Expectations are very difficult to manage. Rant.

I was reading about the Blood Elf models not making the WoW – Warlords release, and through the comments people are extrapolating from that (a) Blizzard are rushing, (b) release might be around the corner, (c) the community deserve a little more information, (d) Blizzard have had plenty of time already and they are lazy, (e) the expansion will be terrible.

The variety and breadth of perspectives on the next expansion is telling of two things. The fan-base isn’t sure of many details they consider important, and that Blizzard isn’t actually served (in the short term) by being honest with their fans.

The company who is infamous for releasing when they are ready, and who has already said that the game will be released closer to December than July – I just don’t get it. A feature set was broad brushed a long time ago, and details are being released to keep the fans interested and also to keep WoW’s long tail of blogs, news, etc alive. The release dates cycle is very long (basically impossible to argue against) but it is not significantly longer than other expansions.

I do not think the studio deserve to be derided for communicating about status, delays, and where their thinking is, because the alternative is that they just go silent and do press releases for the blogs to recycle. For pity’s sake fan-base, start being fans.

If the long view is taken, a fan can look back at the 10 years of discussion and banter between the vendor and customer, it demonstrates that talking to fans is a good thing. Many other game devs do not discuss their products in this way, and I think they suffer less bad comments pre-release.

Comments such as this is superficially reasonable, until you start to ponder what answer would actually be satisfactory…

The only thing that worries me is this;  what has to be scrapped to allow extra time to get this in at a later date now?  Meaning, if this was supposed to be done at launch, that allowed for room for other content to be released later on.  Since this is being pushed, what content may get pushed even further or now scrapped because of this?

There is no useful answer to this question. Speaking as a manager of software projects, I see questions similar to this all the time, and the answers cannot be specific without creating another set of clarifying questions. It becomes an endless cycle of q&a…but what if…why can’t we just…why wasn’t I consulted?

As much as it might be hurtful to say the end consumers of the expansion are not stakeholders who should be involved in the timing and planning stages, so releasing information to them is done for customer engagement purposes, not to actually ask which feature should be in or out to meet a flexible deadline. Yes, they are the end paying customer, but your needs and views have been analysed and incorporated into the product strategy already. I’m certain that Blizzard are taking every feature seriously as they’ve released so many good quality products in the past. A flippant approach to features, quality, or deadlines doesn’t match their history.

Express your frustration or opinion without the dramatic rhetoric, and you might even find the vendor listening. Attack the vendor with no constructive feedback and you’ll be muted. We all know that an attack creates more clicks, but at this stage the whining is just tiresome. If you don’t like waiting, then go do something else because you’ll be waiting regardless.

The fact that one of the racial character models won’t be updated isn’t a show stopper. This announcement proves that, and tells us that they are willing to drop some non-core features to meet their target dates. Heck, drop more character models for all I care. The content (worlds, raids, quests, etc) being finished to a high quality and without defects is a showstopper, the upgrade process for the game is critical, the distribution method is critical. Even the comms plan for marketing and the planning a round their own other products and the products of their competitors is important. New character models? Sit down (imho*).

Keep in mind too that the models are not being shelved, but being delayed. This isn’t the dance studio. That is a box feature that is wonderful to drop into a discussion like this to demonstrate why something which was all but pointless to a wide range of players can also create a blather of negative feedback from a loud minority. It should never be anything except a silly nice-to-have feature. By comparison I think the new models are more important, but trivial compared to the actual story and event content for the expansion.

We need to deal with what we get at launch. Not what you wanted? Then don’t buy it.

If the lack of a particular widget ruins the game for you, then wait till it is present and join the game again during that content patch. I’ve unsubscribed during the downtime period and cannot understand the parts of the fan-base who are angry that they don’t have new content in the period where it was well communicated that there would be no new content. Too long between expansions is only true if you’re choosing to not play or not enjoying what you have now.

I’ve previously blogged about the time to expansion release being long, but it was an observation targeting the idea of doings something else with my time and money. If you are choosing to pay for something you don’t like, or sitting in front of a game which we know won’t be changing for months and expecting something new; then I think there are other issues. PEBKAC.

Happy gaming, TyphoonAndrew.

