Life

is

weird

sometimes.

After about four months of total silence & a clean break on both parts… um… Biggie logged onto the game the other day.  He sent me some very civilized Hi how are you tells, and went on to say he was quitting for good & sending me all his gold & items.

I didn’t really know how to feel.  It was immensely awkward just seeing him on, my first reaction was to log off!  LOL.  I just didn’t know how to respond… these overtures coming from someone whose last words to me basically amounted to “If you see me walking down the street, you’d better turn around and go the other way.” I told him not to bother, I didn’t want anything, etc., but he did as he pleased.

All I gots to say is… only 10,000 gold?  Pfft.

Maybe I’ll finally purchase that traveler’s mount, the one with the npc vendors.

I dunno.  I got terribly melancholy for a bit.  But only for a little bit.  And no one will ever know.

So there’s an officer who’s our unofficial GM (the official GM is this guy’s puppet), let’s call him Scrooge.  He is basically all of your most negative, condescending, irritating gaming personality stereotypes rolled up in one gnomish ball of discordant strife.  Super-sized ego?  Check.  Loves rubbing other people’s faces in the dirt?  Check.  Can’t take the slightest hint of criticism himself?  Check.  Loves arguing about anything, anytime, any place?  Check.

The weirdest, inexplicable part about this is… I mean Scrooge is the first person to jump on anybody’s mistake and the last to let it go, but…

So we have this boomkin who is That Guy, to the infinityeth degree.  Let’s call him Tiny Tim.  Tiny Tim is not the sharpest tool in the drawer, he’s a dim bulb, he’s… slow. Basically he’s a sweet guy with his heart in the right place; he tries really hard and earnestly, perfect attendance, always flasked… but he is just incredibly, frustratingly, absurdly SLOW.  Slow to understand things, slow to learn, slow to react, slow to obey explicit instructions, just all-around unbelievably sloooooooooow.  A guy who needs BOTH his hands held.  Did I mention he’s slow?

We have geared him up the butt- Tiny Tim’s in the top 5 best-geared moonkins on the server, yet his damage done is consistently barely above the tanks, usually BELOW the feral tank’s.  We literally carry him through most fights, and when I say carry I mean he is dead for 95% of the time. He is a wet smear of feathers on the floor watching the rest of us fight.  If you Armory’ed him, you’d think he’s good because he’s got some fairly hard-to-get Achievements, but the sad truth is he was dead baggage as the rest of the raid 24-manned not some… not most… but ALL of them.  All.  Of.  Them. We handed him his Rusted Proto-drake on a 9-man silver platter.

So here is the burning question the rest of us raiders have:

Are Scrooge and Tiny Tim related?

Because, inexplicably, to the complete bewilderment of us all, Scrooge (an obnoxious prick notorious for mercilessly tormenting good raiders for hours over once-in-a-blue-moon fluke mistakes) is strangely, astoundingly quiet over Tiny Tim’s repeated, constant, spectacular-in-their-stupidity routine mistakes.  And what’s more… he defends him!  He defends him with all that obnoxious, sarcastic aggression he normally reserves for making perfectly competent people feel bad.  It boggles the rest of us.  There is a multi-page thread on the forums about how bad Tiny Tim is and why he’s still in the raid… that thread was started three months ago.  Guess who’s still lying there, a bloody lump discreetly tucked in the corner of the room in all our raids?  I don’t wanna sound elitist but it does make me grumpy to think that this kind of person may have a chance at getting a server first… it’s not right!

I just don’t get it.

Scrooge says stuff about how valuable Tiny Tim’s raid buffs are compared to his personal damage but, as the rest of us point out, his raid buffs don’t count for much when he’s dead 5 seconds into the fight.

Scrooge says the rest of us don’t know how hard Tiny Tim is trying, and how he’s breaking his back at a minimum-wage job so he can save up and buy a new computer and not lag so much.  Nobody responded to this because we just sounded like bullies after a while, but honestly?  It’s a game not a charity.  Not to be heartless but… should that really matter to the rest of the raid?

