If you don’t want to see shots from The Burning Crusade beta, if you don’t want to spoil it for yourself in any way, then don’t look at the AFK Gamer Flickr photoset.
My one-screenshot review of the Blood Elf starting area:
Two weird dudes I ran into on my latest hiding-from-the-guild alt: So there I was in Westfall, working on the Lighthouse quests for the 33rd time, when I ran into weird dude #1, a level 19 mage, also working on the same quests. He saw me, a mid-teens tank, pondering the high-teens murlocs and asked if I wanted to join for the “kill murlocs up and down the coast” adventure. Thought me, fuck pride, better to finish this sooner rather than later.
We commenced to a’killing and very early on, I noticed he had a peculiar habit of shouting out random words, like “scuba!” or “engine!” or “pencil!”. The first few times, I’d “huh?” but after his explanation that he was a terrible typer (“billboard!”), I pretended not to notice and got the hell out of there as soon as the quest was completed. Could be that he’s roleplaying a gnome mage afflicted with Tourette’s syndrome or a drunk — in either case, sayonara and please don’t add me to your friends list.
I moved on to the Lakeshire quests. I’m killing pigs. Again. This night elf hunter runs up behind me, opens a trade window and drops in a wrapped present. He stands there, silent, trade window open. I close out the window, cancelling the trade, HOPING this was somehow a mistake and he’ll move away from me.
I kill pigs. He runs up and, again, opens the trade window with the wrapped present. I accept the trade, open the gift and inside is a picture of his penis. HAHA, no it wasn’t. How would he do that in a game, noob? Inside was a level 13 piece of armor. I was level 16-ish with some tricked-out tank gear (I take care of my alts), how am I to greet level 13 armor? I was tempted to disenchant it right then and there, but I took the high road and thanked him. Plenty of time to disenchant that later.
I kill pigs. Now he finds his tongue and /tells me “now you give me a present”. (How bout I give you a gold and you get the fuck away from me forever? I’m not above paying people off to go away, in this life or the real life.) I told him that I didn’t have paper, which was true, but he was prepared for that! He opens a trade with some wrapping paper. Just great, not only do I meet every whack job on this server, they’re like Boy Scouts with preparedness.
As God is my witness, the only crap I had in my bags were stackable items (which can’t be wrapped), soulbound items (not tradeable), and one level 13 piece of armor that was waiting to be disenchanted. I explain that I’m fresh out of presents, bye! and I flee down the road. If I could have sprinted, I would have. I peek around the hills to see if I was followed … coast is clear … I kill pigs.
I’m skinning a pig when a trade window pops up, with a craptastic wand, and my gay would-be suitor smiling beside it.
Now we were well into a weird area here. I could have hoped that a wrapped wand would end this sick brand of stalking, but I was guessing that would only be the beginning. Next it’s friends lists, then it’s group with me!, finally it’s “let’s put on a show for Ironforge and dance in our underwear!!” I can see the future and it involves deletion of this level 16-ish tank and a therapist’s couch.
Suddenly, an idea pops into my head — to repel a whack job, one must become like them. Get into their pelt and crawl around for a bit.
I /tell him “scuba!” and strafe away. He /reply “??” (Heh, confused are we?) “magazine!” He repeated that it was my turn to give him a present. “engine!”
He tries to escape to Lakeshire with a “bye now”, but I must have the last word. “furniture!”
I kill pigs.
If I were to do live-blogging on a guild raid night in World of Warcraft — let’s say yesterday night — this is how it would have gone:
One hour before raid invites, 20 guildmates online: Log on, check my character for repaired equipment, combat supplies, and after all the ducks are in a row, zip down to the Stormwind Stockades to farm for some noob alt gear.
Guildmate Convo #1: This rival guild’s alts are sending our guys tells begging for gold, can I deal with this? I think wtf and suggest they /ignore the idiots and, errr, maybe don’t give them any gold?
Convo #2: Offtank_03, aka The Emo Tank, has a serious family issue at the moment but he’ll still be at the raid. I express sympathy and hope that won’t lead to a longer conversation where I’ll need to quote a little Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. I suggest he take the night off, Emo Tank will have none of that. For the Guild!
Convo #3: One of our raiders with dwindling attendance was reclassified to our casual raider rank and wants clarification on that.
I’ll explain: we have two ranks for regular members, one is for those with over 50 percent raid attendance, the other for those with less than 50%. The only difference between the two ranks, other than the name, is that higher-attendance people get invited first to the 40-man raids, and the lower-attendance people are invited next, if there are spots available and based on what classes we need. Everyone on the waiting list earns DKP same as those in the raid, so the lower-attendance people aren’t penalized in that way because they can’t get into a raid. Both ranks bid on loot equally, earn DKP equally, receive guild assistance equally — the only difference is the order of the invites.
We instituted this change many months ago when we noticed the curious relationship between attendance and farm mobs. Once the learning was behind us and a boss mob moved to farm status, suddenly, ALMOST INEXPLICABLY, attendance for that mob and/or zone would skyrocket. (Apparently, real life obligations can go to hell when there’s loot to be had.) Since we used to fill raids first come, first served, you can imagine the ruckus when some yokel who never showed for the learning attempts (read: wipes) got into the farm raids ahead of those who had.
Enter our two-rank system, which has worked wonders to encourage stable attendance. Every evaluation period (about once a month), there’s fresh drama from those guildies that didn’t make the cut and get moved to the lower-attendance rank. I just don’t get that drama. It’s math. Attendance is under 50 percent, you’re not invited first. Big f’ing deal, you go on the wait list, get DKP anyways and you can do whatever the hell you want in game. You don’t like it, get on that wait list more than 50 percent of the time and in a few weeks, BOOM, you’re back to the higher-attendance rank.
So that’s what Tell #3 was about — guy was pissed he got bumped to the lower-attendance rank. We had just done an evaluation the week prior, so I’ve gotten a lot of these tells this week, and they all start off like this: The guild should make an exception because *fill in the blank*. (Y’know, blow me.)
Kinda went on a rant there, where was I? Oh ya, The Stockades. Finished that, flew to Eastern Plaguelands to do some Naxx turnin.