Category Archives: World of Warcraft Journal

Finding Joy in the Grind

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For reference, I am an Alliance rogue. Your mileage may vary.

Evil things I like to do in World of Warcraft’s PVP Battlegrounds:

1. Kill warlock pets. This has become such an addiction for me, I’ll cheapshot, blind, sap (the miscellaneous stuns available in the rogue bag of tricks) the warlock, and let him stew for a bit while I kill the pet. That’s right, I’ll leave a loose warlock out there just so I can nail the pet. This isn’t even a tactical decision, this is me being a dick. (Thanks to Raster for introducing me to this mini-game within the PVP game.)

2. Turn on auto attack while a caster is backing up in my direction. Caster, meet the buzzsaw. Most of the time, I do this for my own amusement rather than out of necessity because, say, stealth or vanish aren’t available.

3. Allow the 5-combo pointed priest/mage to think he dodged a bullet. The priest or mage does his/her thing, I do mine — 5 combo points worth of mine. The mage iceblocks, the priest psychic screams (their AE fear), whathaveyou. I restealth or vanish, they back away, alt-tabbing wildly, looking for me. (When I have 5-combo points, caster, you don’t back away, you run away.) Tada! Surprise! See ya next fall.

4. I’m a bow-spec rogue … honest. I love the frost nova + blink combo that mages do. One of the few chances I get to haul out ye olde bow in PVP. I COULD vanish out of the frost nova (it’s a mage root), but it’s more sporting to bow them down.

5. Guard Alterac Valley’s Snowfall graveyard. Not really, who gives a shit about Snowfall once the Alliance has Iceblood or beyond? Not me. But sometimes there’s a shouting dude in the AV raid that calls everyone tards (or in their venacular, “retarts”) and shouts out instructions as if no one in the raid has ever won an Alterac Valley before. If we’re losing or falling behind, it’s never THEIR fault, it’s always the rest of us because they’re the smartest human on the planet. In our raid! The smartest! Talk about lucky.

Anyways, they’ll shout their Captain Obvious instructions and I’ll remind them (several times if necessary) /bg I’m on defense at Snowfall. Eventually, they take the bait and call me an idiot in the raid channel. “ABANDON SNOWFALL U TART! GET DOWN TO FROSTWOLF!” Did I say Snowfall? I meant the Relief Hut.

Imagining the bulging vein in their forehead gives me a great deal of pleasure.

Similar dickweed stuff I do to the shouting dudes in Warsong Gulch: /bg Hiding the flag in Horde base cuz they’ll never look for it here!

Dying Alone Together

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Zul'jin Server Crash on Patch DayIn the World of Warcraft for the past several days, this was not uncommon sight: a landfill-sized stack of corpses buried deep under the Alterac Mountains. (As shot by Solymr of the Zul’jin realm, click for original size) Poor, poor dead priest with Spirit of Redemption, aka the Angel of Shame. Couldn’t you have found another talent to spend that point on?

Some post-patch observations: Who do I have to blow around here to get my Alterac mini PVP-map to remain open? Damn thing closes every few seconds so that by the time I race down to the Frostwolf graveyard, I’m alone, and, as I will discover after running headlong into a pack of Horde warlocks and shaman, the Alliance hasn’t captured a single graveyard. W. T. F. If the map would stay put, I’d know I was on a team of no-graveyard-capping knuckleheads and plan accordingly (i.e. never leave stealth).

Now that Warcraft has cross-server battlegrounds, I was (not) shocked to discover that other servers have dicks, too. I’m talking Alliance here; my x-server battlegrounds have been refreshingly free of the Horde /kiss’ers and /spit’ters. Not so of the ALL-CAPS-CALLING-US-F’ING-TARDS Alliance leader-wannabes. How can they have experienced so little of life that they think screaming in ALL CAPS repeatedly is a valid technique to encourage troop obedience … with a voluntary army, no less. My solution, since I haven’t found a way to /ignore players from other servers … offer the screaming dude gold to get out of the battleground. Also, mocking them in public chat has been effective.

