It Came From the P.U.G.! Good Surprises.

For those who might not know yet, my gluttony for abuse knows no bounds. As a result I find myself in a rather large number of P.U.G. groups. At the end of the day I bring you, my readers, the stories of my travels in the random grouping of Azerothian adventure in It Came From The P.U.G.!

Last night something awesome happened, something I completely didn’t expect. I’ve never been an achievement monger. I’ve never gone out of the way to try to get them and as a result I’m missing just a few from getting my Red Protodrake. I queued up for my daily random and waltzed into Azjol-Nerub. Oddly enough the LFD system had queued up multiple healers for one group. A quick laugh and a decision of who was going to DPS and who was going to heal and we were on our way. We blow through the first boss and make our way down to the second boss when the druid of the group doesn’t even ask if I need the achievement for Hadonox (which I did), but just goes for it anyways. We complete Hadronox Denied and my achievement pops up. I say thank you and the druid makes a comment about how he saw I needed it so he just went for it.

That right there absolutely floored me. I didn’t ask for the achievement, I didn’t have to beg or cajole. The just did it because they saw I needed it and wanted to help. The entire group was excited I got the achievement and we came together at that moment, five complete strangers. Moments like that truly show off how amazing the community of gamers can be!

This is also the same way I earned the Less-rabi achievement. Someone just saw I needed it and went for it making sure to hit each interrupt.

With all the horror stories in pick up groups (my own tales included!) it is often times hard to keep sight on the good that you come across. Those times where something honestly nice and unexpected happens. This past week has been very cool on that front each night for my dailies.

Two nights ago my queue found me in Oculus. Two of the party members just freshly dinged 80 and happened to find their way into my group. One of the members was complaining about carrying fresh 80s and I piped up. It was actually really fun, and watching a fresh 80 warrior tank and a fresh 80 warlock having a blast in an instance most people hate was refreshing. They both got some good upgrades and the run was fast and smooth. We spent the entire time just talking and having a blast. It was just a fun healthy run. And at the end of the day that is why we play the game right? To have fun. Most of my runs this week have been like that. Lots of conversation, friendly and enjoyable. I’m very pleased by this and hope I get to see this more often. No one telling someone they hate them or how they fail at life, but rather just getting along and having a good time together.

So what about you? How have your P.U.G.s been this week? Anything fun or exciting happen? Any good news from the LFD system?

That is it for today, until next time Happy Healing!

16 thoughts on “It Came From the P.U.G.! Good Surprises.”

  1. That’s pretty awesome, overall, and really unusual. Hopefully it’s the start of something frequent.

    My Prot/Ret Paladin and Resto Shaman on ZJ (shaman’s gear is kinda blegh) have been lucky with the polite, fun groups. My Prot Warrior on TB has been lucky, too (hellooo wipeless HoS gauntlet!) and it’s given me SOME hope for the system.

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  2. Thanks for the uplifting read and grats on your achievement. /agree on watching new 80s get stoked for a heroic. I have done Oculus numerous times on my druid, but this weekend was a first for my lock. It was refreshing to see a “mundane” heroic through a different perspective than the party members’ health bars.
    .-= Bacon´s last blog ..The GEB Pattern =-.

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  3. I myself have had great success and fun times with the LFD system. The only time I can remember getting groups that whine and complain is every time HoR queues up. I have yet to complete a successful HOR pug run, but over all, the LFD system gets a thumbs up in my book.

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  4. I love to see this sort of thing happen in pugs. Personally, I was pleasantly surprised last night when running Halls of Lightning, and my group beat my time record on the second boss (Volkhan) dropping it to 21 seconds (previously it was 28 seconds).

    Even better was the fact that the tank was a freshly dinged 80, who performed surprisingly well for his lack of gear.
    .-= Spazmoosifer´s last blog ..What’s in a Name? =-.

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  5. Oh I wish my week had been as good as yours. To be fair, I usually don’t have as much of a hard time as you seem to have, so I guess this time was just karma waiting to happen.

    I actually had a rogue vanish on me a few nights ago, running heroics. I died, tank died, group wiped. It didn’t bother me at first, were it not that said rogue didn’t even acknowledge they did something wrong. But I shall refrain from ranting here~

    Best of luck for next week!
    .-= Ari´s last blog ..Power Word: Fail =-.

