But I’m toying with an idea.

Oh, and I have a D3 update, let’s do that first.

So there is expected to be a D3 beta character wipe next week. I’ll be starting over from scratch so this time I can take some notes and whatnot on the play experience to pass on to you guys.

Oh, look a squirrel!

And back to my idea…

I have a story floating about in my head.

It’s been there for at least a year now, probably pushing 2 years.

I’ve got a page of random scribbles for the story, most of which contradict each other.

If I decide to become brave and put some serious effort into this wisp of a plot bouncing in my brain, should I do it now or should I wait to participate in NaNoWriMo?

Specifically, do I have readers that have done the NaNoWriMo marathon?

I’m worried about being able to meet any goals I set for myself about writing, and NaNo would take care of that.

The story has been simmering for quite some time and has recently began to heat up. Would I gain more by attempting to bring it to life now or continue to let it mature until November?

NaNo sounds like a lot of fun… would anyone else be willing to sign up with me if I do it?

Original can be found here: http://us.battle.net/blizzcon/en/blog/4338369/2012_Battlenet_World_Championship_Event-1_25_2012

Two things:

1 – What are my friends supposed to get me for my birthday this year? Everyone chipping in for my BlizzCon Virtual Pass has become a bit of a tradition.

2 – This means there won’t be a 2012 BlizzCon pet or mount or anything! /whiiiiiiiiiiiiiine

The Daily What – Geek mentioned some of the heat that happened last year with some of the Alliance bashing. It was bad enough that Mike Morhaim apologized for the whole mess. (You saw it here: http://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/blizzcon-2011-day-2/) And while yes, that was undoubtedly a PR nightmare, I don’t think it had that much to do with skipping a year of BlizzCon.

What’s odd is the announcement was hidden in an eSports article. I enjoy watching people beat the shit out of each other in a game of SCII when it’s on at BlizzCon, but I don’t follow any of the related news. If it weren’t for The Daily What and MMOChamp’s Blue Tracker, I would have missed this little tidbit entirely.

BlizzCon takes place in late October.

Diablo III has been pushed to sometime after Q1 this year. Patch 10 on the beta was supposed to go live this week but a major bug prevented that so we won’t see anything new until next week. Assuming things go well, perhaps we can get an April or May release of D3. (Yeah, right.) Then a series of patches to fix everything that went wonky in the release and they can consider it stable by August.

Mists of Panderia they want to get to us “as soon as possible.” I have a recollection of standing outside in the cold for the past two expansions so I imagine they’ll be shooting for a Q4 release – if it can make it at all this year. This means that all of us Annual Pass holders should be hearing something in the next couple of months about beta. 6 months sound about right for beta testing period? Meaning they’ll be busy dealing with us trying to break the beta all summer and fall.

So between stabilizing D3 and getting MoP ready for action, there isn’t much time to devote to prepping for a BlizzCon. Toss in Heart of the Swarm (which I can’t recall seeing anything about recently in terms of development) and you have a potentially overloaded calendar.

They better have an awesome pet and a kickass band in 2013.

I broke down and got him the helm and shoulders and cloak to go with the chest and axe… and I got him a full set of the same in the tanking flavor.

Obviously substituting the 1-handed sword for the 2-handed axe.

Although, I have healed an instance or two with a low-level tank insisting that it was just as good as having a shield… he made me say unkind things. There was possibly gnashing of teeth and questions regarding his parentage and drug use.

And obviously I made yet another blood elf.

Coincidentally, I wanted my first ever WoW character to be a blood elf warrior and was very saddened when I discovered that even if I had access to the BC expansion, my dream could not come to pass. Because picking up a sword and hitting people with it just couldn’t be done by a blood elf without some sort of mystical assistance in the form of a little blue bar.

So obviously as a blood elf I am repeating the questlines running out to Tranquilien for the umpteenth time.

With the addition of even more free XP (between the long pauses between playing him and the massive amounts of BoA gear he’s loaded with) I’m zipping through content at a frightful speed.

Oh, and murlocs have more spines now. This makes for many fewer kills.

This has had some interesting side effects.

While fighting some ghost-types that would increase their dodge chance by 60% or some obnoxious number I screamed “can’t dodge DoTs, bitch!” while watching my Rend ticking down on her with my axe *whiffing* wildly about her.