I pulled a few oddball Alterac Valley (the 40-man PVP battleground) teams. The one, we got all the way down to the Horde’s encampment, captured the Relief Hut (the graveyard), our Hunter begins the pulls of the warmasters (the Boss’ guards) and OOPS: We have no warrior. BIIIIG problem. I suppose we all could have teleported back to our own encampment and turtled for hours (playing pure defense mostly to annoy the opponent), but who has the energy anymore? We took our loss and moved on.

While I’m enjoying the action of x-server PVP immensely, I will miss the board flaming and trash talking that used to go on. Seems to me that a community NEEDS that kind of, ahem, distraction, lest the public conversation descend into bitching about ancient server history when Suchandsuch Guild wiped for weeks on Ragnaros and absolutely everyone else passed them by on raid progression. It was more entertaining to read how Jimmydawarrior was played by three real-life friends 24/7 to get the top PVP rank and Stabbydarogue was speed hacking for flag captures.

Fucking Stabby. I KNEW he was hacking, but it’s always nice to have the suspicion confirmed by 5 players I don’t know and will never hear from again.

I Am The Master

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Previously … a pair of guild jackasses fail to seize lasting political power and leave the guild. Their applications to a new guild contain some harsh shit-talking, prompting a rather canine-like response in our more submissive members — namely, asslicking. I use the absurdity of the shit-talk for new comedy material in guildchat and Ventrilo, for which I am labeled an ungrateful prick … and worse. Ok, ya, guilty, however, in my defense, what I left unsaid was … power-hungry, self-serving loot whores and good riddance. Although I am saying that here and now.

(If you’re just joining the story, don’t spoil the ending for yourself: Read Part I and Part II first.)

We scheduled Ahn’Qiraj 20 for the first off-raid night of the week purposely. The guild alts and recruits needed some of the upgraded books/spells in the zone and also, there’s nothing quite like free loot to shut people up when guildchat has become a bitchfest. To prove we were serious about shutting people up with free loot, the head raidleader volunteered to run the shindig, which is usually beneath him, but this was all about restoring the guild to order.

As I recall, the hunters and priests made out like bandits, and you know me, anytime I can please the raid priests, I’m all for it. (“Here’s some free loot, please don’t burn out.”) We had just swept through four of the bosses, including the big boy of the zone, and were clearing back to finish a couple of crap bosses when the raid paused momentarily while the head raidleader (aka Puppet #1) stopped to deal with guild shit.

You can always tell when an officer or raidleader is getting tell-bombed with guild shit — they’ll pause mid-sentence, stand right in the path of patrols and become unresponsive to text chat.

We cleared the patrols and waited. This is what we heard the raidleader say on Vent: Oh I don’t fucking believe this. This is what we saw the raidleader type in guildchat: You know what you did. This is what we saw next: Warrior28 has been removed from the guild. This is what I said on Ventrilo: Heh, what was that all about?

Here’s the deal. Raidleader got a tip that Warrior28 had applied to the same guild as the two jackasses who ripped our guild a new asshole. (“Oh I don’t fucking believe this.”) Raidleader alt-tabbed out to check that guild’s forums and confirmed that Warrior28 had indeed applied over there, and for extra fun, had listed the two jackasses as references. (Some guilds have an application that is eerily similar to a job application, which is really stupid in my opinion, but that’s material for another day.) Raidleader informed Warrior28 that he was about to get a boot to the curb. Warrior28, at that moment sitting outside THEIR raid zone with OUR guild tag, expressed surprise and asked why. (“You know what you did.”) Raidleader explained in a tell that Warrior28 had been busted. (“Warrior28 has been removed from the guild.”) And that’s what that was all about.

Raidleader had had about enough of the whole mess at this point and just unloaded in Vent … kinda like “f this, f’ing f’ers, f’ing do everything, f’ing never enough, f’ing loot whores, f’ing f that, if you f’ing think f’ing us is f’ing ok, then go f elsewhere, f’ing dirty *word I can’t even abbreviate on a family blog*, you get the idea. It was really quite spectacular. A few of us joined in, the asslickers did some licking, but eventually everyone calmed down and the raid went forward. Warrior28 had terrible attendance and was hugely negative DKP, so in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t a big deal in and of itself.

