Category: Gaming

Game And Let Game

Posted on by Nimgimli

One of the biggest challenges of being part of a global gamer community based on social networks is existing in such a huge ‘hive-mind’ without losing your identity.

Definition of hive-mind in this context: The majority opinion of the influencers in my social graph. The hive-mind that I experience is almost certainly not the hive-mind that you experience since you and I follow a different set of individuals. I don’t mean hive-mind in a negative context, by the way.

For me personally, I find it can be frustrating when I don’t “get it” when it comes to a particular game. A couple of recent examples: Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3. People who I know, respect, and even look up to are ecstatic about these titles and their enthusiasm is infectious as heck. They get me super excited about these games.

But the excitement dies as soon as I start playing. Now don’t get me wrong, I liked what I saw of Guild Wars 2 during the beta weekend, and I like Diablo 3 well enough, but I’m not feeling the passion that the hive-mind is feeling. I don’t find myself dying to play them while I’m at work, for instance. I certainly don’t feel the urge to cheerlead for them. They’re good games but I don’t love them. I want to. I want to be as excited about these titles as my friends are. It’s fun being in love with a shiny new computer game!

[Backdoor clause: I reserve the right to change my mind about GW2 once I play it more. LOL]

But love is fickle and you can’t make yourself love a game. The best you can do is try to open yourself up to it’s possibilities and see if it can win you over.

But too often we don’t do that. Instead, we give in to the temptation to try to ‘correct’ the hive-mind. While I think to some extent this is a natural tendency (we want our friends to have the most fun possible and in our opinion the games they’re playing aren’t the most fun ones out there) it almost never leads to a positive outcome because our technique is flawed. Our friends love their game. 90% of the time [I made that number up] pointing out its flaws is just going to annoy them (and some of what you see as flaws they’ll see as great features).

(Think of this in terms of people. Your best friend just fell head-over-heels in love with someone who is really cheap. You point out how awful it is that your friend’s new love regularly stiffs the server at your favorite restaurant and it’s making your gang unwelcome at the local hangout. 9 times out of 10 your friend will find an excuse for his/her new beloved’s behavior and if you push the issue, they’re just going to get mad at you. They’re in love! They aren’t looking for reasons not to be!)

For me, and for plenty of others (whether they realize it or not), it’s a constant struggle to “Game and let game.” on social networks.

It’s OK that I don’t love Diablo 3 or Guild Wars 2. Yes, it’s a little sad that I can’t join in on the constant delight that my friends are experiencing, but game-love is fleeting and by the time the dog days of summer hit the hive-mind will have moved on to something else and maybe I, too, will love the new discovery.

I’m going to try and adopt “Game and Let Game” as my new motto. I will continue to extol the virtues of the games that I love on social networks, but I’m going to try to refrain from pointing out the obvious (to me anyway) flaws in the games my friends love.

Oh, and just to be clear, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t talk about a game’s flaws. I’m really speaking to context. I’ll write a blog post explaining what I find missing in Diablo 3, sure. But I won’t jump into a thread on G+ where a bunch of people are sharing the delight they’re finding with the game in order to point out flaws. Let them enjoy the game they clearly love. If they want to read my criticisms, have it be their choice. Don’t shove it in their faces.

I’m hoping if I adopt this new philosophy it’ll make my social graph a tiny bit more pleasant for everyone, including myself. (I’m no altruist!) And maybe, just maybe, others will pick up on the better karma and kick it forward to others.

TGIF Gaming Wrap-up for 5/18/2012

Posted on by Nimgimli

Whoa, almost forgot this. Still boring…

Purchases This Week
Almost got through the week unscathed, but just today I bought Crusader Kings II for $10 during an Impluse “Flash Sale”. I blame Chris.

Played This Week
So here’s an interesting thing. I use Raptr to track my time. If I go to my Raptr profile it says I played 4 hours of Diablo 3, 1 hour of Guild Wars and 55 minutes of TERA this week.

But this morning I got my Raptr Weekly Summary and it says 4:24 Diablo 3, 2:34 TERA and 1:18 of Guild Wars. That seems more accurate. I know I played more than an hour of TERA!

I’ve also been dabbling in Hero Academy on the iPad (I suck..want some easy wins? Start a game with me, username pasmith), and last weekend I spent a good amount of time in The Secret World beta, though I wasn’t tracking it so I’m unsure exactly how much time it was.