I also frequently feel that I am invincible.

As if the universe itself wished to prove me wrong, Knucklerot lumbered across the path before me.

I’ve been hitting 70+ DPS, even spiking up to 121.1DPS at level 13.

Of course I didn’t grab a shot of THAT 121.1 DPS, but 114.7 isn’t too shabby.

How hard could this be?

I failed to notice that Knucklerot is level 21 until it was a tad too late.

My overpowered DPS was no match for something that I couldn’t freaking hit. And I mean, seriously? He’s got to be 3 times my size and I can’t hit him? Whatever. Apparently an 8 level deficit was just too much.

As I prepared to run back to my corpse all the way across the zone (because obviously I was not prepared), paused to consider my choices.

3 minutes of resurrection sickness? Or running, on foot, allllllllllll the way across the zone? And alllllllllllll the way back to turn in my quests.

Hmmmm… but there’s that 10% durability damage to deal with. Let’s see, 10% of 0 is…. math is hard…. zero!

Bless you, zero durability BoA gear.

I was now in place to turn in a gabillion quests and in very short order was able to ding to 15 after a brief jaunt down the scar.

Level 15 means that I’m eligible to enter the dungeon finder.

As a tank because I suffer from brain damage!

Alright, let’s make sure all my talent points are spent (I would take Blood and Thunder in any spec just because I like the name) and swap all this prot gear on.

Got a helm… got some shoulders… a cloak… a chest… I’m looking pretty snazzy here with my 1-handed sword and in my off-hand…

Problem?

I had no shield.

There was a quest reward shield back when I was in the cradle, but I dumped it under the assumption that I would get a better one before level 15.

But I leveled so fast that I didn’t have to do a lot of quests and didn’t get as many mob drops on account of all the mobs I didn’t have to kill.

No problem! I’m on a high-pop server with a booming AH. I’ll just find a low-level shield on the AH.

And there was one.

With intellect.

Fuck me.

A quick search on WoWHead shows that there is a vendor in Silvermoon that sells a shield I can use.

A piddly, little white-quality shield but at least it’s not a 2-handed axe and it’s not an int shield. Both would have been blogger fodder.

Now, we are ready!

To log out.

My little quest for a shield took too long and now I have to raid.

So our epic tale of me being a brain damaged tank will have to wait for another day.

I’m everything that happens in an encounter other than a boss smacking your tank in the face.

I’m what provides difference to encounters and hopefully makes them at least slightly more invigorating than stomping a training dummy in to the ground.

If I’m not there, people bitch that the encounters are boring.

If I’m too similar to a previously used mechanic, people complain that I’m not creative enough.

So in theory, everyone thinks I’m a great guy.

Why, then, does no one respect me once they’ve moved up a level or two?

I see these hot shots in their sparkly 390 ilevel purples come cruising through my raids, expecting to smack me in the face with their epeens and I’ll just fall over – well I got news for those punks.

You WILL learn to respect the mechanics or you WILL die.

It’s that simple.

Yeah, yeah, you might have enough health to survive a misstep here or there, but at what expense?

Why, the annoyance of your healer who was properly tucked away on the other side of the ice tomb when that frost bomb hit. Now they have to bring you back from the brink of death so they can listen to you continue to brag about how easy this place is now and how leet you are.

Try going back to Molten Core.

Sure, you can one-shot most anything in there. But try it with a group that doesn’t understand how a pack of core hound trash works. *snicker* Even if you manage to survive, it will have been a huge waste of time and energy. So much more effort than if people knew the mechanics – and followed them.

If you want to be on the floor, you’ve got to dance the dance. You do not get extra credit for marching to your own drummer. You signed up for the fight, now follow the rules of engagement.

There’s a DK that’s soloed just about everything in game. Know how he does it? He knows his class inside and out AND he understands every minute detail of how I work.

So the next time you bring a ragtag group of “raiders” in to my hallowed halls and expect to feed me your cock, I’m returning the dish with a heaping side order of shame and disgrace until you get your shit in order and pay me some respect.

“@)(*$)@*_@!_@# NERFS!!!! WHY U NERF MY CONTENT BLIZZ?!?! YOU SUCK!”

Or at least that is what most of the community thinks. Personally, all I have to say is this;

“Welcome to the end content patch of World of Warcraft.”

