What be this that doth grace my eyes? It cannot be. A random PUG system? Yes it is.
If it isn’t obvious by now, I am a perpetual lowbie. 80 sounds nice and all, but it’s so very far away, and I haven’t even the minutest amount of patience to get there if I’m not enjoying the journey. Soloing gets old. Soloing gets old fast, especially when I have shelves of games to occupy my alone time just fine. I like to run instances more than I like doing quests. I don’t like to “be run through” instances. Not in that “it causes me pain” way, but in such a way that I’d rather be actually playing the game. I appreciate the effort made by my stronger friends to aid me, I really do. I just gain very little personally from being run through an instance. Only my character benefits. No, what I really want is four other equally clueless lowbies crammed together by necessity, fumbling through a challenging task to the best of our laughably limited ability. And the problem is that at low levels, good luck ever seeing a group. Inevitably, a PUG always collapses into someone bringing their high-level friend along to get it done faster and easier. Le sigh.
Maybe, just maybe, the new 3.3 patch has just what I want. You know how you hit that “I wanna BG dangnabit” button and sooner than later a box pops up to swing you off to BG land where you face off with several people from several different servers? Word on the PTR is we’re getting that in dungeon instance form. Craziness, I know! Push the button, choose a dungeon (or random), and soon you could be swooshed off to tackle the likes of Edwin VanCleef with four strangers from anywhere in your Battlegroup.
Gear requirements are being tagged onto the harder dungeons, to make sure super-n00bsaucers don’t crash your party for a free ride. Vote Kicking is available for removing problem members, or general d-baggery. Losing/kicking/”gtg gf wants xxx” teammates lets you choose to go back into the queue for a replacement, so you could find yourself popped in mid-run, which may or may not suit some. Gear rolling in these settings gets a tweak. The melee-only classes can’t roll on obviously-caster gear. You can only roll on your “dominant armor type (ex. paladins for plate)”, which I’m skeptical about. It’s not uncommon for Shaman and Druid casters to roll on squishier armor due to a significantly larger selection of caster gear amongst the clothier sorts at low levels. I’ve heard of Boomkins in cloth bits as late as their 60s. And caster mail in the 40s? Forget about it. Here’s hoping the system is lenient enough to only restrict the most obvious ninja-looting needs. Greeds, however, are unrestricted, and there’s apparently an automated disenchant rolling system for unclaimed gear as well.
Skepticism aside, I’m excited. Maybe I’ll finally be able to enjoy true grouping on my slow sight-seeing journey to that crowded end-game. I’m pretty well sick of the level-cap-or-nothing attitude that unwaveringly mocks me for not taking the soul-crushing time to put work ahead of play in a game and force myself to play catch-up. I’ll get there when I get there, and if little ideas like this make getting there more fun, it may just start happening a little faster. Now if we could only look into something about these level gaps separating me from my friends. Time to introduce you to a little thing called “side-kicking“. No? Okay, one step at a time then.
I’m not a huge fan of being run through instances either, but it does speed up the leveling process, I’ll rarely turn down an offer of a run through on Ophie just because I’d like her to be 80 SOMEDAY. Aaaand I want you to have an 80 SOON!
I’m looking forward to the random PUGs for my lowbies too. Not sure what I think of these at 80, but I definitely miss running low instances the way they were designed. I sort of enjoy the groups of newbies (and sometimes morons). It forces me to turn off my hardcore side and just go with the flow. While the people around me seem to get eternally frustrated by their pugs, I find them oddly relaxing.
I certainly never turn down a run, heh. I’m not an “every level is precious” sort, but I do like to experience what the general level era I’m in has to offer. Pushing through Outlands on my Druid right now is almost painful, as I’m watching it rather quickly blow past me, knowing people played this content for over a year. I see uninhabited wastelands void of players and dungeons I’ll never experience in all the glory they were designed. In these cases, being run through is about the only way I’ll even see them.
There’s also the matter of learning my classes. I shudder at the thought of waiting until level cap to actually play the character I’ve been stringing along for months. The idea of not leveling a healer as a healer spec or a tank as a tank spec has never sat right with me for that reason. And where as healer and tank roles are pretty well defined in my head (more so healer, as my Shaman has healed several instances now), the act of DPSing in a full group is a process I’ve not fully warmed to yet, especially in the case of melee. My lack of aggressiveness plays a solid part in that. Bad tanks love me for keeping under their threat, but I need to learn when it’s okay to turn it up to 11. I look forward to potentially finding instance PUGs more often, as it may just give me means to level a raiding character, purely in a group environment.