Plans for the Week to Come
There’s another The Secret World beta weekend this weekend, and I’m hoping against hope to get into the Torchlight 2 stress test weekend.

Otherwise, I’m planning on diving back into TERA this week. And I’ll keep poking along in my solo play-through of Diablo III, depending on if the lag clears up.

Happy gaming, folks!

NBI: How not to build an audience

Posted on by Nimgimli

Hello again, new bloggers! You thought I’d forgotten you, eh? Not so, not so…

So by now you’ve got your blog going and you’ve hopefully found a writing frequency that fits your schedule. Now maybe you’re wondering how to attract readers.

Well, I can’t tell you. I’ve been writing Dragonchasers for 10 years now and I have like 500 readers who generate less than a thousand page views a week.

Why?

Well it could be because I suck at writing, but I don’t think that’s it because on my other blog I get as many as 10,000 page views/day (though that’s not typical… about 1,000/day is typical).

So I’m going to have enough hubris to not blame the quality of my writing, but instead to blame the quality of my marketing.

I figure if I tell you what I do, you can do the opposite and you’ll probably get plenty of page views.

So the first thing I do is, I don’t care about page views. I’m narcissistic enough that I actually enjoy reading my own writing, so I tend to write this blog for myself, not for my audience. I think they can tell and so go find someone willing to cater to their needs.

You should probably be more aware of your audience and try to judge what it is they’re interested in. How? Simple: ask them. Your fans will tell you what they like and don’t like if you ask them. In fact they’ll feel more committed to you because they’ll realize that they’re important to you. You may not have a lot of fans yet, but nurture the ones you do have and their numbers will grow via word of mouth.

Second, if you really don’t want an audience, be really inconsistent. Write three posts on one day and then go two weeks without writing any. Be nurturing and rational in one post, and in the grip of a flaming nerd rage in the next. Keep the audience totally guessing about what to expect next and it’ll guarantee that you’ll never have to pay for extra bandwidth.

But if you want an audience, you should probably find a voice and try to stick with it. Being angry is fine if that’s your shtick. There are plenty of popular rage bloggers out there. If you want to be wacky and weird, go for it. Again, plenty of wacky and weird bloggers have devoted followings. Ditto thoughtful bloggers who talk about game theory or what not. Just don’t mix these things up. Don’t go from philosophical musings on the nature of gaming to talking about how you want to build a sculpture of your favorite character out of navel lint and ear wax. People find that jarring. Once you’re established you can drift a bit, but even then it’s worth it to preface ‘out of character’ posts in order to warn people that they’re about to get a taste of something different.

Third, I’m an asshole on social networks. People block me all the time. People who block me certainly don’t read my blog. Mission accomplished!

In order to build an audience, DO get involved with social networks but remember that now you’re selling yourself. People absolutely will remove your blog from their RSS feeds and unfollow you based on one outburst. We all have more things to read than we really have time for and in some sense we’re all looking for excuses to cut down on sources. So don’t be a doormat, but do remain rational and respectful on social networks. You probably do this anyway because you’re probably not an asshole.

Fourth, swear a lot. Some people hate swearing and many will get nervous about reading your blog at work if you’re filling their screen with 4-letter words. As soon as I finish writing this I’m going to go find a nice jpg of a naked woman to insert into this post. I bet I can get 50 people to drop me from their feeds if the image is raunchy enough.

For you, keep a lid on excessive swearing and provocative images. None of us can admit it, but most of us do a lot of our blog reading at the office. Don’t make your audience nervous about opening one of your blog posts within sight of their co-workers.

Fifth, and I don’t do this one, but plaster ads all over your blog. People hate ads and they’ll avoid you in order to avoid them.

For you, skip the ads for now. Not everyone is sensitive about them, but some people are, and until you’re established you’re not going to make enough for it to matter. In particular stay away from sponsored posts or links because they make you look like a sell-out in some people’s eyes.

Bandwidth ain’t free and the best way to keep your costs down is to keep your audience down. So follow my plan and you’ll never have enough of an audience to worry about.

Or if you’re one of those crazies who’d like an audience and maybe to grow your blog into something more than a hobby, use me as an example of what not to do. Work hard, be true to yourself and your audience, be consistent, and before long you’ll have a huge number of devoted followers.