* ok, not humble.

Random stuff from MMO Champ and Blue Posts

An assembly of trivia from readings around the place, mostly from a MMO Champ post..

Mists of Pandaria Flying for Alts – “WTB Book of Pandaren Flying (BoA – requires level 90 to purchase) = 2400gold, PST.”

“We’re not sure if we’ll be doing this. The tome worked out well enough for Wrath of the Lich King as an experiment, but so much of the experience we spent a lot of time and effort shaping in Pandaria is negated by flying. In addition to the upcoming reputation changes for alts (when a character on the account hits Revered), we’ll consider other methods of potentially speeding up the leveling process for alts, but we don’t think “allow flying” is necessarily the best answer.”

Meh, either way. It would be nice but also not a game breaker to walk while leveling. It really didn’t feel restricted to me. When I bring an Alt through it will be nice to see the content faster, and perhaps level in a manner I enjoy, or have more control of. Nice, but not a drama. By the 3rd Alt I can see their point.

Updated Raid Schedule Heart of Fear & Terrace

• Oct 30: Heart of Fear (N)
• Nov 6: Heart of Fear Part 1 (LFR), Heart of Fear (H)
• Nov 13: Terrace of Endless Spring (N), Heart of Fear Part 2 (LFR)
• Nov 20: Terrace of Endless Spring (LFR), Terrace of Endless Spring (H)

Are you guys happy with the daily system playing such a large role in end-game content? (via Blizzard twitter)

“I think the valor and charms feel good because you can cap them. I think rep itself would be better with a cap.”

Idiocy. Inspired idiocy. Only a fool is happy with the gating on Valor and Valor gear.

There is almost nothing worth getting until Exalted with each gear faction, and by 90 all the other rewards are moot. Justice Points are useless as far as I can tell, and if anyone knows what Justice can be used for except for buying odd gear for alts then let me know. Please.

This post demonstrates the general feeling of linking dailies to Valor, and the time it takes. The fact that it is written in caps does nothing to dismiss that the sentiment is correct.

HEY BLIZZARD – IT SUCKS.

The charms are fine. It’s not meant to be 100% loot, its meant to be an extra roll of the dice. The dailies themselves are OK in repeat, but what they grant access to is non-nonsensical. For example I’d love to buy an upgrade now that I am Revered with the Klaxxi which was higher than item level 463 and didn’t cost Valor. Instead I keep grinding that out until Exalted so I can get an upgrade quest reward. Then I will not be doing anything for the bugs again, and would go back and kill them in the name of the Empress if given the chance.

What is trolling (post)? Well behaving like a dickhead when somebody else is affected. If you are irritating somebody, you’re trolling. If you are not sure, you’re trolling.

Here is a  happy player, with renewed faith. If sarcastic then weird, if not then why post?

A poster suggested removing rewards from LFR. Yes, I think he’s a troll, but he got 3x Blue responses, so he’s good at it. Apparently.

wow build 15961 has DK changes. Yay!

Well the Beta build 15961 has DK changes coming to a server near us all very soon; well a change. Yippee. Cough. Now this is not assured, so perhaps this is the beginning of something beautiful. Oh hell, I’ll just cut to the chase, here is the change which will benefit so many Death Knights:

• Horn of Winter now has a 100 yd range, up from 45 yds.

Now I think they’re just screwing with me.

Ramifications of Guildie Blogs

Sal is a guildie of mine and she’s started a blog – They Call Me Sal. It is a very personal and honest set of observations about being a wow’er, and also peripheral life stuff.

Her current topic is How do you name your wow toon? I’ve ranted a bit on that many years ago, but I’ll post again now too. See further down.

Gen is a guildie, and the current GM no less (ah the endless joys of being in leadership). Her blog – Untamed Hell Cat. Gen is a tad more ranty than Sal outwardly, and loves a good joke at the expense of all of us, a meme or two, or idiots in trade chat and LFR. Like Sal’s blog it is also worth a read.

Hellcat’s post is almost too much Drood-speek for me to type – oh flame kitteh how i miss choo! Don’t take that as theme for all the content, it is a hat tip to Alamo (?name?)  and is contextual to the post topic.