Anyway, lag is the least of Tiny Tim’s raiding problems.  A laggy computer is not what keeps making him give his innervate to WARLOCKS, or run to the exact frost patch we spent an hour telling people NOT to run to.  About ten people sent me LMFAO OH GOD messages when Tiny Tim was assigned to be a soaker on Twin Val’kyr, and sure enough he lasted all of 10 seconds.  Nobody says anything anymore when Tiny Tim flamboyantly messes up, vent stays eerily silent as we just let the stupidity sink in, and we’re all silently flabbergasted anew at how and why Scrooge can seriously keep his mouth shut about it.  And then we move on, as if we don’t comment on such vulgar things in polite society, just sweep the feathery roadkill under the rug.

I just wanna know, why?  Scrooge is just about the least likely person in the world to take on a charity case; he’s the opposite of a carebear officer type; what the heck is going on between him & Tiny Tim?

I’ve definitely been spoiling Babyfresh too much. He’s been tantrumming a lot lately & it’s getting tiresome.

Babyfresh is a sweet kid and almost ten years younger than me (my God!  I sound old!) with a cute squeaky voice and he’s a quick learner, great gamer, and very attached to me, much like my own little sidekick, so of course I’d spoil him!  We’ve been playing for about 2-3 years together now, server transferred a few times together, etc.  So of course I like to pamper him & bully other people into being nice to him too.

But I never took into account that in real life he’s the youngest of several siblings… several doting  sisters. With doting parents who just got him a BMW for his 17th birthday.  Aaaaah!!   He’s used to getting spoiled in real life too!  He… kind of expects it!  It’s weird that I never realized until recently.  Because he’s a genuinely sweet, nice kid, not a brat.  So it was kinda hidden, how he kind of expects things to go his way.

In our last guild, we had the same exact too-many-resto-druids situation except the officers favored him.  Babyfresh commiserated with me about being sat out all the time, but he never said anything to the officers or offered to switch.  Whereas now in this guild, I’ve been making heated posts on the forums, arguing spiritedly for hours with the one officer that I have a huge personality conflict with, and switching out the majority of the time, all on Babyfresh’s behalf.  I sit for him because I don’t wanna see him down, but the thought of returning the favor or rejecting my offer rarely crosses his mind. It’s slowly dawning on me that Babyfresh takes all my efforts as his due… Little punk!

It’s hard to stay mad at him for long though, cos he’s a good kid.  I think one good talk with him will be enough to set him straight, cos he’s pretty conscientious.  And also… you know what… he’s kind of like a sponge. He’s so easily impressionable that it’s actually a little alarming- I’m really like his role model.  Like if I get excited about something, he picks it right up & gets all excited too.  If I sneer at someone for being a bad player, ever afterwards he jumps on every opportunity to point out how bad they are.  Every choice I make in game, whether it’s trying a new spec, new meta, different flask, different glyph, whatever it is… he copies it.  I actually suspect he made a resto druid in the first place to be more like me, way back when.  LOL.  Now… I never used to nerdrage, but I confess I’ve been having some bad fits of temper lately (ever since I picked up tanking on my DK- “hey can you guys wait til I get aggro I said WAIT WTF OMG OKAY FINE YOU CAN TANK IT THEN GO AHEAD YOU TANK IT I’M NEVER TANKING FOR YOU GUYS AGAIN.” Heh.  I think I’m not cut out for tanking, who knew I could have such unexpectedly explosive anger problems).  Coincidentally, Babyfresh has also become more volubly prone to nerdraging and emo tantrums as of late too.  So maybe this is all my own doing.  Bad role model!

I guess really the best way to calm him down would be to calm down myself.

Oh why helloooo there, are you still around?  Poor blog, all neglected…

Well if you’re bored you can check out my recent video log of the guild’s 25 firefighter achievement!  Yea I don’t think I’ll really become a regular vlogger, despite recent prolificity, but I do wanna film the cool stuff.  Like if we get server first Anub down!  Crossing fingers…

Things have been going pretty well, WoW-wise.  My new guild is pretty good & I really like & respect most of the people, there’s just this one person (hey if I’m not anonymous anymore should I not gossip/gripe about people anymore, cos their identities may be guessed at?) (nah who would go to the trouble anyway) who I could rant about if I wanted my comeback post to be angry, but let’s save that for a rainy day.

