Your Raid

From the World of Warcraft general (and class/realm/guild relations) forums, These are the People in your Raid by level 10 posting alt, Peri of the Terokkar realm (I think. It’s been passed around all the forums so many times now, who knows.):

The Raid-

You raid with these people. You work with these people. These people are closer than your family. You should worry.

The GM- He’s sacrificed his health, friends, and probably a couple of jobs to drag you through new content. When the guild isn’t performing, these decisions are in question. Prone to shooting sprees, forum flame wars, and the rapid advancement/gearing of whatever toon the guild “needs”. If you can keep your mouth shut, he’ll go emo and quit before you get gkicked. Still, you do like the guy. Or did. Before he went crazy. See drunks, below.

The GM’s Significant Other- Okay, so he was going to have to quit but he tricked his SO into playing. She loves it. She’s terrible. You’ll effectively 24 man every boss. Count on 4 constructs in the raid, every attempt. She plays a Belf.

The Raid Leader- When you stand in the flames, he dies a little bit inside.

The Heir Apparent- When the GM goes psycho, ninjas the bank, and gdisbands, you’re the guy the guild is gonna look to to to fix the mess. You see it coming. You can’t decide if ritual suicide or being the new gm would be more painful.

The Positive Officer- That was great. Just great. You know, only 5% of guilds have even made it to Supremus, and getting him down to 67% on the second attempt is hawt. See Stoners, below.

The Negative Officer- Jesus Christ why are there corpses under all these goddamn volcanoes? It’s Supremus for %@*@’s sake. GET OUT OF THE GODDAMN FLAME! See Drunks, below.

The Healing Officer- Has this job because, as the newest officer who plays a healer, he’s stuck with it.

The Hunter Class Lead- Will tell you that it does actually require skill and preparation to play a hunter well in the end game. Lies frequently.

Metermaid- He’s got meters running. Always. Asks for meter postage whenever he’s in the top 5, which is rare, as his focus on the meters is preventing him from seeing the volcano he’s pathing towards. Pulls aggro. Has yet to realize that 0 health returns 0 dps. If he’s healing, you might as well just put him on raid, he’s gonna heal them anyway.

Stratman- Has read every strategy on the entire internet for every boss. Unable to think critically. Knows where his talk key is. Hated by the officers. Likely to play a hunter or mage. If this is also Chick With Accent, below, guild will probably collapse.

The Gay Guy- Affects the gay accent for effect. Upgrade decisions tend to involve lengthy discussions about gear appearance. Learned to use the dressing room function before the v key.

The Stay At Home Mom- She’s around children all day and craves adult conversation. Babbles incessantly in vent, forgetting that adult conversation doesn’t usually begin with, “So I was talking to (insert name of four-year-old child) and he says …” Well liked, but frequently muted.

Mr. Mikeless- Has a microphone. Hears the conversation and directions. Once wiped the raid because he started talking and most folks alt-tabbed to see who the hell was speaking. May be your best player.

The Kid- So, you messed up on this guy’s interview and nobody noticed that he was 12. But, he can play. And if he gets a little bit excited when boobies are getting talked about? Hey, he’s young.

The Backbone- Plays a tank. Doesn’t have much to say. Made an error once in SSC, or so you heard. Will disconnect when Gorefiend is at 30% and keep aggro while offline for the rest of the fight. Has never said anything negative to the healers. Ever. GL with your progression without one of these. Hates the prima donnas.

The Other kid- Remember that accountant you interviewed for the fury warrior position? And how you wondered how he’d make time to raid during tax season? He couldn’t. His eleven year old daughter took over about that time. She’s been raiding since. Mages, that’s an eleven year-old girl owning you night after night.

The Hunter Who Doesn’t Do His Homework- Always good for insightful commentary and clever observation just after a wipe. “Holy Crap Man! I was just standing and shooting and this damn VOLCANO popped on me! When did they put in those volcanoes?”

The Prophet- Kept insisting that you were going to need a melee group for BT, despite the fact hat melee was dreadful for SSC/BT. Badgered the management until they broke. Plays a rogue. Shreds. Loved by the Most Devout.

The Most Devout- This is the guy who gets to play an off-spec in a big-boy raid. He’s the fury warrior or the enhance shammy. He cannot believe that some fate is letting him have this much fun that he’s afraid it will all come crashing down. Prays devoutly to his favorite diety that the guild won’t collapse because he’ll never have THIS much fun again. Ever.

The Drunks- The core of your guild. As raid progresses, their voices in vent are getting just ever so slightly slurred. You don’t notice because you’re trying to sound sober yourself. DPS output seems to scale positively with blood alcohol content.

The Stoners- Quietly wiping raids since the beta. They really, really, really hate having to move out of the fire. Two of them are dead under the volcanoes. They live in fear of the negative officer. They have their own channel. Try /join (insertguildname)stoners. You’ll see who’s in there. It’ll explain a lot. Still, if these guys don’t show, bosses don’t seem to actually die. They’re also having more fun that everyone else combined.

The Prima Donna- Requires special attention from management. Constantly whining. Plays some vital role. Might be a main tank, mage tank, or lock tank. The officers really hate this guy and as soon as they can find another tank with 24,000 buffed HP, he’s out. Not a stoner.

The Chick with the Accent- Is the accent fake? Nobody knows or cares. Future visits to Australia/Britian/New Zealand/Alabama are now planned by all single raid members.

