Ninja of the Violet Hold

Quite fancying something more rewarding than wandering around Dragonblight I put a call out that I am looking for a group, either to purge The Old Kingdom of bugs or to quell the uprising in the Violet Hold. Either way, as a protection warrior I am looking to tank. It isn't long before I am invited in to a group, but without any preliminary communication.

My previous experiences of being invited in to a group without first being contacted are all negative, at least in Northrend. The groups were all unfocussed and lacking in personal responsibility, with the leaders shirking any sense of duty on to anyone they can whilst they head off for food, to the point where I never made it past the entrance of an instance, let alone defeating any bosses. Conversely, all the groups who have contacted me first, asking if I am a tank or DPS and which instance I am interested in, have been mostly smooth and successful runs.

I listen to the voice of my experience and decline the random invitation with as much comment as I received. Almost immediately I am invited again to the same group, again without communication. This time I decline the invitation after telling the group leader that I have had nothing but poor results with groups that invite me in to the team without any initial contact. A reply comes back of 'vh', in its entirety, before another invitation to join the group is sent my way. I am looking to venture in to the Violet Hold and am currently not doing anything terribly exciting, so against my better judgement I accept.

It seems that my preconceptions are misplaced as the group starts fighting back the dragonkin piling through the portals of Violet Hold quite effectively and the first boss released from the prison is defeated with little fuss. Some good mage loot is dropped, which unsurprisingly goes to our mage, also our leader and the person who invited me along. During the second wave of portals a superior-quality items drops from the trash mobs, again good mage loot and again our mage rolls 'need' on the item to win it. Except this time he is challenged by another group member to equip the items he's received, after noticing that he also isn't wearing the equipment dropped from the first boss.

The mage is reticent about why he is reluctant to don the new bind-on-equip item, but is given the benefit of the doubt as the gear is certainly for mages and obviously went to the right class. After the second boss is despatched efficiently another mage item drops, the mage wins it and only equips it when provoked a second time. My interest piqued, I sneak a look at the mage's current gear and he is wearing mostly greens, the three blues he's picked up are definite improvements. The only new item he is wearing is the second boss drop and as it is bind-on-pickup there is no drawback to equipping it.

Either this second challenge is too much a slight on his good character or he's got a good enough haul for one group of marks, as the mage leaves the group and runs out of the Violet Hold. I am actually quite impressed that a ninja looter can survive all the way to mid-70s rather than concerned that some mage loot was gained unfairly. Even so, after quickly putting his name on my 'ignore' list, there are the final portals and boss to defeat, as we are only two-thirds of the way through the instance. With the Violet Hold being timed we cannot pause, but that's okay as the mage was apparently not pulling his weight and the four of us remaining are able to complete the instance smoothly.

It puts me in a state of confusion, however. I am not sure whether I should count this as a bad group that should have been avoided, because of the ninja looter, or a good group that breezed through the instance with few problems, even one man deficient. Because the blind invitation came from the eventually exposed ninja looter I think it is best still to consider blind invitations as probably harmful.

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