Top 10 of Raid Slacking: Number 9

The top 10 of raid slacking is a collaboration between me and Quincey, a guildie and a fellow blogger. We both have been in Phoenix Legion for a long time now, even before TBC. Since we both are melee (atleast now we are) we have seen our fair share of deaths and the accompaning downtime, resulting in, well, us having nothing to do. This is our top 10 for those moments and for when our guild leader takes his time on the tactics.

It is time for number 9. Nine. Neuf. Negen. Neun. 00001001 (That is 9 in binary). We Quincey already discussed the poker mod, so it is time for me to write one. The method that I am going to discuss is a simple one, requiring no add-ons or such. You still need a brain though.

Number 9 on our list is: Guild/General Chat.

Okay, it may sound simple and mundane... Or lame. Or boring. But it isn't! Atleast, if you have a fun guild, which you obviously have. My guild has some very unique, smart, witty and funny individuals, which creates some funny situations. Wether it's my guild leader with his puns, our Pally CL with very wrong thoughts or plain silliness, it's mostly good. We're all good friends.
Below is a snippet of our guild's silliness:And this is just during the day. In the evenings and during raids, it is total chaos from time to time. Especially since our funniest members are online then. Making lame jokes about nerfing warlocks is fun, but the ones you need a dozen of braincells for are even better. Like this one (click to enlarge):

This one is on number 8, since you might not have a guild/friends that are as funny as ours. And that's a shame.

Why applies must have been invented

I was sitting around in Shattrath today and as usual, I had people whispering me. Always happy to help, especially if they are interested in my guild. Today, I had someone that was interested (apologies for the horrible JPEG compression, name is edited out out of pity):
At this point, I inspected him. *sigh* Full PvP. And I mean FULL PvP gear. Nothing PvE oriented at all. Meh, doesn't say anything about the player. We move on:
Ooookay... Still nothing too bad. Everyone learns in a guild, and our guild really teaches very well. Another guildie started out as, well, not the smartest person, but now he gets along fine and to be honest, he is a great guy now.
Wait, what? This guy is PvP guild material. He thinks Misery is a good battleground and he has the ability to quote the one time he got lucky in a BG. Okay... And he wants to transfer. Why apply to a PvE guild when it's blatantly obvious that you are PvP. And why bother if you are going to transfer? The lunacy doesn't end here though.
Lolwut? You hate applying, but you want to raid?
System warning: your IQ has reached abyssal depths. Try reading D&D comics or anything else that requires a brain. this might remove the debuff. I hope.
I apparently am one of "them". So he expects that he joins a raiding guild, gets to raid whenever he wants/is online, gets epics and he has to do nothing. And he doesn't know how a forum works. If you don't know how a forum works, how can you know how raid signups work? And ofcourse he has a 6th sense for idiots. I'm just not going to bother to tell him why a guild has applications.
Just no. It's 22:00 now and he still hasn't made an application.

Offtopic bit: I fixed my bicycle and I can ride it now. For the first time since 4 months I can go somewhere fast and on my own. I am happy. Very happy. Also, another music video that I like.
4 Strings - Take Me Away. Via youtube.

Pocket money, apparently

After reading this on Ratshag's blog, I was curious:

How much is my blog worth?

I am always very sceptical of such things, as what may work for one, may not work for me.
Anyhow, I am worth:

My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?

Respect your Elders, son.

I have no inspiration what so ever right now, so it just might proc if I type something, but chances are that this will be another lame paragraph. Anyhow. I got great news today, I don't need to getmy knee forced to bend in the OR. I was very nervous because of that possibility. FYI, I had a karting accident in September, in which I shattered my knee. Had it pieced together again at the hospital, etcetera. etcetera. At the moment, I can still only bend it 90 degrees. But atleast that means that I can ride a bicycle again, if I get to fixing my 2 flat tires (I am lazy, flat tires are the bane of my existance. Well, maybe not, but they are annoying).

I get the feeling that this won't be a very WoW-related post. But it's okay, it is my blog after all. Only "big" thing that happened lately was last night's raid attendance. I might have posted about it before, but this time is different. We had too little signups to raid, but my guildleader invited us anyway. He had an announcement: He and the officers are going to be a bit less free with the word "raiding". Meaning that if you call yourself a raider and are in a raiding guild, you should actually raid, not raid 3 times and then slack on the signing up.

Inspiration has procced.
The ranks are going to change. First we had the following: Initiate -> Member -> Elder (meaning that you were with the guild pre-TBC) -> Officers and such. Now it will change. Initiate -> Member -> Elder. It looks just the same! Well, looks can be decieving. The Elder rank used to be a nice title you got for being in PL pre- and post-TBC. Now, it is revamped and actually comes with responsibilities. As quoted from our forae (I prefer forae over forums. I had Latin for a year and I still like the Latin's version):

-Elders are expected to maintain a high raid attendance. Although this will vary in usual PL style ( ) a ball-park figure of 75% is a good guide. This includes raids that were signed but oversubscribed, of course.
-Elders are held to a high standard in general player relations - you are standard bearers for the guild. Do not bring the guild into disrepute.
-Elders are assigned to new members as mentors and must ensure new members settle in and learn all they need to know to be productive members, and to not feel lost or confused.
-Elders are also to be active with regards to encouraging guild sign-ups and publicising recruitment.
-Finally, Elders are encouraged to assist less experienced players in improving their own personal WoW skills and help keep Officers appraised of any issues that need dealing with (social or raid-related).

