And here’s the last of the “I fucked up and need to L2post” posts.! If you read it the first time, that was a draft, there were a few tweaks.

Horde?

Alliance?

Night elves?

I consider myself a Horde player.

Yes, I started Alliance. And yes, I enjoyed my night elf characters. (It’s the pointy ears.)

But I didn’t really start to feel involved in the game until I rolled Horde.

Cruising through Org, I pass by all the trolls, orcs, forsaken, tauren, blood elves and it just feels right. Normal, if I can get away with using such a word.

I am surrounded by friends, brothers-in-arms.

In the field I see a fellow member of the Horde under attack from Alliance forces, I help.

Out on the For the Horde! run, I slaughtered the opposing faction leaders with gusto. (Actually, I mostly helped with killing the Alliance players that came to defend their leaders, but you know what I mean.)

I was thrilled with the inclusion of the Horde insignia on my T9 gear. Reveled in the difference between the Horde and Alliance weapons coming out of the Trial of the Crusader.

The red and black flag signifies home for me.

Switch over to my new night elf warrior.

I enjoy playing him, but I don’t have that sense of belonging.

Darnassus is home, but the blue and gold is merely decoration. There is no faction-pride associated with it.

I’m sure when I’m higher level, I will dutifully defend a city I’m in. But I can’t imagine riding out to get a black war bear.

(Except maybe to kill Garrosh after Cataclysm. We’ll see where Blizzard takes this guy.)

I’m not even certain I would come to the aid of an Alliance player being attacked by the Horde unless they asked.

I look around the cities at all the gnomes, dwarves, humans, draenei.

I see strangers.

Here’s the second of the “I fucked up and need to L2post” posts.! If you read it the first time, that was a draft, there were a few tweaks.

It’s dead, I know.

But I had a thought, are sanctuary cities to blame?

Have we, even on PvP servers, become so used to rubbing elbows with the opposite faction that our instinct for red is dead has atrophied?

I started on a PvE realm, RPPvE to be exact.

As I recall, and I could be wrong – I was a very lost little night elf warrior much of the time – there were only a handful of situations that would flag me for PvP on that realm.

• If I did something stupid. It took me a long time to figure out the difference between the orc-mobs and the orc-NPCs in Ashenvale. Stupid patrol on the main road…
• If I entered a battleground. And then got on the tram and got ganked by a rogue…
• If I got to close to an enemy city. Like trying to get the map to bwom on Undercity…

Tangent!

I can hear you now: WTF is bwom?

Bwom – to claim or uncover territory on a map.

Origin – Dungeon Keeper. As your imps claim territory they made a noise very much like “bwom.” Ever since then I have associated the noise with any uncovering of new terrain on a map or claiming of territory, all through StarCraft and now WoW. Yes, I even say “bwom” when the map uncovers a new area.

So most of my early career in WoW I had free reign of the land, I didn’t touch them and they couldn’t touch me. Just like a sanctuary city.

In fact, I had very little desire to engage in world PvP. Red is dead was limited to mobs.

Then I joined a PvP realm.

PvP lurked around every corner, usually in the form of a level 70 that felt I would be better off corpse running instead of fishing.

StarCraft had given me a very bad taste for PvP so I spent a lot of time shying away from it.

But I gradually warmed up to it and happily would kill someone for being in the wrong place and fully expected the same in return.

Then I got to Shattrath.

Look at all the Alliance and I can’t kill any of them!

Hell, some of them are up on the Scryers Tier.

Opposite faction… in my inn… brain malfunction…

I got used to seeing them up close and personal without having to be ready to launch an offensive or strategically retreat.

That started to carry over into the zones outside the city.

I was more inclined to leave people alone and was surprised when the courtesy wasn’t extended to me.

Then came Dalaran.

Even more close quarters with the opposing faction.

At least this time we have our own faction space.

But again, I find it reinforced that Alliance aren’t really targets.

Argent Tournament Grounds?

Same thing.

Meh.

Alliance.

Can’t touch ‘em. Don’t care.

But when I was back in old world working on quests for the Loremaster achievement.

I wasn’t even returning to Dalaran most nights unless I’m raiding the next night.

I found the old spark of the killing urge welling up inside me.

There is no sanctuary here.

When I touched down at the Crossroads I waited a bit before heading out. This allowed me to finish my Peggle game and see if there’s any action.

I saw a fellow Horde, very low level, getting chased by a tree guardian thing in Ashenvale.

I was immediately off my mount and slinging spells. Then it was right back on the mount and patrolling the area to make sure there were no Alliance players that might have been after him.

I found myself edging closer and closer to Alliance towns, as if I’m subconsciously spoiling for a fight.

It’s a shame I’ve already done all the quests out of Tarren Mill. I must remember to go tear that place up before the expansion hits and the Alliance lose it.

I’ve noticed something similar on my little priest. Since he’s running with a hunter that has some serious PvP leanings we embrace red is dead and will take on Alliance players that probably think we’re bat shit crazy. But I did get a killing blow on a DK. Before I was level 33. /flex

And the DK I just rolled on a PvE server because my battlegroup was down? ZOMG. Never before have I wanted to gank so much. He’s right there… and I can’t touch him… gaaaaah! Quit picking my herbs! I only rolled on this server to meet some people. I’ve noticed that a lot of the people I want to eventually roll toons to meet are on PvE servers…

Anyway, sanctuary cities are most likely here to stay.

