Okay...
First off, welcome to the first installment of of My Alternate Reality. This is where I'll chat about one of my favorite past times in life - The World of Warcraft.
My name is Shawn and I play a hunter on the Blackwater Raiders realm named Aurendar. I usually blog 'in character' with her but decided I needed a place to air out various in game incidents, situations and other out of character junk. To start off, I thought I'd vent a bit on a common "WTF" moment for raiders. The now infamous Naxxramas summoning stone.
For those not familiar with it, it resides at the base of the necropolis itself on a small platform accessed via flying mounts. Not a big problem, you fly there, summon your team and head through one of the various portals to begin your raid. That's an explanation of a Naxx raid in a perfect world. Let's talk reality for a minute. A typical Naxx run starts out with a few of your members flying to the stone. At the stone you are then faced with anywhere from 20 to 40 other peeps gathered on the platform. Some are trying to summon their own respective team mates but a majority are there to do nothing but be, for lack of a better term - Asshats.
It seems that some players get their rocks off by making everyone elses life miserable. A favorite past time of said asshats is to get to the platform and flag PvP. An innocent bystander trying to click the stone to begin summoning will then accidentally attack this moron thus flagging themselves for PvP and ensuing an ugly fight that usually sends you back down to the ground in spirit form amid roars of laughter from the offending idiots. So much for being all ready for the raid. But that scenario compares very little to the bain of all raiders at Naxx. The dreaded 'mass mount'. You see, these asshats like to get to the stone curiously at around 6:00 server (raid time for most guilds) and then search through their various mounts for the largest, fattest, most obnoxious mount they have (usually something like a giant proto-drake or a travelers tundra mount), they mount up and merrily relax right next to the stone. While one mount may not be such a problem, it quickly becomes an issue when you're dealing with 5 or 6 mounted idiots around the stone. All the while laughing it up. Damned attention whores.
Well, I've read a lot on this subject as much has been written about the problem. It seems that the general consensus is that Blizzard designed the raid wrong in that they should have placed the stone on the ground. While this may be true, the problem isn't in the design, it's in the mental ineptitude of the idiots that like to pleasure themselves by making everyone else's life miserable. While I don't think it's Blizzard's responsibility to redesign a working method of entering Naxxramas, they may not have a choice if the QQ'ing keeps up. One solution I like is to have the area immediately surrounding the stone a "no mount" zone. The ledges at the edge of each entry way would be the only places where you could mount and fly in or out. That might work but I can only imagine those ledges quickly becoming clogged with mammoths and drakes. I say no to the no mount zone.
The one solution that I really like is to have the Scourge commision the Dark Irons to dismantle the pyramid portal left dormant in the Eastern Plaguelands, have it crated up, placed on a ship and reassembled in Dragonblight. Now, when you want to head to Naxx, you make your way to the portal on the ground underneath the necropolis and teleport up. Much like the original design had intended. This portal should either require an attunement of some kind or base the requirement on your flying skill. That would solve the problem of the dreaded "Naxx Mass Mount".
I don't know, it's just an idea that I like. You have an idea that would make your Naxxramas experience better?
Sound off!
Till Next Time,
See around the Meeting Stone!
Shawn
