Monthly Archives: March 2012
The search for intelligent life on Earth Online
Okay, so enough is enough already. After I put up my catch-all application info last week for a new Earth Online guild, I’ve been fielding responses from a bunch of guilds and asking around for more options, and HOLY CRAP there’s a lot of fail out there. And look, I’m not even talking about progression, because, whatever, there’s like a hundred reasons why a guild might be going faster or slower even if they know what they’re doing. So that’s fine, you clear the content that you clear.
What I’m talking about is all these guilds you see floating around that have to be run by frigging idiots. And okay, I think I’ve already established my opinion of most guild leaders, but I’m talking serious no-fucking-around pants-on-head IDIOTS here. Like the ones you see advertising in general chat in-game where every other word in the blurb is fucking spelled wrong. Or even the ones you see every once in a while that somehow manage to spell their GUILD NAME wrong. No, I’m not kidding – I’ve seen this a few times. Look, you guys all know by now that I write poetry on the side – I like words, okay? I don’t like watching them get crapped on by a bunch of morons on the internet.
Oh, and by the way, one more axe I have to grind with these illiterate asshats – you know who you are – you ever see what happens if someone tries to call them out on BEING illiterate morons? “lol it’s the internet not Common class lol” – seriously, does that happen ANYWHERE else? Would you EVER have someone, say, try to hold a sword by the blade, and fuck their hand up like an idiot, and then if you call them out on how stupid that was, they roll their eyes at you and go “OMG we’re not in a battleground” like YOU’RE the one being an idiot for thinking that if somebody’s going to be fucking around with a sword at all, they should maybe know the blade from the hilt.
So okay. LOOK, idiots. Read this REALLY CAREFULLY, sound out the words if you have to, because you’re about to fucking LEARN something, maybe, if you’re not already too braindead to salvage. Are you paying attention, you fucking fuckwits? Okay. So: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE IN COMMON CLASS TO SPELL YOUR FUCKING WORDS RIGHT. You know why? Because people who aren’t fucking stupid DO NOT sit around and go “Well I know how to spell this word, but it’s just the internet, so it’s really not worth the extra trouble, so I’ll just save the effort and spell it this other way that’s wrong but what the hell it’s just the internet ffs” – yeah, people DON’T do that, because you know why? Because if you know how to fucking SPELL, you just DO it and don’t even think about it, and then you go about your merry not-retarded day. And if you DON’T know how to spell, then people are going to figure you’re just stupid, because hey, guess what, YOU MOTHERFUCKING ARE.
So yeah, anyway, rant over.
So you know what? Hell with it. Toka had a suggestion in the comments the other day that I should just form my own guild, and you know what, I think there’s already enough of a track record for me to say I’d be a better leader than most of these EO GM’s (I’m looking right at you, Manageurdeath). So yeah, here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor – I’m starting a guild! So if you’re on Goldwater-Kalimdor server or you think you could use a change of scenery, hit me up. I know Spazzle and Mokvar are going to be helping found it with me, and I know Garona plays so maybe she’d be interested in rolling an alt here at least.
So, who’s in?
YOU CHOOSE another EPIC VERSE!
Not a lot of mail this week, so I’m going to hold off on doing a mailbag for today. In the meantime, though, I thought I’d toss out yet another of my GENIUS READER PARTICIPATION EVENTS. This one went over pretty well the last time I did it, and it’s been a while since I treated you all to one of my masterpieces, so here we go again: vote below to pick the theme of my next brilliant and inspiring EPIC VERSE!
Mag’hari house guest
Sorry I haven’t been posting the last week. I’ve been pretty busy here in Orgrimmar, and not even with anything big and momentous like wiping out the Alliance or even the aftermath of Deathwing biting it. This past week my Greatmother has been visiting from Nagrand, so I was showing her around and just generally keeping her out of trouble.
As it turns out, just getting her out here was a big production all by itself. I offered to send a mage to port her straight here, but oh no, no way, turns out apparently old people don’t trust mages and their new-fangled portals, no sir, so we had to arrange to get her out to the Dark Portal to come through that way. By the way, funny how she didn’t want to take a mage portal because those things are dangerous and unreliable, and yet she was totally okay taking the DARK PORTAL which by the way HAS “PORTAL” RIGHT IN ITS NAME TOO, only with dragon heads carved around it and warlocky fel magic buzzing all over it because we all know NOTHING ever went wrong with THAT.
So anyway, we finally got her out to the Dark Portal and through to the Blasted Lands, and then over to Grom’gol to catch the zeppelin up to Orgrimmar. On the way I hear tell she promised home-knit sweaters to a couple of the Grom’grol guards and one of the goblins on the zeppelin, because, you know, you really need a sweater when it starts getting nippy out there in the tropical jungle. I bet most of the problems the Darkspear ended up having in Stranglethorn could have been cleared right up if someone had through to crank out a few cardigans.