I can’t believe you want that kind of pressure, but whatevs.

The day Diablo 3 broke the Internet

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m in a really lousy mood today, and it’s all because of Diablo 3. Though it isn’t Diablo 3’s fault.

Diablo 3, in case you didn’t know, is a video game. You’d be forgiven if you thought it was a cure for cancer or the key to world peace, because god damned if people aren’t giving it that kind of weight.

I bought it but I only played for 90 minutes or so. My ‘gut’ response was fairly tepid but I’m trying to reserve judgement until I get farther in. I’ll admit I’m one of those curmudgeons who would’ve been happy to pay $60 for Diablo 2 re-skinned with better graphics.

So how’d Diablo 3 break the Internet? Why am I bitching this time? Well, first of all let’s set hyperbole aside. I’m not talking about the entire Internet, I’m talking about the gaming-oriented parts of it. G+ and I assume Twitter, and personal blogs.

But I feel like EVERYONE is mad today. Some people are mad at Blizzard because of the DRM model and/or the fact that the servers are/were down. Some people are mad at the people who are mad at Blizzard. Some people are on very tall seats, pompously chiding the people who are mad at Blizzard. Others are on equally high seats, pompously chiding the people who are mad at the people who are mad at Blizzard. Of course there are people mad at the people on those very tall seats..mad at them for their condescending attitudes. People who bought Diablo 3 are angry, people who didn’t buy Diablo 3 are angry. People (and here’s where I come in) are angry that everyone is angry about a stupid video game!

The game-facing web today is a giant cluster-fuck of bad feelings and ill will, and it’s all because Diablo 3 launched.

It reminds me of a story…

I used to be a bartender in a local-kind of bar in a resort town. One day, Gerry Cooney walked into the bar with a friend. This is long enough ago (mid 1980s) that everyone knew who he was. Conversation almost immediately died down. Cooney sat at the end of the bar, quietly talking to his friend, and had a beer or two. Then they got up, left a nice tip and thanked me, and left the place.

And suddenly the clientele went nuts. Guys swearing that Cooney wasn’t so big and they could take him. Other guys calling bullshit on that, which led to whether or not guy A could even take guy B. Next thing I know I’m trying to manage 3 separate altercations at once. I started ejecting people from the premises left and right… everyone was mad and throwing punches willy-nilly.

Now Gerry Cooney didn’t do anything and carried no blame, but he was still the cause of everyone having a terrible night down at the local pub that night.

Diablo 3 is the Gerry Cooney of the club that consists of my gaming friends on social media and blogs.

I think I’m just going to put my head down and wait for this whole thing to blow over.

First glimpse into The Secret World

Posted on by Nimgimli

So as you probably know, Funcom’s new MMO, The Secret World, is having an NDA-free beta weekend. I got in via a PAX East give-away and I’ve now had a wee bit of time to play. Here’re my thoughts based on the first hour or two of play.

TSW makes a pretty horrible first impression, at least in the beta. Character creation options are very limited (there will be more on release), textures on the characters are just awful (details like laces or decorative medals are just ‘painted on’) and there’s a lot of exposition in the form of NPC monologing in the little prologue (which was apparently crafted for this beta).

Your best bet is to get comfortable and just go along with the prologue in order to get it out of the way asap. Once you leave London and head to New England the game starts to really open up.

TSW uses a classless system and at low levels at least, gameplay is going to be defined by your weapon. I chose a sledgehammer for mine. My first 3 skills were a basic attack which generated a Resource and had the potential to Weaken an enemy; a longer cooldown, more powerful attack that also generated a Resource and could trigger AOE secondary damage if used on a Weakened enemy; and a big cone-shaped AOE attack that consumed all those Resources. The more resources, the more damage. You can hold up to 5 Resources and for a Hammer-wielder they’ll fill by themselves, but doing attacks causes them to fill faster.

Honestly at low levels combat isn’t all that exciting but I think it’ll get more interesting as we get deeper into the game. You’re constantly unlocking Skill Points & Ability Points that you can spend on new skills & abilities, but you can only have 7 Active and 7 Passive Abilities in use at any time (Skills seem to be more generic buffs to particular weapon types). So after a while it’s going to be like Guild Wars where you have to pick and choose from your Abilites in order to develop an effective set (or Deck in the game’s nomenclature).