It would take a major effort to remove them and I can’t really see why they would go through the trouble.

But if they were to be removed, do you think we would see more world PvP?

Even with sanctuary cities, can we reclaim our faction pride, especially in light of the changes coming to the Horde?

Thrall would want us to lay our differences aside and work towards the common good of all of Azeroth and Tirion Fordring is trying to pull everyone together, but we’re about to have our faction leaders at each other’s throats.

Varian’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Hyjal and Garrosh doesn’t know the meaning of restraint.

Will it be enough to stir the hearts of the players and revive world PvP?

I doubt it will, but it would be exciting!

And can anyone explain to me why people that want to PvP roll on PvE realms and people that don’t want to PvP roll on PvP realms?

I know in my guild our circumstances were a little unusual.

We were picking a realm to all roll on at the same time.

One of the guys said if we rolled on a carebear server he wouldn’t play. We were expecting him to be one of the core members of the guild so we went PvP.

Then he doesn’t even hardly play on our server (too busy raiding on another at first) and has now gotten so busy with school that he’s not playing at all.

So in our group, we have several people that would have much rather have been on a PvE server but weren’t really given much of a choice.

But what about the people that randomly pick a realm, the ones that aren’t rolling on a realm to join friends? Why go PvP if you don’t like it?

I was in Hellfire mining on my priest the other night.

Some poor Alliance guy was trying to take the towers.

There were level-appropriate Horde in the area that were having none of that.

Guy disappears.

Level 58 DK gets to the zone.

“Would you assholes knock it off, I’m trying to get my marks for the quest!”

(Yes, we can roll cross-faction on the same PvP servers.)

The conversation that followed was sad.

If you’re trying to convince a group of people to not kill you, calling them all “fucking 70-year-old virgins” is probably NOT the best tactic.

Just my guess.

How’s world PvP on your server?

Whoospie! This is one of those posts that was written in the heat of my fury but I didn’t get around to posting it back in October when this was all on fire. Things have simmered down now, read yesterday’s post for more information on what has changed. Since it was released and people have commented, I’m reposting it. Maybe someone will get something out of it… it’s already spawned a very good response post.

…

Yes, this was the alternate title to my post regarding our non-visit to the Trial of the Grand Crusader.

I had a nice recruitment post ready to go. Making the push from 10s to 25s, come join us!

What follows is not a nice recruitment post.

I want to start by saying that I <3 the people in my guild very much. They are an awesome group of guys and when we get a raid going, we can usually bust some shit out.

Here’s the problem:

We are a social guild trying to pretend to be a raiding guild.

We have friends and family in the guild that we are either working around their crazy schedules or lack of skill.

Our progression team roster has 11 people on it.

Limited play time plagues several of them. This generally takes the form of being on only 1 or 2 nights a week. Why do we have someone on our progression team that can’t even commit to 1 night a week? Because he’s a friend. He’s a decent player, but isn’t able to devote enough time to the game to keep on top of things.

We have our share of afkers as well. It’s not meant to be disrespectful to the raid, I’m sure. I know they have stuff happening in real life. But would you sign up for a softball league if you knew you were going to have to walk off the field every 10 minutes?

Communication is an issue for scheduling. I’m using the in-game calendar and the calendar on the guild site. Can’t log in to WoW? Fine, do it at the guild site. Don’t like the guild site? Fine, use the in-game calendar or drop me a letter. Something. Anything. Carrier fucking pigeon if you have to.

Then we have the people that sign up and don’t show. Again, communicate as soon as possible.

We have one guy that we laugh at, he never gems or enchants his gear unless we drag him to the bank and take care of it for him. We give him flasks he never uses unless we hound him. He hasn’t even spent all of his talent points in his main spec. He plays really well, so it’s not like it’s hindering us, but it isn’t helping us either. It’s a funny inside joke, but what about when we bring in new people? If I joined a raiding guild and one of my fucking officers didn’t put forth the effort the keep his shit up to par, I would quit on the spot. But we’re a social guild so we just laugh about it.

With only 11 people on the roster (1 of which I don’t really count since he’s only on 1 night a week at most), if we’re out any 1 person we’re in a bad spot.

We have some other people in the guild that we can try to pull from to fill spots.

But the majority of them either don’t want to raid (and we obviously don’t want to force people to raid) or they want to raid but their skills aren’t on par, or they just haven’t been proven in a raiding environment.

WoW is a more of a game than just plugging in Super Mario Bros. and jumping around randomly until you’ve won. It takes time and effort if you want to do well at it. Even company-sponsored softball teams get together for batting practice once in a while, this is no different. Your guildmates can give you direction and advice, but the learning and application of that information has to come from the individual player.

We’ve got a couple people that could be in progression raiding, but the others seem to be afraid of expanding the progression list past their friends and family and a couple of us that have shown we’re not retarded.

So we end up in situations where we have 8-9 progression raiders on and a couple sub-par or unproven guildies.