That's all?
Honestly? I am the oldest and most experienced Shaman in my guild (although my resto and elemental days begin to become a blur) and as such, I am the unofficial FAQ guy for shamanism. Not just from my guild, also for some other people I know that know I play Shaman for a long time. I love guiding new Shamans into raiding and my raid attendance used to be 95% pre-TBC. We raided 5 times per week. And I have never brought my guild in disrepute. What are my privileges then? Also quoted from my guild's forae:

-Elders have their own board on these forums. Please note that this board is primarily for issues relating to the Elders extra responsibilities.
-Elders have higher withdrawal limits for the guild tab (although since people put in more than they take out... )
-Elders may edit the GMotD (again, part of the extra responsibilities involve this).
-Elders get a bonus when it comes to looting (see below).
-Finally, we aim to allow Elders a small daily allowance from the Guild Bank towards repairs. However, don't take that for granted as we need to ensure such fund are sustainable.

Nice. I like my guild alot, and I am very loyal to it, so I like being able to do more for it when/if I get the rank.

Blog Azeroth

Hmmm.... I kind of forgot to mention/post about Blog Azeroth, which is a really good idea (and well done so far too) by Phaelia. It truly is a great knowledge base and the people there are really friendly. Quoted from the introductory message,which sums it up perfectly:

"Blog Azeroth was created to facilitate the exchange of information and foster community among Warcraft blog authors. While we all appreciate and thrive upon building our own separate communities of readers and — in some cases, members of the class upon which we have focused — we are all part of the same community. Many of us struggle with the same problems, be it the cumbersome migration from one blog platform to another, knowing what stats are the most helpful, or gold spammers trying to take advantage of a publicly available platform. By sharing what we’ve each learned individually, we increase our collective knowledgebase. And all without having to hunt down an e-mail address or post a comment in an attempt to contact each other!"

Wireless! And Shared Topic #1

New router, so I'm posting (and playing) wireless. If you don't count my powercable, my Nostromo cable, my speaker cables, my USB dongle's cable and my mouse's cable, wait, that has no cable. It is holding up fine, and installing the router was piece of cake pie. The pie cannot be a lie, since it is pie and it rhymes.

Anyhow, Siha from Bananashoulders came up with something on Blog Azeroth: Shared Blog Topics.
Thus, to kick off the idea, here is the first topic:

Q: What do you enjoy about the class you play the most?

What I like:
Tough one. When I started playing WoW, I played Hunter, but after my break, the server I was on didn't appeal anymore. Then I rolled Shaman, just to see if I like it. Needless to say, I loved it.
What did I love? Well, in retrospect, I must have liked the fact that I could heal myself and that I am versatile. Hence why my favorite alts are Druid and Paladin. When I raided at level 60, as Restoration, I liked how I played a vital role in raiding, mainly keeping people alive.

But as Enhancement, I love that I can do what I please: I can't really PvP, but I dislike it anyway. Grinding is easy, because of Shamanistic Rage and I love my Windfury. In raids, the melee DPS is always happy to see me, since I buff their DPS alot. I do alot of damage with my shiny axe, which makes me happy. I even enjoy counterspelling.
The Downsides:
Ofcourse, though it may seem as an easy class, you actually need skill from time to time. Unfortunatly, there are enough noobs (not newbs, those are okay, they just need guidance and advice) that think that it *is* the easiest class and then screw up. In a PuG that I'm in for example. I always carry more ankhs than I will possibly need, for those that forget them, that is no problem, even I forget to get some from time to time, I even forget to repair sometimes. Oh, and melee doesn't work on all the bosses. Like Onyxia, or Al'ar, when there are no adds.

Siha's Point of View.
Nightravyn's PoV
Phaelia's Side
Conjude's Opinion
Same by Twalkins
Kyrilean's one
Valenna's Version

Offtopic
I also found this, when I was looking on Bananashoulders, who linked to this: Karazhan Bingo! I laughed at the idea, since I recognise some of it. I want a PuG bingo! I might just make it. But I have to PuG to put my main gripes on it... Yikes.

You may have noticed that this post is not as well written as the others. I can't think very straight at the moment, I am very, no, extremely nervous at the moment. I have a doctor's appointment at the hospital tomorrow and I don't like the idea of having to enter the OR again.
To make up for this, have one of my favorite songs via younoob.

Router issues

The router at my house is broken. It says that 2 out of 4 PCs have internet, whilst the damn thing isn't connected to anything. Odd. Oh well, this is a good chance to get one that has both wired and wireless, saves me alot of hassle with all those wires on/at/near/behind my laptop. So I might not have internet (because I get my internet straight from the router) tomorrow, when someone downstairs wants to have it.

Anyhow, I'm working on a new header... Might go for something funny, but It'll be a surprise. Something with the words Tauren and Rogue. And maybe Wolpertinger.

EDIT: It's done, <3 Jiro for the inspiration. Hope you like it.

Ribbit!

As WoW Insider posted in their article "Get your Mojo workin'", there are free Mojo's handed out at Zul'aman. All you need to do is to kiss a troll. According to WoW Insider it's another version of Mojo, or atleast they think so. I wonder if we can keep it.
Why? Because it's a bug. And *gets tinfoil hat* remember what happened to the Ghost Wolves? Okay, they didn't get the ASPCA to get them back, but they're untamable now.

Thanks WoW Insider for bringing this to my attention!

EDIT: I laughed at this: "Mojo whispers: I promise not to give you warts."