I want to preface the opinions that are about to be expressed in this post. These are not the opinions of Arioch of Clearcasting. These are the opinions of Tirael the DK of 1337BOHICA (which I lost my password to, because I had to shut down an email account linked to it.) Some of you know who I am, some of you don’t. I will give you some background on me, since some of the new readers out there don’t know who I am.

I am the other half of Arioch. Selwyn recently talked about molesting my priest Naerityah and Arioch himself commented on my tusks not being a roadblock to fellatio. I have been playing World of Warcraft since January of 2005. I have raided all content when it was CURRENT. This includes all content between BWL & Dragon Soul. I was sitting at Muru pre-nerf in Sunwell, I was knocking on Heroic 25 LK’s door and I have wiped more times than I can remember on The Four Horsemen in Naxx 40. I have been there done that and got the T-Shirt. Well, I don’t really have a T-Shirt, but I want one.

In all of that content, I have played every role in this game. Starting with Tanking on my Warrior in Vanilla, to Dpsing on my Warrior in BC, to Tanking on my DK in Wrath, to Dpsing on my Priest in ToC/ICC, to Healing on my Paladin in Cata, I have done it all, at least in my mind.

Does this qualify me to make a statement on the current state of this game, its community and the current content available? Damn straight it does. Why? Because I have Titties in Vent that has a Blog that says I can make a guest post, that’s why. Let’s get to the meat and potatoes.

The WoW Community and Entitlement

It’s terrible. Not just because there are “QQ’ers” on the forums or in game, but because of entitlement. There are good places to feel entitled and bad places to feel entitled. YOU, as a paying customer, are entitled to a gaming experience of your choosing. However, you are NOT entitled to have the game changed to the way YOU want it. You are NOT entitled to a legendary weapon. You are NOT entitled to have raid achievements handed to you. You are NOT entitled to be able to kill Deathwing on Heroic Mode.

However, I do believe you are entitled to being able to see content. In my WoW time, I have come across some a lot of things I thought were just terrible. For one, I am one of the FEW people I know (in game) who still play WoW who even experienced Naxx 40. I am also one of the few people I know that was even stepping foot into Sunwell, pre-nerf. To me, that kind of sucks.

Back in Vanilla, sites like Tankspot, MMO-Champion, Elitist Jerks and Wowhead either didn’t exist or were in the infancy. Research your class? LAWLSIECOASTER. Research an encounter? ROFLCOPTER. Mass summon? HAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA. We walked to raids, uphill, both ways, in the snow, barefoot, carrying all our consumables, on slow mounts if we were poor, and waited on 15 people to get back from afk so we could start a raid.

Guess what? I FUCKING HATED IT. The game was in its infancy, class balance was terrible and pvp was a joke. However, the community wasn’t full of a bunch of entitled and whiny asshats who think just because they pay to play WoW that they were entitled to anything they wanted. The game was a challenge. When you earned something in game, you felt like your pixels accomplished something. The community was great. We did whatever we could to help each other.

Fast forward to Wrath of the Lich King. Asshatery ensues. At this point the game was at its height of popularity. Content was more readily available to the masses. The game was at a good point. Content in Wrath of the Lich King was just like Kara in the fact of how much of it was ran by people. The community was well-established. Then it happened. Entitlement began.

Because of the ease of Naxx 10/25, people thought that ALL content was supposed to be like that. PuG raiding really took off at this time. Ninja’ing in WoW became the norm. Yes, ninja looters had been around since the days of EQ, but WoW rarely had these issues prior to WotLK. In order to make a buck, Blizzard caved to the forum QQ. We had the atrocities of raid instances known as Naxx 10/25, ToC 10/25 and ICC 10/25. Ulduar was the one shining beacon of an actual raid in WotLK.

However, as much as I disliked the ease of those raids, I agree with one thing, as I have always said. I believe everyone should have the CHANCE and the CHOICE to raid. Do I think I should raid with some of them? No, but I do believe there should be a place for those people to raid. You are entitled to a gaming experience because you are a paying customer, but you are not entitled to doing everything on the hardest difficulty available or the loot that comes from it.

Ease of the Game

People also say, “The game became easy in Wrath of the Lich King.” Wrong. The COMMUNITY was more fleshed out in WotLK. The sites were there, they told you what to do, gave you the strategies and taught you what to do, when to do it, and when not to.