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  6. Don’ you play a Shaman? I get that achievement every time when I’m on my Shaman… just costs a few gold in repairs (it’s also faster and I’ll pay a few gold to save 5 minutes any day of the week).

    1) Tell your group to stay up by the platform area and not follow you right away
    2) Yell “LEERRROYYYY!!!” as you run straight into the adds
    3) Die
    4) Adds despawn
    5) Tell your group to haul their bums down to Hadronox
    6) Ankh up and follow them
    7) When you reach Hadronox, drop Mana Tide and pop Heroism
    8) Profit (get achievement)
    9) Loot quickly and jump down before the adds come

    I’ve also done it on my NE DK with a skillfully executed Shadowmeld and on my Hunter with Feign Death.

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  7. Lately my bad experience outnumber my good ones so much I just turn off party chat or ignore it. Eventually someone will whisper me, or we just pull through it. I check to see that my mudslide boots didn’t drop again, and queue for my daily random hoping it is H PoS so I can get another chance at my boots.

    I want to be viewed as an NPC these days. More pew pew, less QQ is my philosophy.
    .-= Arkaneena´s last blog ..Before Others Do Unto You =-.

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  8. I got “Watch Him Die” in AN with a pug: the tank was an over-geared pally who noticed everyone else was pretty overgeared too, and said “let’s go for it”. Burned down the Gatewatcher in seconds, and then all died, and ran back, laughing. It was great fun. Especially since that’s an achievement which was reckoned to be one of the toughest back in the day (although more susceptible than most to outgearing)

    (I think we went on to get all the other AN achieves too, but I already had the rest)
    .-= Carson63000´s last blog ..Fellowship of One =-.

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  9. I have a noob question: How did they see that you needed those achievements? Did they go to the armory and look you up?

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  10. I had a similar experience in Culling of Stratholme for the drake. I didn’t even KNOW there was a drake drop achievement, so the tank asked if anyone didn’t have it, I said I didn’t and immediately the group rushed ahead fast enough to make the timer to allow me to get it.

    Now all I need is the funding to get the correct level of Riding, but what an awesome group and definitely one of my favourite moments pugging so far.

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  11. I’ve had a terrible few days, levelling alts (L39-40) in PuGs, there seems to be a lot of players playing tanks (and healers) that have no idea of their role. For example in Uldaman, Druid tanking in cat-form and unable to hold aggro on even single mob fights (after he was persuaded that Bear-form was better).

    Then on another alt (L21) in Deadmines we lost the tank after 5 mins, we had 3 Hunters mine included. After a few fights I noticed I was the only one using Hunter’s Mark or any form of crowd control. There are periods like this that make me seriously re-consider levelling through PuGs.

    Uldaman in particular seems to be where I find lots of people with absolutely no clue!

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  12. Ended up in a Nexus with 2 kids at the keyboard this morning, the tank unfortunately was one. Paladin, no righteous fury on, never answered or said anything in guild chat when we asked him to put RF on. He would run in and pull mobs without ever stopping and without trying to taunt loose mobs even once in the whole instance. In 2 cases he also went the wrong way and charged mob packs without anyone following him.
    But me and a healer had probably a warm heart so we followed and saved.
    The other kid was a DK, death gripping single mobs before tank pulls. This second one was later replaced by an adult who helped pulling aggro off healer and my balance druid,.
    Why a good experience? Because no one shouted, no one was kicked, and the healer just said “this will be interesting”.

    So before nerd raging and shouting at silly play, please remind you may be dealing with little kids who can’t read English.

    Leave group or go ahead and try having some fun in the process 🙂

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  13. I try to do the same thing for people when I am on my main, a warrior tank. The one I end up doing the most is the Anomalous and Volunteer work the most. Since my GF is ranged DPS (and sitting next to me) I leave her to organize everyone and it allows me to just tank it.
    I kinda wish there was an addon that would scan the other people’s achievements and let me know if we should try to get the achievement or not. Some are just not feasible (Watch them Die I think its called) b/c its a suicide pull. You are almost guaranteed to die, but you will get the achievement.
    Some are really easy and its nice to get them, others require so much coordination or effort that its not worth it.

