Gasp! Patch! And I'm back.

Just like Deathwing torching the world, WoW has chased me down once more.  So, I'm back! Wooh!

With this Tuesday's maintenance came something fun - a new patch!  

Rage of the Firelands, patch 4.2.0, came out on the 28th, bringing new Daily quests, raids, legendary items, and - what's this?  A Dungeon Journal?

Well, there goes my need for Atlasloot.

Not only do we get all these fancy things with the new patch, but we also get a bonus to Recruit-A-Friend rewards.  Bonus experience and free level grants go all the way up to level 80 now, up from level 60.  Hooray!

One of my favorite things to come out of this patch is this: 

"If a player wins a Need roll under the Need Before Greed system on a Bind on Equip item, the item will become Soulbound to that player. The item will remain unbound if won via a Greed roll."

Hooray! Less ninja-ing, at least on BOEs.  

Here are just a few of the interesting things this patch has brought us:

• Pets have lost their Aggressive stance and have gained the Assist stance, causing the pet to attack the player's target only
• Multi-Shot damage has been reduced to 120% weapon damage instead of 137%
• Arcane Blast has been nerfed by 5% 
• Spellsteal's mana cost has been increased by 100% 
• Divine Shield, Rebuke, and Divine Protection have new icons to confuse you with
• Cloak of Shadows CD is 2 mins, up from 90 seconds
• Blind keeps NPCs occupied for 1 minute now
• All Conquest Points were converted to Honor Points
• All Valor Points have been converted to Justice Points
• Guilds level 3 or above can no longer be disbanded.
• They fixed the Guild Finder long comments bug.
• Reins of the Dark Phoenix art looks less transparent. 
• Keyring is gone! 
• All races have a /roar sound now!
• Your character now physically takes out and looks at a map when you push m.

How fancy is that.  

Brief Hiatus of Wow

Taking a small break from WOW... Such is the way of many who blog about this game, huh?

I just need some time to myself really.  Spiritually I need some time to balance my life again, because everything just feels like a jumbled mess. And WoW isn't helping, as it's just been a near constant reminder of lack of communication between myself and an old friend I used to be very close with.

 So! Brief Hiatus until I feel up to playing again, but if you really feel like following my life for some weird reason, you can check my personal blog out at Click My Koala.

Peace, yo

Guild Banks

Mmm... Coins.

Guild Banks.  They're just there aren't they?

I'm in two active guilds at the moment, on two different servers.  One is primarily a raiding guild, while the other is a levelling guild.  The two have fairly different views on the guild's bank.

For example.  I am one of two bank managers in the raiding guild.  I've gotten the snarky comments once or twice, such as: "Bank cleaner...?" Followed by "???????" I don't mind so much, I guess.

But I have to say... The bank for the raiding guild is very... Skimpy?  It's got 5 tabs.  The first tab is pretty much open to everybody, for a limited amount.  Members get 2 withdrawals a day, apparently Core Raiders get 10 withdrawals a day, and Bank Managers/Guild Officers get many, many more.  The other tabs, Cloths and Ores, Gems, and Enchanting, are pretty much locked up.  The only other semi-freebie tab is the Food tab, which once was inundated with raw mats, but thankfully has been filled with buff food.

Unfortunately, since cleaning all the low level (non-useful to raiding and/or other endgame content) items, the bank's been looking very empty.  Hardly any cloth sits in the bank, Only Wrath level gems have survived, and the same goes for the enchanting mats, save for a single Maelstrom Crystal and 14 Heavenly Shards.

I'm not sure exactly why this guild hasn't been as... Well.... Giving?  You'd think that with a mostly common goal of "Let's Raid! Yeah!" people would be pretty generous with the guild bank.  We're sitting on at least 35k gold every time I log on, as well, so it's not like we can't afford to buy stuff for raiding, either! Haha.

The levelling guild has 7 total bank tabs, with only 3 available to even see for anyone at my rank.  To be honest, I have no idea where I am rank wise in this guild.  I've been told rank depends on your level, which makes me wonder, if a level 83 joins the guild and levels to 85 with them, would they instantly become an officer?  Hrm.

Anyway, the tabs (that I can see) are filled with all sorts of stuff.  Linen Cloth, Silk Headbands, Melon Juice (?!?), some grey level 82 bracers... Upper...Map... Fragment.... Wait a second, this is all junk!  I tell you, if I were in charge of the bank in this guild, I would have punched someone in the head for depositing such things.  Grey items?! Vendored water?! Agh!

We've only had that sort of stuff being deposited a few times in the raiding guild.  For the most part it's been dealt with, though once in a while a few spare Gnomish Army Knives that nobody needs, or non-buff foods that nobody wants, will sneak past my radar.  But I tell you what, I'm very tempted to use my daily withdrawals on those crap items from the levelling guild, just for the sake of having a cleaner mess of junk to look at, haha.