No one in progression wants to take the sub-pars. We’ll do gearing runs with them, we’ll do instances with them, but progression is not the place for a healer that has his primary healing assignment as number fucking 7 on his heals list. True story. But no one, including me has the guts to tell them (really only him) that they (he) sucks. And my only reason for not being honest with him has to do with the real life friendship I have with a family member of his outside the game. It would get around to him and he might take it the wrong way.

They don’t want to take the unprovens, because they don’t know what they’re capable of… but we never take them… so we never see… mobius strip of reasoning.

But they don’t want to bring non-guilded friends or pugs to fill in the spots. It wouldn’t be fair to the guildies that we’re not taking.

So you know what happens?

No one fucking gets to raid.

We had a second raid team going for getting new people geared and trained – trying to get some skill instilled in those that wanted to raid and give an opportunity to the unprovens to strut their stuff.

The idea was to eventually push to 25s by combining the 2 groups and then picking up a couple extra people.

The second raid group had even more problems getting enough people to sign up, show up and not afk through the raid.

Not to mention, it was generally a group of 4-5 skilled people trying to make up for 5-6 bad players. The bad players were getting bored that they never got to see anything new and the skilled players were ready to kill the bad players for not demonstrating an ability to learn anything about their character or the mechanics of a fight so that they could see something new.

We lost our raid leader for that second group yesterday.

I saw it coming.

I’ll miss him. I think out of all the officers, he and I and one other share the closest vision of what the guild could be and was willing to put forth the effort for it.

I don’t blame him for leaving.

Hell, I’ve thought about following.

But as much as I want to raid, I’m trapped by my social obligations.

I have friends that I want to continue raiding with, but what if we don’t all get accepted to the same raiding guild?

I have friends that don’t want to do serious raiding, they wouldn’t even be able to apply to a serious raiding guild as a social member.

What next?

This is what I think should happen:

People that don’t sign up for raids don’t get brought.

We will pug your replacement. Yes, that’s right. Bring total strangers in place of people that don’t fucking show up.

People that sign up for raids but don’t show and don’t have a damn good reason for it or weren’t able to clear it before the raid get benched. If we have room in the next raid, we’ll take you. If not, sucks to be you.

Players with skill issues need to be told. And if I’m one of them, please tell me.

No one should be allowed to enter a raid without full enchants/gems/whatever. In progression, there is no excuse for it, everything we’re wearing should be full epics and worthy of an enchant. Gearing raids there is more flexibility – if you’re a couple badges away from upgrading a piece, we can wait for the better piece.

The progression roster needs to be expanded to at least 15 people. Life happens and we can’t expect every member of the core team to show up every single week. But it shouldn’t stop us from raiding. We should have 3-4 people capable of tanking. 4-5 people capable of healing. And a bunch of people that can DPS. Does this mean that some people won’t get to go? Yes, it fucking does. But it means that 10 people DO get to go. Selections should be made based on raid composition requirements and who actually signed up/showed up, not who is a friend or family member or who didn’t get to go last week (unless the switch is basically equal). Being on the progression roster is a privilege earned by skill

We need people to step and show some leadership. I’m organizing raids. I got people to finally agree to dates and times (not that it’s really helped). I put the events on the calendars. I hound people to sign up or decline. But I can’t be the only one. We’re lucky that in the progression raids, we’re usually taking on content that we’ve all seen or researched. We know what we’re supposed to be doing so the little discussion we have is minor tweaks and fine tuning. The gearing raids are not so lucky. It is often new content to the majority of the party and the people that know what the fuck is happening aren’t sharing their knowledge. If you know that MobX should be killed before MobY, don’t wait until after the wipe to point it out. Say it when the targets are being marked.

If we want progression, we need to take it seriously and quit being a social guild.

We can raid and still be nice to each other. We can hold our raiders to a higher level of personality and attitude expectations. We don’t have to accept assholes.

But if we’re just nice to each other, no one gets to raid.

If no one gets to raid, people are going to leave (more of them).

If people leave, there is no guild.

If there is no guild, there is  no one left to be nice to.

Yup, that would be me.

I really like the way I can set posts to publish at a future time, I really do, it’s a very spiffy feature.

Until I go and fuck it up.

Yesterday some of you may have thought it was an early Christmas as 4 posts appeared (and they may still be in your feed reader).

Ooopsie.

The posts that weren’t supposed to be published yet were removed within a couple hours of publication, sorry to get your hopes up.

I will be reposting them officially over the next few days. All the comments from the early-bird readers have been saved and will show up again when their posts reappear.

…

Disclaimer on tomorrow’s post:

Tomorrow’s post is the “angry post.”

It was originally written back in October and is the angry rant mentioned here.

Quite a bit of it still stands although I’m not nearly as torqued off about the situation.

The member of the progression team that couldn’t commit time has since stepped down to allow someone with more time to take his place.

The calendar still sits idly by. I even have people ask me when the next raid is… when it’s on their calendar.

We have gotten better about bringing in second and third string guild members. This *normally* works out well but then we run into snags.

Now when raids get cancelled it’s because I only have 4-5 people logged on, not 8-9.

Our other raid leader has returned. The raiding was greener on the other side but the other raiders were assholes. But now he’s on another character and doesn’t seem to be all that interested in leading anything.