    Glad to see someone’s PUG’s are going good, I have had almost nothing but terrible ones.
    .-= VSUReaper´s last blog ..Better late than never… Stat Changes =-.

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  14. Yesterday, also in AN, my husband’s motherboard crashed on Anuk. Since he was the tank and I was on my undergeared tree, we wiped eventually (the hunter kept md’ing to him so he held threat for awhile since he was still in the game.) As he brought up our laptop, downloaded the latest patches, the group patiently waited and neither complained or bugged us as to when he would be back up.

    We felt horrible but they were so nice about it all and even thanked us for the run! We had similar great luck with a PUG on HoR the first time we (prot warrior and priest) completed it (notice, I did not say “ran” as we had ran it time and again when it first came out.) We have had some very good luck with our PUGs. Grats on the achievements!

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  15. The scale on which we can measure our PUGs of late has become well worn by the drastic swings back and forth. I certainly have had some awful people to run with, particularly as my only 80 presently is a pure dps and ramifications of leaving a group that is clearly going south is not as simple as wait out the debuff and requeue.

    I will say that the good things I have experienced GREATLY overshadows that of the negative. Gamers can be many things but at their core they are community minded, thats how we have lived/survived for decades. It’s in our GNA (Geek-ribo nucleic acid) to help each other, even if it is for selfish reasons.

    You know have me desiring greatly to be in an Occy run with 2 fresh 80s because I remember my first time choosing my drake and the hours later when the Ley Guardian finally bit the dust. It was truly magical. Pun intended.

    If I can piggy-back on Lodur here, I’d love to put a call out to every reader that you owe it to your geek-fore-fathers to pass on the love in any way you can, meaning you should do everything possible to make sure that that guy, that 80 warrior zoning into Occulus, scared stiff by a room full of strangers and a strange environment/encounter, I want you to make sure that he is going balls to the wall the whole instance and having an absolute blast! Make fun for him. I promise you with financial backing that making that person have a great time will make YOU have a good time!

    Cheers!
    .-= Rilandune´s last blog ..I Want To Heal… No Seriously =-.

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  16. I had the BEST series of random instances recently on my leveling Paladin tank. You know those rare moments where a group of complete strangers come together with perfect synergy? Where little to no communication is needed – but everyone chats away happily about in-game content and RL stuff?

    This was one of those.

    It started like any other random in Old Kingdom, but after the second group of mobs I could tell this was something special. Everyone spent a minute or so checking out the other players, and then I was off, pulling the first mobs carefully to get a feel for the healer and DPS. They seemed competent and confident so I pulled the second group. I usually have to mark the Spell Flingers or remind people after the first pull to attack them first – but not this group. Bang! Spell Flinger goes down, followed by the web-flinging one. A stray Lightning Bolt pulls the second group and I think to myself, “Oh crap, a wipe on the second pull”, but nooooo. The priest healer starts going crazy with chain heals and the DPS kicks into high gear, bringing down the rogue group. After that, I expect a vote-kick dialogue to appear for the Shaman, but nothing happens apart from a series of “Wohoo!” and “Wow that was fun!”. We res the dead (a RL friend of mine on her Rogue) and keep going, clearing the instance in record time. The major highlight of the run was an offhand question about whether any of the group had managed to take on all three of the smaller Faceless Ones who patrol the room of the Herald at once. The abject chaos that ensued from that was hilarious! Fear. Run. Desperately grab aggro back. Rinse. Repeat.

    What followed this instance was a whirlwind ride through six more instances with this group of merry nut-cases. We went through three healers (who lamented in having to leave for various in-game or RL obligations), but in each instance we pulled together with incredible gusto to defeat the instances with elegance (read: a moronic lack of self-preservation). Grabbing all of the raptors, their riders and then King Dredd in one fel swoop – and surviving to brag about it is something that this group of players will carry with them for a while.

    It’s cases like this that has me wishing desperately for the ability to add people from other realms to your Friend’s List. I know that the chances of me ever coming across that combination of players are infinitesimally small – and mores’ the pity. Those of you who were in that group that lined up with the Draenei Paladin tank from Aman’Thul, I salute you.
    .-= Big-Muu – Aman’Thul´s last blog ..Recruitment =-.

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