There’s a bigger problem than personality conflicts, anyway!  Such as… We have three core raiding resto druids.   And if I may be so bold, we’re all three very good, top of our game I’d say, and very well-geared.  With perfect attendance.  This used to be okay, but now with more & more healer apps and fights requiring more precise group compositions, we’re all three taking turns sitting much more than we’d like, me moreso because I am way too obliging of Babyfresh’s feelings.  I’ll just say it straight- the officers prefer me & the other druid (who is an officer herself) so Babyfresh is the one most often chosen to sit out, for both 10 mans, 25 mans, and special achievements (like Algalon).  He’s aware of this & has been getting steadily depressed, questioning himself, asking me if he’s not good, etc., and the sad thing is, he IS!  He’s excellent, and in any other guild he’d be a hot commodity.  It’s just really too bad that this guild has all three of us… and all three of us are so dedicated.  The obvious alternatives have been suggested- for one of us to go boomkin, perhaps make another toon our main, etc., but all three of us apparently have the same tastes- we love resto healing the best.

Anyway, in my adopted role of Babyfresh’s older sister (or something), I’ve been switching with him a lot when they try to sit him out.  But a little too much, I think.  Because I’m actually the one sitting out the most now, and it bothers me more than I thought it would.  I thought I could be mature, not whine & question myself & go all emo & threaten to quit the game the way Babyfresh does… and I haven’t been… but it’s getting a little close for comfort now.  I honestly don’t know what kind of good answer there is for this situation… I keep thinking, if only Babyfresh had stuck with his original warlock toon, but I feel guilty for thinking it because he’s absolutely got his heart set on druid healing now, and he really is a great one.  But… I don’t like sitting in Ironforge anymore and… I don’t wanna go boomkin!  :(

Otakon was fun!  Photos coming soon.  Meanwhile, I did finish a new WoW drawing… My ancient scanner doesn’t hook up to my nice new computer so I just took a crappy picture of it.  Hope you can still read the bubbles:

Heehee.  Inspired by a specific incident when there was only one pally for 25 people who all wouldn’t settle for Kings… and Mr. Obnoxious kept insisting on keeping his pet buffed although it kept dying!  xD

Well I survived my first Biggie-less weekend, mostly WoWed it out hardcore.  Thank God for Babyfresh- he kept me from feeling too lonely.  What a sweet kid!  We farmed Sethekk every day for the raven mount- no luck yet, but my goodness, it is so much faster when you’re with another druid!  We just stealthed through all the mobs except the ones in Anzu’s room.  I bet I could solo-farm it actually, but it’s more fun with Babyfresh.  We have some kinda synchronized mind-meld ESP thing going on when we play together, he’s like my little sidekick.  Hmm I hope he doesn’t think it’s the other way around.

I played my hunter a lot, she’s 42 now.  A lot of it was from Babyfresh running me through SM & Zul’Farrak.  To be honest… not to sound ingrateful but… I sometimes would prefer not to be run through stuff.  It happened a lot on my druid too- my brother & his friends all kept trying to run me through things.  I know that I’m lucky to have people who offer to waste their time leveling me, and of course I like the fast leveling and I appreciate their kindness… but sometimes I get in the groove of learning my class, concentrating on quests, enjoying my lovely pet (I finally got a gorilla!  I love him so much!  His name is Chester!  I only realized the punniness after the fact!), and then it kind of just ruins the whole experience to have to tag along just following someone picking up their droppings as they run me through an instance. 

I diplomatically told Babyfresh to go do his own thing, but he was too bored.  IMO, boredom is quite a serious epidemic once you’re done with the week’s raids.  So he just started popping up wherever I was, lurking in the background, killing my mobs before Chester could pound them into the ground.  It was really quite creepy, a big hulking boomkin trying to shadowmeld into the scenery whenever I looked for the culprit responsible for the premature death of my Hunter’s Marked target.

