Tag Archives: tanks

Week of Fives: My Favorite Stories of 2006

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In chronological order, these were my five favorite stories from 2006 — all from World of Warcraft, three from Le Guild (nothing like a raiding guild for putting out drama and angst!) and two from my travels near and far.

1. January 2006 – The Gates of Ahn’Qiraj are opened for the first time anywhere on the Medivh realm. Hundreds of well-wishers and curious observers from other realms flooded Medivh with level 1+ alts, created specifically to observe the gate-opening scripts — largest gathering of cows (tauren) anywhere, with bovine names such as Milkme, Gotmilk, and Mooyou. (Warcraft tutorial: the tauren starting area is the closest to the Ahn’Qiraj instance.) GMs eventually got involved and ported the cowlings to other areas so the natives could enjoy their gate party without being trampled.

I took some heat for running around AQ/Silithus with my own noob cow tourist, but there’s nothing like being there for mass chaos. I only wish there were more such events during the year, hopefully on my home server for once. Would save me the trouble of making a noob character and running him all the way out to the anarchy.

The series:

2. August 2006 – The “I Hate People” series. Notice how quiet my guild was for the first 8 months of the year? Ya, I notice it too. What in the hell happened Summer 2006 because it was just one shitstorm after the other.

Too many players involved in this shitstorm to name, but I enjoyed writing this series because I got a rare chance to toast someone’s ass who thought he got away with a lie. I didn’t necessarily enjoy LIVING through this drama, but all’s well that ends well.

The series:

3. September 2006 – THE EMO TANK!! I know you miss him. I’d say I do too, but that would be a lie. He’s trying his darndest to get back into our happy family so you might get your wish.

I’m voting “NO!” because I want to publish his tattoo pics and gang hand signs pic that I copied from our guild site a few months ago.

The series:

4. October 2006 – If This is Wednesday, This Must Be Naxxramas. I had wanted to try a live-blog chat-log type post of a guild raid for a while. Unless you are an online-gaming raider or have been one, you cannot know the craziness involved in organizing more than five people. Even thinking about it now, these are all adults, who can all follow directions (I used to think), why is meeting at a pre-arranged location at the pre-arranged time so difficult??

I still don’t know the answer to that, but maybe the log makes it clearer why “guild” is just another word for “nuthouse”.

5. October 2006 – No, I Won’t Dance Naked with You in Ironforge. I love these two nutballs (aka future guild members) I met in Westfall and Redridge Mountains; they taught me the true meaning of irony. I’m hiding from my nutcase guildmates on an anonymous alt, enjoying the peace and quiet, and somehow, like I’m a vortex for crazy, they found me.

The one guy did teach me an important technique for avoiding people. Whenever I don’t feel like talking, “SCUBA!!”

Bonuses after the jump, Other Favorites and My Five Favorite Screenshots of 2006

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The Emo Tank

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I’ve got to believe that my guild is not the only one that’s experienced this phenomenon: The Emo Tank. I’m going to believe that because the other explanations are too horrifying — we as a guild are somehow attracting these nutbars, or, worse, we are the cause of said nuttiness.

Some background. Once upon a time, we were allied with another guild for raiding purposes. Their main warrior had this habit of doing a stream-of-consciousness play-by-play commentary for every single boss fight. Something like this: “I’m at 80 health, gonna need a heal soon, ok, got a heal, thank you whoever that was, now Onyxia is at 95, I’ll need more heals, knockback!! ok got a heal, I’ll try to find a good spot to stand, we’ll have phase two when it’s time, I’m at 70 health, 65!!! ok got a heal, thanks again, think I found a good spot, I’M TAKING SERIOUS DAMAGE HERE, ok healed …”

Oh ya, it was hilarious. So I did an impression one night of his Ventrilo play by play. My impression was very popular and spawned many other variations for everyone’s amusement. HE, however, was not amused. I got yelled at for being a dick and I apologized. (Between you and me, it wasn’t a sincere apology. That shit was funny — he was being too sensitive.)

As I’ve told you before, that alliance ended the one day and that was the end of our first Emo Tank encounter, although we hadn’t coined the term as of yet.

Fast forward a few months and we have this secondary tank in the guild — some would call him the primary offtank, the #2 warrior. Basically, he’s the guy that offtanks the second most troublesome add/guard in a boss encounter or he’ll tank the boss itself if the MT (that’s Mr. Main Tank to you kids!) loses aggro for some reason.

This new emo warrior would regularly descend into self deprecation and long-winded apologies whenever the boss fight or the raid didn’t go well, which was really annoying because he’d need reassuring for 15 minutes and he’d have to talk to a guild officer and he wanted the MT (that’s Mr. Main Tank to you peons) to evaluate his tanking skills and on and on until no piece of uberness could ever be worth dealing with that shit.

Exhausted of this love-me-now routine, I rebuked him one night, by telling him to “Save it for your Myspace, man”. And, out of that rebuke, a running bit in /gu chat and Ventrilo about The Emo Tank and his Myspace was born.

“Dear Myspace, I screwed up the Razorgore kiting today. I need a hug.” “Dear Myspace, I disconnected during the Skeram fight. I’m so ashamed.” “Dear Myspace, I think my guild wants to /gkick me. I feel so alone.”

OF COURSE, his feelings were hurt and I got yelled at for being a dick. Again.

He left the guild after a time (no, not because of The Emo Tank stuff), and one little side benefit of his departure, so we figured, was no more Emo Tank — how wrong we were.

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