15/46/0

I play PvE, which comes with a PvE spec. Mine is 15/46/0. Please note that my current build is slightly different, as I'm saving for my Epic Flying mount. It's just 1 point different, so not a big deal. Anyhow, let's start.

Elemental Tree
The Elemental Tree is actually very useful. Stormstrike (enhancement) grants a 20% bonus to the next 2 sources of Nature damage. Since Earth Shock is Nature damage, well, I assume you can do the math. Earth, Flame and Frost Shock are all affected by the following talents:

Convection 5/5 - This reduces the mana cost of your shock spells with 10%. I have found that the shocks are the main reason my mana bar needs a little Shamanistic Rage from time to time. the less mana you use with your DPS routine, the more mana you have to throw a fast heal or refresh your totems.

Concussion 5/5 - This increases all damage done by my shocks by 5%. This may seem little, but in the long run it is alot of damage. Especially when you combine this talent with some of the Enhancement talents, you will see that it adds up. With Stormstrike up, I do around 1200 damage with my Earth Shock.

Reverbration 5/5 - Reduces the cooldown of the shock spells by 1 second. Especially when you're on counterspell duty in, let's say, Karazhan (Aran) or H Arcatraz, it is useful to have. It also ups your DPS, but that's obvious.

Enhancement Tree
46 points in Enhancement, so this is the beefy part of the post. I personally like to buff myself and my party, rather than just me, since this is a PvE oriented spec.

Astral Knowledge 5/5 - Increases my manapool by 5%.

Thundering Strikes 5/5 - Increases my melee crit chance by 5%. This is very, *very* useful, as alot of my buffs proc on crit. More about those on the buff talents themselves.

Enhancing Totems 2/2 - My Strength of Earth and Grace of Air totems have their effect increased by 15%. When I have a druid tank, druid DPS, rogue that loves his poisons too much or any other something that would prefer Agi over WF, I use Grace of Air, since that ups my own crit chance.

Shamanistic Focus 1/1 - On *every* melee crit, I get a 60% mana cost reduction on my shock spells. See, this is where all that crit comes in handy. Believe me, this procs alot with a feral druid in my party and dual mongoose.

Anticipation 3/3 - This is some filler that grants me 3% dodge chance. Nothing to see here, moving on.

Flurry 5/5 - FLURRY! This grants 30% faster attack speed on the next 3 swings after a melee crit. Again, this is where I love my crits. This combined with Shamanistic Rage equals alot of mana.

Improved Weapon Totems 2/2 - Increases the effect of my WF totem by 30% and 12% of my Flametoungue totem, which I never use. This is useful for when I have warriors or non-poison using rogues. They all love me.

Spirit Weapons 1/1 - Parry chance, meh. 30% threat reduction on melee attacks, oh yes! When everyone is complaining about getting too much aggro, I'm at the bottom of the DPS division of the threat meter, whilst doing the same damage. Which is great. Add in a Blessing of Salvation and you're not overaggroing soon.

Elemental Weapons 3/3 - A very long tooltip, let me sum it up: WF is 40% better now, the other three (rockbiter, flametounge and frostbrand) are useless in my opinion, so I took it for the Windfury bonus, which is almost pernamently on my weapons.

Mental Quickness 3/3 - 6% mana cost reduction on instant cast spells (Shocks, anyone?) and increases your spell damage (again, shocks anyone?) by 30% of your attack power. Which can be alot. Remember when I said that I did 1200 damage with my Earth Shock? That's because of this talent.

Weapon Mastery 5/5 - 10% additional damage done by your weapons. Useful.

Dual Wield 1/1 and Dual Wield Specialization 3/3 - Allows you to dual-wield weapons and actually hit something that isn't the size of a barn, since the DW Specialization grants 6% hit chance when Dual-Wielding.

Unleashed Rage 5/5 - Adds 10% to your AP whenever the Shammy crits with a melee attack. This doesn't stack, only refresh, as far as I know. This is a nice boost for Shamanistic Rage.

Shamanistic Rage 1/1 - One of the best spells that I have. When I go oom, I use it and watch my mana bar fill itself again. What it does is that is gives your melee attacks a chance to regain mana equal to 15% of your AP. Is usable anywhere, any time, aslong as you are hitting things. I used it once when I was alone with a paladin, making my mana go from 0% to 100%. The pally said: "Wow. That makes me feel so useless.", most likely because their mana regen spell isn't as good as mine.

Restoration Tree
If you read the title, you'd know that I used no points in Restoration. However, there is one good talent, if you die alot in instances, which is Improved Reincarnation. You need to use 5 points before you can put points in it though, which is a shame and reduces it's usefulness. It nerfs your spec, by lack of points to put in the earlier 2 trees.

This was my first attempt at describing a spec, please post comments or questions and I'll be happy to answer them. Short and easy go as a comment, long and hard will be in the next post (if possible, could be later).

EDIT: I just realised I said I'd post again on monday, but I bought an USB WiFi adapter for my laptop. And btw, if you (dis)liked the song "Boten Anna" by Basshunter: He has redone the song with lyrics that make sense now. Linkage via younoob.

New Header.

I made me a new header. A nice picture of my Shaman standing on the ocean (yes, on, not in, he has waterwalking), which should be somewhat unique. And I just love the NWN series, so I used that font. To celebrate, here is it (well, how it would be ingame):


I am gone for the weekend, new post on monday. Bai.