So what happens when guildies blog?

As a guild we’ve gone from strength to strength, even though there have been hiccups, arguments, and dummy spits. I’m interested in how many people within the guild have blogs, and what that might say about our age and demographics. If I get some stats and evidence to assert a theory I’ll certainly post here. It is easy however for me to say that I’m opinionated and the blog helps with that.

For many years I was the only regular blogger, and that gave me some capacity to write about events, or capacity to control when I did not to write about events. As a guild member though I do not expect to see incidents of the guild posted in public (or certainly not without compassionate consideration), and now that more of my guild are writing their own blogs I feel that the shoe is on the other foot. It is an interesting change in the balance.

A blog can be a soapbox, therapy, and all sorts of things. It may spark discussion, or cause issues of it’s own.

In our guild’s case I’ve not see any drama from bloggers, and I’ve hopefully not caused offense to those we care about. So for us there have yet to be any poor ramifications of guildie blogs. I know for certain that this is not always the case, and sometimes regular posts of that style can garner huge feedback. DramaMamas on WoW Insider is such a blog. I don’t blog for feedback, I do it for the joy of writing the blog. Frankly that is reflected in the small readership, and in a strange way having a small readership means that I can also say what I wish.

So there it all is – a set of wow bloggers virtually standing on our soapboxes, talking to the masses that pass by on the internet (I was going to say, “that pass by on the information superhighway”, but I think that term is as dead as floppy disks).

MMO Champ DK Comments

Some recent forum comments from the Devs, via MMO Champion – nice ideas, stupid responses, as you’d expect. Have a read DKs, its slightly informative, but essentially we will see everything stay very similar.

In particular though a section miff’ed me:

The Comment

While I admire the persistence of my fellow DKs, and agree fully with the above issues, I can’t help but look at the plethora of ignored threads that exist and throw my hands up in despair.

The Response

Not helpful. You guys have an enormous capacity to influence the quality of these forums. We’re not going to ban our way to a higher level of discussion, nor are the busy developers going to post every time someone feels neglected. Post your feedback. If you have done so, then consider your job done. Once you go from posting feedback on the game to posting about about how we have not yet responded to or acted upon your feedback, then you are doing damage to the forum discussion. Think like a good newspaper or magazine writer – make sure the most important part of your message gets across. Don’t distract from that message with a bunch of clutter or needless posts (including shameless bumps).

Consider this: it is not in your best interest to make it harder for community managers or developers to find actionable, detailed, constructive feedback.

I try not to make it a habit of posting in really whiny threads, so if you don’t get a response, that is certainly one potential reason why. It’s far more likely though that we are just really busy and reading takes much less time than responding.

The WTF

Responding that they don’t like whinging posts is almost as effective as the whinging post itself. Clearly the person posting is trying to express frustration, and (mostly) would not be doing so unless they felt it would assist, build awareness, or reenforce their distaste for something. However STFU, and the dev should continue to ignore it (but then I should too).

Yes, I agree with the idea of not over populating the forums with junk or whine posts, but expectation management is part of the role which forum mods must accept. As counterpoint a “thrown hands in the air” player is probably a lost cause. Have a break, read a book, whatever.

OR

Let the devs of the responders off the leash with no holes barred fighting, ranting, and swearing. Give everyone involved the opportunity to be total bastards to each other, in a special place. If you read/enter that area, you accept what you’re getting. Heck – call it the 4Tran Forum.

Its a bit ranty. But hey, DK rants are not new.

Old topic rant: Lockouts

Today’s blog post pinged because I was listening to the Outlandish
podcast and one of the guys was chatting about the lockouts. The lockouts
in place now strike me as odd.

Sharing SOPA Rant

I’ve made a rant about the anti-piracy bills in the USA and the SOPA movement. Its important enough that I want it shared here too so it reaches a different readership.

What to do if SOPA Passes

Now returning you to some more rants about RPG, Warcraft, and pugging as a casual with no patience.

Hate: Constantly moving tanks

Today’s post is a little rant to get something off my chest: Tank moving mobs too much. I hate it. A lot.

