“You are now saved to this instance” WTF?!

OK, I’m late posting how week 4 of Arena went (I’ll try to post the details tomorrow), but this happened last night and I MUST post it.

Warning: This post may exceed your daily tolerance for QQ.

Tuesday is patch day. It is also the day I get arena points. And it is the day when VoA unlocks for the week.

Huzzah for Tuesdays!

Log in to see that we own Wintergrasp and the next battle will be in about 40 minutes. I want to get my VoA out of the way for the week, so I zone in to the Keep and start watching the chat for a group.

I get distracted by RL™ and come back to the computer with about 25 minutes left before WG is up for grabs. That’s cutting it too close to get a 25-man together and get everyone herded about, but a 10-man is forming.

“LFM 10-man VoA, 1 of each class,” something to that affect.

I whisper if they have a mage already, nope, I’m in.

Little note about me: I don’t want to be “that guy” in a group. You know the one I’m talking about. “That guy” out in Sholazar Basin mining. “That guy” kicking it in Org and asking about getting a summons. “That guy” on his 5th of 15 mobs he’s got to kill for a quest. A quest in the far reaches of Storm Peaks. I am not, nor will I ever, be “that guy.”

We’ve got 6 people in group, things are shaping up nicely. I step into the instance, so as to avoid being “that guy” that everyone is waiting for.

“You are now saved to this instance.”

WTF?!?!?!

Looks like someone hadn’t bothered to exit and reset from the 25-man they just finished. And by “just” I mean, long enough ago to be spamming chat looking for more members of the group.

The 10-man was a little rocky, melee DPS only had to be yelled at once to get out of the cloud, but overall DPS was low. I was in my PvP spec, still went 2k without going OOM and was only beaten by a warlock with a Doomguard. That thing was awesome. Big and huge and hit things and stuff, very impressive. The healers rocked and actually paid attention to people getting nailed with the spikes (that would be me). We cut it close, down to the 1 minute warning for the raid reset. No drops for me.

Fill out a GM ticket and see if I can get myself reset for 25-man.

Turns out that Raid IDs cannot be removed or reset. Also turns out that the emoticon for sticking your tongue out ( =P ) really pisses me off when a customer service representative uses it when telling me that the problem cannot be resolved or escalated.

So I asked the GM what I could do to prevent this in the future. “Group with people you trust.”

Seriously?

There was a very good suggestion on the official forums and one I have /signed: Add a fucking notice when entering an instance. “Warning! Entering this instance will cause you to be saved. Do you wish to continue?”

Found a guy that got saved to someone else’s CLEARED Naxx. Not once, but 2 weeks in a row. Damn.

There’s talk of people doing this on purpose to get random people locked out of instances for a week. Those idiots can DIAF for all I care, that’s just plain wrong. I don’t think my situation was one where there was malicious intent. I think it was just a really bad call on the part of the party organizer to not make sure the raid was ready to go before inviting people.

“But why didn’t you just look at the instance portal and see that the skull was there, laughing at you?” I know someone is going to ask. And I have a reason.

Since the last patch (and I have done a complete uninstall/re-install of WoW since), I randomly do not see either the skull or the pretty swirly portal in the first place. I flew into a Heroic Halls of Lightning the other day, asking in Vent where the hell the portal was. I knew it used to be right there… zone in, get dismounted, turn around, and there’s the portal and skull. Happens all the time now. Normally, I’m grouping with people I trust (my tiny little guild) so I know I’m not getting suckered in to some crack-monkey scheme.

And then the fun continues. I’m fuming that I can’t get into 25-man for the week, but we still need to try and do Heroic Gun’Drak to get to the elder tucked away in there. It’s the last elder most of us need.

My guild has trouble in Heroics. I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say that there is usually a lag issue, a DPS issue, or a threat issue that alternatively plagues us. It’s a guild of friends, most are very casual gamers, and it is nigh impossible for us to get our collective shit together in any sort of time frame.

We have just enough people that have the best chance of completing the run on at the same time. Meaning we have a tank, healer and our top 3 DPS. That’s about 3/4 of the guild right there.

I respec to PvE and we all head out. We’re going to try going in the south door to just take out Moorabi and then sneak by Eck to get to the elder. In and out. Surgical strike.

Yeah right.

We’re not even there yet when we hear the rogue on Vent, “My WoW just crashed.” Sure enough, he’s offline a moment later.

Logs back in. Crashes again. Rinse. Repeat.

Finally, his whole computer says, “Fuck you,” and shuts down. He’s calling it a night.

We have no one left in the guild roster that evening capable of even entering the instance, let alone being useful on Heroic. We call off the run.

The other mage logs off and logs back on as his DK. We join a WG raid and stomp the Alliance. I feel happier for a moment.

Then they all start talking about joining a 25-man. I threaten bodily harm if they don’t quit rubbing it in my face. I know where they live. They stopped.

So our DK and holy pally end up in a 25-man together, after being told that the raid was full on DKs. Funny, they were calling 1 DK “full.”

I’m still on Vent with them and we’re discussing the scenario:

• The raid leader is from a specific guild
• The 1 “full” DK is from the same guild
• There are 5 paladins in the raid
• Master loot is in effect, on a member from the specific guild

Suspicious? No, not at all.

DK gloves drop. Immediately looted to the “full” DK. No roll.

Pally gear drops. Immediately looted to one of the pallies.

Resto druid gear drops. OK, there was only one druid so it made sense that it goes to him.

But the first two pieces? Gone with no rolls.

Then the specific guild enters trade chat and begins their recruitment campaign, “Now recruiting, we ninja loot for you!”

The moral to my story? People suck.

I’ll stop QQing now.