Wednesday Wind-Up

This week's Wind-Up....

WoW: It's just a game...

What I say? No, it's not just a game.

When you pay US$15 each month in order to play this game, it means a lot more than something you don't have to pay for.
When you spend hours, days, months, years just trying to level and build your characters up, they mean more to you than some Sim that's easily replicated.
When you build or join a guild, make friends (or enemies) and learn to live in Azeroth, it means more than some uninteresting landscape.
When the lore surrounds and encompasses you, getting you caught up in the fever, it means more then some world where you're just...there. (I'm looking at you Runescape)
When you RP your character, build their qualities and faults, strengths and weaknesses, family bonds and ties of friendship, they are often more real, more easily understood  then that stranger down the street.

Yes, WoW is a game. But it's not JUST a game! It's a way of life.

Later days.

AFK from IRL

So I'm going to be leaving to have surgery.

Hospitalization: 1 week
Wheelchair: 6 weeks
Crutches: ????(who knows)

So, unless I can steal some internet, no posts from me.

It's a femuralosteotomy, if you know medical terms. (I think I spelt it right...)

Well, I'm off to spend some more time with my precious WoW, before I'm /afk 1 week.

Assuming there's no complications, I'll definately be online after that.

Later days.

Outland: Easy on the level, hard on the eyes.

So my paladin is now lvl 58, Outland here I come.

About 10 quests in, and I've replaced all my gear =/  All those blues traded for greens. It hurts, but the stats are better.

What hurts even more, is how you look. I went from red-and-gold themed armour(mostly the Lightforge set), to a mottley array of scrap metal. I look disgusting.

And my healing set is even worse. I had mostly the Magister's set for healing, with a few Postmaster pieces, but now I have a few cloth pieces, a few leather, some mail, and one plate piece. It's worse than if I had dressed in the dark.

Plus my head piece makes me look like a Borg =/

Oh, well. I guess I'll just have to find some gear with good stats that are a bit easier on the eyes.

Later days.

If I ever have to PuG [insert dungeon here] I will [insert action here]!

We all have one, a dungeon that we hope the LFG system will never throw us into.

Naturally, it's the next one you get.

But what do you do? Do you stick it out? Getting hopelessly lost and possibly suffering abuse from your fellow group members? Do you leave and suffer the PuG-deserter debuff(the one that looks like a dead canary)?

Up until quite recently, mine was Wailing Caverns. And all my levelling alts would always get thrown it there. Usually I would stick with it. Sometimes I left. Then one day, the ultimate horror happened:

Guildie: Hey!
Me: Hey.
Guildie: You doing anything?
Me: Playing with the AH.
Guildie: Wanna run me through something?
Me: Sure!
Guildie: Sweet. Meet you at WC! /log
Me: o_O

I hate WC. This guidie KNEW that. But they wanted the Fang set for their Druid. So, I sucked it up and went.

And as we ran it, I was shocked my how much of it I knew. Although I shocked an RL friend that was with us on Vent (he was sitting next to me IRL). Apparently, he never realised how much I swore while tanking/healing/boosting. Or how much stress the boostee causes me. I found his reaction amusing.

Over Vent, I was confident about the way through. "This way." "We're going left here." "...your other left." etc.

IRL...."Oh, crap." "@#$%, where'd he go?" "Damn...I'm lost." "This wasn't here last time...." "Gah, where am I?" "I hate this place." "I'm never running anyone ever again!" etc.

He informed the guild over Vent, that he was leaving the computer for a while. When asked why he said: "Because Am's mutterings are freaking the hell out of me." Now everyone wants to hear them. I don't want them to. I think I must be the only person that mutters/talks-to-self while playing the game. I don't even realise I'mdoing it until someone points it out.

But, back to the story, I eventually got all the bosses down, so we headed back to the start to talk to the druid there. All the while I'm thinking 'pleaseletitworkpleaseletitworkpleaseletitwork'. And it did. So I'm crowing over Vent, as we follow the insanely slow-walking druid. (I swear that it took longer for him to get to the Sleeper than it did for us to run the instance =/)

Eventually we got there. Killed the swarms. Killed the murloc with glee. (I HATE them with a passion. That passion is hate.) Watched the two druids turn into birds and fly out. Complain about how the druids could use Flying form in Azeroth. ("I CALL HAX!" was said often.) Eventually we stopped sulking that they had flying forms in Vanilla (well, mostly. I'm still sour.) and left for Xroads.

All in all, it was a fun day. I found in-game-hax, as well as finally not being afraid of LFD'ing Wailing Caverns.

Now, to conquer Gnomeragan, Blackrock Depths, and Sunken Temple. Especially BRD. Although finding the dwarf-guy with the coffer-key is kinda fun....

Although I STILL hate regular Oculus. Heroic is alright, because everyone knows the fight and it's over quick. But regular...you're lucky if the tank can keep aggro, and everyone can get it through their heads to STAY ON THE DAMN DRAGON FOR THE LAST BOSS! I want to reach through the internet and slam their heads against their screens.

Oh, well. I guess we can't have them all.....

Best of luck to all your PuGs.

Later Days.

Wednesday Wind-Up

I'm going to try to start something that (hopefully) will continue for as long as this blog is up.

