I have to admit that the spawn camping has slowed down a lot since the expansion's release (mostly because I'm still hanging out around 66 when all the crazy people have made their way up to 70), but if I could send one message to all my fellow Hordies out there, it's this: if you're after a named kill (like Grillok 'Darkeye' here), and you see me or someone else sitting on the spawn point waiting with you, please, please, please invite us to group up and get the kill together.

There's no reason we should fight on this one. On a collecting quest, where there are so many boar's jaws to go around, I understand it's every Orc for himself-- in that case, I'll usually move on to greener pastures. But if we're both here for just the kill, why would you refuse a member of your own faction? This one's in Mystic Worlds' helpful Outland tips, too: if you're both camping the same named, group up.

Of course, this only goes for factions. I'll steal a kill from any Alliance I see out there, and I just expect those smarmy Night Elves to do the same to me (and I'll take them out when they're halfway down for doing it, too). But if members of the same faction are going after the same kill (or kills) for a quest reward, people, let's just all get along.

The vast amount of coverage I have seen on The Burning Crusade rollout has been positive. I'm having very negative experiences. For the first time since I started playing Warcraft I got to bed early last night. Not because a raid got cancelled, or because I was tired, but because I couldn't actually do anything.

Every quest spawn in Outlands was camped. As a warlock, I'd typically get a couple DoT's on a mob, and some warrior would charge it. DoT's don't tag mobs until they do damage. It was taking, oh, 20-30 seconds for DoT's to tick because of the breathtaking lag. So I'd do about half the damage on the mob, the warrior would do the other half and get all the quest credit. Excellent. At least I was still out mana for the cast.

So I rolled a new Draeni. Every quest spawn in the Draeni starting zone was camped. As a mage, I'd typically get 8 seconds into a 10 second frostbolt cast (did I mention it was laggy?) and a shaman would earth shock the mob, and I'd kill it half and get no credit. Nobody wanted to group, because of the XP penalty.

The Outlands and the new starting zones are all on the same server. How do I know that? They all crash together.

So I went back to my warlock, back to Outlands, and decided to get a guild group together to try the Ramparts. We zone in, the server crashes. Twice. Before the first pull.

Then I get clever. I go to bed early, use flextime for the early in-early out and get home at 4. That would give me 3 hours of playtime before prime time. And they rebooted the servers this afternoon. I got 20 minutes in before the waves of crashes started again.

I'm moving one of my level 60's over to a different server. A server that isn't crashing the outlands over and over and over again. Maybe I'll hit 70 there. Because it's not happening on my main server. So far this patch has been a uniformly horrible experience for me.

Anyone else having bad experiences? Vent (but keep it civil) below.

The humble camper is a life-form frequently encountered amongst the many zones -- often found in great numbers throughout high-level areas in particular. By sticking to one particular spot based on a number of factors -- primarily aiming to harvest particular drops for fun and profit -- campers cause high-level questers a lot of trouble.

I've had numerous encounters with level 60 campers who decide that pulling every mob in the area, all at once, is a good tactic to maximise drops -- indeed it is, but when there are other players there waiting to complete a quest, it's not a particularly nice tactic. Of course, on PvP servers you can add ganking into the equation, making it often more fun for the would-be quester to give up rather than waste several hours on one quest.

Have you had bad camping experiences? Any tips to deal with those who just refuse to budge? Or are you a camper, and willing to defend your stance?

Asking politely is one way to deal with campers, but it only gets you so far -- nowhere, when it comes to the opposite faction. Irritating them so that they'll give up is another tactic that I've seen employed, but can't bring myself to try. Ultimately, there isn't much you can do to stop people camping, especially when they ignore you -- but don't dismiss them all as gold farmers without a second glance. Some may be questers just like you.

While we might assume by default that every other player is a honourable and upright paragon of virtue, sometimes little quirks of behaviour manage to shatter our illusions beyond repair. From chat spammers to mob campers, we frequently run into some dirty tactics which serve to convince us that perhaps WoW isn't such a nice place to be after all.

Ganking aside, what are your favourite or least favourite tricks to employ in these situations? One of mine is excessive politeness--it may be the Englishness of it, but saying "I'm terribly sorry, old chap, but would you mind pushing off for a few minutes while I finish this quest?" has surprising effects.

Aggro Me suggests a list of MMOlympic events that players could compete for -- ranging from a camping competition to a tricky roleplay race. Some more WoW-specific events that we're all longing to see:

• Chest Competition -- Juggle bag space and run speed as you try to collect all the treasure chests in a zone; no dwarves allowed!
• Auction House Wheeler Dealing -- Pit your salesmanship skills as you compete to sell AH items in the Trade channel for a profit
• Hunt the Ninja -- Run instances with PuGs; try to be the first to find a ninja-free group
  
• Survivability -- Level 1 characters race from their starting area to the furthest capital city via high-level zones; first through the gates alive wins!

I've heard of the last event taking place under several themes -- the Running of the Bulls sees baby Tauren characters sprint for survival, and gnome footraces have also been run on a few servers. While some of these events exemplify the bad side of behaviour ingame, others are just plain fun.

[via Wonderland]