Another day, another QQ

I like to play around in the Trade channel. Preferably on an alt. Not to make a mess and spam, but to annoy the spammers themselves. It is basic knowledge that the words "proper", "grammar", "spelling", "language" and "usage" in any form or way in one sentence makes them see red. Today, I had a laugh with this: There was someone that managed to get every word abbreviated or spelled the wrong way. Seriously. So It kind of went like this:

[1. General] [Someguy]: im sry bt mah lil bro playd rs nd his acct gt hacked nd i thought t was no big deal bt he does think so

Or something like that, I didn't screenshot it, I forgot. I felt my fingers itching, I had to respond. I was on an alt, at the time, but I'll use my main's name. Here is how it went:

[1. General] [Cryon]: Dude, could you please use proper grammar and spelling when you type?
[1. General] [Somethingwifak]: some people just can't, lol
[1. General] [Bloodpoisen]: no one carez for spelling nd grammer lol

The third guy, Bloodpoisen, is just about always involved in spamming on the global channels. Smile, Bloodpoisen, you're on my blog! Anyhow, he starts making snide remarks. So I respond with a psuedo-pschycologial way (I hate the word pshy- pschyc- oh, sod it, spellcheck ftw):

[1. General] [Cryon]: Are you intimidated by people that can maintain proper use of grammar and spelling in the English language and respond to that by acting like a small child?
[1. General] [Cryon]: I know I'm not intimidated by a sad, pathetic little spammer.
[1. General] [Bloodpoisen]: if i was a spammer id be spammin now

Then he apparently got him a friend to help:

[1. General] [random]: take him to hell plx
[1. General] [Cryon]: I have a condo there.

I eat comments like that for breakfast. Then I had to log my main, raid was about to start. The first part of this post wasn't QQ. I know. The second part will. Well, QQ, I'm not angry at people, just disappointed.

What is the problem, you may ask. Well, I am in an awesome guild, really nice people, always a good laugh. The downside ot any community is that you have a core and a mantle so to speak. The core consists of the hardcore members, like me, who are there for all the raids, are active, read the forums daily, etc. The mantle consists of the rest. A raid is built up the same way. Our tanks are always the same great, skilled people, since all our tanks own ^^. Never a problem. However, DPS and healing is a problem from time to time. Last week, we had tons of signups for TK. Great. Just how we like it.

Then we have SSC this reset. Either we lack signups, we get people that cancel (no problem, RL > WoW, but this kinda falls back on the lacking signups then) or people that won't show up. If we had all our raids like planned, not cancelled like today, we could be in Hyjal end of February. It truly saddens me that our progress is limited by this.

I am sad, but I am not the workhorse of my guild, who's hard work is in vain. My guild leader is. We owe so much to him, and we love him so much that we (I don't know if he knows) give him the phoenix mount from Kael'Thas as a thank you when it drops. He is one of the best tanks I ever played with. He is there every raid, exept when the trains can't being him to his PC, or when there is an emergency. He is funny, witty and makes our guild so awesome. That's why I, well most of the core group I think, are upset or angry with the slackers that don't bother to sign, or even inform that they stopped playing WoW.

I was a guild leader too, been there, done that. I used to be the workhorse too, so I know how it feels. Which is why I appreciate his input so much. <3 you, Creamy.

A day on my Paladin

I want to heal again, but respeccing my lovable Enhancement Shaman with shiny epics would take ages to get my gear and skill up-to-date. So now, I am breaking out my lvl 40 Paladin out again, even though 30-58 are very boring in my opinion. Stranglethorn Vale... ugh. I hate Feralas too. For now, she is Retribution, but as soon as I hit 70, I want her to be Holy for the healing goodness.

She, the Blood Elf Paladin, started out as a character for my little brother who had no money to play his own account. At level 36, he had that money and now he has a lvl 70 Resto Druid. I hate the levels I still had to level, so I told him to boost me through those 4 levels. So now, after a crushing defeat in Feralas, where I tried to do some quests, I decided to round off some quests in Arathi, much easier.

After doing the last part of Call to Arms (including the quest for Or'kalar), taking me to 35% of lvl 40, I wanted to head to Org via the Undercity. But I couldn't find the flight master! It's gone! I went to open a ticket and saw that it was listed in the hot issues. I could explain what they said and lose all funnyness of their message, which we don't want, so I'll place a picture.
Whilst flying to the Undercity, I found out that there actually are many level 40 quests in Arathi. So I headed back to do them. After doing some, I went on to try a series of underwater quests... And failed miserably due to lack of water breathing. On my shaman this would be cake(not cake, the cake is a lie, remember?) pie, since he can cast waterbreathing.
So I need some [Elixir of Water Breathing]. With the only online alchemist of my guild in H Steamvaults (With a warrior that has never seen the inside of SV), this could take a while. I could get me a shiny staff from Gnomer, the [Hydrocane], but alas, Paladins cannot use staves. So I open my pally's engineering menu (she is engi/blacksmith, and my shaman is mining) to see if she can make the diving helmet yet.