Recently in a LFD run the tank was constantly moving the creatures. Now I don’t mean slowly moving them in a reverse circle to gather them up (bears do this, it makes sense), or a tank moving so that nothing is flanking them. Or even adjusting because shitty dps don’t know not to stand in front while the baddies cleave or use flame breaths – I mean constant changing where they stand randomly.

This idiot tank walked forwards, backwards, and sideways through the monster’s hit box so that both he and mobs needed to switch facing all the time. The entire fight against multi-mobs, he walked around constantly. Showing his flank to the mobs, switching around, even bloody jumping from time to time. It was like watching a pvp battle. What made it funny (in a sad way) is that he totally ignored the two melee asking him to stay still. That request just seemed to make him spin and dance more, which made the fights longer, and I suspect he took some serious damage from it too. Yup, an idiot.

I don’t get it, and think its a sign of a bad tank and a player who does not understand the mechanics of tanking.

The tank tip: Gather the melee baddies so they are all in your face, none behind you, and preferably all your team are behind them. ie:

(Tank)–> <— (Angry mobs) <— (melee) <— (healers and range)

This way the melee can hit from behind happily, you can see when the mobs move away, your healers are protected by the melee, and nobody has to move anywhere. All cleaves and spells will only affect the Tank.

Reward the rare in Random Dungeons?

Blizzard has announced a new scheme which will reward the rare types of role in the queue with rewards. If you are the role that is most needed – you’ll have extra cash, pets, mounts, all the good stuff. But it feels like a solution looking for a problem.

It will be worth tanking – but only slightly more. Not significantly more, and as the reward is not gained for guild groups – so we’re actually discouraging friends from playing together. Why? It should at least allow 2 people to sign-up together, and 3 would be better. Would it matter if 3 guildies took 2 stranges with them on a run? Wouldn’t that speed the rewards a little too?

It won’t fix the fact that dps rolls on my Tank gear, and vice versa.

It won’t stop any role gear going to the wrong roles at all, which is what pisses me off the most. Almost every dungeon the loot from the last roll will be a series of Need rolls. Why? Because there is no recourse to stop them doing it.

It won’t stop people being rude, or kicking without reason.

It won’t stop the time wasters, the AFK’ers, and the gogogo-moron-boys.

It won’t stop Loot Fever. Except it could be easily stopped, as we have had roles for a long time, and its just lazy to think that we can code specially for Orbs, or for some mounts, but can’t figure out that gear with Dodge is a Tank item. Total bullshit.

I really hope my friends and guild are happy to keep doing runs, and I’d rather run with them than get a new mount. I’d rather walk.

Happy killing….end rant.

Guild Ethos – Scrambled Eggs

You can’t look at a character’s Armory profile and know if they will fit your guild; any more than you can look at a person’s shoe size and know if they prefer scrambled eggs.

Like almost every detailed application process, the way somebody fills in the application sometimes tells you as much as the information they provide – look for the context, thinking, and subtle indicators, and then reap the rewards.

wow calendar improvement thought

Quick thought I had while tring to suss out invite mods, guild events, and all sorts of other tricky tasks – the in game calendar could be greatly improved by make the accept in calendar sign-ups also allow selection of role.

Meaning the selection of Tank, Heal, Range, or Melee; and having a sort on that field, just like the sort on guildmember rank, etc. Off-spec would be handy too, but not nearly as good as having the role that the character will bring to the raid.

Confessions of a WoW’er

1. I’m a drooling maniac when it comes to WoW, particularly doing dps. I like it. Love it. Wants it. Tanking is awesome too, but not dps by half.
2. No way in hell I’ll play WoW (or any game) when I’ve a perfect partner at home wanting to head out and do stuff. While she’s studying or working though…
3. I don’t believe anyone is really in the game for anyone except themselves, or very close friends. ie. If a guild talks about being a Family, they better be folks that you have met and know in real life, or been playing with for a very long time. Otherwise your family vibe is a bit of a stretch.
4. I’m a loot whore. So is everyone else.
5. I will never have enough gold, even if I had max gold I’d spend it on something.
6. Healers are almost always praiseworthy, as they’re doing something I don’t like doing.
7. Gear will always date, and mean nothing 1 year later. Its like that link from Terminator “in 100 years who is going to care?”.
8. You think your Alt is way cooler than I do.
9. I honestly don’t care much for WoW RP. I respect it, but can’t get it to click in my head.
10. PvP still feels like a disorganised mess to me, and making PvE content do PvP is a reason to stop. Not a big reason, but its plain silly.
11. I think your vanity pet is vain.