BTW I’m sure y’all know this already since I’m very late to the game of Huntery-ness, but this macro made my life a sunny sparkle of rainbows and joy:

#showtooltip
/cast Hunter’s Mark
/petattack
/cast Charge

My brother Mr. Obnoxious, who is renowned for being a superior hunter despite his obnoxiousness, scoffed at me when I asked if he uses any macros.  I suspect he does & he’s just pretending his leetness is all from innate magical abilities, but in any case!  Macros make me happy.  I’ve come to love Chester deeply, from the bottom of my soul, ever since I learned how to make him do everything for me.  Who needs Biggie when I have Chester?  When Chester gets big, red, and angry, he takes it out on mobs!  Ohoho… mm… yes…

I’m still painfully noob at Huntering but whatever, I’m muddling my way through and having a lot of fun at it.  It’s costing me uber gold though, spent at least 2,000g over the weekend.  Power-leveled Alchemy to 300, got 20-slot bags for every slot including the bank’s, and… I know this is Dumb x Infinity especially considering how I’m being run through several levels but… yeah I buy BOE’s from the AH.  Yeah I said it.  I did it on my druid, I’m doing it on my hunter, and I’ll do it again if I ever level another toon.  It’s a free country! 

It all boils down to how I love my druid so much.  My hunter looks like her identical twin sister.  She’s so cute, all blank-faced & clueless, I have to spoil her with the nicest gear for her current level, no matter how quickly she’ll replace it!  See, if I’d rolled a Horde from the beginning, I would be much richer right now.  I don’t know that I would feel the same desire to spoil a big ugly tusked Tauren.

YEAH I SAID IT!!  BIG UGLY TUSKED TAUREN!!  Or, B.U.T.T. if you prefer.  Yeah that’s right.  You got a problem with that?  Take it up with Chester.

So last night we brought in six new recruits to Heroic Ulduar.  Two performed excellently, one was average, two were in need of improvement, and one was gkicked for turning out to be one of those persistently clueless bumblers.  Of course you make allowances for someone’s first time, but I think that if you continue to fail for 3 attempts by making the same mistakes over and over again, and even go so far as to raise your voice to the raidleader and get all lippy (“I know, I know!  I know what the skull over my head means, okay!“) while wiping the raid, it’s fair to write you off as a bad egg.  I’m just happy that our officers aren’t hesitant or wishy-washy about kicking people like that. 

We only got Flame Leviathan, Razorscale and Deconstructor down.  All in all it was the worst Ulduar run we’ve ever had.  Our shortage of viable tanks is really hurting us.  Snuffles is an excellent main tank, but we really need better off-tanks.  Right now we’re using DPSers who’ve dual-specced but are unaccustomed-to and reluctant with tanking.  Which means adds were gambolling amongst the healers & dps.  LF good tanks plz.  If I sound a little bitter it’s because, well, I was slapped around all night by iron constructs.  >>>:^[

On the bright side, I got the healing mace.  Woot.  And a ring.  Yays. 

We use the EPGP system for loot, which I honestly feel is the best loot system I’ve personally experienced since everyone can see exactly who it’s gonna go to, where they stand in the priority line and why… but I guess nothing with loot will ever be drama-free.  We’ve got this one rogue who is one of our top DPSers but regrettably has developed a very poor attitude- he doesn’t want to waste repair bills fighting bosses that don’t drop anything he wants.  So he doesn’t bother coming in until we’re onto a boss that he wants.  Like if we happen to start up a Naxx run, he says quite reasonably, “Invite me when you get to Kel’Thuzad.”  And what’s more, he’s started a campaign against the EPGP system because we recruited a new rogue who will, in a few raids, be a viable contender for the same loot.  Very regrettable attitude.

Everybody & their mamas have an army of alts, while I have had only my beloved little dr00d to call my own for about 2 years now.  Recently, after sulkily watching Biggie run through Naxx twice with each of his level 80 toons, unable to join in because I was already saved, I decided The Time Has Come.  To Make An Alt.

At first I started a warlock because, well I dunno, it seems a lot of girls play warlocks so I sexistly and offensively had the sneaking thought that Hey! Maybe they’re easy to play!  Or they have some kind of particularly girl-friendly aspect to them!  But no, actually, they really don’t.  Or maybe they do, later on, but I shall never know because I abandoned it forever at level 6.

Hunter was my next choice and folks, I believe we have a winner.  I love being a hunter!  Or, I love being a hunter from level 1 through 10!  But I’m sure I’ll continue to love it still.  I love the shooting and the kiting and the having-a-petness of it all, it’s so awesome, I can’t believe I never tried rolling one earlier.