Anyway, final thoughts.  Maybe it's people not wanting to look silly, or not wanting to "waste" their money, but for some reason the raiding guild I'm in seems to donate items far less often than the levelling guild I'm in on another server.  I mean, if we changed the 'rules' up a little, I'm sure people would donate far more often.  It seems the only people who get good enough access to the bank need to be either core raiders or officers, and that leaves members, some of them being people who have been there for ages, kind of in the dark with mats.  Sure, you can ask an officer for stuff, but if there's not one on... Then what are the chances of you getting what you need? Slim, to none.   So I guess I can understand not putting stuff in there, especially if you're not even sure that YOU would be able to access things in there anyway!

Well... That was kind of everywhere.  Forgive me, I've just pulled an all nighter, and can't seem to get the bitter taste of this anti-nail biting stuff out of my mouth.  Pleh.

I try so hard not to get in it with people.

Sometimes it's just impossible, though.  If someone wins loot that's better for you than for them, yeah, that sucks.  It's irritating.  It happens.  But when people bitch about someone having the AUDACITY to roll on loot that THEY won ANYWAY.... that's where I draw the line.

Example:

[Necklace of the Half Assed Lame Loot] drops.  Necklace has stamina and resilience on it.  It appears to be free roll basically, as while I'm on my mage, I have the option to roll need on it.  I don't, because I plan on doing pve mostly on this mage.  However, the rogue in the group decides to roll for it, along with the tank.

Now, the rolls play out, the tank wins.  Good for tank.  But suddenly, managing to win the loot in the first place is NOT ENOUGH.


How dare that rogue even try to take this loot from me, he wonders. I'm the tank! I'm the most important person in this group! I I I, ME ME ME!


Rage coursing through the paladin's veins like fire, he brings his right hand from the mouse and firmly plants it at the base of his keyboard.  Anger pours forth from his fingertips in the form of questions, subtle demands to know why the rogue even thought for a moment that rolling on that [Necklace of the Half Assed Lame Loot] would be o.k.

In comes me, the popular social networking website known as Bookface to be a jackass.  I ask why it's an issue, and for sir paladin to just continue on so we can finish.

No, this cannot be!  He cries out, staring at his computer with horror and rage. Someone with common sense!? How could this happen!? 


A flurry of fingers later, he's already come up with a response.  Something along the lines of, "i was talking to (rogue), not bookface." and "not putting your nose into matters that arent yours is a good life lesson"

Here, the irritability cursed upon me by the presence of my womanly cycle escape and I quickly snap back something like, "Shutting your trap and tanking is a good one for you too. :)"

Because the smiley face at the end makes it ok. I'm so smart.

Tanking Paladin becomes enraged!

Face red and all sorts of goo and bodily fluids pouring forth from him, he manages another attempt at hurting my ego.

"out dpsing the tank would be too but i dont see you doing that"

Zing!

And you know what?  It would have worked, had the tank not been a paladin.  If it had been a warrior saying,

"Out dpsing the tank would be too, but I don't see you doing that,"

I would have felt a little insulted.  But alas, he was a pally tank, and I was a lazy mage.

Shammy leaves, possibly because of childhood memories of their parents fighting.

Pally feels his ego starting to deflate.

Pally uses LINK DAMAGE DONE CHARTS.

It's not very effective...

Yes, that's right. He's linking Damage Done (Not DPS) for a trash mob in Underbog.

Sure, he beats me in Damage done.  But look.  DPS, his complaint about me, is completely nullified, out of his own doing.  My DPS for that trash mob was 858.  His was 825.

I'll admit, I didn't even read it when he posted it.  Just looking back through the chat box is enough for me.

WAIT! WAIT!  Paladin cries out, frustration setting in. You can't talk to me that way, I AM THE TANK. I AM THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON EVER! His mind is aflame with fifty different comebacks, whirling around, just out of reach.

It continues on, he insists that he's not trying to start a fight with anyone.  I tell him to just drop it and get over himself.  A pure gem of ,"get over yourself bitch" pops out, a few more words are said, and eventually the last boss is downed and it's all over.

Sigh.

I do admit, that I pretty much provoked the whole situation.  I didn't mean it in a "HA Now I'm going to screw up your day and make you fight with me!" way.  It was more of a, "Are you seriously complaining about loot, even though you won it?" way.  People!

Spider Cat!

Spider cat, spider cat! Does anything a ... spider cat... can. ... Yeah!

I don't want to even think about how this abomination came to be! :)

Load Screen of DEATH

Come on... Hurry up...

Wow sucks when your internet is capped. While I waited for my load screen to finish loading (which took about 10 minutes, no joke), the group I was with killed the holiday boss without me, looted, and left.  I ended up with the daily holiday boss reward, that I did not earn or deserve, and then proceeded to encounter another load screen that I'm still waiting on, while on my way to TB to save myself some lag.