I am down 2 of my 3 first string healers. Our second string healer has come up quite a ways (even healed our Sarth 3D zerg) but cannot support 2-healing most raids when we have to bring in our 3rd string healer.

To be honest, I’m a bit burned out and have been spending more time on other characters. It’s nice to just run around pick a few plants and hit a pile of rocks for a few hours.

Even my husband is burned out. Raiding has become more of a chore and less of a fun thing, and all he has to do is show up. He says if he were me he would have quit organizing raids a long time ago.

Anymore, when I log on to Arioch I’m greeted either with “so when are we raiding / how come we’re not raiding” or a calendar full of invited people that haven’t responded.

When most of the officers had to take a break for real life reasons, I don’t think any of us knew it would be for this long. I, at least, was only expecting a couple weeks but it feels like it’s been months.

I can’t maintain the level of effort I’ve been putting out when the response has been lukewarm at best, particularly from the remaining officers.

I keep telling myself it will all be better when the healers return. I have tanks, I have DPS, I just need skilled healers.

But what if they can’t return at the level they were at before?

I think about leaving, but the odds of ending up with a bunch of assholes is pretty high. I want to struggle against raid encounters not raid members.

Server transfer is an option… but I would be looking at transferring my entire stable of characters – they’re the ones that support my raiding and pursuit of pets/mounts/achievements/happiness.

And again, I wouldn’t have much of a guarantee that I could find a guild that I like, especially one that would be willing to take me, my husband, a couple of my raiding friends and some of my non-raiding friends (if they even would want to make the transfer).

What I would like to see is a return of at least one of my healers and recruiting at least one more quality raid healer. Then I would like to see the people that say they want to raid actually use the goddamn calendar.

I want to be in a situation where I have too many people signed up for an event. This actually happened the other week, it wasn’t progression, but it was still awesome. I sat out so someone that doesn’t normally get to raid got a shot at some gear and learning the encounters.

For now, I’m taking a break and exploring a few other characters.

This does not mean that I’ve stopped raiding – it just means that I didn’t finish that fail boat of a ToCr 10 we ran (which we had on fucking farm). Only 3 people showed up for the scheduled conclusion so I gave up on it for the week.

It’s the end of the year and I know there are a lot of obligations that people have to meet. I’m going to do my best to not get too wrapped up in our lack of progress until the holidays are over.

But come January… there’s going to have to be some changes.

…

So for those that have already read tomorrow’s post by virtue of my stupidity, I hope this put it into a bit of context.

For those that haven’t read tomorrow’s post, angry post was angry but I’m not that upset any more. Apathetic, maybe.

ZOMG!

Can I join your ultra-awesome guild?

I mean, you’re offering a FREE guild tabard, and those are like, what, 60 silver?

Ooooooo!

And you have ONE guild bank tab!

This guild is going places!

…

Seriously.

A guild means different things to different people, hence why there are so many of them.

Some guilds are purely social, maybe with a dash of aid in quests or instances.

Some are “hardcore,” raiding 6 nights a week for 4 hours a night and you will be /gkicked for not bringing your own flasks.

(Although where anyone could find that much content to raid in a week right now I have no idea.)

More guilds are somewhere in between.

And then there are the guilds of desperation.

LFM to join my guild plz!

I envision some 13-year-old kid at the keyboard, just wanting to be at the top of the totem pole for once.

Being a guild master will elevate you to superstardom in WoW!

Too bad your free guild tabard is only going to attract the type of people that are impressed by a free guild tabard.

(As a side note, I see these people destined for dead-end middle-management jobs. A title makes them happy and they think that people thrown together in a situation will make it work, regardless of a lack of positive incentive. When the cool tabard doesn’t work they will be confused and blame it on the employees.)

We see trade chat full of a dozen of these every day.

Sometimes I even see one or two members running around Orgrimmar for a week or so, then they fade, much more quietly than they arrived.

…

To be successful (by which I mean, have longevity and mostly happy members that stick around), a guild has to have an agreed upon purpose.

Even if the purpose is just to hang around Dalaran and gossip – so long as everyone joining knows that’s what the guild is about. Call yourselves the Dalaran Quilting Bee. Knock yourself out. Did you see what she gemmed for? And those shoes? Oh, dear she looks like a tramp. /titter

But what about these fly-by-night guilds?

Most don’t even bother to include in their spam the purpose of the guild.

LFM to join my guild plz!

A few mention that they are a leveling guild but hope to be raiding soon.

We are currently recruiting members of all levels but would prefer level 75+. Will start raiding soon.

Soon? Raiding?

If you’ll excuse me, I need to stop laughing.

Very few people level 75+ want to join what will most likely be a guild of people begging for boost runs.

Will determine raid times after we have more people.

OK, so you find what the majority of people can work into their schedule and the rest are SoL.

What if, as the guild master the majority’s time frame doesn’t fit your own schedule? Do you tell them too bad, so sad it’s your guild so you choose the raid times? In which case, why didn’t you just announce the acceptable raid times from the start and avoid all the anger and disappointment.

…

Most of my characters are unguilded.

I have my main in Shadow Rising. It’s a medium-core raiding guild.