Rather be pugging than helping mates? (rant)

Its a shame, but after a Ulduar run with some mates, I’d rather be puging. It will most likely be the last run I do with them, at least without saying I want an equal roll on loot.

As back story: I’ve known some of these guys for quite a while and are mates with a few in real life.

When the opportunity to do 5 mans comes up, I don’t hesitate. They’re a solid set of gamers who all have a good attitude and spirit. But on Guild runs there is a policy of only giving loot to the extra folks if a guild member does not want it. Which is rotten for the pugger (me), but most of the time I don’t want the loot anyway. Historically I’ve been past over at least 10 times. Most of the time they’re doing things that I’m past, and I’m there for fun and the odd badge. So generally this is OK. I don’t sweat it.

Until I join them in an Ulduar progression runs. They’re learning, and have not done much of the Ulduar content yet. We are all wiping, we all use mats, flasks, feasts, etc. We all have repair bills. Then an item drops that is an upgrade for three people, and I win the roll, but it is assigned to a guildie instead. Well bugger me, now I feel like a sucker for coming along.

To put it another way – if they had pug’ed that 10th spot, they would have had to share openly on rolls. That means that a stranger has better chance of loot with them than somebody they’ve know for ages and has helped them in the past. That is why I’m miffed.

My lesson is to now speak up front with their GM, and state that no loot means no run for me from now on, and wish them luck. The worst that can happen is that they say they’d rather run 9, or wait for a guildie, in which case I save gold on wipes and pug something else.

(I know, a loot drama post. But its been a while; and its the basis of most wow threads)

Paid Faction Change

Faction change was announced a few days ago, and its been a heated and typically whine filled debate.

Good god wow community, quit your bitching. Folks seem determined to crap on any idea, change, or shift in the game. I like reading the constructive feedback, can stand the “but this might break…” posts, but there seems to be a solid contingent of players who are determined to find anything that is new and bitch.

Like I said in one of the threads on project lore:

There is no gear, achievement, etc issue that cannot be solved with a little logic.

The players who want this service will pay well for it, and it pretty obviously not aimed at players who are happy to re-roll. Its not aimed at hardcore “back in my day..” players either. The players who want it will also accept some fudging of results too. Its aimed at players who wish to play without re-playing the content. And they’ll have to pay – more power to ’em.

Just like paid toon transfer (or the barber shop, recruit a friend, easy modes, or frigging anything) you don’t have to use it and it does not hurt your game if somebody else does.

C’mon guys, there are great things to talk about.

• Players might to to play with their friends otherwise lost to other factions.
• It can be used with some rules to help realm balance.
• You can switch a toon over to see how the other side of the game without starting from scratch.

I’d like to see them allow the races to stay the same, but the toon make a permanent Faction change. There is no class unbalance anymore (shaman vs paladin); so having a Human traitor to the Alliance; or an Orc who was raised by elves but did not revolt like Thrall is a cool idea.

Give the player base one Traitor per server limit, and see what the RP realms do. They’ll go nuts with stories, movies, and all sorts of roleplay.

ps. yup, I know I bitch like the rest of them from time to time. Ohhh the irony.

Looking forward to…

There seems to be a general pause or slow down in players at the moment. I’d say its a summer thing, but I also think it has to do with folks wanting to get further through content; combined with new content being announced. It may also have to do with the release of the PTR for testing Patch 3.2, which is looking like a very exciting update.

Rather than dwell on the negative, here are some things that I am looking forward to.

• Running Heroics for new tokens. Yummy high level gear, which hopefully increases the number of pug runs.
• Having more play time sooner or later, hopefully. Work / Life balance is hard, and I miss wow when I only play 2 nights a week.
• Hoping that the “link your achievement” bullshit will soon die, but I suspect its here to stay. Players who insist on this just don’t realise that my Alt might not have the achievement, but my main has, and I know the fight backward.
• Tanking more. I dipped my toe in the metal-flesh-wall-of-pain mode of wow again and liked it. I’m not too fussed by the ptr changes to Death Knight tanking, as I trust (trusting the community is not something that happens every day) that DK tanks are a little too strong when compared to everyone else.

