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.