So we finally got her up here to Orgrimmar, and I have to admit, I was kind of hoping that she would be at least a LITTLE impressed with the place, or with me being Warchief, but oh no. First thing she comments on is how we’re still under construction even with the Cataclysm happening however many months ago, and how it wasn’t even that big of a cataclysm, not like in her day when Draenor literally got ripped into pieces, and us young ’uns have it so easy thinking a few earthquakes and some tidal waves count as a capital-C definite-article The Cataclysm – and meanwhile they had their settlements rebuilt in a few weeks. Which, everything else aside, yeah, like I needed another reminder of how those goblins are seriously taking their damn time on the construction work.
Oh wait, hold on, let me correct that. That wasn’t the first thing she commented on. No, the FIRST thing she commented on was the ritual tattoos I’ve gotten since the last time she saw me, like “Oh, is this what you kids are doing nowadays? All these young people running around with their tattoos, calling them ‘ritual’ and acting like that means they’re in touch with the ancestors. I know my ancestors knew the actual rituals. You know they’re only going to stretch and sag as you get older, don’t you? Don’t say I didn’t warn you…” Oh and then there were the pieces of Mannoroth’s tusks that I wear on my shoulders – “You wear those to work? For important meetings and everything?” And when I pointed out how they’re from Mannoroth, who killed my FATHER, and how I’d used parts of the pit lord’s remains to fashion the shoulders and my throne in Grommash Hold, all I got for that was “You don’t think that’s a little tacky?”
Also, as if all that wasn’t fun enough, for the first two days pretty much all I heard about was Thrall and how proud she is of him for saving the world from Deathwing and how great it is that he and Aggra are having a baby and by the way WHEN THE HELL WAS THRALL GOING TO TELL ME ABOUT THAT?! First the wedding and now this, the FUCK, man? And anyway, that was all kinds of fun, being reminded on and on about how awesome Thrall is, and how happy she is that she’s finally going to have great-grandchildren. And then she made some mention about how apparently Kilrath has a daughter around my age that she wants me to meet, and yeah that was all kinds of awkward. Ugh.
Over the next few days a bunch of the other Horde leaders came by to meet her and pay their respects, which I’ll admit was pretty cool of them, and she seemed to like Baine especially, gave him the whole “nice young man” deal that old ladies love to throw around. And everyone was nice to her, don’t get me wrong, but like…I mean, I know I can get cranky sometimes, but I really try to watch my mouth around Greatmother. Not least of all because if she catches me swearing she used to give me a good hard yank by my ponytail, which was one of the main reasons I cut it off eventually, but I’m also not in much of a hurry to find out what she would come up with for Plan B now that it’s gone. So anyway, I try to rein it in when I’m around her, but I swear the other leaders were making a point of giving me bad news in front of her and just generally saying things to see if they could set me off. Vol’jin especially. Meanwhile Greatmother just seemed to get a kick out of everyone. I don’t think she’s really clear on what the Forsaken actually are, though, what with her calling Sylvanas “that nice elf girl” that seems like she could use some sun. (More like she could use some SunWELL, am I right? OH YEAH I WENT THERE.) I’m thinking it’s just as well that I don’t clear that one up for her.
Anyway, that’s a sampling of my week, and I’m sure I’ll roll out a few more stories about it if you want to hear, maybe toss a few quotable quotes in the Twitter feed or something (#shitmygreatmothersays maybe). For right now, though, she just left to head back to Nagrand, so if you’ll excuse me, I have a tavern to go visit.
[Header image provided by Khizzara from Blog of the Treant, used here with permission and many thanks.]
Monday mailbag
We’ve got a bunch of letters today, and there’s a definite Earth Online theme going on this week. So let’s get right to them…
This “Decision 2012” world event in EO is starting to look pretty interesting. And it looks like it’s pretty easy to participate, despite what some of the guides tell you.
It looks like the basic layout goes like this: right about now, you have local zone-wide events to pick “delegates” to a “convention”, to select a faction leader to contend for the office of “President”, which is the EO version of Warchief. Actually contending for faction leader sounds like an immense pain in the rear, but participation at the zone level isn’t all that hard. There’s a kind of back door in that the devs may not know about yet.
Now, the strategy guides will tell you that if you want to participate, you need to max out your “Politics” secondary skill, and grind rep with one of the factions. If you don’t have time for that, what you can do is look for a sub-zone with a ridiculously unbalanced faction population. Like, for instance, the “Texas” sub-zone, although I’ve heard that parts of “California” or “New York” will do just as well. Anyway, on your sub-zone’s scheduled day for the local event, you just show up at 7PM server time for the “Precinct Caucus” raid. Queue for the low-pop faction. And … you might be the only one to show up. Which means, you’ll be rocking a “Precinct Chairman” title for the rest of the world event. And, you’re guaranteed a slot at the “Senate District Convention” raid, which happens about a month later.