Well, she can't. She has the right skill for it, no problem, mats aren't hard too. However, the schematic is sold by a vendor in Azshara. So I log my Shaman to fetch it. My Shaman, convienently parked in Orgrimmar, goes to Azshara (I hate that name, I always type it as Aszhara, so I have to rewrite it everytime - .-). I land in Valormok, after enjoying the beautiful scenery, and make my way to the vendor. Good thing I logged my Shaman, since Lake Mennar is a blue dragonkin infested area (Read: level 50 elite dragons that enjoy a little paladin shaped snack). through which you have to pass, or walk a looooong walk through giant infested areas (read: stronger elites that don't eat, they only scrape the bits of plate and Blood Elf from their soles). Luckily they had the items in stock, so I'm happy. I has the schematic! (that wasn't bad grammar, that is the lolcat part of our guild in which we all talk with "I has" and other flawed grammar, not bad, flawed)

I use my Astral Recall, to yank me through the Twisted Nether to Shattrath City. From there to Thunder Bluff and then to Gadgetzan. I'll look on the AH. I need mithril, lots of mithril.
I need 13 Mithril Bars, 1 Truesilver Bar and some gems. I have the gems in my bank, so I only needed to buy the bars. They costed 15g in total -.- Anyway, I send it all to my paladin and I log her again.

Instead of walking to Hammerfall, I HS to Grom'gol and make it there. I then go eat pizza whilst she is flying back to Hammerfall. And shower, and invent the cure for cancer, I have the time, since the flight path is rediculously long. So after I took a shower and theorised on the cure for cancer (cells duplicate until they get a signal to stop doing so, on cancer cells you have no receptors for that, so we might need to super-glue some on. I may have to call Pattex about it), I resumed my play.

I put on her new helmet and to be honest, she looks cute with her new helm. I feel a Mrs. Bubbles/Big Mommy joke coming up ('tis Bioshock), but I'll refrain from doing so. So... I walk back to the other side of Arathi (thank erm...not God, since I'm an atheist.. thank DAVE! yes! Thank DAVE for having a mount :P(I'll explain about DAVE someday))
This time, I take the route which goes from the right side of Stromguarde, a path that leads to an empty cave which is the entrance to the coastline there. I swam from the left side of Strom to the cove before.

Well, time to quest again. Easy. All the quests are get X now or kill Y. Deepdive Helmet FTW. I love Engineering for it's versatility now. After handing in the quests, they send me to Booty Bay. Near where I was before I flew over here. I started this post when I got up to play WoW, writing as events occured, etc. But how do I write a paragraph about my flying back north again?

Idea: Jungle, Creepy Forest, Volcanoes, Wetland, Mountains, City. Leaving out all of the scenery like this. Me like. Oh yeah, I traded in my Grim Reaper for my Sword of Omen and my Aegis of the Scarlet Commander.

Now I walk all the way to the cove again. I hand in the quest, just to get another. Now I have to defend the captain against waves of Naga that appear. Luckily there are NPCs to help me out. Especially because my Sword skill is lacking, being at 180.
After this, I finally ding to level 41.

EDIT: I want to heal with the paladin as an alt, my main will remain Enhancement.

[2.Trade] [Random]: Stop it!

People that play MMORPGs have more social interaction than people that watch television all day. However, I think that Tel Sell doesn't lower my IQ as much as the trade channel does. Since the trade channels for all capital cities were linked together, it seems that not only traders have flocked to it. Apparently Barrens Chat had to join in too. Apart from buying, selling and guild recruiting, there are people that debate yell insistingly that their country is the best, use witty remarks like "ur mum" and the people that dislike such behavior, but usually have to resort to using language the aforementioned can understand. Such language does not really stand out with it's advanced spelling and grammatical superiority.

These obnoxious individuals, who believe that they are "gangsta" because they spam and hand out virtual death wishes (as in "i hope u die" and such), are also the ones that apparently lack enough braincells to generate a witty remark. If you make a remark about them, they will usually use the F-word, amongst others, which I would expect to be left behind when they left elementary school.

[offtopic]
You know, at this point in this post, I still don't have a title and/or an ending for it, so if you're still reading: Get yourself a drink or something, I have the feeling this post is going to wind on and on. Think of it as amana break. Maybe you should even get your Camelbak, if you have one. Seriously.
[/offtopic]

They like to use diseases and ailments/affections as a base for their name calling, swearing and other hopeless endeavors. Which shows how little respect they have for other people that might suffer from them. Why would they do so? Why be such an idiot, that no one likes? The picture below from Penny Arcade sums it up nicely:Even though they use Unreal Tournament 2004 as example, this applies to the entire Internet. It would seem that, according to the theory, that these childish acts are preformed by attention whores who believe that being mean to others is the key to being liked. Wait, what? Does. Not. Compute.

It may sound like I am an old fart that is annoyed to hell and back by these "youngsters", but actually I am a young man who is tired of having to deal with assholes that think they are the epitome of awesome, both online and offline. People seem to think that as soon as they interact through TCP/IP, all morals can go overboard. For example: My server has a large percentage of Dutch players, of which alot are nice, and the rest are annoying, loud and obnoxious football maniacs. Once one starts talking in a civilised way about his favorite sport, football yelling how their football club is the best, all the others join in and yell back. This results in a wave tsunami of spam across the trade channel.

Such a "spamnami" leads to a situation where all reasonable people wish that they stop, which means more spam and so on and so on. It's growing exponentially and it comes out of nowhere. Oh well, atleast it usually dissapears just as fast, once the kiddies get bored.

We killed Solarion!

Our first night of trying! And we nailed her. :D We now got 3/4 of TK down! It took us a few tries, but the last one was perfect! On the first try, someone bombed the raid. The second we couldn't get the priests down fast enough, but the last was perfect. And we tried Kael'Thas, which we got to Phase 2.

And gz, Quinc for being on BBBB.

Lower City exalted!

Finally exalted with Lower City. Next: Thrallmar. I hope. Wow. Short post. Not much to say about something like this, to be honest, so...

10: Poker Add-On

Number 10 on the "slacking top 10". It's over at Quinceh.

