Tag Archives: warcraft

The New York Times to Gamers: You Have a Stigma

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Another article in the New York Times about Le World of Warcraft, linked on WoW’s front page also, doesn’t really cover any new ground. Ya, there’s real people that pretend to slay dragons in a popular game. Lots of real people. We’ve already established that, let’s move on. However, this snippet was mildly humorous: “It is rare for guilds in North America and Europe to get together in real life, partly because of geographic distance and partly because of the social stigma often associated with gaming in the West.” It’s not the stigma, baby, there’s just a lot of crazy fucks in the West. Some of them own guns. And have a camera phone. But no friends. You get the idea here.

Updates, or, How the Stories End

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Air Guitar with a BenedictionPictured: my priest alt, screwing around by the Tinker-dudes mailbox in Ironforge. I had to abandon my regular tile in Ironforge, too many noobs hanging out begging for gold, asking where I got suchandsuch piece of gear, or, can they join my guild. (No, Blackwing Lair, and no.)

Updates, because everyone wants to know how the story ends: Recall the lying “I’m ebaying/IGEing” rogue that left our guild a few weeks back, immediately after the departure of two insurgents who tried to grab lasting guild power and failed. Whatever happened with all of that? Well, the rogue’s application to a rival guild was closed and denied that same day, as I wrote previously, and he eventually landed in a guild that we call, affectionately, the Guild for the Unguildables. Every member is a former member of a raiding guild and has … let’s say, baggage … in other words, a tattered reputation.

Recall that as the rogue was trying to salvage his application to the rival guild, he claimed that the two insurgents could vouch for him and his avatar. That was one of the tipping points for the two jackasses’ applications — they were also denied and shown the exit. From my super-leet sleuthing, I found out that subpar DPS and subpar tanking were also issues in their guild auditions. Hey! That’s exactly the problem we noticed, too!

Don’t feel badly for them. They landed in a raiding guild only a few rungs down the progression ladder. When I say “a few rungs down”, I mean they get to endure Nefarian learning all over again. Welcome to early 2006.

They’ve put some effort into maintaining friendships within our guild — y’know, testing out whether a reconciliation might be possible — one of them PVPs alot on his mage alt and he’ll buff my rogue with intelligence whenever we cross paths (???), but whatever, that bridge was burned. Have a nice life.

I had semi-sorta promised the story about the PVPing, former guildmember, won’t-speak-to-either-me-or-our-raidleader, chick. Here’s how that all happened: about six months ago this chick and her husband (that’s real life spouse) were raiding guildmates of ours. Good raiders, excellent attendance, some of the best gear in our guild. The chick was an officer in our guild, too, although she was a bit prone to quitting the officer position with regularity. She was given One More Chance at the officer position, with the understanding that if she quit this time, she would never be offered officer again, because hell, enough is enough.

Everything went along just fine for a few weeks with the One More Chance. Then, one night, I don’t even know what the hell happened, but this is what I witnessed. She made a post on our boards about new plans she had for recruiting and new ideas she had for easing the integration of new members into the raiding core, etc. etc. It all sounded great — she really was one of our best officers when she wasn’t quitting or threatening to quit. A few hours after that post, she announced that she and her husband were quitting Warcraft for good, they were going to focus on family life with no more gaming, and she wished us all well.

What in the …

Here’s my theory: something happened that night in those few hours that forced a game-quit. 7:00 pm, everybody’s happy. 11:00 pm, they’re outta here. Doesn’t make sense otherwise. I also have a theory of what that something was, but it’s only speculation from knowing her personality and *cough* behaviors. Nevertheless, they’re out and we wished them well in return. And meant it.

Over the following weeks, she would occasionally email or IM me and our raidleader, as we were good friends with her in the guild. We were, in fact, among her few supporters because she had a tendency to be short with guildmates which was not endearing. And I’ll say here, this was because she is a woman. We have male officers that are similarly terse and demanding, but they don’t get the bad rap that she did. Ya, it’s unfair, but this is life.

Well, she must have been getting bored at work and with no game in her free time, because she gradually stepped up the emailing and IM’ing to the point of nuisance. She reinstalled Warcraft solely to chat with us during raids. (Hi? I’m in Blackwing Lair? Kinda busy here.) She’d log into the guild’s Ventrilo server and chat with the guild there, too. I think you can imagine how out of control this was becoming.

The raidleader and I talked about how we could solve this without being complete assholes about it. That’s me rationalizing. Remember, we didn’t START OUT intending to be complete assholes. That’s me clinging to a fine line as I rationalize.

Next week … we are complete assholes about it.

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!