Alterac Valley practical jokes
by Robin Torres 
Nov 26th 2007 at 9:00AM
I am writing this while I wait for my Deserter debuff to wear off. No, I didn't exit a Battleground because it was going badly (I don't do that). No, I didn't have to leave because my daughter needed me (she's fine). I have the debuff because I am absurdly gullible. Yes, I just fell for the latest Alterac Valley practical joke and I'm pretty angry at myself about it.Orange is the emote color. I know this. Yet, I still fell for it when someone emoted that I had been reported for AFK and to type /AFK Report to find out why. I couldn't believe someone would have reported me for being AFK before the game even started! (Can you even do that?) And so I immediately typed /AFK report, hit enter and got slapped in the face with the loading screen. My husband tried to stop me, but he was too late. So now he's snickering. I feel so stupid.
I felt this stupid a year ago when I fell for the now classic "help me summon" joke. Someone calls out to help him summon a friend to the AV instance. (You can't do that.) And then he throws up a portal. And you click on it, if you are a sucker like me, then get transported to a town and get the lovely Deserter debuff.
Years ago, when I played EQ, I fell for someone emoting that they pickpocketed me and I almost cried at the loss of my hard earned cash. You'd think I'd get wiser about these things. I'm not stupid. I am just too trusting.
I'd like to blame my first MMO experience. Ultima Online was painful with the pickpocketing and other tools that were available to griefers. But then I remember the time my "best friend" pulled the chair out from under me in the cafeteria, embarrassing me in front of the whole school. And the time my "best friends" at this other school conspired against me during a piggyback ride and I ended up with a hospital trip. And, well, I guess I'm just a sucker.
So, please, learn from my mistakes. If the text is in orange, it's an emote.
Have you fallen for these too? (Please make me feel better.) More importantly, do you know of any others you can warn me about?
Filed under: PvP, Humor, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Matthew Rossi Nov 26th 2007 9:27AM
A mage can put a teleport portal right over the warlock soulwell or another mage's refreshment portal. Make absolutely sure you click on the right portal.
aisenfaire Nov 26th 2007 11:49PM
I thought opening portals in BGs was already disabled in 2.3? It was in the patch notes.
Chuddy Nov 26th 2007 9:26AM
Oye. I fell for this and what's worse I went on a 5 minute rant to my girlfriend about this. It went something like this....see what I get for going back to my alliance. This kind of kid crap is why I started a horde character up. Y'know I'm just minding my own business, waiting to lose and boom. You are afk? wtf? So I type it in and then I get kicked. C'mon. See this.proves.my.point! Then I realized and felt dumb the rest of the night. I havent seen anyone in my battlegroup on horde side do it though. :P
It's probably there I just dont look now.
Richard Nov 26th 2007 9:29AM
Can't say I've fallen for it, but I certainly get a good laugh about others who've fallen for it.
As a parallel, though:
In my last raiding guild, we had a mage who would throw up portals at the end of the night... one to Shatt, and one to Exodar. *Stacked right on top of each other*, so that when you hovered over the portal, at any angle, the tooltip would flicker back and forth between both locations.
It was a crap shoot, and funny as hell.
Sielanas Nov 26th 2007 9:31AM
Personally I'm sad that you can't cast portals in BGs anymore. When running a train we'd be "summoning our people in" with the soul portal trick. TuringTest is a good mod for auto-reporting afk-ers to try and clean things us.
Hellbena Nov 26th 2007 9:31AM
I'm just waiting for a warlock to open a "soul portal" at the beginning of AV and watch as some guy gets sac'd and have a Doomguard running around. Newbs will click on anything if it has the potental to give them free stuff.
Maf Nov 26th 2007 9:42AM
@3
I do that too, it's a barrel of laughs :D
Drakar24 Nov 26th 2007 9:45AM
I'm sorry, but rofl!
Things not to believe in AV:
1. /AFK (and anything else) will not work, they kick you out
2. Alt + F4 will also kick you out
3. If you're Alliance (and I'm sorry to say I am), farming HK's does not get you more honor due to the low level of honor you get from others now and diminishing returns.
Tristan Nov 26th 2007 9:57AM
In Ultima Online I formed a guild with the initials "you" and made my title " is attacking" = " is attacking, you"
Sometimes when running up to the bank, people would see that on their screen, flip out, and try to attack me back. One time about 10 people where guard-whacked as soon as I appeared in their frame. kek
engineering is underpowered Nov 26th 2007 10:04AM
Haha, sometimes it can go the other way when people think they're being smartasses - for instance, last week I was with a group of 8 friends on our vent server and we decided to go into WSG. Two other random people were added to make our group 10. One of them was afk the whole match, but we all reported him so he got the debuff. Then the other asshat in the raid decided to say "To see a list of afk players, type /afk list".
On vent someone said "don't do it," but I spoke up and said "maybe we should, just to mess with him." None of us needed the daily quest, and even though we were winning with 2/3 captured flags, we decided it'd be more fun to leave the sucker alone in there. So we /afk'd out, all 8 of us, and left 1 dude in there with 1 other afk honor farmer.
I wish one of us had stayed to see his reaction ;p
freehugz Nov 26th 2007 10:18AM
I almost fell for it once. Someone put up a message about an afk bot. And to type /afk to auto report afkers. I typed in /afk and thought to myself "wait a minute"
Matt Nov 26th 2007 10:14AM
IMO, removing portals in BGs was the lamest thing ever. If someone is too stupid to read the tooltip before they click, they deserve it.
Scrit Nov 26th 2007 11:50AM
Yeah, you were surely in a premade group. I've never seen people do that in a pug. I've been in organized groups that have done it, but I always found it pretty distasteful. They should just get rid of going /afk in a BG. I mean, who actually deliberately /afk's in a battleground? People go AFK mind you, they just don't actually type it out.
Shadowisp Nov 26th 2007 10:29AM
My best one, used to use this one alot in old AV.
Tell nubs that when your defending a banner you can control the guards like pets by standing near the banner and going /camp.
Windleaf Nov 29th 2007 8:55AM
A slight variation of the ever so good question "How do i leave my guild again?".
Ely Nov 26th 2007 11:07AM
@10
So they deserve what they get by failing to read the tooltip? When the whole purpose of someone throwing up a porta to a city is to get unknowing people who think it's a soul portal to click it? So they deserve to fall into a trap when they probably thought they were helping? Really weak :(
It's basically a bunch of idiots trying to make other people look stupid (instead of trying to play the game better). Especially wrong considering that AV has the longest queue time. But I suppose you get these types of people in any game - those that want to humiliate their own side rather than the opposing. What amazing players.
Tolento Nov 26th 2007 11:05AM
I'm an Alliance Grand Marshal with more hours of AV under my belt than you've probably even /played, Robin, and recently I fell for the mage portal trick. I clicked it thinking it was a warlock soulwell and ended up in Exodar. With Allies like these, who needs Horde?
Dan Nov 26th 2007 11:06AM
@3 and 6
All you have to do to avoid (more often than not) the crapshoot is to tilt your camera so that you're looking down at the portals from above. Usually you can click the right one from that vantage point.
redxiii Nov 26th 2007 11:23AM
Also not advisable in BG:
/camp
Adam Nov 26th 2007 11:29AM
I've fallen for a slight variation of this. People start saying how we should report afk'ers, they give the names of the afk'ers and say that you can easily report them by typing /afk report
Yeah...