Are Herbalism & Alchemy weird profession choices for a hunter?  Hunters often go Skinning & Leatherworking don’t they?  The thing is, my druid already has maxed out Leatherworking and Enchanting, so I don’t want to do either of those again.  Skinning seems unlucrative, as leather is pretty cheap on my server.  Biggie said not to do Mining since he already has it on his paladin.  I figure Herbalism will save me some money since my druid spends a lot on Elixir mats, and if I’m going to do that I might as well go the whole way and pick up Alchemy as well.  If the only other options are Engineering, Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Jewelcrafting and Inscription, I think Herbalism and Alchemy look like my best bets, even if they are incongruous in a Hunter.

My brother, Mr. Obnoxious, quit the guild this weekend after a falling-out with Nerdboy, our guild leader.  Some backstory:

Mr. Obnoxious is our best DPS, probably the best hunter on our server.  He’s been playing WoW since it first came out and is indeed very knowledgeable, an excellent player by all accounts.  However, he has a terrible attitude- he gloats a lot over his own l33tness and has a bad habit of holding up the raid to insist that paladins give his pet Might for every single pull.  Paladins seriously hate him. 

Mr. Obnoxious has a special way of being obnoxious- he brags while pretending to be humble (“Good job guys, you broke 3k damage! You guys rock!” <- after posting meters that show him at the top with 5k damage. Nobody is fooled by his show of encouragement- he only does this when he breaks some personal DPS record), and he’s a greedy loot-whore but plays it off as if (and possibly genuinely believes) he doesn’t care about loot.  It’s a long-standing joke in the guild that Mr. Obnoxious always joins a raid by announcing loudly and generously, “I don’t need anything from here, I’m just here to help you guys!” but every time something drops, he will say, “Hold up, hold up… I think I could use that for my offspec!” 

Basically, Mr. Obnoxious is the type of guy who can say earnestly, with a perfectly straight face: “I’ve already proved I’m the best DPS, but it’s not about who’s the best!  I play WoW to enjoy the game, not to beat other people!  Although I CAN, it’s not important!”  Nobody really likes his attitude, but they tolerate it because he IS the best DPS and we need him for when Ulduar comes out.

So the other day we found out that Mr. Obnoxious inexplicably made this completely obnoxious thread in the WoW forums about some loot he got.  “I got 6 pieces of epic loot in my first heroic Naxx run, aren’t you guys all jealous?”  Naturally he got negative feedback, “Grats on being carried”, etc., but he decided to fan the flames with more fuel: “Wow you guys are so bitter and jealous of me”, etc.  It kinda just went from bad to worse, to the point where people were Armorying our guild and criticizing some of us for our gems, specs, etc.

Anyway, Nerdboy was pretty pissed that the guild was getting attacked & demoted Mr. Obnoxious to a low rank.  They had a little tiff which ended with Mr. Obnoxious viciously telling Nerdboy how he’s a terrible leader and not fit to be guildmaster and /gquitting. 

Biggie & Co. attempted to talk him into joining back,  but Mr. Obnoxious made his stand and joined a new guild.  Nerdboy passed guildmaster to Shammyman; I thought maybe Nerdboy was feeling down and hurt and reached out to him, but actually he seems to be in fine form, cracking snide little jokes about Mr. Obnoxious and pretty much acting quite normal. 

Biggie, having long loathed Nerdboy for his own reasons, is actually on Mr. Obnoxious’ side in this case (although he said “it’s like choosing sides between Al Qaeda and North Korea”).  Actually Biggie’s more swayed by the fact that he’d really counted on having Mr. Obnoxious’ DPS on his Ulduar team.  As his real-life sister I guess I should have more sympathy for Mr. Obnoxious, but to be honest I’ll probably miss his I-don’t-wanna-rub-it-in-your-face-but-whoa-I’m-like-so-much-better-than-you-all attitude the least of everyone.

Life rolls on…

…you start taking random cell phone pix sitting at your desk at work.

Tra La La~ Working very hard as you can see

Browsing websites...

Game sites BLOCKED YOU SAY??!?!?!!

Hmm yes, so camwhoring aside, I am no longer raiding with Strategos.  It’s pretty disheartening the way it happened- after I told him I wouldn’t be able to join his guild at least until Wrath, he said it’d be best if we part ways then.  I tried to keep it on friendly terms but he was pretty curt about it: “Okay.  Ty.  Goodbye.”  Sighhhh.