On feeling wanted...

Logged in the other night, with the intention of checking auctions, and probably questing around Zangarmarsh or farming some herbs or grinding to collect unidentified plant parts for Cenarion Expedition rep.

A few minutes after logging in, my favorite healer, Drake, whispers me for a Stratholme run. His guild has a group of 4 and he told them to invite me. I was thinking it was a bit close to bed time to be starting an instance, but...oh hell, sure I'll do it. I like instancing, and he's great to work with, so I'm willing to suffer a bit of fatigue the next day. I mean, after all, it probably affects my co-workers more than it affects me, because they're the ones who have to deal with the cranky tired guy.

I was in Zangarmarsh at the time so they try to summon. Nope, stone maxes out at 60 so I can't summon. Ok, quick run on my swift mistsaber over to Shattrath, portal into IF, then fly to Light's Hope Chapel in EPL. There's another guy coming that way too, so I have a few minutes and take my time gathering Plaguebloom and Arthas' Tears on my way.

Finally make it to the instance. Pretty cool looking area, I've never been there before.

Then I think to look at my party members. Ugh. Hunter, Hunter, Shammy, Rogue, Resto Druid. No tank. I make some jokes about wanting to make a quick hop back to IF to train up in Plate armor, but nobody's laughing. Oh well. I've never partied with a Shaman before, so I'm excited about that.

Next thing I see the party turn into a raid. Blechkkkkk. For some reason, my spine cringes anytime I see a group change to a raid when heading into what should be a 5-man instance.

But then again, I'm a guest of their guild run, so I'm on my best behavior. Then they say, they want to invite 1 more. "Sweet," I think, "a tank'll be joining." Yeah. You wish. Mage, lvl 70. And we're all 60-63, so the added beauty that the mage'll have aggro even if he throttles back.

So now we're at 7 people. But only 6 are in the area. Head into the instance, the other guy will catch up. Strange. So we go in. Somebody says "have the pets tank". I ask what we're going to do to keep the other mobs that we're not directly attacking off of the healer when he starts healing. Somebody says "we'll AoE them". Huh? So I ask how we're going to keep them off of you once you start to AoE them. Bunch of us wear mail, and the other wears leather and doesnt have any AoE's that I know of. At least the Shammy's holding a shield.

That one gets the answer of "just attack and we'll figure it out". Then somebody says "oh man, too bad we don't have any CC, this is going to be rough."

We have 3 hunters in the raid group. No CC? I was a little surprised that he knew enough to be talking about CC, but had no worries of lacking a tank, and also doesnt consider 3 hunters as a decent CC capability.

But like I said, I was a guest, so I'm on my best behavior. Next thing you know, one of the guys disconnects, then one says he is going to run with a different group, and then a third says he's buddies with the other guy and would rather run with him. So we're down to 4...Hunter, Shammy, Hunter, Druid.

So we decided to see how long until we wipe. We did the first pull, which is all non-elites. As you can imagine, total chaos. But we survived. Then somebody says to change the group from a raid back to a party. Next thing you know, the other guys get teleported to IF, and I'm all alone in the instance, so I hearth'ed back to Zangarmarsh and thanked them for the invite and maybe it'll work out next time.

I was totally fine with the hour wasted on getting into the instance. In fact, I was just happy to be invited and viewed as a potential useful addition to their party. I had had pretty laid back plans for my night anyways. And who knows, maybe this weekend, I'll get an opportunity to run with them and be successful.

But it was a pretty standard experience, from what I'm seeing. And what was the deal with the teleportation to IF? Is that something that happens when you downgrade a group from a raid while in an instance?