Sunday, July 13, 2008

Engineering Kills Me

My Alliance hunter is an engineer.

...

Those of you who also have engineer characters, that pause was for your sigh of commiseration. For those of you who had engineering characters, that pause was for your laughter.

The engineering profession is far from a newcomer to the subject of ridicule and lamentation. We make very few useful items, most of those items require skill to use and thus can't be sold, and the rest of our items (aside from a small handful of things like scopes and high level ammo) are... well, let's just say Blizzard likes to kick engineers when they are down.

This isn't a Blizz-bash! This is an engineering bash, though. And here's why, the final nail in the casket of my patience with the profession: It finally killed me.

When engineers got their long begged for mount-making ability, I was one of the ones cheering. I made my roflcopter and it was wonderful... for about a minute. Then it was the loudest and most obnoxious thing I'd come across and I longed for a nice quiet gryphon. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. The rolfcopter was my badge of honor and shame and I've stuck with it. I mean, sure, I dismount as soon as possible, but I'm not replacing it.

Somehow I never got around to making my transporter to Gadgetzan or Blades Edge Mountains until recently. And I used it for only the second time yesterday, to get my hunter to Gadget so she could grab something out of the bank for another character. But was I safely transported to town? No, not so much. Did only half of me make it through? If only. No, instead I was teleported so high above Gadget that my cat despawned during the fall. (I imagine he saw the ground and developed his own teleportation abilities involving the thought "Oh, hellll no.")

And what was there for me to do? Did I have any backup options like slow fall or levitate or even a parachute cloak? No such luck and like the bowl of petunias in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, my only thought was "Oh no, not again."

And let me tell you it is a severe understatement to say I was pissed. This was an outrage, a pure white-hot anger that burned in me as I walked from the graveyard to collect my body. A rage that flared up stronger as I paid the six plus gold repair fee. This was ridiculous.

Do leatherworkers ever accidentally gouge themselves in the brain with their needle while making a pair of pants, killing themselves and causing 10% durability loss to their equipment? Has there ever been a case of a jewelcrafter cutting a living ruby and having a rogue shard fly off and disembowel them, covering their gear in costly-to-clean bloodstains and bits of internal organs? Ever seen a tailor making bolts of runecloth and accidentally get it wrapped around their throat, strangling them until deceased and somehow rubbing a tenth of the longevity off their clothes in the process? Blacksmithing is dangerous, right? How many of those metalworkers in Ironforge have their face and clothes singed off while making new boots?

So why do engineers, who arguably have the worst profession in the game, with some of the most expensive mats, have to further face the humiliation of death on top of dysfunction?

I'll tell you, if it weren't for my hunter's goggles and addiction to cheap ammo, she'd have unlearned engineering right then and there.

Then happily headed to Shadowmoon to buy a nice, quiet gryphon.

1 comment:

Michael said...

Ha! I just wanted to leave a comment. Entertaining post, even for a non WoW-er (aside from one 10-day free trial...) Sotwe breeds blog readership, perhaps!