Linkage.

(meh, 1:16 here, Zzzz...)

"Can I has 1 g pl0x?"

When I just started on this server, the Eonar server EU, it was 3 days old. People levelled to 60 like they should, on their own power. Now... Well, I rather not be in Orgrimmar.

People come and beg, asking for money from people that didn't need to beg when they levelled. And then they simply won't take no for an answer. "Can you boost me?""1g pls" The amounts they sometimes ask for are insane. A lvl 5 asking for 10g so he can buy skills for example. Ofcourse, if they would just ask nicely and with proper grammar and spelling, it would be less annoying. Everything has to be abbreviated the wrong way, questions can't be typed out beyond "why?" and so on.

"why?" actually seems a form of advanced spelling with these people, since you usually get "y?". So, bad: "help me with q."
Good: "Could you help me with this quest, please? I've read the questlog, but I still can't figure it out."
I had the latter once, a shaman couldn't figure out the Call of Fire quest, but atleast he tried to ask politely. So I helped him.

But if I and many others could do without bothering and begging, why can't they? I personally have no idea what so ever.

Insert witty post title here.

Well, I have been unable to come up with any good ideas on what to write about so... No post this evening a random post which will most likely have nothing to do with WoW, but will sport a better length, use of paragraphs and pictures. Why? Because I can and because I have soup.

Which brings me to this: do *you* have soup? Probably not. Using probabilities derived from top secret and classified files I have concluded that you most likely will not have soup. Which means that I have soup and you don't. To support this theory, I have a very professional looking diagram, stating that I have soup and you have none (see right). My amount of soup molecules will most likely be over 9000, which means that IT'S OVER NINETHOUSAND!!!1!1 (that was a random meme, not my typing style.)

But it's okay. You might have something else than soup. You could have cookies. Which is the same, only crunchier and less liquid. Or pie, which is just as delicious. But not cake, because the cake is a lie. Yes, the cake is a LIE.

Lie:

1.	a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

2.	something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.

3.	an inaccurate or false statement.

4.	the charge or accusation of lying: He flung the lie back at his accusers.

–verb (used without object)

5.	to speak falsely or utter untruth knowingly, as with intent to deceive.

6.	to express what is false; convey a false impression.

–verb (used with object)

7.	to bring about or affect by lying (often used reflexively): to lie oneself out of a difficulty; accustomed to lying his way out of difficulties.

So actually, you cannot have cake, since a lie is not real, it is false.
I was bored all day, grinding a bit, reading the various chat channels, remembering the-good-old-days-without-welfare-epix^tm. Constantly being bugged by gold spammers etcetera, etcetera. Untill a hapless player typed this:

Which incited a flame war. Poor guy. He can't help it that he play(s/ed) Runescape. You should help him get past those days and resolve the traumas he got from it. And a few moments later the only good gold selling macro came by:

The next lines of text consisted of players cheering to the gold seller. This shows that if you want to be loved, don't sum up what you are good at or can do, but be funny.

EDIT: Just sold my Void Crystals, gold incoming :D

Zzzzz... grinding.

Grinding is boring, so I usually cba doing so. Dailies are boring too, and I can't get my little brother to do them for me (he is 15, but if you ask him something you won't get a normal answer, he runs away without daying a word or he acts like an idiot). But... I'm going to try. Why? Because I want a Netherdrake, damnit!
However, this will require alot of dailies and grinding, since my mining isn't on an Outland-ish level... yet. So now I'm grinding Scryer rep items and netherweave and random items that pass by... Zzzzz...


Current status: 1364g

Lolcats.

I like cats. In my opinion, cats > dogs. I like cats more when captioned, so I am subscribed to icanhascheezburger.com 's RSS feed, which feeds (lol, pun intended) me my daily lolcat. So I made my own pic now, even if it's fail.

Link
Alternate caption

Coming soon: 10 ways to "spend time" whilst raiding.

23:24[Cryon]: I have the suspicion that Cream is starting a blog too
23:24[Quincey]: haha
23:25[Quincey]: we've all gone blog mad, you can consider yourself a trend setter :P
23:25[Cryon]: :D
23:25[Quincey]: 9 posts on mine in 24 hours
23:25[Quincey]: =s
23:25[Cryon]: Blogging is fun, imo, you should get a site tracker
23:25[Quincey]: most of them are reasonable length too
23:25[Quincey]: perhaps i just had a lot to say :P
23:26[Cryon]: xD so do I, but.... I am a little more direct and to the point, me thinks
23:26[Quincey]: read my arathi basin post
23:27[Quincey]: ima start linking it to people who whine about the new AV on the pvp forums :P
23:27[Cryon]: I like that post
23:27[Cryon]: because it's true
23:27[Quincey]: exactly <3
23:27[Quincey]: wait, they are all true :P
23:27[Cryon]: anyhow, I has an idea: top 10 ways of slacking in raids :P
23:27[Quincey]: ooooh
23:28[Quincey]: :)
23:28[Cryon]: would make 10 nice articles, no?
23:28[Quincey]: sure
23:28[Quincey]: ima look through my exploration screenies tonight
23:28[Cryon]: a small collaboration, if you wish :P
23:28[Quincey]: find the better ones
23:30[Cryon]: but... wanna make those 10 posts with me? :P 5 on each blog? 10 on yours, 9 on mine, etc.
23:30[Quincey]: sure, but since i dont slack ima need help writing them :P

Thus, the idea was born. :D So, soon, we will post a top 10. these will be posted alternating on both blogs (10 on his, 9 on mine, 8 on his etc.). No timeframe, might take forever :P

Gamepads and gourmet

The mystery raid was KZ... Couldn't be assed to do KZ today, so I went to play HG:L and some TF2. The Nostromo n52 plays nice, although I have to get used to having my action bar where my WSAD-keys used to be. I might just map all (WoW, HG:L and TF2) to one profile, much easier, or atleast the first 2.