When you finally get to New England, you’re supposed to be on a small island off the coast somewhere near Maine (one of the NPCs talks about kids going to Bangor for hay rides) but everyone on the island was imported from Queens or Jersey or somewhere like that. If you’re not from New England this might not be as jarring as it was for me, but wow, did the voice acting directory ever get these accents wrong!

But once there, you’re kind of overwhelmed with quests. Quests work differently than they do in most games. Rather than run around and gathering a bunch of kill ten rats quests, you can only work on a single quest at a time, as far as I can tell. There are about half a dozen different types of quests and maybe you can work on one of each kind? Still figuring this bit out.

But I want to tell you the [SPOILERY] story of one quest just to try to illustrate why I’m liking this game so much. The Sheriff of Kingsmouth, which is under attack by zombies, wants you to help set up surveillance cameras. So step one is leaving the safety of the barricades and running around pulling down security cameras from buildings (well almost constantly fighting zombies). The first few are really straight foward… you just right click on them. Then you find one you can’t reach, and you have to find a way to climb onto the roof of the building to get to it (via jumping on boxes around back). Then there’s one really high up. To get to that one you have to climb a ladder to the roof of an adjacent building, then leap across the gap between buildings, only to get the camera and find out its broken. But there’s a note attached to it saying there’re replacements in the basement.

You head into the basement of the building, which turns out to be a solo instance. The janitor in charge of the building has turned into something inhuman, though with his last shred of decency he warns you to stay away and then barricades himself behind a series of booby traps. You need to get to him though, so your next task is figuring out how to avoid the booby traps.

The first few are laser trip-wires that you can just leap over, but then you come to a grid of lasers. You have to enter a side room to turn these off. Inside the side room are security cameras, motion sensitive, which will set off deadly bombs if they detect movement. Suddenly you’re in a stealth game, avoiding the cameras by timing their movements and scurrying from cover to cover. Eventually you come to a switch that’ll turn off the grid of booby traps in the hallway, letting you get a bit further.

Before you get to the janitor you’ll have to walk through a maze of laser beams and do another security camera-avoidance room. When you finally get to him, he attacks, so then you have to kill him. And finally when he’s down, you can collect the last camera. I died 4 times in that darned basement!

But you’re still not done. Now you have to place 4 cameras around the Police Department barricade, avoiding or killing the Ravenous Hordes of zombies while doing so.

Once THAT is done, you head back into the police department and access their computer system to bring the new cameras online. When you do, you can actually access the cameras to see what’s going on out there.

Then FINALLY this minor side quest is finished. It was one of the most elaborate quests I can remember doing in an MMO.

So exploration, combat, jumping puzzles, stealth puzzles, more combat, more exploration, more combat and then some basic computer skills, all required to solve that quest.

I have to admit at first I found the basement to be annoying as heck. MMOs aren’t supposed to make you figure out things like this! But then I made a conscious decision to treat The Secret World as its own thing, not like “another MMO” and I started to really get into it.

I’m probably done for the beta weekend. TSW doesn’t lend itself to being played under time pressure, in my opinion. When you’re playing a weekend beta you tend to want to go through content as rapidly as possible so you can see as much as possible, and The Secret World seems designed to be a game you have to think about, puzzle over…maybe even walk away from now and then. Try to rush through it and it’s just going to be frustrating rather than enjoyable, like trying to rush through an adventure game.

I still have a TON of questions and honestly it doesn’t feel like a game that can get polished up between now and June so I expect a rocky launch, but I really like what Funcom is trying to do here. I’ve pre-ordered; I’m happy to support a company that’s breaking the MMO mold; I can tell you that the chat was full of people taken by surprise and really frustrated that they weren’t being given more explicit instructions, so I think TSW is going to be a niche hit that’s disliked by many MMO vets.

When I gave up on SWTOR I remember saying that I was done with MMOs because there weren’t any good ones coming out any time soon. Now I’m hooked on TERA and excited about both The Secret World and Guild Wars 2. Talk about being spoiled for choice; I guess there’s still life left in the MMO genre!

PS: Sorry no screenshots. I was hitting PrintScrn on the assumption it was taking shots (I wasn’t really paying attention) but as in AoC the screenshot button is F11 or something. Doh!