I have 2 in bank guilds all by their lonesome. Think I have 10 bank tabs between them. I’m such a packrat.

I have one in our old guild we made when we started all our characters together before we merged. He’s just a placeholder there. I don’t really play him that often.

On another server I have a character in a purely social guild.

Each of the guilds I am in serves a different purpose.

I raid on my main, and enjoy the company.

My bank guilds store my stuff.

The social guild is just to have people to chat to, especially since it’s my only character on that server. I iz all alone and ascurred there.

But my unguilded characters do just fine.

Some I am open about and friends know who they are. I’m just a friends list away from a conversation.

Others I’m more secretive about. Sometimes the people we like and love best are the ones that drive us the craziest.

(And let’s face it, sometimes I’m not always in a good mood and don’t feel like playing nice. With friends I might feel inclined to apologize for telling them to fuck off and that sort of contradicts the reason why I probably told them to fuck off in the first place.)

…

Before starting or joining a guild, think about what you want from the guild experience.

It’s OK for those wants to change or even be different from character to character.

But be honest. Do you want to chat? Do you want to raid? What times are you available? Do you want boost runs or are you willing to give boost runs?

Do you know how to fucking spell the word “recruit?” And all the other words in your ad?

(I don’t think we should notify people that spell things wrong in their ads. It’s really a form of advertising in its own way. Or a warning.)

[lame guild name] is now recurting its OK if u dont hav gaer we will gear u up pst me for mor info

All the tabards (cool looking, of course), Vent, and bank tabs in the world cannot make up for a lack of purpose and like-mindedness.

Random people put in the same chat channel with no direction will soon devolve into a situation much akin to herding kittens.

(Hell, getting 25 people in a raid with a common purpose often turns into kitten ranching. And you’re only planning on being with those people for 4-5 hours, maximum.)

Both sides should think about what they are offering to the community, what they want from it, and what is acceptable parameters for that to fall within.

…

Maybe I’m asking too much. Maybe I have more self confidence than the average WoW player. Or maybe more self worth.

I don’t understand the desperation, the *need* to be in a guild, any guild, the first guild that will take me.

Is there a stigma against being unguilded, even at the low levels?

Likewise, I don’t get the need to head a guild of random individuals selected only on their willingness to sign a guild charter.

When I was offered the chance to lead a guild, I ultimately decided against it. I’m not ready for that type of responsibility at this point in time.

I know there are unguilded individuals on my server that are that way because no decent guild will take them, but every server has a few asshats like that and you learn who they are. I know of more asshats that are in guilds than are not and I know of some very good players that have no guild affiliation, so it can’t be used as that precise of a barometer.

Getting into a good guild, one that is recognized as upstanding by your server, can be an accomplishment. There is also probably an application process and initiation period where it’s determined if you are a good match for the guild.

Getting into a bad guild can tarnish your name for at least as long as you sport the tag.

Why then is there such a steady stream of garbage guilds being created?

I foresee this getting worse in Cataclysm with the introduction of the guild levels.

Perhaps Blizzard needs to raise the price on purchasing the guild charter?

Set some sort of standards for creating a guild? Have to have a level 80 on the server/faction sort of thing. Well, maybe 60 so as not to completely screw the people that want to run classic guilds.

Or you know what would be really awesome? Do away with the guild recruitment channel, no one uses it.

Have a “billboard” at the guild registry building in the major cities. Allow guildmasters or charter holders to post small advertisements. Have it set up like a form with the guild name, check boxes for type of guild (social, leveling, raiding, other), selections for main day and times of activity and enough space for a couple sentences, perhaps some selections for what classes in particular they are recruiting for. Maybe charge a small fee to post and have the posts fade after a week or so.

People that want to join a guild could browse by guild type and matching times. Guilds being created (and using this service) would have to have a clue about what they hope to accomplish.

…

Guilds are a good thing.

But even a good thing can be ruined.

…

This has been a public service post from the Quit Spamming Trade Chat with your Stupid Guild Advertisement Council.

A little humor for your Friday morning, wouldn’t want anyone to strain themselves with a thoughtful post after consuming mass quantities of stuff on Thanksgiving.

I know these are Soth’s favorites, so enjoy a couple of seasonal searches.

Let’s add some punctuation here…

Wow! Who wants cranberry chutney?

And now we can answer this query:

Not me. Get that disgusting crap away from me.

And they make it look so easy in the game… just get some berries and some honey. Stand at a fire and make repetitive motions with your hands for 2 seconds.

Voila!

Cranberry Chutney.

They LIE!!!

A random google search for cranberry chutney searches shows that people put celery in that shit.

Where in WoW can I buy celery?

Another one adds raisins and onions!

And allspice. Is that like the Allspark? Is there more than meets the eye on the spice rack?

The only thing that goes with cranberries is vodka. In a glass. Maybe with a lime…

/me runs to kitchen

It appears I am all out of limes, cranberry juice and vodka.

/sigh

Hmmm…

Looking for instructions?

Try here: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=3932149

Per Urban Dictionary, “turkey fucking isn’t defined yet.”

Well, sounds like someone needs to get on that.

