Tales from the Random Pug - 3rd story

I raided LBRS on my druid the other day. But not in the conventional way where you've got 10+ people in a group at once, going for some fun together. No no. This isn't a story about some fun lowbie raid where everything was just peaches. This time we were 10+ (11 actually) in the group, but never more than 5 at one time. Because I did a regular instance run, it just had very many drop outs. Welcome to the world of random pugging.

I only queue up for instances specifically nowadays. I don't care much for the satchel loot, since leveling is so easy and you'll probably replace most of it pretty fast anyway. Most of the time I've outleveled an instance too fast to do it more than one or two times, and by doing each instance in sequence I'm collecting the quests and get to experience all the changes made without overleveling any by doing the same instance twice in a row. So I was queueing for LBRS, and since I am a druid with dualspec I queued as everything and got a group pretty fast as the healer.

First thing that happens, the tank leaves. No comment, no nothing. Just join the instance and left immediately. Well people do that. I've done that. If I queue randomly and end up in the one instance I really didn't want to do I might do that. One of the dpsers, a dk, let out some random curse words and left too. Two down. The rest of us, me, a hunter and a paladin, requeued. It didn't take too long before we had gotten us a new tank and a new dps. We clear a couple of groups when the lock says he has to go afk for a short while. Well no suprise there, people go randomly afk in random pugs all the time. I usually endure afkness for a couple of minutes. I mean, people could have to leave the computer a short while occasionally, it happens to everyone. But after a while I kick them. I didn't have to with this lock though, apparently he realized that whatever was taking time from him would take more time than expected, and so he left. Actually I commend him on that, rather than just stay in the group or even worse, just go offline. By leaving he gave us a fair shot at getting a new dps.

Good thing getting a dps rarely is a problem. Enter an elemental shaman after a minute of waiting or so. So we keep on clearing. After having killed some bosses we get a tank neck drop, which the retripaladin needs. The tank asks for it, but gets a "no, kick me if you don't like it". I don't mind people needing gear for their offspecs, but whoever is there with their mainspec really should have prio. Especially if they're doing all the job, like you would be if you're the tank. So that guy was kicked. I didn't initiate it, in fact kicking him was letting him off easy. You don't get a penalty timer for being kicked and he could just requeue if he liked to. Sure he might end up with a long wait, but if he needed the neck he might actually have a tanking offspec and just go for that. On the other hand there's really no other good way of punishing ninjas. You can either kick them to make sure they won't do it again, in your group anyway. Or leave them and need on everything they want to sort of let them taste their own medicine. But none of these are great options. But he was kicked and we queued for another dps, again.

After a couple of minutes we got a mage. We kept clearing on and suddenly the hunter dinged. Everyone says the regular, semi-automated, "grats". And the hunter leaves. He didn't need us anylonger, he had accomplished his goal and off he went. It reminds me of a horror-instance I did with my hunter at 79. We got tank after tank that dinged 80 and left before we finally managed to finish the instance. It was in Violet Hold, so my pet had to tank half the instance since the mobs keep spawning. We had worked through some 5 tanks in the end, not counting my pet. Why can't people just stay the last 10-15 minutes? Well a dps leaving isn't as horrible as the tank leaving, fortunately. So we queued for a new dps... again.

Enter a dk. I told him that he should be proud to know that he was the 10th member of our group! He thought that was funny, when suddenly the mage left the group, mid boss fight. I said "well yeah, that sort of explains what I mean". Requeue for a new dps... again. Before the fight was over we had gotten us another lock. By then we had gotten as far as to Urok Doomhowl, so there wasn't much left of the instance. And that's probably a very good thing or I am sure we would have had a couple of drop outs more. So in the end I ended up having done LBRS with a group that over the course of time consisted of 11 different members, including myself. That's 6 dropouts over about 40 minutes, so a drop out approximately every 6,66 minutes (omg, that's totally a sign). It will be very interesting to see how UBRS will go.