I dedicate this thread to theeFollow

Another milestone has been planted with this thread and post, because I have now reached my 24,000th post and I'm still going strong. A lot of things has happened in the last thousand posts, probably more than during the previous 23,000 posts together. I made a list of things to do and I now find myself having completed a lot of those things.

I've built a strong social life outside of the game, I've dated hordes of women, been elected presid-- no, wait, wrong page. Still need to do all that.

Ah, here it is! I've leveled through Northrend without quitting the game - twice, I've grown fond of the Warrior class, I've respecced DW Frost on my Death Knight - something I never thought would happen. I've joined the most awesome guild since Vanilla and for the first time in a long time I feel like I belong somewhere. In real life I actually got my own place a couple of weeks ago, moving closer to where I study and where I have my friends.

But this thread isn't about me, because honestly, you'll get enough of me in the coming months as it is. This thread is about thee. And who is 'thee' you might ask. It's not you, or maybe it is. It's a certain someone I like to call Mr Pug. Mr Pug and I have been close friends for a long time now, but recently we've drifted apart mainly because of in-game social relations. I no longer have this urge to hang out with Mr Pug and you know how things go.

So as a sort of tribute to Mr Pug, I would like to present to you a great tale of misplaced courage, inadequacy and overall fail. I call this one A Tribute to PUG.

A Tribute to PUG

We find ourselves in the northern reaches of the Borean Tundra, on a cold and isolated island called Coldarra. We are on a quest of great importance because in the Kirin Tor capital of Dalaran, a certain someone is having doubts about our previous heroic deeds in the stronhold of The Nexus. We were sent to retrieve the manipulated and brainwashed Keristrasza's heart, but despite having delivered close to a dozen each of that particular item, he is still not convinced that she might not be alive. So we now have to face the Horde and not least our group members as we try to do this quest once more.

My skills in the restorative arts of druidic magic are epic (okay, I added this myself - but really, I'm quite good) and as such I have the responsibility of keeping this fellowship of oddities alive. With me I brought a Warrior known for his ability to lie or manipulate the truth, a skill which would later prove crucial to our undoing. Knowing two people are far from enough to take on the Elves and Dragonkin in the Nexus, I had the privilege of being forced to accept the company of a Death Knight named Deathkinght and a Mage whose name shall remain undisclosed, primarly because it's not really silly. And as a final blow to my chest, I also had the delight pleasure of bringing a Hunter and his inexperienced pet with me. The cherry on the top, so to say.

We five heroes began our daring heroics by watching the Death Knight and the Mage spend five minutes arguing over who should fly from Dalaran to the Nexus to summon the rest of us via the interdimensional gateway known as the Meeting Stone. As it turned out, another one of us was already there, but was far too busy doing other quests to apply a sense of logic to the situation. Until after I juggled several Gnomish inventions in order to transport my persona from Stormwind to the eastern reaches of Northrend (and luckily not the center of the planet) and dragged him by his longbow to the Meeting Stone that is.

So, there we were. Well, four of us, anyway, because the Hunter had suffered acute dimensional displacement and faded from existence for a moment. He would catch up with us later once we were inside the instance, though. The rest of us proceeded to die by the hands of Arcane Serpents and members of the Horde faction on the 50 yard stroll to the entrance of the Nexus. It would take a total of three attempts before we could all let out a sigh of relief just before being molested by a Dragonkin of the Blue Dragonflight who had found great annoyance in the fact that the Hunter's pet was chewing on its leg. We were all very glad to see our friend again, though.

Once gathered in full numbers, we cast incantations of protection on each other to bolster our stamina and intellect. It was during this critical phase of morale boosting and peptalking that the Warrior decided to let us all in on a little secret of his. He did so by yelling "gogogogog" and running head first into the same Dragonkin that made short work of us moments earlier. It was then I realized that his mastered skill was manipulation, because as I saw him take two blows from the Dragonkin and die in fountain of gore, I realized that he was not wearing the appropriate gear to be the frontline brute of this fellowship. In fact, he was wearing such inadequate gear that he unwillingly received the perk Bloody Mess and applied it to himself. Knowing that our time was up once more if I didn't act fast, I cast an ancient incantation of restoration and rebirth on the Warrior, hoping it would bring him back from the dead to save our hides. It was then he decided to contact me from the ghostly realm and instruct me in the arts of healing and how I was not living up to the standards he had.

On our third run to the Nexus, the Mage decided that eating was more important than saving a continent from certain doom. Something I found strange as he had been sitting and munching on something when the Dragonkin turned him into an umbrella. That was not going to stop us, though, as I quickly picked up another adventurer who was also in the process of breaching the Nexus to retrieve the infamous heart of the corrupt Red Dragon, Keristrasza. He was a man trained in the arts of thievery and assassination, skills that would prove completely useless as he believed himself to be capable of filling the role of the Warrior. However, we managed to turn our misfortune to temporary luck when we killed the Dragonkin with almost no incidents, other than the Warrior dying in spectacular explosion of blood. He really was not geared for such a mission.

Thoughout the rest of the time where our fellowship watched each others backs and ignored whatever happened to them, things went somewhat well. Deathkinght turned out to be a better tank than the Warrior, but the Warrior turned out to be a better Rogue than the Rogue. The Rogue turned out to be an epic case of misunderstandings and the Mage turned out to be the only one able to avoid critical hits from the enemies, but he left before we got started.

As I crawled up to the mage in Dalaran to present him with another bloodied dragonheart, he threw a few gold coins and some medals in my mangled palm and told me to come back tomorrow. After looking at the massive heart he was still not sure if Keristrasza's had truly been killed.

The end... or is it?

Sorry, I'm tired, drunk and just finished a Heroic Nexus run with my guild. The story above is from about two weeks ago and represents one of my first runs through Heroic Nexus. I think it was my third or so. It was a journey of epic proportions, if failing massively is epic. The tank wasn't crit immune, but the Mage was. The Rogue never once used stealth or Tricks of the Trade, pulled aggro due to the Warrior being a massive pile of crap, had to spam Feint (why I don't know) after a few seconds, delivering a solid 800 DPS throughout the instance. The Death Knight with the horrible name tanked most of the pulls in his Naxx10/25 gear, in Blood Presence and the Hunter suffered from disconnected throughout the run, being active on barely half the pulls.

Probably one of the worst PUGs I've ever been in. Probably.

Ding 24,000 posts and +1 in a moment.

Edited, Oct 5th 2009 1:28am by Mazra

Thanks.

And yes. He was wearing all PvP gear. Of course, his DPS didn't suffer too much, because he pretty much never hit anything.

Epic story is epic. 24,000 posts moreso. Congo-rats!

I <3 Story Time with Mazra!

Gratz Mazra! Remember it's okay to shadowmeld and leave them all to die...

I theeenk she was insinuating you were using a play on words- a "cherry" is a euphemism for a virgin or an inexperienced person- so it was amusing that you made a pun in that statement.

I could have underlined "pleasure" too...

Nice, you managed to turn my story into a sex story in one post.

It seems your training is complete, young one.

Buckets.

Figure out the rest.