Note to self: Don't try to play with capped net.

Pretty Screenshot...

This has got to be one of my favorite screenshots I've taken so far.  Double sun flare ray! What does it mean!?

Get up, Stand up.

I also hate the Westboro Baptist Church people.
But anyway.

I hate battlegrounds.  Actually, scratch that. I hate the people IN battlegrounds. You know, the "OMG YOU GUYS FAIL," the "U GUYZ R RETARDED," and the "WTF U IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!" etc... people.  They're everywhere. Horde or Alliance, these jerks will be screaming in /bg about how stupid we are for not doing something "right".

Recently, I was in an EotS,  and one of the major battleground chat griefers complained that the Alliance was raping us because we were not doing so-and-so (can't remember the words exactly).  Without thinking, I replied that there are people who play this game that have been raped before, and that saying that sort of thing was insensitive.  Yeah, go me.  He obviously continued, replying with "Rape rape rape. Rape rape rape rape."

So... I saw it coming.  But I did it anyway.  The only thing I could do after that was report him, and pray to the gods that others would report him as well, and that he would hopefully realize that what he was saying could actually be really harming someone.

But that's only one experience, and I'm sure you've had many yourselves.

The fact that people can purposefully spit out such vile and offensive things just disgusts me.  And don't get me wrong, I've played this game for about four years now, and have heard things like this before.  I'll probably hear them again.  But I ask you, dear reader, where does it stop?  How does it stop? What would it take?

We all know that Blizzard can only do so much to stop players from saying offensive things like that.  And even then, they'd probably just recommend you to "turn on your language filter" to avoid having to read things like that again. But I gotta tell you, I would never switch that filter on.  I'm an adult, I talk to other adults in my guild, and occasionally we swear.   Ideally, I'd like to be able to pick which words we essentially "bleep out," but I don't think it'll cross Blizz's minds anytime soon.

So what do we do? It's a community problem, I think it will take the community to fix it. We, as the non-asshat people of the WoW community, need to stand up against those in the game who are being jerks. Don't just take it laying down.  Don't let them dump all their rage and insecurities on you and your other party/raid members.  Don't let people walk all over your guildmates just because they're good at tanking or healing or dealing damage.  As the great Bob Marley once said, "Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights".

Now, putting it in the context of a MMORPG, here's the idea:  Don't let people ruin your fun intentionally by acting out on their own insecurities or jerk-ish nature.  You pay the exact same subscription as they do, why should you have to suffer through their immature name-calling and insult-throwing?

Communities are built by people.  By allowing people to walk all over each other, we're not doing our community any good.  If we want our experience to be less trollish and less offensive, we need to stand up against those who are mistreating others. Even if we're standing alone, maybe, just maybe, one of the bystanders will take notice.  And maybe they'll stand up against someone else, too.  Then another person may join in, and another, and another, until eventually, maybe people will realize that allowing people to treat each other like garbage is something we can change.  We just need someone to show us that we can change it.

On the Community...

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry...

Happy New Year!

Friends, the community of WoW has grown considerably in the past few years, and I know it's a tired subject, but my complaint today is about jerks.

Jerk: Slang . a contemptibly naive, fatuous, foolish, or inconsequential person.



The other day, a friend of a guild mate was invited into the guild's vent server.  One of the first things he said was a very sexist remark, some shot at making a joke (something to do with women and kitchens, I believe you can put the rest of it together).  As I was without a microphone, I could say nothing, however one of (two or three other) women in the channel spoke up and proceeded to rip him a new one.  His defense?

"I don't care what people think of me, in game or in real life."

Allow me to go back into my time machine for a moment here.

Sir, that is not a defense--that is an excuse.  An excuse to act like an idiot, and to make stupid, sexist remarks, to people you do not know.  You. Are. Pathetic.

It's things like this these days, little comments like this, that drag the community of this MMO down further and further into the gutter every day.  And their excuses, the "I'm like this in real life," "This is how I always act," and "It's just the internet," that we hear every time, are ridiculous, failing attempts at justifying behavior that I very highly doubt they often indulge in outside of the video game.  I mean seriously, would you walk up to a group of women you did not know and say, "Lol get back in the kitchen," ?  No? I didn't think so.

My point is, despite what you may think, there are real people on the other end of these avatars.  Your hurtful remarks meant "as a joke" usually do end up hurting other people, REAL people. Think before you speak.  Don't make a jerk of yourself.  Don't intentionally hurt others just because it makes you feel a little less inadequate.

"Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves." - Ulysses S. Grant.

And those words ring true to today.  It doesn't matter where you're from, where you work, or what class you play. As a person, you still deserve respect.  And so do the people you choose to insult.  Think about it.