Whats your Guild style?

A snappy little shared topic was raised by Tzufit in the Bloz Azeroth forums.

Every guild has a certain personality, style, and even traditions all of its own. Do you have certain abilities that you always need to use on a boss kill screenshot? Or perhaps your guild holds an annual holiday party? What special traditions does your guild have?

From my perspective, we have a few consistent jokes:

1. We rant about killing Dragons, often. Rawr!
2. We always try to blame one of a few players for small mistakes. If you slip and fall from the AH roof, then it’s time to find that scapegoat. Firstly its Ram’s (boomkin/resto Druid) fault, then its Dia or Gen’s fault depending on who you ask, and then if that fails we blame Ram anyway. We used to blame any Shadow Priest, but they’re scarce now. I wonder why?
3. Most raiders argue about who should get loot instead of them. That is so great.
4. We help each other. We ask questions, and we go a little extra for each other.
5. Most of the guild types almost complete sentences, and we have a few folks who are grammar fanatics. I love that, the avoidance of leet-speak makes me happy.

Happy raiding

Advice for <3k dps DKs at level 85

My Death Knight Dps rotation: Tongue, Nose, Forehead, Chin or Cheekbone (on proc), then Forehead until my eyes & nose water, then wipe face on keyboard. Repeat.

Ahem, sometimes I’m amazed by the facerollers, and wanted to help them improve. I hear league of legend is good too. Happy killing.

Cata 4.0.3 excitement

Just patched my gaming pc, watched the trailer, and read some patch notes. Darn it, that old saying really does ring true.

I thought I got out, but they pulled me back in.

Bring on mid December, when the bug fix patches have been applied, and we’re getting right into it. Fo rnow though its just as exciting to think about DeathWing attacking every damn city in Azeroth.

Cata as a Gift

The Cataclysm release date has been confirmed as Tuesday 7th December. Now the interesting and totally self serving thing about this is that it is also my birthday, so I’m really pleased. Thank you Blizzard for the thought, such a wonderful gift.  I’d hate to think of how the scale of this gift could be topped, – kidding.

But I have a issue: How am I meant to be playing the expansion (or downloading the last patch and waiting) on my birthday when my partner and family probably expect me to be talking to them that day?

Well the reality is that we will all be patching that day, and that Tuesday will probably mean more like Wednesday or Thursday. So as long as (a) it all goes smoothly, (b) I can get online, and (c) I can create a reasonable build; it will be a great birthday week.

“Cataclysm includes the best content we’ve ever created for World of Warcraft. It’s not just an expansion, but a re-creation of much of the original Azeroth, complete with epic new high-level adventures for current players and a redesigned leveling experience for those just starting out,” – Mike Morhaime

It is safe to say that I am very excited, even if you ignore the hype and flashy improvements there is still a lot of new and strange things to explore. I expect we will see a return of some players to the game due to this in the short term.

Happy hunting.

Plants vs Zombies

Via a GeekoSystem feed, and from the folks at Rock Paper Shotgun, World of Warcraft – Plants vs Zombies….like in the game! Darn cool.

Incredible, awesome, and I’m still thinking this could be a hoax. Just because total-biscut did a vid doesnot mean its not 100% legit, or at the very least it might be a trick or bonus for the beta folks. But if its not a hoax, this would be a great way to swindle away serious hours as the raid starts. The in-game mini-games is something that is kind of odd.

If the WoW game is good enough, do we need mini-games?

Or if you’re paying to play wow, is this extra? Where is the line?

It would have to be phased though? Griefers watching the fields for new players might have a field-day.

And please tell me that their is a flight point, or inn nice and close, so I can bind my hearth to that Inn, and port back to play anytime.

More mount madness

The Instance #179 & #180 talks about new mounts, and by all things holy I think we can go way past riding Hoverboards and Wasps, we can reference the fun ideas in a shared topic on Blog Azeroth, which started it up for me a while back in August 2008.

We might soon see submarines, and all sorts of oceanic mounts. I expect I’ll never see the phoenix or another ultra-low-drop-rate mount, but some of the stuff the Instance crew talk about in #179, and touch on in #180 is interesting.

Just saying its a great thing to add in an expansion, gives breadth of fun to everyone, and has no balance issues to speak of really. And I kind of support a Jetpack for Engineers; more so it can explode or go out of control.

New Legendary: Shard of the Demon Soul?

Larisa at Pink Pigtail Inn has a nice post about the drama and joy involved in Legendary items. Hmm Legendary items…..drool. At some stage I’d like to get something akin to that, even if it was just something uber rare. You know for bragging rights.

It got me thinking of what would be a good Legendary item around the DeathWing story. And it’s pretty clear to me that something called the Shard of the Demon Soul (or similar) would be great.

It sounds kick-arse to new players who don’t know the lore. If you know the lore, then even a shard or segment of it would be powerful, and it has all the aspects of a Legendary quest chain to boot. The caverns of time could get a great workout here as we jump back in time to when the Demon Soul was destroyed, so instead of it being totally unmade, the shard remains. And when we’re finally ready to dispatch DeathWing, we earn this little beauty to help complete the fight.

What about of Legendary items:

• Restored Dragon Soul?
• Essence of Sunwell?
• Tooth of Sagearas?
• Lost Eyes of Illidan?

We could even make it a little funny or odd, by way of pitching the stuff you know must have existed but is really supposed to be lost in time.

Quick noob move

Totally embarrassed to have done this – last night in Halls of Reflection Heroic,  we’ve cleared the initial room and are now running past Arthas and about to kick-off his walking scene. Like normal we stack up on the tank, just on the left of the main path, so Arthas can walk past and we can do the trash waves in relative peace.

My noob move was to back up….right off the edge of the cliff. Damn it! Shamefully its not an auto-Death, you land on a small shelf, and I get to suicide off the ledge.

Players were ok with it, I ran back, and joined the battle again. Thank god you can run back in and re-join the fight. /facepalm.

Its been a long time since I noob’ed it up that badly; otherwise the “walk backward into mobs” was my classic oh-shit move.

Random Screenshots

Q. What happens when your mates group with you in WoW?

A. All sorts of stupidity, see screen shots below after the fold.

WoW Pod – Player housing in RL

Hows this for an odd concept: a WoW Pod where you play wow.

The WOW Pod is an immersive architectural solution for the advanced WOW (World of Warcraft) player that provides and anticipates all life needs. Inside, the gamer finds him/herself comfortable seated in front of the computer screen with easy-to-reach water, pre-packaged food, and a toilet conveniently placed underneath his/her custom-built throne.

Talk about taking immersion to the next level. So impressive, but so wrong at the same time. I love it. No way in hell I’d ever buy one, but 10 points for style.

What does this tell us about the creators?

- might have too much time

- might love the game, a lot

- have a sense of humour

- you can never go too far

- parody and truth are borderline

I wonder if they have a subscription / rental option where the design is still tailored to your toon.

And they refill the goodies, clean up the crap (literally?), so you can game longer, stronger, harder than ever?

Found via wow insider, and one of the commenters actually said this:

But apparently they bothered to plumb in a toilet, suggesting we all play with our pants around our ankles. Strikes me as a gimmick rather than well thought out.

Um, dude this is real….totaly….for sure….no parody here….never satire….