For a warm, fuzzy feeling, try this one: http://thisfuckingwar.blogspot.com/2009/11/soldiers-in-afghanistan-enjoy-turkeys.html

…

Hope everyone had a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

(Preferably with no turkey fucking… I mean, how would you even get consent from the bird? Goes back to “kinky is using the feathers, perverted is using the whole damn bird.”)

Have a happy Turkey Day!

Hope your dinner puts up less of a fight than this one:

Short post is short.

Next couple days will be light on content – I’m on vacation and my battlegroup is down.

I have rolled a DK on another server and I’ll say, it’s kinda weird the second time around.

First off, I practically had the zone to myself.

Soth also rolled a DK on the same server. He choose an obvious name while I choose, well, a name.

I waved at him. He waved back.

He poked me. I poked back.

He whispers if it’s who he thinks it is. I whisper back if it’s got pointy ears you know it’s got to be me.

Next year's Halloween costume?

We steamroll the starting area. It’s just the two of us as well as Lilslutt and Lickkmyass of the guild “My other server is down.”

It was odd being able to actually see the NPCs instead of clicking blindly through a sea of brother death knights.

Noth was there, and Patchwerk and Gothik and Instructor Raz. It’s like a happy little pre-reunion. I know you! You dropped some phatty loot for me back in the day!

Except that wasn’t me, it was the other me… damn this is like talking to Chromie.

Now that I’ve cleared Naxx umpteen times I got the little jokes in what they were saying.

So Noth, where is Heigan?

And with the information about Icecrown that’s available it was like I could look ahead and say, “Yeah, I’ll be killing you in a few months. Just you wait.”

All your lootz will belong to us.

On my first DK I was so amused with the starting quests that my husband had to ask if I was OK. Apparently maniacal cackling could be interpreted as having an issue of some sort.

Pffft.

This time through the amusement was tempered with the frustration from being in the middle of something on my priest when my normal server went down, AGAIN.

I still enjoyed myself, but was able to keep much of my mirth from slaughtering villagers contained at a manageable level.

The epic battle at Light’s Hope was more epic and less epic at the same time, resulting in a neutral amount of epicness as compared to my first time there.

There was just the 4 of us so I could actually read all the text that was going on instead of my chat pane being spammed with a thousand people whining about “zomg too much story, let’s just go now.”

But this also meant that I had more of a clue as to what was going on and was a little confused about our surrender.

According to my display, we still had over a thousand combatants to their 200. Why the fuck are we giving up? CRUSH THEM!!!!

Well, we got sent off to Stormwind (/gasp! Alliance DKs!) to go talk to King Douche, er, Varian.

I’m following Soth who obviously has not spent much time in Stormwind. I suppose I can forgive him for not knowing the layout, it’s hard to get your bearings when you’re aggroing every guard and player in the whole city.

But this time our mission was one of peace and love.

Stroll into the King’s chambers, the guards are having a field day using Soth as target practice with produce and ignoring me.

Hmmm….

There’s the kid.

There’s the throne.

When we’ve been here to kill him, he’s always standing right there…

God dammit.

A For the Horde must have just gone through here.

Guess we should have rolled Horde.

Fuck it.

/logout

In the name of Christ.

(I wish I could link you all back to the original post that the Christ line is from but Megs seems to have shut off her archives. /pout)

Just an average weekend for us in Shadow Rising.

Run a few heroics.

Do some dailies.

Kill a mother fucking dragon.

Note the snazzy new title?

I know, I know, we took forever to get around to doing it.

What’s hilarious is it looks like I’ve missed every other Sarth-with-drakes-up run with the guild.

Now that’s efficiency.

Screw getting each individual achievement one at a time and work my way up to 3 drakes.

Pfffft.

So how did it go down?

Egads, painfully.

The new guy (and I’m going to have to come up with something else to call him) volunteered to lead the raid.

I’ll be honest, I’ve been getting a little burnt out on organizing and leading just about every raid we do so I was more than happy to let someone else call the shots for an evening.

Not to mention, he’s done this on other toons and knows all the ins and outs to this achievement.

We were short having enough people logged in so grabbed a shaman out of LFG so we could have Bloodlust.

(That’s BLOODLUST, not heroism or whatever it’s called on the other side. BLOODLUST. RAWR.)

Grabbed a pally tank out of guild and plunked him down in front of the dragon.

The guy did great, for what he could do. Someone will be speaking with him shortly and walking him through why it’s best not to have all 71 points in the protection tree.

So after about an hour, the pally gives up.

We swap him out and have one of the DPS switch to his warrior tank and replaced the DPS spot with a guildmate that logged on.

Another hour goes by.

We’re swapping people around as they log in, but just can’t get a decent composition together and we’re stuck with this lame shaman.

The shaman wasn’t pulling in any DPS to be writing home about and *he* was the one complaining the DPS wasn’t high enough…

Boom!

Two guildmates log in.

Both have shamans.

Um, pug shaman guy?

Yeah, so we’ve been here two hours… think it’s just time to call it. But it was great of you to come out and fail with us.

/disband

/reform group with all SR members

Took another hour to get the tweaks in the method down pat and to get lucky breaks on the flame walls.