With the masses being able to do experience this level of raiding, of course we would end up with the content being relatively easier than in the past. Did I like that? Not really. I agreed with it, until the nerfs to ICC came in. At 5%, when I was sitting at 11/12 Heroic in 25 wasn’t so bad. However, when it made it to 30%, it was a joke. Yes, I know I could have opted out of it. We all did. It was the simple fact that it was THERE that mattered. However, since the nerfs to Sunwell at the end of the expansion, I agreed with it simply because it was the end of the xpac. Halion was fun though.

Another thing of note is that at this point in raiding, inventive raid design was hard to come by. Why? The encounter design team couldn’t think of new things to do. The metric they used was something like an algebra equation when it came to difficulty.

If x is normal then y boss damage is the product of a and the price of tea in China.
If x is heroic then y boss damage is the product of a and the price of coffee in New York and b number of boss mechanics is multiplied by 4.

As you can see, it is not a very inventive encounter design metric. However, it provided for a lot of people to see the content. It did not provide for new and inventive boss mechanics.

On to Cataclysm. Let’s get past BWD/BoT/To4W/FL and go straight to Dragon Soul. FINALLY, a content level meant for everyone. LFR is probably the SINGLE BEST thing Blizzard has done. It allows content to be made easy for people who don’t or have never raided before. The loot system sucks, and I am not going to discuss that. Normal is Normal, Heroic is fucking hard and the encounter design is pretty cool. Madness and Spine really bring some good new elements to an encounter.

5% Nerf to my Content

However, now everyone is BITCHING about a 5% nerf. Here is an empty creek, cry me a river. If you are not 8/8 heroic DS, you have NO right to complain about a nerf. Even if you ARE, you still have no right. In either situation, you either need the help or have already done it. Also, YOU CAN OPT OUT OF IT. If you truly want it to still be difficult (which a 5% nerf will do nothing but push your 5% wipes to a kill), turn the fucking buff off.

Don’t go on to the forums and bitch about how you are entitled to some experience of difficulty when the shit can be turned off. Don’t complain when you are sitting at 4/8 normal and can’t get Ultraxion down. I would venture to say about 65% of the people complaining are wiping to the MECHANICS of the fight versus the actual damage/healing needed to down a fight and I am being generous. 5% will not make a difference to you getting the boss down if you can’t do the mechanics.

Another thing. This shit has happened SINCE FUCKING SUNWELL. You act like this is new. Since most of the player base probably started during WotLK or BC, you are all use to it. It happens. It allows people to see more of the content on normal. At least you can turn the shit off.

Blizzard makes a game for three reasons:
1) Because they like making games that people enjoy
2) They want people to see the story and the content
3) To make money.

If a company doesn’t make a game for those three reasons, then I won’t play their game. Why?
1) If a company makes a game that no one will enjoy, then no one will buy it.
2) If they don’t want to tell a story in an RPG (specifically this genre), then why make a game?
3) If they don’t want to make money, then they will not feel a sense of responsibility to their customers, which means CS wouldn’t exist for the game, they would not care about the community and the game would suck.

Stop complaining about something so arbitrary as 5%.

Selwyn, so kind of you to come.

Selwyn: I was very close to vowing to never talk to you again.

I’m sorry, was it really that bad?

Selwyn: Bad? It was hell – complete with horns and cloven hooves. And did I mention before – NO PENIS!

Yeah, sorry about that.

Selwyn: And the tail? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to walk with a tail? The harder I tried to walk in some semblance of normalcy the more pronounced that infernal “waggle” became.

Arioch: But you do have to admit, you made a mighty fine woman with that waggle. If I hadn’t been your brother… what’s the saying? I would “tap dat ass.”

Selwyn shoots Arioch a withering glare.

Selwyn: Does “dog dick red” mean anything to you?

Arioch: Ouch! That was pretty low.

Selwyn: You have no idea what it was like; fending off the advances of those burly spacegoats and their invitations to Shadowmoon Valley… and I don’t even know what a transgoto is but I was told repeatedly I had a nice one. Humans and their mustaches, it’s like roadkill on their upper lip. And don’t even get me started on gnomes! I have no idea how someone “accidentally” ends up under a floor-length skirt – repeatedly.

