Virtual kill that is, as in online gaming PvP.
I worked from home yesterday because of a dentist appointment in the morning. My work commute is too damn long for me to be able to schedule appointments and get downtown in the same day. So I came home instead. And since it was also a very slow day, I had time to get online and feed my WoW gaming addiction a bit.
I decided to play my level 43 mage some and do a series of quests in a zone that I skipped over on my warrior when I was leveling her up. These are in the desert zone of Tanaris and would give me faction in the neutral town Gadgetzan. Not a bad deal and leveling in contested zones is always a bit easier during the day time (US server and all).
So I hit town, grab every quest I could find and head out to start working on them. Kill quests are the easiest to do I think, after the FedEx variety ones (“take this to person A, then bring me the answer”) and I had one that overlapped with a collection quest as well. Being able to stack quests like this are nice, since as you get higher in level, the drop rates on collection quests get worse and worse, to the point of pain after a while. This one wasn’t too painful (only needed 5 of the item) and with the number of mobs I had to kill for the other quest, it should be easy.
Well, the mob killing part was easy. They were spread out enough that I didn’t pull adds unless I really timed things wrong, but close enough that I could work the camps without moving around too much. The fun came in when I saw a level 44 troll rogue named Zabiji also killing the same mobs.
Now, I’m on a PvP server because I enjoy the challenge of fighting other people people instead of just computer AI. But I rarely initiate the combat because I just don’t. I’m aggressive, but not in that way. So when I saw Zabiji fighting while I was sitting down regenning mana, I just watched instead of running over and attacking him while he was fighting. My own version of honor I guess.
He finished his fight, and headed my way, hitting vanish in the process. I personally hate rogues, and hate how they can do that in the middle of combat. It’s a get away free card for them. So I put up my mana shield for protection and started looking for him. Unfortunately for the rogue, I could see him in stealth as he got close to me. Also unfortunately for him, my AOE doesn’t require a target for me to use it, and it will hit him pretty hard even if he is stealthed. The battle was on.
I had to Frost Nova him to get out of range and use my spells, but between Fire Bolt and Arcane Missile, I got him on the run pretty quickly. And run he did. He took off when I got him to about 1/8 health, and tried to vanish on me again, but I could still see through the stealth. And I don’t think he counted on me being able to blink-run after him as well as I did. I managed to catch up enough to send another series of Arcane Missiles after him that put the finishing touch on our first battle.
Our second battle seemed to end in a draw because once again he ran off with a sliver of life left, but this time he got his Vanish off and I lost sight of him. I then headed back to the quest spawn area and started hunting again. He decided to attack me while I was fighting and ended up killing me. A bit rude, I thought, but now we were even.
Because of that, when I saw him for the third time, I didn’t waste time being polite, I attacked him while he was fighting. I love how my fire spells can stun sometimes, I just wish they did it more often. Yet another chase and he was down. I finished up the quest mobs I needed and headed back to town to turn the quest in. While there, I ran into Zabiji as well, but he didn’t respond to my wave. I hope he wasn’t too upset. 🙂
Either way, I enjoyed the combat. It reminded me why I play PvP games – for the challenge of fighting another person. The risk of pitting my skills and knowledge of my character against the same skills and knowledge from someone else. Even dying three times to a level 48 hunter later that session didn’t bother me too much, since I didn’t have much chance against him (red con hunter/pet v. me isn’t much of a fight). Not that I think he’d ever see this, but I would like to thank Zabiji for giving me a couple of fun fights yesterday and reminding me while PvP is so damn fun.