Northrend map chosen as it represented the excitement I had when they first announced the Wrath expansion, and all the Death Knight, lore, class, etc changes began in earnest.

Noth’n Suss

Nothing suspect about a level 1 warrior pinging all classes and such. His name seems to be gibberish. Nothing at all. What strikes me as odd is how (after how easy the interface is) this guy couldn’t even use a macro properly. Fail.

So hard to get good help these days. I reported him just to be sure, and at least that keeps his spam from interfearing with Topper and Miller’s spam.

Random news and thoughts

No major theme for this post, just a series of stuff that I found, saw, or experienced over the last week. Read more about bad pugs, WoW Ripoffs, Mortigen’s titles, and 10m vs 25m below.

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….

Patch notes 3.1.1 thoughts

I’m sure every wow player is aware that 3.1.1 is being deployed across the realms tonight, and there are a flurry of updates, and a few fixes applies over the last few days. Mainly downward adjustments to Ulduar, but a few class changes too. The weather report version might be: A mostly fine and sunny patch, occasional slight nerf, with light QQ, and moderate wind in some areas.

Some thoughts:

1. Firstly we get our talent points back again. Cool, especially for folks who were still mucking about with a few different specs. Comes at a handy time and I’ll take the opportunity to muck about with spec again. Any free respec is worth considering a tinker.
2. The scaling down of content in Ulduar is sure to make most of the community happy, but some angry. Some guilds are having trouble (mine), others are making slow-ish progress, and a few are tearing the place apart. Kudos to ’em. If the tiny percentage of players who already think this instance is too easy are upset, I hope I don’t hear them in a lift or on the street. I’ll slap them as its just too early to say anything definitively. If its too easy for you then you get to fountain dance in T8.5 before everyone else. Grats.
3. DKs get a 50% reduction in the maximum amount of damage blocked by Anti-Magic Shell (was 100% health, now 50%). This feels like a pvp adjustment that is a touch too wide, but what ever. Maybe DK tanking was too easy for spell damage too? Pfft. I can’t say that the change is class breaking and can’t say that it will shut any folks up about DKs being over powered. Its the player, not the class. It was and will still be a damn fine ability.
4. DK also get a Death Strike change which feels nurf-ish, but again not the end of the world.
   

   We have since made another hotfix to just change the way the healing works completely. It now heals 5% of the death knight’s health per disease on the target, up to a max of 15%. This should allow Frost and Unholy to benefit from Death Strike healing while letting Blood benefit from extra Death Strike damage. The tooltip will not reflect this change until we can patch the client.

5. This note is wonderful: “Katherine Lee should no longer be attackable in Dalaran, meanies.” Just what I like about wow, this made me laugh. And also made me wonder who could be bothered.
6. If the rumoured WG exploit is real, then I hope they fix it now too. Either side being able to cheat is nothing to brag about, or take advantage of.

Go read the rest at MMO Champion.

Quick haiku and random thoughts

Some random creative lines that are running through my head. Some if this is warcraft-ish, some just observational. The further you read the less responsibility I take for your sanity and my writing. [rant inc]

Conan
Barbarian slave,
sunders a raging horde,
never to find peace.

unrelated to…

Proudly she walks on,
while adversity abounds.
I stand still amazed.

And lastly something that makes even my sense of sarcasm twinge with political incorrectness: I was chatting in guild a few days ago about the definition of wife. Its one of those guild chat conversations that stays borderline polite, but we’re taking the piss out of each other. When one guys says something like obviously you don’t know the definition of w.i.f.e.

I didn’t know what he was talking about so used the google:define tool to look it up. The 8th result was:

define: wife = A lady who said “I will” and has done so ever since.

…I did warn you. That is just mean. I bet she would say far worse things about her husband. Or perhaps her ex-husband. Reminds me of the Devils Dictionary, as that is pretty subtle.