We were running a caster/melee split which was not making anything easier so it required even more effort to get the planets to align with the flame walls and void zones.

Oh, and we had to talk the holy pally into actually moving out of the way of flame walls so his bubble would be available to use in the bubble/divine sacrifice combo after the tank’s cooldowns were blown. L2 dodge flame walls. =P

Now, we’ve dropped bosses in the past.

And I’m sure that collectively, we’ve spent more than 3 hours on some bosses. (Hodir comes to mind…)

And when they die there is always the rush of “Yay! Dead boss! Lootz? What’s next?”

And then we just move on. No one lingers at the corpse. No one cheers.

But this one was different.

I’m hoping Icecrown is like this. That when we finally get a boss down we are so elated about it that the loot is forgotten until we’ve all gathered around for a photo. I hope our guild forums get filled with these.

Just in case anyone was curious, here’s the damage for the kill:

4 piece Tier 9 for DKs. Nerf it nao. kkthxbai

(Army of the dead was cheating, too.)

Loot is being handed out and it’s time for the drake roll.

One of the guys said when we started that he didn’t care about the drake.

I was a little surprised that he rolled on it.

He beat my 3.

(God my raid rolls suck, this is why I’m glad we are on loot council or I would NEVER get a drop.)

We asked him to show us the drake in Dal but he just logged off.

Then the next time he was on, he was saying how ugly it was.

If you win something that you know half the raid was drooling over after you state that you could care less about the item, don’t make disparaging remarks about said item. It takes that knife and twists it so slowly… “I have something that you wanted and I don’t even like it. Neener neener. I’m banging a supermodel but going to complain that her left tit is slightly larger than her right. Neener neener.”

I would have loved it and hugged it and called it George.

Sorry about that.

I’ve been staying up far too late in the nights past.

Anyhooo, on with the show!

As with every holiday, I produce my own guide even though everyone under the sun has also written one.

This is a completely optional holiday. For those of you after the violet proto-drake, this is NOT part of the meta.

Rewards are the title of Pilgrim and an awesome turkey pet. (Summon, build campfire, laugh – it’s hilarious.)

This holiday has two main parts – the bountiful tables and the cooking. Everyone can get the achievements for the tables, but you’ll need to level your cooking up to complete all the cooking bits. You will also need to be at least level 55 to get the instance kill.

Start the event by looking for commoners in any city, they will send you to Undercity. (In case you couldn’t guess, this will be a Horde-centric guide.)

Note on bountiful tables: The chairs at the table are labeled according to the food that is available from that spot on the table and function like vehicles. Your action bar will be possessed, just like when jousting. Button 1 will be your pass/throw button and the remaining buttons indicate the different foods. Any food available to you will be lit up.

Here’s the breakdown, achievement by achievement:

Easy as pie. Or throwing pie.

Sit in any chair at a bountiful table, target a player, press 1.

Interestingly, you cannot throw food at players of the opposing faction. I was rather disappointed about that.

Now move to each chair and do the same. If there are no players close enough to pelt with cranberries, you can target another chair at the table and pass the food to that space.

The next person to sit at that chair will have a serving of that food available as an option to eat as well as whatever the chair is for.

While at the table, eat 5 servings from each chair.

So get in a chair, throw something at someone or another chair, then eat 5 of whatever’s available.

Move to next chair, stuff your face.

Continue through all 5 chairs.

5 servings of each of the 5 foods gives you the Spirit of Sharing buff.

Rinse and repeat at all 4 capitals. Note – this is the only reason to visit Silvermoon during this event.

Whereas normally we get XP buffs form events (Midsummer pole dance), this one is a reputation gain buff.

Quick, go farm Lower City rep! Or am I the only one still working on those?

And just how many is “enough?”

40 fucking turkeys.

Actually, this really wasn’t that bad.

Wild turkeys are found in Tirisfal Glade (or Elwynn Forest if you want to go kill the Alliance turkeys) and are neutral critter types with 2 hit points.

When you kill one, there is a hilarious animation to turn it into a little roast turkey carcass and you loot a turkey from it. This is important, as you’ll need those turkeys for later – loot your turkeys!

You also get a buff upon the turkey’s demise that lasts for 30 seconds and is refreshed when the next wild turkey is slain. (This buff is NOT extended by killing Lonely Turkeys, more on that later.)

So you have to kill a turkey, then another turkey within 30 seconds. Until you have slain 40 turkeys.

At every 10 turkeys you get a new turkey killing “title” that does nothing.

Hints: Tracker snacks last an hour, but require level 70 to use. Or roll a hunter and use track beasts. Turkey population is denser the closer to Brill and UC you are, but there is more competition there as well. The area north of the eastern lake is completely devoid of turkeys, don’t end up there!

Go at low population times if you can, lots of “kill stealing” accusations around this one.

Ranged classes obviously have an advantage here. But… I was able to get 84 turkeys before the buff ran out on my priest who had to resort to running up to them and beating them with a stick. I got lots of skill points for staves.

Pretty self-explanatory.

When you visit any of the cities, there will be a vendor selling a cook book. Purchase the book and open it to get all the recipes you need.

The recipes range in cooking level from 1 to 280. Done properly, you can level your cooking from 1 to 300+ using just these recipes.