Beyond that, I’m not sure how it works. I’ve never been to a “State Convention” raid, or the “National Convention” either. Maybe I’ll make it that far this time around. It’ll be a few months before I know, though. I’d planned on making the “Precinct Convention” raid next week, but my sub-zone is having trouble applying the most recent “Redistricting” patch, which has thrown a wrench into things.
Still, it should be fun.
–A Concerned Citizen
It IS kind of cool how they’ve set this up, ACC, with the contenders for faction leader all squaring off with the server-wide push to gather resources to eliminate some of them before the big final match-up. Right now on my server it looks like there are a LOT of people running around crafting the Negative Ads needed to wear down the contending mini-bosses, although I kind of have to wonder if that ends up weakening whoever comes out in the end if it’s not a runaway victory. Then again I guess there are the Fundraising dailies, where some of the Negative Ad debuff can be offset by pouring money into somebody’s campaign fund. (And I thought the Shattered Sun Offensive were bad about asking for handouts – at least THEY gave you their “of the Shattered Sun” name tag for your troubles.)
Here’s the part I’m not too clear on, though – between these “primaries” and then the bigger “general election,” is every individual server going to have a different outcome as far as who the Warchief is going to be? Because it would be kind of weird story-wise if they don’t have one consistent leader across the whole game…but if it’s going to be standardized and preset, it kind of defeats the purpose of all these world events where it makes it seem like you get to have an effect on who ends up in charge.
Anyway, at least they’re having a world event like this to account for a possible change in leadership. It would kind of suck if you just logged on one day and the old leader was gone and the new leader was in place and the whole damn world had just gone topsy-turvy overnight.
Riiiiiiight… You totally disappeared because you were kidnapped and used in a bloodletting ceremony to have the spirit of Cho’gall take over your body. And also you’re Garrosh, warchief of the Horde. You seriously expect me to believe this shit?
First of all, as far as your “blog” being “proof” of your claims, do you not realize this is the internet? Anyone could start up a blog and pretend they were anybody. Oh look, I’m going to start up a blog as Elune, because I’m totally a beautiful night elf goddess! In the moooooooon!
Secondly, there’s no way Garrosh is smart enough to be able to string four words together, never mind learn touch typing and a complicated rotation in a video game. He’s an orc! Have you ever talked to one? “Me tired.” “Okie dokie.” “Something need doing?” And have you seen the size of Garrosh’s head? His brain must be half the size of a normal orc’s.
Thirdly, if you were Garrosh, which you are not, that ALONE would justify me booting your ass from the guild! Why would I ally myself with the most barbaric, disgusting, hated enemy of the Alliance? Actually, I fucking hope you ARE Garrosh so that every time I see you I can camp your corpse for ten hours to remind you who the fuck owns Azeroth. (Hint: It’s not the invading orc scum.)
And finally, I’m not even going to click your link. Do you think I’m an idiot? I don’t want any viruses or creepy porn pop-ups.
Don’t contact me again or I’ll report you for harassment.
–Manageurdeath, Guild Leader, <West Coast Avengers>
Oh this guy really really really wants this to end badly, doesn’t he?
I was in a bad enough mood about this asshat kicking me from his lame-ass guild before he turned out to be some fucking Alliance out in Theramore. And before he decided to go all personal. And racist, did I mention racist? Goddamn fucking human.
So ANYWAY, Manageurdeath – or should I say Brant Jasperbloom, herbalism trainer who I’m guessing fell back into that line of work after months of bringing Jaina flowers didn’t get him anywhere even though she’s JAINA, because I guess he’s just that much of a loser? YEAH YOU GOT THAT RIGHT. Boy it’s good thing I’m not really Garrosh, otherwise I would have a tech guy who can trace IP addresses AND an investigator based right there in Dustwallow Marsh to follow up on leads and make sure I’ve got the right guy, and he might even be a rogue to boot so he could sneak right on into town and peek in on you in person, and by the way you REALLY ought to clear out your browser history because you and I both know you sure as fuck don’t need ME to send you any creepy smut links, RIGHT?
And yeah, you go right ahead and report me for harassment – when I fucking BURN THERAMORE TO THE GROUND. Just you watch, Jasper, it’s coming sooner than you think.
Fucking hell I hate guild leaders.
Hahahahaha! You actually named your toon “Omgipwnedurface”? I thought that was a joke! XD
–Garona Halforcen.
PS: You should really move those two points from Overtime into Tenure. And your best secondary stat is Funding because then you won’t have to worry about going oom (out of money) and will be able to use upgraded versions of your lessons more often. So drop some Charisma and stack Funding — your throughput will go through the roof! Don’t you ever read the Self-Righteous Pricks forum?