The Healing Pallie- Hates healing and had to go holy to see endgame. If you raid with a boomkin, a feral druid, a fury warrior, or any non-resto shaman, you are not getting a 10 minute blessing. Forget it. He hates you. God help you if he has a raid-viable alt in one of those classes; you’re not even getting heals. Also, see Prima Donna.

The Departed Legend- You joined after he left. You suspect that he could not actually solo Doomwalker. But you’re not totally sure.

The Disgruntled Raider- Took an unannounced, extended vacation and now has to share his raid spot with the other 11 extra dps. Very angry about this situation. Doesn’t realize that ##@#*ing is making things worse. Officers pray for a gquit.

The Warlock Whisperer- Directionally challenged. Despite having run Karazhan 1.26 million times, will require a summon to Maiden’s room from the entrance. Has a “summon pls” macro. Strangely, is good at moving away from volcanoes. See (you guessed it) Stoners.

The New Guy- Begins most sentences with, “That’s not how we did it in my old guild on Korgath.” Likely to remain guilded for approximately one week. You wonder if he’ll be tellign his next guild, “In my old guild, we ran TOWARDS the volcanoes.

Note: I read a similar archetype post couple years ago, when I first started raiding. It altered the way I viewed raiding forever after and I’ve tended to think of my guildies along these terms since.

We had a “Chick with the Accent” in our guild recently. I’ll use the word charming because this is a family blog. But lemme tell ya, after a few battlegrounds and raids, it wasn’t so charming.

She left recently to follow her game boyfriend (who I suspect is married to another woman IRL but I never said anything because it’s frankly none of my business), they went to another guild because he decided he hated our guild.

That was cool though — those two were the types who screenshot every single game conversation to prove whatever secret agenda they had that day. Was really annoying to get their screenshots all the time in my email about how Soandso disrespected them or Whosit was mean to their friend.

Despite the (formerly) charming accent, habitual convo screenshotters mean one thing to me: DRAMA WHORES. They are to be avoided at all costs, and, for your own safety, do not send them any /tells.

Warlock Looking for Head and a Producer

I’m thinking this guy is better live than in the studio, but nevertheless, an (almost) epic World of Warcraft thread about a warlock and his quest for the Zul’Aman Hex Shrunken Head: What would you do for a ZA run?

The setup:

you’ve probably guessed it. im a horde warlock, and im looking to go to Zul’Aman with a raid group. My guild is too small to go with. I will respec affliction and dps if i get the chance to go with anyone. And if it matters im only going for one drop, Hex shrunken head. The rest i won’t roll on, i don’t care about the other drops. If i get the head i won’t leave the raid either because i got what i wanted, i’ll finish it out. Please send me a message in game if we could arrange something. Thank you

Zeromaz

ok i have resorted to paying for this shrunken head… give me a time and a price. send me a piece of mail in game, a message… whatever. im a pvp warlock and i have no way of getting this trinket myself, please help.

So … (I think) the guy gets an audition with a guild willing to take him into Zul’Aman and they invite him into their Ventrilo server.

Part I of the Vent recording
Part II of the Vent recording

(Both NSFW: language, plus, terrible music)

Twenty Things Foton Did on Holiday

Here’s the quick version of what I’ve been up to the past month, besides taking some time off to sharpen my axe:

1. Holidays. Duh.
2. Traveling for the holidays.
3. Finished a major project at work. Ka-ching!
4. Traveling for work. Bleh.
5. Updated the blog software and ruined the site … on New Year’s Day while VERY hung over. That was fun.
6. Told 1/3 of our World of Warcraft guild membership to GTFO of our guild. We realized it was more efficient to have them type /gquit then go down the list and /gkick. Really saved a lot of time.
7. Explained on Vent that we really did mean it.
8. No. Seriously. GTFO.

Here’s the thing. Every goddamn year around Christmas time, raiding guilds go through this period where people are traveling or spending time with their families or both, cuz THAT’S WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO. So, of course, the raiding (read: the loot train) slows down or grinds to a halt, only to pick up again after the holidays have passed. And every goddamn year, there’s a group of players who begin to panic when the loot train isn’t chugging down the tracks. “Are we disbanding?” “Will we raid again?” “This guild is dead!!”

Fercrissakes, it’s two weeks out of the year and these losers can’t wait for people to get back to their computers.

So our officers told the losers not to panic, and, after the holidays, they’d see, everything would be back to normal.

Apparently, losers don’t have access to calendars, and in their world, the holidays are over December 26th. Therefore, they had been more than patient by waiting until January 1st to start issuing ultimatums like … replacing our long-serving officers and giving King Loser the guildleader rank. (Riiight.)

See #5 above. I was trying to put out a fire on Ye Olde Blog while alt-tabbed at the PVP lounge and those sonuvabitches are complaining because we’re not in Serpentshrine Cavern and goddammit, turn over that guildleader tag and give them admin rights to all the web resources and the Ventrilo server so they can get to it.

The officers said, “So go raid SSC, nothing stopping you.” And indeed, they were welcome to raid SSC, there was nothing stopping them.

Not good enough. They wanted the raid leader to stop playing his alt and lead the raid; they wanted me to stop screwing around at the PVP battlemasters and heal the raid on my priest alt; and pretty much everyone to stop what they’re doing for a good old-fashioned New Year’s Day raid in Serpentshrine Cavern.

It was one of those super-rare moments when everyone’s temper blows at once. In short, every single officer online issued a “GTFO” (or some variation thereof), and me, late to the party, added my GTFO on Ventrilo … y’know, for the illiterate in the audience.

Those that GTFO are now on their third post-Foton guild.

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