And get this, the vendors even have all the ingredients you’ll need with the exception of the turkeys.

Every vendor has the mats for Spice Bread (which you should have learned at cooking level 1 from the trainer and is the base for the stuffing), the Autumnal Spices, and the Honey.

The vendor in Orgrimmar has the berries for the Cranberry Chutney, in UC you get the pumpkins for the pie, and the cows in TB have the Sweet Potatoes.

As you visit each city, stock up on the unique ingredient from that city.

There are two quest series involved with the cooking.

The first is started when you turn in the quest from the commoner.You will be sent back and forth between the cities delivering 5 of each item to whichever city is running low on that item. This quest has two parts – you must cook the food and turn it in, so no purchasing cooked food from other players. The catch? It glitches sometimes. So if I’m in UC and cook the food that I turn in at Org, when I get to Org it would have “forgotten” that I cooked that food. To be safe, just get the mats and take them to the appropriate city and cook them there.

Completing the quest chain gives you a Turkey Caller. This is an item that summons a Lonely Turkey with a 2-minute cool down. The Lonely Turkey can be killed and looted for a wild turkey carcass to use for cooking, but does not count towards the Turkey Terminator kills. It can only be used outside.

The second set of quests is the dailies. Those will require 20 of each dish but does not require that you have been the one to cook them.

Note: Most of the items are considered to be conjured items and cannot be mailed or sold on the AH. They can be traded to other players.

Speaking of the dailies…

Bring 20 of the requested dish to different cities.

I didn’t really pay attention to what went where, terribly sorry.

But of course, the city that wants Cranberry Chutney will not be the city that has the berries. This is why you stock up on the unique ingredient every time you visit a city.

Being a mage rocked for this holiday. I was given 25 gold for a port from Org to TB. Cha-ching! (Hell yes I took it.)

The dailies give one of the following rewards every time they are completed:

• Chest piece: robe, attire or dress (these are all interchangeable as far as achievements are concerned, you will need one of them)
• Hat (you will need)
• Boots (useless)
• Turkey Shooter (you will need at least 8)

Oh the joys of a PvP server.

I happened to be on right when the servers rolled over and started the event so I was at a bit of an advantage in terms of server population and awareness. There was also a server crash in the middle and I was one of the first ones back on.

You have to be wearing one of the chest pieces from the dailies, so either the robe, attire or dress.

I also stripped off my shoulders, gloves and belt as they just looked silly.

So wear one of the chest pieces, visit each city and sit at the table. You don’t even need to eat or throw food, just sit.

Unfortunately, you must be out of combat to sit. This gets a little tricky. You also cannot be mounted, be sure to dismount quickly.

If you die, try to res standing on a table. It makes it a little harder for people to get to you and you will be within range of 5 chairs.

• Darnassus – get to Rut’theran and ride through the pink portal. Keep going straight, around the tree bank and up the marble ramp. Just on the other side, to your left will be the tables. If you die, you will end up at the graveyard all the way out in Dolonaar, it’s a bit of a jog back.
• The Exodar – located by the main entrance. If you’ve ever done For the Horde, you probably went through the door closest to the docks. This is NOT where the tables are. The GY is at the northern end of the zone.
• Ironforge – all the way up the dirt road leading to the city, in a clearing to the right at the top. Didn’t die here, no clue where the GY is.
• Stormwind – Outside the city gates, on the north side of the road. GY is no longer out at the Eastvale Logging Camp, thank god. It’s now somewhere middle-ish of the zone.

This one is in Sethekk Halls (I think) out in Terokkar. It’s the one on the East side.

It can be done on normal or heroic. Normal requires level 55 to enter, heroic requires a key or rep or some stuff like that.

If you have a druid available, do it on Heroic and take a stab at getting Anzu.

You must be wearing the hat and your choice of chest piece from the dailies.

This one is probably the hardest of them all.

It will take you 2 days of dailies to get enough turkey shooters – they are one use items.

The turkey shooter has a cast time, so make sure your target isn’t rapidly fleeing from you.

The target is turned into a turkey, but loses no abilities. Turkeys casting fan of knives is pretty darn amusing.

Dwarf rogue was the tricky one on my server, rumor has it there are all of two of them.

To get that one, we resorted to some fancy mind vision tricks. I didn’t even know that mind vision could be chain cast like this, it was awesome.

I stood in the doorway of the Alliance inn in Dalaran. A friend cast Mind Vision on me, getting the bar keeper across the room in line of sight. He jumped the vision to that NPC and looked around the room.

Tucked in the corner where I couldn’t see him, was a dwarf rogue. He jumped the vision to him and I was able to assist target and nailed the sucker with the Turkey Shooter. I’m guessing true LoS isn’t very important with this one.

Then we promptly informed the local chat channel of the name and location of said dwarf rogue. Tee hee.

If a rogue is already under the effects of the turkey buff, hitting them with it will not give you credit. And the buff lasts for an hour unless they click it off.

So that’s how to get the Pilgrim’s Bounty done. I’ll leave you with silly turkey pictures.

That’s my hubby’s rogue driving the bike. We think the passenger glitch may be related to the fact that the machine is being operated by poultry.