01/17/05 — HOUR TWO

It’s really hard to beat the fake GM announcement pranks at these worldwide historical events:

And until I spotted the cracks in the impersonation, it gave me pause. A 3-day Warcraft vacation? That’s quite a chunk of DKP I’d give up, ALTHOUGH, a forced break from raiding might be nice.

The GM Posers are still perfecting their technique; so far, no genuine GMs are in evidence.

Shame. That’s usually when things start to get good.

01/17/06 — UPDATE #3

We SAW no GMs, but the level 1 alts started disappearing from the Ahn’Queer gate and word quickly spread that the GMs were mass porting the observers out.

Soon thereafter, my level 6 (heh) kinda-sorta-RPish-named cow was unceremoniously teleported back to the pastures of Noob Cowtown. Raster, on his level 1 not-RPish-at-all-named cow, was able to logout before his involuntary teleport, so he should be back inside soon.

No noobs we! We’re stoned at Cenarion Hold (for you EQ-types, that’s the Warcraft lingo for being bound somewhere) and can stone back at will. Once an hour. (ya, that’s stupid)

The price we pay to witness history!

01/17/06 — UPDATE #4

To save on bandwidth, because I’m a cheap bastard and I’m not made of money or bandwidth, I’m uploading some of the larger screenshots to the AFK Gamer Flickr account. Larger views of any of the screens can be found by clicking on the pic and selecting All Sizes.

New shots will be uploaded sporadically as I hearth and ghost my way back to the tailgate party.

I wish these other noob cows would stop trying to milk me. I’m a bull and that’s not milk.

01/17/06 — UPDATE #5

I burned my hearthstone (that once-an-hour instaport to a character’s “bind” point) and arrived back in Cenarion Hold.

I listened (read) the zone chat from the natives jawing about ‘ZOMG the lag is unbelievable’, even though Cow Network News has had better ping in Medivh’s Silithus than on our home server in the instances. Whatever, maybe Medivh usually has 50 ping, because I averaged around 100 in Silithus with dozens of cows milling about so Medivh must usually have the best ping on the planet.

I began my run back to the Ahn’Queer gate, died (of course), began my ghost run back to AQ — I figured what harm is there if I stand to the side as a ghost and just READ the script as it plays out? — then BOOM, I’m given a forced port, IN GHOST FORM, to Tirisfal Glades, the undead noob area.

I don’t even know where there’s a Tirisfal spirit healer to restore my bod to life. I’m a frequent graveyard visitor Alliance-side, for sure, but I r horde noob.

Anyways. The noob gossip is that the next portal the GMs are giving out free of charge is to Durator. YAY! I can stop off in Orgrimmar and do some shopping while I’m there.

01/17/06 — UPDATE #6

Our first official communique from the overlords:

And the second, after a lovely zeppelin flight over to Durator:

Again, I didn’t see any stability issues, but I’ve also seen the nifty patch server they have … and the growing queues, and the killer lag spikes, and I’ve even seen two-thirds of a raid force drop off the face of Azeroth in the blink of an eye, so they may have something there.

01/17/06 — UPDATE #7

To the forums, Batman! The argument between the natives and the tourists moves to the forums: Blizzard hits new all time low. Caydiem explains Blizzard’s position on the tourist ports:

We had a difficult decision when players started gravitating towards Medivh. In the end, we had to make a choice between:

1) Letting everyone show up in Ahn’Qiraj until the realm crashed, thus allowing no one to experience the event whatsoever; or

2) Remove the low level players from the area, thus allowing the players who worked for the event — the true residents and community of the realm — to enjoy it.

We chose the second option. I am well aware of the fact that many of you wish to see the opening of the gates and feel that running a level 1 alt to another realm is the only way you’ll be able to do so. However, it does not change the simple fact that the continent server cannot support the thousands of players that were congregating. Instead of depriving everyone of the content, thus not only preventing the level 1 alts from seeing it but everyone who normally plays on the realm as well, we had to take steps to ensure that the Medivh community, at least, can enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Additionally, you accusation of “fixing bugs” instead of removing the alts in Ahn’Qiraj is unfounded, since GMs are not the programmers who fix such issues.

In closing, I ask that you be patient — the gates will open on your own realm soon enough. What Medivh has done is quite incredible, and it’s perfectly understandable to want to witness what will occur, but we cannot allow the area to crash with the sheer number of people therein. Neither can we spontaneously upgrade the equipment to make such possible. We are preserving the community’s hard work at this point. Congratulations to them, and best of luck to the rest of the realms — you’ll get there! (Yes, even the newer realms.)

Now, unfortunately for me, that’s her edited response. And I don’t have a cache of the original response. CURSES. The tone of the original post was more like … bla bla, we worked for this, we deserve to enjoy, bla bla bla. Even a poster that quoted Caydiem’s response later in that thread had his blockquote edited to reflect the new and improved version. Weird.

Always odd when pronouns are edited.

(As with all Warcraft forum links, the thread will expire and disappear into the Internet Trash Bin. READ IT NOW.)

01/17/06 — UPDATE #8

No additional warnings about stability, although I hear the login queue is nasty: 877 last I checked. Frankly, that’s not much more than my server at primetime.

There are some rumors in general chat that Chuck Norris is somehow involved with the Ahn’Qiraj opening:

Best Warcraft battle ever would be Highlord Bolvar vs. Chuck Norris. Even odds on that fight.

01/17/06 — SIGN OFF

Fate Accompli — Medivh turns in 3.85 million in war supplies and becomes the first server worldwide to complete the AQ war effort.

One of the tourists composed a song to express his appreciation for the warm welcome the tourists received. (That’s sarcasm. Both natives and tourists were, predictably, morons.)

Finally, while the war supplies worked their way to Silithus — a process to be completed within 5 days if public channel chat is to be believed — everyone crowded the gong, anxious for a peek at He (or She) Who Will Bang A Gong (rumored to be a member of the Alliance guild, Fury):

Congrats Medivh on a Herculean joint effort between Horde and Alliance to get all those war supplies pulled together. Any Medivh native is welcome to make a tourist cow on my server to witness our group hug at the gong … in about a month when we finally “get around to it”.

More screens tomorrow.