Well now you’re back and all your bits are back in the proper places?

Selwyn: Yes, finally. I can walk properly again and can stand to pee.

Good to see the important things are taken care of. Moving on, what do you do these days?

Selwyn: I check in with the jewelcrafter in Orgrimmar most days to see if she needs any help. And I’m on standby for saving the world. But other than that, not much.

I heard Nearityah came back across with you. I recall a couple screenshots of the two of you, didn’t you have an interest in her?

Arioch chuckles.

Arioch: Too bad my little brother is too shy to do anything about it.

Selwyn: Oh, shut up! Yes, she came back as well.

And how are things going?

Selwyn: Well, um, she’s a troll now.

Arioch laughs.

Is there a problem with that?

Selwyn: Well, she’s still attractive, and her hips seem to be quite a bit more, ah, flexible… but I’m a little apprehensive about the tusks.

Arioch laughs harder.

Selwyn: And she doesn’t blink. It’s a little unnerving. I keep trying to work up to asking her out and my eyes just start watering every time I talk to her.

Arioch laughs even harder.

Arioch: Dodging tusks isn’t that hard. And trust me, the non-blinking won’t be bothering you once you see what those hips can do.

Well, I think we’ve gotten as much as we’re going to get out of this conversation on this side of decency. I’ll leave you two to discuss the finer points of inter-racial relations. Thank you for your time, and welcome back to the Horde.

Arioch… is doing *gasp* dailies again.

I think the last time I was doing dailies was back in the tourney days, trying to get my pets and mounts. (Which reminds me, I’m not finished up there.)

Finally, I opened up the Molten Front dailies. In another couple days I’ll be able to recruit my first choice. I think I’m going with the druids; it was recommended to go that route to get a head start on some of the random achievements.

I also pick up the jousting daily and will have my little pet in another few days.

I’ve even made a return to Northrend to work on my Frenzyheart dailies. I’ll pick up tourney again at some point. But I didn’t realize that there was a transformation item available from the little furry vendor there! So I pick up the disgusting jar and do the dailies. Then in 3 days, when I’m sorely disappointed, I return to get another jar and do the dailies. (I’m practicing for the Oracles and that damn green drake.) I’m still missing one of the dailies to get the achievement for doing all their chores. Hopefully by the time I’m exalted I’ll have both the item and the achievement. Then on to the big tongues.

I’ve even headed out to Tol Barad to work on those dailies and hope for a fox kit while I’m there. They have pets and mounts…

If I hit all those, and the island is available on TB, then I’m done (I also toss in the cooking daily for giggles). But if that doesn’t take me to full, then it’s off to Twilight Highlands to fill out the day with Dragonmaw dailies. I’m exalted, but not 999 exalted and so you know what that means – I’m not done yet! (Actually, I am done now, but I wasn’t earlier when I wrote this. Now I need to decide on dailies to fill this slot.)

The dailies aren’t really loads of fun, and if I wasn’t doing this on a mage I would probably shoot myself, but it’s nice to be enjoying being in the game again.

I even was able to tie up enough loose ends to snag this the other day:

Granted, with the addition of all the Cataclysm stuff that was a lot easier than it was when we first started trekking towards it… but it still felt good.

Raiding wise… I’m not really sure what’s going on.

I was asked to be in the Friday/Saturday group. And for the first week I was.

But then they went, “Oh! She’s, like, decent DPS! Move her to the Tuesday/Wednesday group!” And for the second week I was.

So I log on Tuesday night, unsure of what I’m doing. I’m back in the Friday/Saturday group and their “first group” didn’t have the DPS to down Ultraxion. (Their #1 DPS – a ret pally – decided to stop raiding. I don’t blame him, between the two of us we were 50-70 percent of the damage on some fights and he was generally stomping me.)

We’ll see where I am next week.

Mage transferred?

Check.

Priest transferred?

Check.

Bank alt made?

Check.

Bank alt leveled to 20 so we don’t have to run everywhere on foot?

Work in progress at level 13.

Paladin transferred?

Check.

Paladin churning out glyphs?

Not quite. Need to take stock of current ink inventory. The glyph market does seem to be a little more stable than on Lightbringer though. I’ve started getting a few up on the AH.

Death Knight transferred?

Check.

DK’s abilities sorted out?

