OOOO, Scary!

Gnomes.  Scary!You don’t think THAT is scary?!? A gnome with a night elf mask?!?! Maybe it’s an undead mask. Almost the same thing, I think. Scary nonetheless!

This week, World of Warcraft patched in the Hallow’s End stuff, which I guess is the politically correct name for Halloween. It’s one thing to offend the Fundamentalists, quite another to offend Satanists or pagans or whoever is sponsoring the mid-autumnal holiday known as Hallow-whatever.

And really, how much of a tightass do you have to be to get offended by Halloween? Ya. Exactly. But don’t get me started.

Where was I? Oh yes, the Hallow’s End stuff in Warcraft.

In a phrase, the decor, the quests, the atmosphere, all of it is incredibly well done. Superb even.

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A Parting Gift

There’s these books, y’see, that drop in the higher level Warcraft instances. They’re spell books for group buffs: Arcane Brilliance (mage intelligence buff), Gift of the Wild II (the fancy druid all-stat buff) and Prayer of Fortitude II (the priest HP buff).

The guild has about a billion of these in the guildbank for any up-and-coming alts reaching max level 60, plus each and every guildmate has several duplicates themselves that ya CAN’T GIVE AWAY. This is good, in theory, because I really hate games that hide away essential class spells in the tougher instances or dungeons on rare ass drops, so the poor sap has to either pay a king’s ransom to complete his spellbook or rely on the kindness of strangers.

Nevertheless, whenever another of these books drops, everyone in the raid will groan and there’s a minor argument over who has to loot the damn thing.

Not me. I like to loot them. I even keep a complete set on my person at all times, and I’ll tell you why.

Every time I’m grouped with one of those stingy buffers … you know the type, you have to CONSTANTLY remind them to redo their buffs on the group and they moan and grudgingly rebuff and I always think, wtf, I’m so sorry to ask you to DO YOUR JOB … every time I’m grouped with one of those, I like to give them a parting gift of their class buff book.

“Here ya go. This should come in handy for your next group.” (with someone else)

I mean, it couldn’t hurt to relearn it, since its usefulness was so obviously lost on them the first time they got the spell.

A Hunter Sting

Just a typical weekend afternoon in World of Warcraft’s Maraudon …

Hunters-galore!

Looks like a group of five, either desperate for a priest or helping out a priest friend PLUS a whole shitload of hunters. Was there a convention? A roleplay event perhaps? Maybe there’s a portion of the hunter community that missed the memo explaining that the Maraudon “issues” had been repaired.

If it was me, if it was my game, I’d set up a hunter sting. (heh, get it? That’s a pun because hunters get a sting spell. I kill myself.) I’d send in an undercover hunter to befriend them, learn their ways, earn their trust, ask for some advice, eventually get an invite out to Maraudon to see what’s so damn interesting out there.

If it’s interesting for level 60s to spend all day in a zone, there’s GOT to be a cheat.

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