www.stopthesanity.com

We had a new wizard with us for a while, trying out and trying to get part of our core static raid force.

He sure talked the big talk, and kept bragging about how much in game money he had spent to get geared up and ready to go, and how he was going to do lots and lots of DPS.  To me, after dealing with him for some time I get the feeling he is all talk, and not much walk.  Kinda reminds me of a guy whose toon is Meznosis a bit.

Hippys couldn't apparantly remember instructions on things like where to stand to avoid damage from the mobs from week to week.  As a healer when I notice people taking damage from bad positioning I will tell them, and also I will remind people and tell new people about positional stuff.  For example in the Vigilant raid there are some mobs that will do you damage if you are within the 180 degree arc of their front.  Not only could hippys not figure this out, but when told, and told to move he forgot it before the next week when we went in again.

Hippys also likes to lead off with his two biggest hits, sometimes before the tank gets the mobs back to position.  Needless to say this certainly contributes to his rapid deaths on pull.

As it sits, we are getting moderately successful as a force, and are starting to get more people signing up than we have room for, so some people end up having to sit out.  Normally we get enough volunteers to sit out.

One night last week, we didn't get enough volunteers... and ended up having to go by our signup times to find someone to sit out.  We first fill critical spots that we HAVE to have for the zone, then fill in with people according to time they signed up.  If you are not early enough signing up you run the risk of having to sit out in those situations.

That night, Hippys ended up the low man on the totem pole, and was asked to sit the raid out.  People who sign up and show up earn points regardless, even if they sit out... so it doesn't sting as much.  You just dont get access to rolling on the gear.

Good ole hippys didn't like it.  He threw a temper tantrum, started going on about how it was his birthday, and then we he still had to sit out, ended up quitting the guild over it.  Yes, temper tantrums over a game are definately a way to show your maturity folks.

So, the next day he sends a /tell to our raid/guild leader.  During that conversation he apparantly says he is still mad, but is sorry for what he did.   Since a few of us were grouped with the R/G leader, and officers in the guild, he read us the replies both him and Hippys were sending.  It helps to keep the officers up to date on interactions with people who ragequit and other things that affect the guild.

Later on, after a chance comment in general chat about raiding guilds and recommending one for someone, good ol hippys contacts me asking about it.  We get talking about and he casually mentions that our R/G leader asked him to come back to the guild.  Now, having been party to a running commentary about that conversation, I expressed my doubts, and told Hippys I would be chatting with the R/G Leader to confirm that.   Hippys apparantly doesn't like to be doubted.

The conversation went downhill from there, and at one point he goes "do you know who I am?"    Well at this point, yes I was pretty sure.. so I told him "the old man who throws temper tantrums and cant stand where he is told to?".  Well, that is who I had figured out he was.  Yeah, minor I know.  But still it upset him.  Upset him to the point where he sent back a rather nasty tell involving profanity.  And even put in general chat commentary about my character and his (his words) "pee pee".  yeah.  Mature /grin.

As he started rolling up his apoplexy at me, he even goes so far as to claim that "his brother runs this site" (by site, I am guessing the game?) and that he could have me banned from the game.  He even asks if I want him to do it,  I did reply "sure", which upset him even more.

After all is said and done, I am still playing the game, and he has a /report and a petition about his threats and claims to be able to get people banned.   Wonder how that is working out for him.

I have been dealing with moving a couple of our websites off our property and onto a remote host.  We ended up choosing pacifichost.com because they offered postgresql as well as supporting wildcard DNS entries.  Both items I needed for some of the features of the sites we had, and because I didnt want to migrate our database over to mysql or some other database.

Because the migration process is one that I can't really stop once I start it, I needed a couple days clear of schedule to get it done and deal with any buglets and problems that might have come up.  But sadly, several times I attempted to start the migration, and ended up having to postpone it.

So, I go to set up the postgres database.  And I cant.  There is no option set up in cpanel (their management software) to let me do this.  So, I get on their support site and open up live chat.  Only to find out they cant help me, I have to do a trouble ticket.  Ok, trouble ticket submitted and after a few hours I have access to postgres control.

Ok, I go in and try to set up my databases and connect from my workstation with the admin tool for postgres.  well I can set up the database but I cant access from work.  Ok, I try their webased tool.  no go, it goes into a constantly page refreshing loop asking for a password.

So, I go to live chat and ask for help.  They tell me to submit a trouble ticket.  Ok.   I do, and end up having to delay my migration of the sites yet again.  A few days later, a few emails back and forth as we iron out the problems and I can access stuff from our tool locally and their web tool.

Now I purchase a dedicated IP for the hosting account, but, when I started up, they didnt bother to tell me that they cant have multiple SSL based servers in one hosting account, so I had to purchase another account with them to handle it.  Yay for spending more money.  So now I have two hosting accounts and have to connect across from one to the other for the common database.  Yeah, annoying but can be dealth with.

Now with dedicated IPs handy, two hosting accounts, I schedule up the migration again.  Only now postgres stopped working again.   And all my databases are gone.   I go to live chat for help, only to get told to submit a trouble ticket.  Ok, I can do that.  They get the databases working again and again I schedule the transition.

Only, now... the databases are missing again, and I cant access the databases from local or their web tool.   Please insert yet another live chat interlude ending with "submit trouble ticket" ending here.   I am not happy, and I let the live chat tech know in no uncertain terms that it needs to get fixed, it needs to stop breaking, and it needs to happen soon or we would be demanding our money back and leaving.