TGIF Gaming Wrap-up for 5/11/2012

Posted on by Nimgimli

TERA is having more staying power with me than I expected it to, honestly. So another boring wrap-up.

Purchases This Week

Nothing! Wait, I lie… I bought Ascension for the iPad for 99 cents.

Played This Week
Last Friday was our first Guild Wars: Eye of the North session and that prompted me to do a bit more in Guild Wars. About 3.5 hours this week.

I spent half an hour in the Firefall beta before a visit to the game’s forums turned me off the product.

The rest of the week was all about TERA (13 hours of it).

Plans for the Week to Come
Lots of plans. Tonight is Guild Wars: Eye of the North with friends. Monday night, if I get done work in time, is a Guild Wars 2 beta/stress test session. Between those two lies a The Secret World beta weekend.

Then on Tuesday, the juggernaut that is Diablo III launches.

In whatever spare time I can carve out around all these other games, I hope to keep on moving forward in TERA.

Too many great games available at the same time!

Have a good week, everyone!

TERA: Bastion of Lok

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night I finally made it into TERA’s first dungeon, the Bastion of Lok. This is a 5-man instance meant for (I believe) levels 20-24. Our run took a little over an hour (no wipes, a couple bio breaks and Stamina recharge sessions).

Our party was a lancer (TERA tank class, run by Scott of Pumping Irony), priest (run by Oakstout), a sorceror (DPS, run by Scopique of Levelcapped), a warrior (DPS, he was a PUG guy) and my Slayer (DPS). Our levels ranged, iirc, from 21-23.

It was a successful run with Scott doing a great job of tanking and Oakstout being a first rate healer. We had 1 death all night, the PUG dude, who (as PUG dudes are apt to do) kind of kept running off to do his own thing. He was gracious about it, though, acknowledging that the death was his own fault.

I had a lot of fun doing the instance though it was more “spectacle” fun than “thoughtful gaming” fun, if you know what I mean. There’s not a lot of nuance playing DPS in a group, or if there is I haven’t gotten good enough to grasp it yet. Basically I was waiting for the tank to get aggro, then unloading with everything I had until I got the little “You’re about to get aggro” icon and backing off. Though that didn’t happen very often since my skill cool downs were enough to moderate damage I guess.

The only “downside” (and that feels like too strong a word) about the massive unleashing of damage on these innocent dungeon denizens is that it can be really hard to see where you’re facing in all the effect-spam. Since TERA has no enemy lock-on system you have to aim at the baddies and more than once I unleashed my best attack into empty space by accident. At least at the start.

A bit farther along I got into the habit of rushing in, hitting hard, then rolling out of the fray, lining up, and rushing in again. And I think this is how a Slayer is intended to be played. As a leather-wearing melee class I can’t stand there and take the hits. When playing solo I watch the mob and dodge away when it’s about to attack but in the flying furball battles of the Bastion of Lok I’d often miss the tells and get walloped. By rolling out of the battle I get out of the line of fire, give my skills a few seconds to cooldown, and I’d sometimes pop a potion to take some of the strain off our healer.

It’s the first time in an MMO where I felt like getting out of the battle and taking a few seconds breather was OK and not indicative of being a slacker (I always feel a lot of anxiety about people thinking I’m not pulling my weight in a group), though I dunno how other members of the party felt about it.

At the end of the dungeon I got a blue (rare) piece of Lancer armor, and Scott got a blue Slayer sword. So that was weird but we traded and everyone (well, at least the two of us) left happy, but I guess that loot drops are random and not tied to character class (unless this stuff dropped and someone was picking it up and it was just going into normal rotation. From where I stood it seemed like it just popped into my inventory).

The only bad news is that my Slayer went from level 23 to just under level 25 from quest and kill experience in one run-through. I kind of would’ve liked to do BoL another time or two without being over-level for it. But I guess I’ll just have to look forward to the next dungeon!

Gravitaz needs you!

Posted on by Nimgimli

This is gonna be quick since I’m at work, but time is of the essence!

Gravitaz only has about 24 hours to go in their Kickstarter campaign and they’re short of their goal. They need a push from fans of futuristic combat racing!

