We sauntered on over.

The leader, who shall remain nameless, was just chilling near the summoning stone waiting for us. That’s cool we all are to assemble there before heading in. One of the group says he will be afk for 2 minutes….ok I guess. So wee cool our heels for a few minutes. Seeing as one other had not made I to the caverns it really was not a big deal waiting. After the minutes pass the afk’r rolls on in thanking us for waiting. There we are chillin at the entrance to the cavern…without the leader. He is still waiting at the stone. So we ask what’s up and he chats with fer a bit. He stays at the stone, for 5 more minutes.

Finally he runs over and we dive into the cave, at this point the afk’r states he hates WC cuz he can never find his way back after dying. Day yam. I am of course speaking to my wife since she is just across the room from me. She states she is not sure this group will be worth our time. I was thinking the same thing but willing to give it a try.

Group break down:

Level 25 warrior
Level 25 hunter
Level 23….er something unmemorable…
2 level 21 hunters. Me and the wife.

No healing but a butt load of dps. I feel we can do this. I ran SFK with 4 dps and 1 pally no problem. We would just need to burn things down fast without taking aggro from the tank. We get to the instance and I mention to the wife that she needs to tell them she is a skinner. She does, 2 others are as well. Skin rotation?….nope not even a discussion about it. Ended up being whoeverrememberedtodoit’s turn throughout the run.

We fight our way through to the central cavern before I realized something: the tank is pulling by either running at the mobs or throwing an axe. Oh boy we in for a long fight. The afk’r then yells out that we need to be prepared for a 2 hour instance here. 2 hours? Um…yeah sure if you take an hour nap. With the levels we had it would have lasted maybe 45-50 minutes. Even with out a healer. I also noticed that our level 25 hunter was not using his hunters mark with any frequency. It was me or the wife who kept the marks up on target, and some how I manage to out dps the hunter, without pulling aggro btw. I got this sinking feeling that this group didn’t know dick about playing their classes or the game. Newbs or noobs I don’t care it was that bad. At one point I had to explain what DPS meant! Yeah! Though since I was not the leader I kept my mouth shut on all the mistakes we encountered. Like the tanking of the raptors so close to the other raptors that the screams would pull the other groups. We cleared the entire upper ring before heading down into the water to choose which way to go.

We decided to go left since it was the shorter route. We roll through the crocs and kill Kresh (Fast for a turtle). As we head up the ramps with the snakes I decide I have had enough of this group and the wife has had all her energy sapped by the incompetence of this group. She put her char onto follow mine and I ran us out of the instance as fast as possible. We quit the party as soon as we left the portal. I did not say goodbye, tell them why, say thanks, or anything I usually do in situations such as these, they did not deserve any kind of warning or words of advice. Nothing can help those idiots except perhaps for them to uninstall WOW and crank out LOTR. Go over there and learn to play in a group before ever returning here.

I have had some awesome pugs where the actual value of the group was way more then the sum of the parts. Groups where we stuck together long after the quest or dungeon was over just to maintain the synergy we had found and help each other progress. Some have even joined my main guild.

How can you get to 25 without learning you basic class skills and how to group with other players? There are plenty of low level quests for all the races that need a group to finish. I see the folks I grouped with in WC going on to making a living hell for those needing a group for that ever important elite quest with the phat lewts all the way to what ever level they finally cap out on. I have their names burned into my mind so I will never group with them again. Hopefully they will get bored real quick and get out of the world.