Check. I didn’t even bother doing this when he was Alliance, but now that I’m back to Horde it’s taken care of. Note to self – take more random screen shots. I had to go back through my pics to last June to find one that showed his action bars. And I can’t even find one of Selwyn in combat to show my healing UI.

Warrior transferred?

Nope, and won’t be. I’m leaving him put on Lightbringer and re-rolling. Like most of my characters, the name was taken so had to tweak it a tad. I’m going to level prot because I suffer from brain damage.

Tangent: BoA crap is OP. I sent him the axe and chest (with a +3 stat enchant). I went from doing about 15-20 DPS to an average of almost 40 with spikes up to 60 or more at level 10. I’m 1-shotting mobs my own level. This ain’t right. Not that I’m actually going to stop using the gear, I just wanted to point out that it’s OP. And after I fill in the other slots, it will only get worse/better.

Rogue transferred or rolled?

Went with a reroll. He’s ready to go, just hasn’t entered the world yet. And yes, I went with yet *another* male blood elf (I still had an open hair color!)… but I’m suddenly intrigued in more than just having a “lock box collecting bitch for Arioch.” I’m *twitch* actually sort of interested in figuring out how to rogue. *twitch* So I felt it would only be appropriate to name him in honor of another rogue I know, but since that name was stolen I got clever and Enivroc was born. We’ll see how long this lasts. Maybe I should do a poll for how long it takes to get him to milestone levels. *twitch*

Chat panes set up on all characters?

Negative. I had it set up on a couple… then tried to copy settings from one character to another… and fubarred the whole mess. Like, entire settings undid and went wonky – including on the characters that I had just perfect.

Profanity filter fixed?

Fuck no. It was fine when I transferred to Lightbringer but somewhere between there and Area 52 Blizzard has decided to nanny my chat panes. Rumor has it they will resolve this in 4.3.2. &!@# you, Blizzard.

…

Problem:

Tel helped me get most of my random toons in to my own bank guild. It’s a level 2 guild that I transferred from Drak to LB and now to Area 52.

I started questing and leveling and just doing what warriors do when I noticed that 2 things weren’t happening: my personal reputation with the guild was not increasing and my guild experience was not budging.

I am most definitely no where near the cap for either personal contribution or weekly guild experience cap. I think my DK (also the GM) did a quest and the guild XP went up, but none of my other characters seem to be able to get any credit.

Am I missing something? Do we have to be wearing a guild tabard or something stupid? Do they have to be in the guild for X amount of time before they count?

Has everyone heard the expression that smaller breasts try harder?

I tried to find a relevant movie quote or something to help illustrate for people that might be unfamiliar with the line, but if I clicked any of the links that came up I would need to boil my computer in bleach.

The basic premise is that when a well-endowed woman walks into a room, all the interested parties are immediately drawn to her bustline. In order to garner as much attention, a woman with a slimmer chest silhouette usually has to wear something a little tighter, flashier, lower cut, or even follow the increasing trend of nipple augmentation (nipple prosthetics - not just for cancer patients anymore!).

And I can tie this in to raiding. And, since I was listed over at A High Latency Life as a member of Riv’s Honor Roll, I’ll even throw in a few gratuitous boob shots as my way of saying thank you. (Mostly SFW)

I left a guild that was 1/8 heroic 25 Dragon Soul and joined a guild that was 6/8 normal on 10.

Besides the difference in progression, there is a difference in mentality between the better raiders of the more elite guild and the best my new guild has to offer.

So on to the explanation through cup sizes!

The Double-D Raiders

These are the raiders that walk in to the instance and own it without trying. Rotations roll flawlessly from their fingers and they assume their position at the top of the meters unchallenged. They aren’t doing anything special, they’re just doing what comes naturally to them. Downing the boss is a foregone conclusion, it’s just how easy they make it look.

Sure, they might spend some time on class forums or talk with others to compare notes, but these people tend to have an almost inhuman innate understanding of how to eke out the most damage with the least amount of effort. Their efficiency makes their play appear effortless. We had a lot of these in my previous guild.

The E+ Raiders

Some raiders aren’t satisfied with what they’ve got, however, and will pad the metaphorical bra and the meters. These are those assholes that know the mechanics but don’t care. As the busty belle of the ball, target swaps and movement are below them.