The Speedpad (in full: Belkin Nostromo Speedpad n52) has 16 buttons. 2 rows of 5 and one of 4, a small round button above the D-Pad and a button where your spacebar would be, if it was a keyboard. I honestly don't know if I'm going to map and macro it as much as I can, or just use it to rest my left hand on.

When I first tried it today, I was in the middle of a SL run, but the left hand rest was too close to my buttons, so I had to play with my fingers curled up, while I'm used to keep my fingers almost horizontally. Going through the user's manual as if it were a tome of infinite knowledge didn't work, all it told me was that it is adjustable, however, it won't tell how. Instead of sliding back or forth, you have to lift it. It comes off and you see 2 sets of holes, in which the rest fits. Now I can play comfortably.

I have a long weekend (no school on monday, *yay*) to have fun with is, so... yeah.

Also, Tikita is starting to blog, he kinda was the guy that taught me how to raid :P (so yeah, his blog url is fitting). And from now on i'm going to keep track of my gold, 5000g is the goal. I want my epic flying.

Off to dinner now, gourmet FTW.

IT'S FINALLY HERE!

Yay! I has got my Belkin Nostromo n52. I am happy. It feels more solid then I thought, it stays put if you try to slide the thing and the buttons actually need more force than a normal keyboard. My arms can rest on a normal height now and no odd mouseclicks when playing anymore. I think I'll be using the many buttons more for Hellgate: London or some FPSs, since I'm a clicker in WoW. Anyway, I'm happy. And to quote Quincey:

"Someone's going pro :O"

A friend is coming over tonight to check it out and wish me a happy b-day, so it should be fun (he can play HG:L for once too then :P ). Now: Mistery Raid.... I wonder (seriously, I has no idea). Might post pictures of the thing later ^^.

Al'Ar, Take III

22:25 - Al'Ar on 0.0001% Enraged, then killed us all on flame buffet.
22:50 - Al'Ar down! 24 manned it!

Finally, after 3 days of consecutive raiding, we finally slayed it.
*omnomnomnom* Phoenix Wings taste good. It dropped good loot, [Netherbane] for me! Also [Talon of Al'ar] and [Mindstorm Wristbands]. We 24-manned it, so even more impressive imo. (if you count 25 on the picture, Bjellis the DPS warrior joined after we killed it. He joined the raid after we engaged.) I put Mongoose on the axe now and it looks sooooo cool. Still a bit hyped from the kill. We finally got it!

And grats, Mindcontrol for getting your T5 shoulder from Void Reaver. Skipping T4 and going straight for T5, as one of the first to get any T5.

EDIT: 19th of January now, my birthday. ^_^

"PHOENIX LEGION AND VALHALL ARE ATTACKING!"

The title also is a phrase taken from the Alliance's chat, according to a guildmate of mine. We attacked SW, led by Helldozer, but we failed a bit. Last raid killed Magni and the gnome boss, and this one failed to kill any. Nothing spectacular, exept being noticed by druids in the summoning process, so no screenshots of this.

I forgot to mention that Big Bear Butt Blogger has me linked. <3>EDIT: C₂H₅OH FTW and I hate how my touchpad on my laptop is screwy. Random mouseclicks FTL. It selected half the post when I edited it. Then I accidentally saved it.

EDITv2.0: Remind me too checkout my laptop, I has no sound on the left side of my headset or earplugs.

I spoke too early.

Not only does my Nostromo n52 come in tomorrow, on my b-day exactly, but we didn't kill Al'ar either. Still, we got her down to 7% last night and as far as I know we are going to try again tonight. The flame patches are what kills us, because it is so hard to see whenne it's on the transparent part of the arena.

Still, my guild leader had a recipe for Phoenix wings:
"First, find and kill a phoenix. You may need some help on this one. Then add some seasoning, phoenixes are self-cooked. I heard they taste great with lemongrass and thyme."

My father is going sailing (he's in the navy) and he just (litterally, he called while I was writing) asked me if he could borrow my laptop. Is no problem, I'd love to lend it to him, but it's my only computer. If he asked me next year, I would have a desktop too and he could lend it for as long as he needs. And: no PC -> No WoW -> Unhappy me -> no blogging. But it really sucks that he doesn't have a temporary replacement for me to borrow during that time, so he could lend mine.

Also, I installed a sitemeter, which tracks the amount of visitors. I'm off to do my dailies now, so I might get my epic flying mount next december... I hope.

PvP Mojo

If you have Mojo, you might be in for a surprise. Today one of my guildmates pointed out that when you kiss Mojo whilst you have PvP on, the owner of Mojo will have PvP too.
The frog spell breaks when you are attacked, so if you are any good, you get a free kill.
If everything goes well, I'll be back with a long(er), more well written post. Something about a phoenix or something.

I are not amused.

My birthday is in 2 days and I want to have a Nostromo n52 as my present from my parents. However, this will not reach me in time for my long weekend of WoW goodness, I think.

This news bringing me out of my happy mood, so I start to notice the gold spammers again.

