A Sense of Darkness

Hell, why not, this is why people keep journals, right?

Tonight is Saturday night. I leave work the same as I always do, a little later than most everyone else, but not terribly so. There's a woman waiting for a ride, so I briefly chat with her. I've been given a kind of honorary ... thing which grants me better parking spaces than most of my coworkers, so I look for the allotted parking space before I leave.

As I reach my car, I am nearly overwhelmed with the sense that I should not take the Interstate. As I mentioned, I tend to listen to my instincts, even if they make no sense. The weather isn't bad; there's no reason to take the other route, but I feel like I should. Pulling out, I turn right, and am torn between two options. For no discernable reason, I turn right, taking the slightly longer path out of the lot, past a stand of trees. Everything looks like the stray limbs of some eldritch horror, but if something was watching me, I could not say. Night driving takes a toll on me, not because it is so dark, but because of the brief flashes of intense light.

There is something off. I am on edge the entire trip home.

When I cross the train tracks, near to my work, I am confronted with a red light, and there is a man in the center of it all, directing traffic. This is unusual. To my right, along the side of the road, there is a vehicle with lights flashing, though I can see no cause for this disruption. It does not hinder me terribly.

It is hard not to see the Tall Man in the many stands of trees, though truly I doubt He was there.

He is after all so busy elsewhere, is He not?

When I enter town proper, there are more flashing lights, and a siren. As I pull up to a red light, a fire truck speeds through, going from right to left across my field of vision.

There is not much else to report; my sense of dread seems to have been unfounded.

Of course, when I finally arrived home, there was a wild, swinging party going on at my neighbor's house, and no parking to be found the entire block. This was unusual only in that their gathering made any noise at all; in months prior, it had been deathly silent in the house located at the epicenter of the lost parking, and only the leaving visitors were any indication of where to lay blame. Tonight I had to use a back alley, and come through the back fence. Every shape seemed ominous until identified. Even the large tree was vaguely threatening.

I have no tolerance for gatherings, even at the best of times. I am not invited to such parties because I have no interest in such parties. I must confess I do not like people very much, and I have grown very tired of having to solve their problems over the course of my employment. Except that I am still in need of revenue, I cannot say that I will be displeased to become free from my tether.

Every day I am forced to think because another person refuses to, I find the façade cracks a little bit more, and I care a little bit less.

I am just so tired of people.

More Reasons to Dislike Level 58 DKs

So my last post was a rant about the PVE reasons DKs are evil.

Now for a different approach.

As you probably know, I'm an avid Roleplayer. It's interactive storytelling, basically, and it's intensely fun - when you do it right.

It is incredibly rare for Death Knights (especially level 58 Death Knights) to be doing it right.

I have a theory about that. It goes like this: in lore, Death Knights are incredibly powerful, and this is reflected by the class's starting level and array of skills. They are also the most triumphant anti-heroes of the piece. As a faction, they were more instrumental in defeating the Lich King than either the Horde or the Alliance, second only to the Argent Crusade for sheer, brutal effectiveness. Death Knights are damned - and also damned cool.

This combination of factors attracts young people with God complexes to the class. The high level is a cheat toward perceived power, even in roleplay. It's actually rather telling that even RP guilds often have a minimum level set for DKs well above their level 58 introduction into the wider World of Warcraft. The level also grants them access to a variety of clothing options. The cooler you look, the more powerful you are perceived to be, the theory goes, and since Death Knights are so fascinating and overpowered to begin with, as well as actually looking cool, Death Knight player characters generally end up not being cool after all.

To put it bluntly, ever level 58 DK I have seen roleplaying (with few notable exceptions) have done so poorly, and fall into one of three categories: the Death Knight godmoder, the Death Knight eRPer, and the "not-a-Death Knight" godmoder/eRPer.

And, since the death of the Lich King, Death Knights have stopped being particularly lore-relevant! The only thing we get about Death Knights post-Cataclysm is a little blurb about Thassarian and Koltira in WPL, which tells us that since their grand mission is up, most of them have pretty much just joined whatever faction they started out as ... maybe.

TL;DR: The Death Knight class tends to be just plain bad for RP, and bad roleplayers flock to it.

Need More Rage

Caution: This posting contains a RANT.

So, I think I've figured out why it is that back in the day, Warriors were the only tanks. That reason is rage.

I am right now enjoying my second ragequit ever, and have discovered that there is a hard limit to the number of people that can be vote-kicked from a group, period.

So I mentioned I have a pocket healer now. We've been trying to keep our levels together, and it is difficult, as I want to level while he's roleplaying, or on an alt - and vice-versa.

He's 56, while I just reached 58.

I think if either of us run BRD one more time we'll both go mad, so we agreed to queue for UBRS on a whim.

For nostalgia, he said.

I should note here that I am not a very nostalgic person, and I don't remember UBRS all that well. I was very much a noobish idiot-child back in Vanilla, so it's probable that either I was never allowed to come with, or I just wasn't paying UBRS the attention it deserved but nobody got hurt since I was just healing.

The first thing we see upon zoning in is a Death Knight who made me ashamed of my server.

He died on accident before I had a chance to save him: at level 58, he was wearing cloth, leather, and mail greens.

For those who have not yet experienced Death Knights, the World of Warcraft Hero class, let me explain, with relish. And also ketchup and mustard.

There is literally no reason for a level 58 Death Knight to be wearing sub-par gear.

The gear the class starts with (at level 55) is composed entirely of plate greens. It has reasonably optimal stats, and it is sufficient for a level 55 to get by until 60.

The gear they get on the way to level 58 and joining the rest of the population is blue and can last until level 70: everything, every single piece of gear a Death Knight sees from 58-69 is either a sidegrade or, at best, a very minor upgrade.

IF the unthinkable had happened and this poor sod had been hacked, he's only 58. Rerolling his Death Knight from scratch loses him almost nothing.

So, as soon as possible, we lose the useless DK. While we wait to kick him, one of the other DPS flat-out leaves.

We get two more DKs.

And they are both idiots.

Both of them Death Grip off of me, which is actually the least of their sins, although one of the more frustrating to deal with as a tank. One of them apparently has a grudge against the very idea of wearing a helm, so we have to talk him into putting his on. They seem to want to do the [Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy!] JENKINS achievement, at-level for the instance, judging by the sheer number of eggs that ended up smashed before we ever reached the Father Flame event.

Neither of them are inclined to help me, so much as "wander off doing their own thing, which is, by necessity, in my general proximity."

The healer flat-out refuses to heal either of them, nor resurrect the first one to die (who promptly goes AFK for the rest of the instance). I can't blame him. As a matter of fact I pretty much just encourage his behavior - if there was any way for me to directly kill them, I would have done so myself.

By the third wipe, my pocket healer leaves, and I've /ignored three people before leaving, myself.

Thank you, level 58 Death Knights. You have so enriched my Warcraft experience.