After a few minutes, we noticed that one of the rogues had gone linkdead. Hmm, thought we, could that be one of those on-purpose linkdeads? He never returned, we replaced him for the last fight and the night ended without further incident.

The next morning, I logged on early, 6:00 am-ish, to check raid supplies and equipment for that night’s raid. The lone guildmate online at the time told me that Linkdead-Rogue had just logged on a few minutes prior and had removed himself from the guild, along with all of his alt characters. There’s that damn 5:00 am guildremoval shit again. (why?? why??) I speculated to my guildmate that maybe Linkdead-Rogue was one of the asslickers and couldn’t stand that some of us refused to lick ass. Who knows.

I logged and sat to camp the guild message boards for a few minutes before work to see if this latest drama would begin. It did. Linkdead-Rogue posted that he left the guild because he sold his account and, as of that day, was turning over control to the new account owner. He added that it wouldn’t be fair to us to leave his characters in the guild when he wasn’t the owner anymore. Gee … ya think? Of course, that’s the least of the fairness issues involved, but whatever. Fucker had just gone on a DKP spending spree the week before too.

Immediately, some of us doubted his story. The timing, it was too coincidental. And no one admits to selling their account, ESPECIALLY to their guildmates. Selling one’s account is the biggest shame move of all — people don’t admit to that.

We arrived at raid time, with the usual flurry of raid prep: the invites, the waitlist, the flying, the summoning, the zoning, the buffing, the standing around waiting for that one asshole to /afk out of the PVP battleground, etc.

One of our mages announced in Vent that Linkdead-Rogue has just applied to the same guild as the two jackasses. (The mage had learned to watch rival guilds’ application forums from me. Aww, I’m so proud of him. He’ll make a fine game hag yet.) We alt-tabbed out to go read his application. One of our slower guildmates asked, “so then he didn’t sell his account?” Gee … ya think?

After some bitching and some mockery, the raid commenced … the bosses died, the loot flowed … the raid ended. If memory serves, and this was just two days ago, it was about halfway through the raid when I hatched my plan to deal with Linkdead-Rogue.

I know that we were ordered not to publically comment or take action on all the shit this week, but what can I say? I’m disobedient. I’m also a master at guerilla gaming tactics. I am the fucking guerilla master, have no doubt.

The next day, at the gaming witching hour (which we now know is between 5:00 and 6:00 am), I created a new persona. Let’s say I named him Koop, but I didn’t so don’t try googling that and thinking you found me. I gave Koop a fresh gmail account and registered a Koop account on the rival guild’s message boards. Koop made a screenshot of our own message boards, specifically the post where Linkdead-Rogue made his fond IGE/ebay/Player Auctions farewell. Koop carefully cropped out any identifying information of who screenshot the post (fucking. guerilla. master.) and uploaded same to one of those free image upload sites. Then, Koop posted the screenshot link on the rival guild’s forums as a reply to Linkdead-Rogue’s app and added some pithy commentary because I wanted to make the read worthwhile, but I kept it subtle and somewhat light-hearted. Y’know, just an FYI kind of thing, we’re all friends here.

The trap detonated within the hour and BOOM, just like that, Linkdead-Rogue’s application was killed. Oh sure, Linkdead-Rogue tried to explain himself, he even tried to drag the two jackasses into it with him, claiming they could vouch for him (I enjoyed that part immensely), but really, what could he say? He’d been caught, in either a lie or as a sold account, neither of which is any good. (Hint: His only option now is to server transfer. Au Revoir, asshole. Have a nice life.)

That night, a few of the guildmates had noticed that “Koop” had effectively killed Linkdead-Rogue’s app and asked in guild if anyone knew who Koop was. Fucker was obviously a guildmate, he had screenshots from the members-only boards, fercrissakes.

Raidleader (aka Puppet #1) sent me a tell, “heh”. He knew. He knows I’m the fucking guerilla master and he knows what I’m capable of. And now you do too.

So. That’s how my week went. And yours?