And like a bra that isn’t big enough, they aren’t doing their job. This isn’t sexy and it doesn’t help the raid.

You’ll get attention alright, but not the right kind of attention. And unfortunately, we had several of these in my previous guild.

But way on the other side of the spectrum, we have:

The A Cup Raiders

Not the biggest chest, but certainly attention grabbing. They are right there, in your face, trying to be noticed.

Whereas a DD or E+ Raider might pre-pot to increase his or her chances of getting ranked, an A Raider HAS to pre-pot to contribute every spec of output to help swing the uncertain outcome of the encounter. Winning or losing for these groups really is just a matter of a couple hundred more damage/healing/avoidance. The raid leader hands out stacks of potions just to make sure they’ve got the best chance of downing the encounter. Food buffs aren’t a luxury, they are a necessity.

(Now this isn’t to say that there aren’t raiders of all shapes and sizes that don’t sometimes just throw on the baggy sweatshirt and phone it in, but for the sake of simplicity we’re talking about raiders that at least appear to put in effort.)

So when a pull gets borked with my new guild and pre-potting doesn’t happen correctly, no one is upset that their personal DPS will suffer because of it. Everyone is concerned that the raid is losing out on that additional damage. And when there is a wipe at 1 or 2%, we wonder if that would have made the difference.

Kills seem to mean more to the A raiders. When I did the first 4 in DS with my Alliance guild, no one even thought about kill shots for the website. When we get a kill in the new guild it’s a major victory.

Unfortunately for my new guild, they seem to think that with enough times of throwing themselves against the raid wall they’ll be moving on to heroics in short order. I could be wrong, and I hope that I am, but I’m not expecting them to be bringing home the blue ribbon in that wet T-shirt contest any time soon.

The guy that the raid leader knew quickly turned in to the new raid leader. Well mannered, unfailing polite, and very patient. (Which was very good as several people had not been in FL before, were new to raiding, and someone thought it was a good idea to attempt heroics with this set up.) He mentioned nearly 20 years in the military so I’m going to assume early 40s or close thereabouts.

The run was eventually ended when we lost a fire mage doing 13k on Rhyolith. (His 4% extra hit, missing gems, nonexistent enchants (except for the hit enchant!), and zero knowledge of the encounters might have had something to do with his performance.) He stepped out on his own accord after stating he was afraid he was bringing us down.

As it was Monday night, we were hard pressed to find a replacement. But we did give it a valiant effort and during the intermission, our raid-leading tank had ample time to liberally sample the contents of a rum bottle. By the time we gave up he was rather blitzed. (What is it with drunk tanks?)

And he stayed in vent with us after the run ended.

I was attempting to coach our disc priest on some of the finer nuances of disc healing (I will break your fingers if I catch you casting Flash Heal again! OK, I wasn’t that blunt but I did tell him it was silly.)

This kindly gentleman then started saying some of the oddest things.

In the same breath, he told me that I was a “rare flower,” a “great mage,” that I had a “calming and motherly air,” and the “power to change the course of a raid.” I think there was even a “great power, great responsibility” snippet thrown in with something about the “power of the vagina.”

As far as I can tell, he said it all with a straight face and was not struck down by lightning. Thank god for push to talk, though, because I was busting up.

I was getting whispers from guild master and her fiance, both offering to boot the guy from vent if he was too much of a problem.

A problem?

If only all harassment we saw was a kind-hearted drunk man talking about our leadership potential and skill, even if it was incredibly corny and slightly slurred.

The conversation moved on to my voice (“a breath of fresh air” – seriously, are you laughing as hard as I was?) and how it could impact a raid if I spoke up more.

(And if by some freak chance the gentleman is reading this post, please bear in mind we’re not laughing at you so much as the very idea that any of these flattering words would ever be seriously used to describe me.)

I replied that in pugs, I tended to not speak up as the usual pre-pubescent response to a woman’s voice is “TITTIES IN VENT!” and there is the potential for distracting the raid.

Silence.

OMG. Did I actually manage to offend the drunk guy?

No, just turned out he (and a few others) were struggling for breath through their laughter at my remark. Apparently I made his day with that one.

So, ladies, if you would like to bring a vent channel crashing to its knees, simply announce upon your arrival, “TITTIES IN VENT!”

Because with the great power of the vagina comes great responsibilities.