Now... finally everything is working (again), I have assurances that it wont break again.  Strangely I am not so positive on that front, but I plug ahead anyway.

Now, I start the migration and I have the SSL certificates installed, I have the two hosting accounts, I have the database talking right, I have each site talking to the database... its all going swimmingly... until I test the SSL connection.  Going to the secure version of the site on the second account takes me back to a subdirectory on the first account.  A relic of having them both on the same account I assume, from back when they hadn't made it clear they need a seperate account and seperate setup for each dedicated IP address.

I go to the support site, and load up Live chat again.  At this point I can only claim that i have a hope within me deep and hidden somewhere that they can help me in a fast manner...but, you guessed it...  submit a trouble ticket.  You would think by now I would have just gone that route.. but it sure would be nice if I didnt have to wait the hours (or days) to go through this process and could just talk to a live person to get it done.

In frustration I asked them what live chat COULD help me with, and after some pushing I got them to admit that anything related to the configuration of the hosting required a support ticket.   Then, what does that leave?  it's not like I want to go to live chat for the social aspect.

All in all, I have had over 25 emails back and forth with them for the trouble tickets relating to problems with postgresql alone, and another 20 or so for other issues.

One trouble ticket response was the icing,  they totally misunderstood what I had asked them.  The catch?  the person who replied to the trouble ticket was the same guy I talked to in live chat 2 minutes before I submitted the ticket...  who I had explained it all to and who seemed to understand what I had described.

One suggestion pacifichost... lose the live chat.  It isn't helping your customer service reputation any.

Yes, I have deliberately not made references to their website into links.

Well, we have been rearranging our force, where before we were healer shy, now we have chain healers out the proverbial wazoo, so we are able to be a bit more selective and start to work at getting good teams and try harder content.

Next week we are going to try toxulia on hard mode, and I anticipate many deaths. :) We are able to take on the zone in easy mode with no problems, and now are able to reliably take out Sara Greenhart in labs, so we are going to try to take it up a notch.

As for our token ranger. He jumped from 5k zonewide parses to 12k parses literally overnight. Our raid leader made a ranger alt, and has been leveling him up with an eye to being able to talk to the token ranger and know details about play style. And then, our raid leader made him sit still long enough for a little one on one chat. This chat took about two hours, and the token ranger was made to go through his entire hot bar setup, and knowledge book and explain what each CA did and how it could be used.

And then our raid leader got the surprise of the week.

It turns out that our token ranger in combat was just doing two ranged combat arts, waiting for ranged autoattack to fire, and then doing two more ranged combat arts. If one wasnt up, he waited til they were.

No melee attacks.

No melee combat arts.

He hadnt even upgraded his melee attacks beyond apprentice because ne never used them.

After picking his jaw up off the floor, our raid leader insisted that the token ranger upgrade his melee arts to at least expert and use them in combat in our raids. He has been hitting at least 12k now regularly, with some bursts to 19k. Which while not as high as our top 3 dpsers, is a reasonable improvement.

I am glad I am playing a healer now, and am not responsible for the scouts.

Our token ranger has been taking some time off from raiding, something about family, being old, or something like that, so todays tale stems from one of our dirges.

We have up to 3 dirges in our raids, our MT group dirge, who has been with us for some time, a newer dirge that recently leveled up to raid with us since his pally main wasnt really as needed on our raids.. and the twobox dirge.

The Twobox dirge is run by our MT.. so when we have extra slots free on our raids, he brings him along and tanks the raid and handles the dirge.. including actively raising people, etc.

Right now we occaisionally get times where the twobox dirge out-dpses half our raid force. and usually he isnt in the bottom 3rd of the dps parse.. all while the MT is successfully tanking the raid.

A couple raids back, the MT challenged our mt group dirge to a dps-off.. he laid an open bet on everyone that he could beat her on a zonewide parse with the twobox dirge. it was 1p for 3p return. He lost, by a reasonable margin.

Then as we went to the second zone that night, he bet her personally 100p that he could beat her in that zone.. she beat him hands down and now has a nice chunk of cash.

The reasoning behind the bet I believe was to get her motivated to step it up a notch and make her realize that she can do more in the raid than her perceived role.

also this evening, our MT (who is also the raid leader) inspected the gear on the third dirge.. because he was doing considerably lower dps than either of the other dirges... and it turns out that he was so badly geared that he even had a level 79 piece of gear (and not that good of one).

To hint that he should change up his gear a post was made talking about upgrading gear to prevent death to AOEs (our third dirge's group died quite a bit that night)... and commenting on how upgrading your gear can actually result in higher mitigation, better stats, etc.

And then, our third dirge posted... complaining in a veiled manner how the MT dirge had been in the top 6 of the dpsers.. and how they weren't doing their job because of it, and how 90% of the force weren't doing their best with their AA setups, etc..

I think he was offended that he was outdpsed by most of the force, and his gear was called into question (even without naming names)...

Yeah, I can agree some of our people are not optimally set up, how else can a two boxed dirge out dps half the force.. :) but his little rant actually p/o'd several of our top people who DO know what they are doing and DO have a good thing setup wise.
I guess the moral of the story is don't challenge people to think outside their perceived roles, or they might get upset... oh, and don't let the twobox dirge out dps everyone :)