Here’s a press release they sent out today:

GRAVITAZ Recognized By The International Game Developers Association
GRAVITAZ Kickstarter featured alongside the likes of Banner Saga, Wasteland 2, FTL

DENVER, CO (May 9, 2012) — The GRAVITAZ team was honored today by the International Game Developers Association. The GRAVITAZ Kickstarter, set to raise funds for the high-speed combat hover-racing game, is now in the International Game Developer Association’s recommended projects list. GRAVITAZ can be found alongside such previous Kickstarter successes as The Banner Saga, Wasteland 2, FTL, and Auditorium Duet. (www.kickstarter.com/pages/igda)

“The Kickstarter is going to come down to the wire, but there’s still a shot,” says Megan Fox, one of the programmers behind GRAVITAZ. “If even just 2,000 discover the game and plunk down $10 for a copy, we’re there, that’s funded. The Internet is a mighty big place – surely we can find 2,000 more fans of high-speed combat racing.”

Learn more about how to bring futuristic racing into the present at www.GravitazGame.com.

Emphasis is from me.

If you’ve any interest in this style of game, the now’s the time to come forward and pledge!!

TGIF Gaming Wrap-up for 5/04/2012

Posted on by Nimgimli

Another short update this week. I guess that’s good news. It means I’m focusing on fewer games and not spending as much money on games that I don’t make full use of. 🙂

Purchases This Week

Much to my amazement, I pre-ordered Diablo III this week. I hadn’t really intended to play it, but peer pressure definitely got to me. All my friends are going to be playing and hopefully looking for extra party members and I didn’t want to be left out!

On the other hand, I canceled my Dragon’s Dogma pre-order. Just no time to play it with all these other games, and as it’s a single player game it’ll ‘keep’ until I have time (and it enjoys a price cut).

And not a purchase, but I did get into the Firefall beta as of this morning.

Played This Week
Over the weekend I, like seemingly everyone else, played the Guild Wars 2 beta.

Once that shut down it was back to TERA, but Raptr confirms that it wasn’t a great gaming week. I managed to squeeze in just 5 hours of playing.

Plans for the Week to Come
Tonight I’m joining Dusty Monk and friends in an assault on Guild Wars: Eye of the North. The plan is to make this a weekly outing until we get through all the EOTN content.

Then I’m going to check out Firefall of course, but my major focus for the next week will continue to be TERA. I’m still baffled and bemused by how much fun I’m having in TERA and I suppose a lot of that has to do with how modest my expectations were going in.

Of course, having a bunch of friends playing helps, too!

Elder Scrolls MMO is official. Internet rejoices. I sob.

Posted on by Nimgimli

[Update #2: OK, I’ve found a second source (the infamous un-named source… a source CLOSE TO THE MATTER!) that confirms a totally separate team — separate studio in fact — is still working on the kinds of rich single player RPG we’ve come to love from Bethesda. So I’m placated at this point. Whew! Almost blew a gasket for a minute there.]

[Update: According to a comment from someone who I suspect is someone I trust, 🙂 there’s a totally separate team for the MMO and we’ll still see more single player Elder Scrolls games. Which I’ll take as very good news indeed.]

So Game Informer broke the news that it’s cover game for next month is The Elder Scrolls Online.

Yup, it’s official.

G+ is full of people claiming that spontaneous sexual reactions are happening to them in response to this news.

I, of course, am odd man out. Now I don’t really KNOW anything about The Elder Scrolls Online, but this is the Internet, where Knowing is Irrelevant to the Battle.

Remember how great Knights of the Old Republic was? Remember how OK that 3 weeks you spent playing Star Wars: The Old Republic were? And SW:TOR had the benefit of at least rendering the ancient Star Wars universe using modern-day graphics that put KOTOR to shame.

The Elder Scrolls Online is to Skyrim as SW:TOR is to KOTOR, except The Elder Scrolls Online will probably look slightly worse than Skyrim, given that it’s an MMO.

Now all those dragons you kill will respawn 30 seconds later. All those thieve’s hideouts will be ignored until you get a quest to kill 10 bandits, since clearing them out will be meaningless in a game where everything resets every 45 seconds.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE MMOs. But I hate that we’ve come to a place where everything HAS to become an online multiplayer game to stay relevant. I was looking forward to the next Elder Scrolls game that would let me be THE HERO instead of just another dweeb grinding for loot and screaming into the LFG channel for someone to help him kill an epic rat.