[hfsjgvxzcvjhbxzv] yells: OMG! BUY GOLD NOW, JUST $0.22 PER 1KG! BUY NOW! BUY NOW! WE AREN'T THE CHEAPEST, BUT WE ARE THE BEST! BUY FROM US! BUY! BUY! BUY!

[2. Trade] [dfkhsdjvgasd]: OMG! BUY GOLD NOW, JUST $0.22 PER 1KG! BUY NOW! BUY NOW! WE AREN'T THE CHEAPEST, BUT WE ARE THE BEST! BUY FROM US! BUY! BUY! BUY!

Oh, just sod off. If you really think that spamming and harassing people is going to get you costumers, then I don't know. I report all goldsellers I see, which doesn't seem to have any effect on it. Getting bored of WoW, noone is online, cba with my dailies, so I go and play Hellgate: London.

[trade-234][fklhasdfjasdgf]: BUY PALADIUM NOW! WE HAVE MANY WEAPON, ARMOR, MODS AND FAST DELIVERY SERVICE!

WHY?! Apparently there is no escape whatsoever from ads, gold sellers or such. Which does not amuse me.

Shiny.

Not alot of bosses look pretty.
Al'ar does though. Tonight was our first ever Al'ar attempt, and we got him (her?) down to 50%... on phase 2. He is in our pocket! :D And I could fly....I like flying.

In all seriousness, we did great, in my opinion. Even though our Teamspeak decided to quit on us during the transition on one of the tries, 4 people DC'ed and I died alot, made huge progress. I am happy to be in Phoenix Legion. Irony, slaying a beast after which you are named.

EDIT: Our SSC run of today (17 jan) is changed into TK so we can kill it :D

So...

What should I write about?

I could write about my raiding, my guild, my lack of PvP skill, my lack of flying mount, my lack of a 375 tradeskill (damn hackers!), my other blogs, my alts, my life as a resto shaman although that was a long time ago, things I don't or do like about WoW, how I slack during raids, what I eat when playing WoW, I could write about writing about WoW, or... no wait.

I am an indecisive person. Not when it comes to what spell I should use, or what to do now. I am indecisive about loot. Even though I have been told thousands of times that I should need when I need, wether it is for my off-sets (elemental and restoration) or for my little brother (resto druid), I keep asking if I may need.

Well, better safe than sorry. But it isn't that useful when you need to decide if you want something when it drops. Like in raids. Usually I still have to check my old gear, compare and then decide if I want.

Luckily, I have a great guild and the officers know that I take a bit longer (unless it's Rage) and it's all no problem.

First Real Post (and why I am not resto)

Hai.

Pre-TBC I was Restoration, but gave up on that because healing wasn't appreciated at times by others. Second reason is that when my guild (in which I am) disbanded for a short time. No problem there, but I joined a friends's guild for the time being.

Since they were friends of mine and were in the same guild, I had fun. Untill, ofcourse, drama struck there. Which revolved about me.

The Shaman CL (class leader) was (read: is) my friend and the one that learned me how to raid, but... There was a second one and to be honest: She is a backstabbing, sneaky, not nice person.

She is a druid. Always has been. but then she got herself a Shaman alt. And she is an officer there. So she began to whine that she should be the CL. She works around the back of people.

For example: I had a hybrid spec, so I could do some stuff when soloing. There was no spelldamage on healing gear yet, so... yeah. The CL was fine with it. The "2nd CL" wasn't.
Behind his back, she went to me and demanded that I would spec 0/5/56. Instead of being kind and polite, she yelled at me. "Spec this way or you don't raid" etc. etc. So I gave in.

Later in KZ, she saw me using chain heal. Ofcourse, the CL wasn't there. "Stop using chain heal in raids.", she said to me. For the ones familiar with it: It is efficient raid healing. This shows the total lack of skill/brains for her to be a CL. Also, she doesn't talk to people, she yells and whines. When some people asked her to be a bit more kind, she logged off crying like a big baby.

So... Guy with lots of experience with all 3 specs, even was enhancement back Pre-TBC > annoying girl that only has a mere alt. Which was enhancement, if I recall correctly.

All was well, I don't bitch against people about it, I go with the flow, etc. etc.
"Cya all later, guys, be back in a hour.", I said. I returned to find me guildless.

I went to talk to the Guild Leader and apparently I have:

1. No respect for officers.
   
2. No healing skill whatsoever.
3. I don't take advice.
4. I have an alt on another server.
   

Okay.... and this is the truth:

1. I always have respect for officers, even the ones I don't like.
2. I was one of the better healers in my guild.
3. I always take advice, if you bring it in a decent and normal way.
   
4. The "alt" in question was a lvl 43 hunter on Thunderhorn that I haven't touched in ages, which used to be my main, till I took a break from WoW.
   

I asked him what advice I got.
"I don't know, but Serpentined* gave you alot.", he responded. In reality, I never spoke to the ->PRIEST CLASS LEADER<-. So, since I was kicked already, I told him that the dear "2nd CL", the spec-nazi, only commanded me to stop using vital spells.

"So, I was kicked because you all are nothing more than incompetent leaders.", I said to him. "Indeed, he replied."

Then I went to Serpentined. "I have nothing to say to you.", he said. After which he blocked me on Xfire, ignored me in WoW etc. etc. (Soooo mature.)

By pure "coincidence" (they just wanted to screw us over) all of my friends that went to that guild after the disband were kicked too. The only one that wasn't got a warning.

Luckily, my old guild reformed that day and I'm still raiding there happily, as Enhancement.

*all names are fictional to avoid more idiocy.