Sneaking in Under the Wire!

Tonight's moral: if you're going to choose to do your first ever City of Abominations, try not to do it on a night when early server maintenance is scheduled. Especially if you already know about the early server maintenance, because that would mean you're a bonehead.

So, um, yeah... besides letting a brain malfunction temporarily make me forget the server maintenance schedule, I also got to run around like a complete noob in City of Abominations! Wee! I know you're supposed to kill stuff, and people have told me what rewards they've gotten, but that's about it.

Now, the rational thing would have been to announce to the other players inside, "Hi, my name is WarrenWolfy, and I haven't a clue. What can I do to help and/or not bother you?" Even if the responses were hostile it might have still given me a hint what the instance was all about.

But no, I kept silent. Because, you know, the other players were all just sitting there silent, so I wanted to look like I fit in. Wouldn't want them to think I'm a noob, because that's the worst thing ever. Ever. For serious.

Then at 9pm, a boss appeared and the other players started attacking.

So of course I did too, but you know, we weren't in a squad and it looked like they were trying to kill steal! So I lured the boss away from them! Haha! And... um... they let me have it. And went and got other ones.

So there I am beating on the boss and there they are beating on other bosses and you know what? They hit my boss with an AOE and he went after them again! Sheesh! So I ran in and AOE'd their bosses! Haha! Right back-atcha! I think... I mean... They're trying to interfere, right? Or are they helping? Um... I don't know. But I figure I'll do whatever they're doing, lest I look like a noob!

And then one of them politely says, "hey warren, can you please move back a bit so we don't accidentally grab yours again?"

*facepalm* See, this is why I'm an idiot. I know there's teams involved, but I don't know how they're divided up. That's when I notice 2 things: I'm still in a squad from earlier in the evening, meaning they couldn't have invited me anyway if they had wanted to, and also that the name of the entire instance is our team name. Meaning, apparently, we're all on the same team.

I quietly slink away in shame and go on to kill my boss and pick up a punch of Astral Orbs. Right about then they kill the two they've been working on, but they don't pick up the Orbs. Now, I'm smart enough to know there's probably a reason, so I don't touch their stuff. I go find another boss and kill it too, and just as I get my 3rd boss down to 1/4 health, the "Server is shutting down in 300 seconds" message appears.

*double-facepalm* The maintenance. Right on schedule. Just like I knew/forgot it would be.

I'm all about defense. Meaning I've never had a party-wipe, but also meaning I hit like a wet Bounty sheet. There's no way I'm finishing him off in time, and even if I could, so what? I have no idea how to cash in my rewards. So I give up. I try to go find the other players to see what they are doing.

Well, you know what? A small miracle happens! I don't know how exactly, but with 40 seconds left our team somehow wins! I run like crazy and eventually find the other players, just in time to see them standing around an NPC. I click on the NPC, knowing my Orbs are very close to being worthless, randomly select the first selection that works without even looking, hit "MAX", and then the manufacture button.

I get booted. My inventory has 6 mysterious chips that weren't there before. Er... wahoo?

So there you go. I did pretty much everything wrong, but now I know better. If you were one of the unfortunate souls that were teamed with me, please accept my apology for being clueless. Oh, and thanks for winning, despite having me on your team. I'm sure the 6 mysterious chips I ended up with will be... um... taking up inventory space for quite some time. b:victory