Each Wednesday, I plan to post the Weekly Wind-up, meaning that I'm going to share my opinion on a controversial WoW-related subject, and I'm hoping that at least one person will share their opinion, agree with me, disagree with me, or shed a different light on the issue.

This week?

Should Trade Chat be used ONLY for trading/buying/selling?

As opposed to the remake of Barrens Chat that it currently is. =/

I believe that it is good for advertising things, such as buying/selling/trading, guilds (even though they have their own channel), raids (again, their own channel).

It should NOT be about your mother, Chuck Norris, [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker], [Krol Blade], or what you got up to last night.

People shouldn't be making sexual, racist, sexist, or offensive remarks on such a public channel. If you want to let everyone know that the Alliance is going down, so sign up for a [For The Horde!] raid on SW, that's fine. But if you're saying that women/black people/etc are inferior and can suck your @#$%, that's crossing the line.

But that's just my opinion. Looking forward to hearing yours.
Until then,
Later days.

Doing It With One Hand....

Calm down, I'm talking about raiding with one hand. Meaning trying to run a raid or PuG while eating, reading, or anything else that requires the full attention of one hand.

I'm guilty of this. A lot. So are most people I knnow.

But, unlike most, I can still move, attack/cast/heal AND eat, while not causing a wipe.

I'm not trying to brag here, I just thought it would be interesting to post about it after a funny Vent convo I had the other day.
(unless specified, everything is being spoken over Vent)
RL: Ready? GO!
*fight goes here*
RL: Shik, you keeping up?
*silence*
RL: Shik?
Shik(me): (typed) Yeah, I'm good.
RL: Dude, why aren't you talking?
Me: (typed) Coz I'm eating, noob.
*fight's over*
RL: ......Dude, you were healing while EATING?! WTF is WRONG WITH YOU?!?!
Me: (talked this time) I kept up didn't I?
RL: Well...yeah...
Druid-buddy: Wotcha eating?
Me: Pie.
Druid: I like pie.... What flavour?
Me: Umm...beef? Is that a flavour, or a filling? Hmm....either way.
Druid: ....'Kay.....
RL: Lemme get this straight....you healed...while eating?
Me: Yup.
RL: You did it...with one hand?
Someone else: That's what she said....
RL: Not cool dude.
Me: Well, yeah. I have VuhDo, you know.
RL: .....But how'd you move? Use your action bars?
Me: .....Use the mouse?
RL: But...that'd.....you'd be swinging it everywhere, wouldn't you?
Me: Nah, I got a mouse with extra buttons. Got my action bars wired up to them.
RL: ...How many buttons does this mouse have?
Me: Umm.....*counts*....17.
RL: .....wtf? Why do you need that many?
Me: Duh. So I can eat pie during raids.


Incidentally, my mouse is a Razer Naga. I combine it with the addon made specially for WoW and the mouse. It is awesome. I'll post a pic or two of it here once I work out how.
Anyway, it's awesome.
I'd only recommend it if you either have small hands (women or kids) or are okay with using small mice (like me). It's even smaller than some 'standard' mice I've seen, and the smallest gaming mouse I've ever laid eyes on, excluding laptop/portable ones.

It did take a week or so to get used to, but now I can honestly say that I couldn't go back. I almost had a panic attack when I had to heal while using a friend's computer using his non-Naga mouse. Let's just say we wiped a few times until I worked it out. So, no moving, no attacking, only healing. And even then, only sparingly.

I would fail without my mouse.

Well, I'll stop pimping my mouse now. But seriously, check out their website, or at least Google them.

Later days.

Winter Grasp Is Out Of Reach?

For the umpteenth time, the Alliance has successfully defended against us Hordies. Never mind that we own at AB, AV, WG, EotS, SotA, AND IoC. Why do we suck at WG, when we used to win each one?

Organisation.

The Allis KNOW they suck, so what do they do? Get an ex-Hordie-now-Alli and make him their general. They're organised now, because they made the effort to not suck.

What do we do? Argue for 10 minutes over who will lead the raid group(ignoring the person with the red font), resort to insulting each others' mothers and manhood (or lack thereof), and everyone goes off in a different direction.
And because of this, we always lose. So, because everyone assumes it's a lost cause, nobody shows. So we lose.

It's a Catch 22, people. We always lose, so people don't come. But because people don't come, we always lose.

Sometimes I want to grab these Trade Chat idiots and shake them until they're cross-eyed, drooling idiots. Well, more of a cross-eyed drooling idiot. I have a low opinion of those people. I want to get them drunk, so drunk they pass out. I want to keep this drinking going for a week. Then? Then I will let them sleep. Then I will wake them up, and SCREAM in their ears. I will watch them cry from their hangover.

And I will enjoy it.

Also, I would have taped the whole thing, so that when they continue in their ways, I could put it on YouTube. I will then link it in Trade Chat.

Why? Because I'm a DK. We're made to be evil.

Only a handful of us show anymore. Minutes ago, we lost WG (big shock there =/) with only 20 people in the raid group. A few of us non-Tradies even try to follow the plans. Not that it works.

Wondering what's up with the title? I thought "Winter Grasp Is Out Of Our Grasp?" was too stupid a pun to make. Even for me.

So, we'll have to cope with no VoA or Stonekeepers Shards until the Horde develops some maturity.



Later days.