So a few years back, I wrote a post on New Years about why I jump off Teldrassil every New Years. It was silly, it was (allegedly) funny, and I had a great time. Then every year after, I sometimes coincidentally, sometimes intentionally, typed up some dopey story about dopey me doing dopey Vanilla-TBC stuff.
This year shall be no different. And since I am in my feelings about losing my pets as MM, I feel that I should tell a pet story!!
…
Let me tell you about how I accidentally Wailing Cavernsesed because friends are dumb.
…
So there I was, trolly hunter Jumaka, who later because the Mocha Elf Alynsa. Just doing my thing, hiding in Feralas at level 25, way too lowbie for the zone, with my 225 fishing skill (the max I could have for 10 more levels), doing open water fishing for the gold-making fishes [Stonescale Eel]. I’m jamming out to some music, got my bestest lures and fishing pole, my rare white kitty next to me, just having a great time. When I suddenly get a whisper from a friend at by then former coworker.
“u shud tame wig snake”
Dafuq?? That makes no sense whatsoever.
“wing snake”
Ok, better… But not by much. I have no idea what this even means, if its even a real thing. See, this friend… Sorry, this “friend” would often make suggestions to me. Some were useful (“u shud be fisher is gud gold best way”), some were not (“u shud ask trade chat”), and others were just nonsense or borderline offensive (“u shud level tauren 4 milk”). So telling me to tame “wig snake” could be a brilliant plan, a dumb plan, or reportable to human resources if we still worked together. And there is really no way to know which it will be without going out into the world, searching for Wig the wing snake, taming him and seeing the results.
“ok, but what are you talking about? where do i find the wig wing snake?”
“omfg just wing dumby they r in wc”
I knew what WC meant by this point, and had even done it a couple times, so I quickly figured out who Just Wing was and how to get there.
“im not doing wc with you. there are wing snakes in the cave, i’ll get one there.”
“lame ok”
So off I went with every intention of not running into Wailing Caverns, but running around the entrence cave.
See, I had a lot of experience with that entrance cave. Not only was my fishing at 225, but so was my skinning. And while the droprate was much, much, much lower, it was still a good place to farm [Perfect Deviate Scales], which sold well. You had to be ready to solo some elites on a bad day, but on a good one? Some group of my fellow lowbies would be all too willing to help as they traversed the evil skull cave to get to their dungeon, or some high level people would be hanging around waiting for the latest batch of would-be Crossroads raiders to graveyard spawn and offer me some help.
But this was not a good day. This was a very bad day. Because that gosh dang level 60 tauren hunter was there!!! Something like Bisonhunterx (not exactly that, but I remember Bison, some hunter-ish word and an X at the end).
I loved and hated this guy in equal measures. Which isn’t true at all, I mostly loved him. But in that very moment, I hated him.
No wig snakes. No corpses to skin. Nothing.
See, Bison was the one who told me this was a good place for a lowbie like me to get some [Perfect Deviate Scale]s and some medium and light leather to sell. He told me this, because he had done it himself. He still did it in fact! Whenever the Alliance raided Crossroads and inevitably got pushed right back out by the dozens of maxed level Hordies we had who practically lived there, whenever that was finished up, he’d go clear the entryway, waiting for said Alliance raid to regroup fifteen minutes to half an hour later to try again. Just to pass the time.
I found him in the cave, we /waved, he whispered “Sorry Ju, didn’t know you were here. Careful, there’s a rogue around. I’m trying to bait him into attacking me. Just don’t get flagged, ok?”
Yeah, not the response you’d expect from someone I said I hate, right? See, Bison and some of his guild had sort of “adopted” me. There’s a story about 20 [Stonescale Eel]s, a Wailing Caverns run with somebody’s alt, a level 22 night elf rogue and Ashenvale, but it sounds better as a mystery than the story actually is. Suffice it to say, I made friends with Bison, then another guy on his alt, then bartered a WC run for 20 eels, and suddenly I’m adopted.
As a part of this unofficial adoption, they tended to try and warn me off from doing dumb things. The word “try” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence, because while they might have been great at successfully keeping Crossroads safe from an Alliance take-over, nobody has the skills necessary to keep me safe from my intrusive WoW thoughts.
So Bison really, really wanted to stress to me that while this rogue is only level 52 and no threat to him, the rogue was absolutely a threat to me. In the way an asteroid falling directly on my head is just a threat.
“ok np gotchu i’ll just wait with you for respawns. i have to tame a wind serpent because a friend said to.”
I don’t know that Bison IRL facepalmed. But I imagine he absolutely did.
“Ju, Wind Serpents are really bad. Really, really bad. You don’t want one. Don’t you have that hard to get cat from Darkshore? Just use that. Don’t listen to this friend.”
“i dunno he said theyre good so i have to try”
Bison knew “I have to try” is Jumaka/Alynsa speak for “this is the only thing I can do now, I cannot do anything else until this is done” and let it be.
“You at least remembered to stable your pet before trying to tame another one, right?”
This would have been an insulting question later oin in my hunter career, but at this time? Fair to ask.
“i did this time yes”
“Ok. I’ll watch your back while you tame.”
And with that, the waiting game began. It didn’t take long, and the wind serpents were just under level 20, so I could tame them. It would hurt like heck, but it was doable.
So there I was, taming Wig the wind serpent when suddenly… Wig dies. The rogue came out of stealth to one-shot Wig. Bison quickly goes to work murdering this rogue, and I like to think what happened next was no surprise to him.
I was on a pvp server, as you know. And those of you who “grew up” in one of those virtual warzones and happened to play a class with a DoT know you develop a pretty good twitch response, especially to unstealthing rogues. There’s no thought involved, only zen-like action. You react with a quickness.
I hit the rogue with Serpent Sting and flagged myself. I dunno if the spell even hit or missed, but regardless I attacked and I was flagged.
Again, twitch response and instinct took over. My muscles in my fingers knew the end result of a confrontation between a level 25 petless hunter and any rogue three levels below me or higher. And only one response was possible.
I ran away.
I don’t even think the rogue realized what I’d done. His own instincts had taken over, and he was fighting for his life against a higher level, better geared, actual decent hunter, with an adopted baby to protect as motivation!! I caught one glimpse of that battle before the loading screen caught me entirely off-guard.
It was totally reasonable. I was auto-running and panning the camera to make sure I wasn’t getting chased down, but I didn’t realize how very, very close to the instance portal I was. But it didn’t matter anyway, because now I was safe.
Well, safe from the rogue. Not safe from my intrusive thoughts and single-minded focus on taming wig snake.
“Ju, are you dead yet?”
See, Bison knew what was gonna happen. He knew by the time he was done with the rogue, my Jumakaness/Alynsaness would have taken over, especially since the first two wig snakes are right there.
“yeah i am…”
By the time I had managed to find the instance portal and respawn, Bison had cleared the area around the portal. A very sad, mildly bruised hunter came out of the instance portal, still flagged, to find one lone wig snake waiting in a frost trap for me.
Like I said, I did mostly love Bison.
With Wig tamed, and with Wig tested, and with Bison likely nodding IRL at my realization that my friend from earlier was a moron, he escorted me out of WC and back to Crossroads. I watched him and the rest of the Crossroads Citizens Militia (not the name of any guild, just my own nickname for these people) pushed the Alliance back once more. I gave Bison 10 free [Stonescale Eel]s for his help, and flew back to Feralas. About half an hour later, I get a whisper.
“u shud tame wing snake4reel”
“wind serpents suck and im not listening to you anymore”