Yeah, yeah, that’s my toon. One of them, anyway. I’ve also been playing around with a veterinarian alt a little.
And since when did YOU turn into the be-all expert on every other class? Come to think of it, Garona, what do YOU even play in the first place? Anyway, this shows how much you know – you’ve got your specs mixed up. The Funding secondary only does you any good if you’re speccing deep into the Sciences tree and get a Research Grant set bonus. Otherwise it’s just wasted points, because frankly if you’re going with more of a “Liberal Arts” setup for your Pedagogy aura, you’re going to be going OOM all the time no matter what. The 5% buff to your money doesn’t do much good when it’s a 5% buff on next to nothing in the first place. Why do you think we have to spend so much time farming tuna fish in the supermarket zones?
Decided i needed to go on a trip , somewhere im not going to be seen. Youve got a big list of alliance you want to see dead so i thought it was a bad idea to muddy up your head with the reason why and just let you know that it isnt important. Its important that ive had alot of time to myself to think though. Its why ive had time to catch up with some questions that have been swimming arround in my own head, problem was they were probably questions you get every week, how come your so great, How do you manage to keep inspiring the level of awe you are now and your thoughts on how to deal with a person using teeny-tiny harmless little words that might have been misunderstood to mean that they wanted someone else to be warchief, that sort of thing.
But then I read this weeks mailbag and thought that since Sylvanas had hacked your admin id see if i could ask her something before your goblin locked her out.
So here’s the question,which im going to try to word very carefully, if youve got those winged scourge things flying arround making more forsaken why arent any of their vrykul or vargul fighting for the horde too? I thought we could have been allys if they didnt like eating our hearts or painting their faces with our blood so much but since you look like everything these guys look up to and even have their judges arround to..judge them.
–Notzenke, Who is not hiding in the vault of archevon.
Okay, first of all, somebody needs to get Notzenke here a proofreader, like, yesterday.
Second of all, though, this is kind of a good point. With the Lich King dead, that should free up a whole lot of Scourge up in Northrend – how did Sylvanas put it that time? “Found themselves unemployed”? And say what you want about Sylvanas, but she’s definitely got enough charisma to get those stray Scourge onto our side. Obviously it worked out with the val’kyr, so I don’t know why she couldn’t do the same thing with the vargul or for that matter even all the zombies and geists and abominations. The funny thing is, it’s not even like all those Scourge have been running around loose since the Lich King’s been dead. I don’t know if they just don’t know what to do with themselves now, or if there’s something else going on, but you would think they’d be primed for somebody like Sylvanas to come along and snap them up.
Third, proofreader. Seriously. There were parts of that letter where I was like “Is this a paragraph or did he just shake his dictionary over his keyboard really hard and these are the words that fell out?”
More importantly, though, Sylvanas is not still poking around the blog. I had Spazzle crack down on blog security so everything is under lock again. Problem solved.
Lady Sylvanas,
Are you reading the Warchief’s mail too? Because, uh, that one about you and me and him in the gnomish bubble bath was, um, meant to be taken in an artistic context. As a writer to a poet.
And those “special” wands are only available to a very select clientele…
Yours,
–Quelama Lightblade
Yup, these are my readers…
I’m not even going to touch the bubble bath thing, seeing as those e-mails go right into the same spam folder as the links from random succubus web sites and fake letters from Tolvir princes offering to pay me a fortune to help them sneak money into an account in Kalimdor and oh by the way all it will take is a small deposit up front on my part. But really, you guys have got to calm down. Sylvanas is not still screwing around with the blog, she’s not in my e-mail, you can all stop being so frigging paranoid. Like I said, Spazzle has already handled that shit, so we shouldn’t be having any more trouble. Everybody just needs to chill the fuck out and stop being a bunch of Chicken Littles. The sky is not fucking falling, okay?
Or so our dear Warchief would think. Spazzle, shmazzle. Never underestimate the power of a woman on the internet. ~_^
An open guild application
You probably remember how a couple mailbags ago, I got the terrific piece of news that my Earth Online guild had kicked me out while I was busy fighting for my life against the Twilight’s Hammer. Fucking pricks. Especially that dumbass guild leader Manageurdeath, although like I’ve said before, “dumbass guild leader” might be a little redundant. How come it always seems like it’s the full-of-themselves morons and assholes who always ends up being put in charge of things?
Anyway, I’m getting off track. Point is, I’m in the market for a new Earth Online guild, and since I’m guessing I’m going to be a hot commodity, and a lot of these guilds seem to ask the same things on their OMGwhyisthissofuckinglong applications, I figured I’d save everybody a lot of time and put up my answers to a bunch of the most common questions here.
Character Name: Omgipwnedurface, Goldwater-Kalimdor server
Class and Level: 50 Teacher
Talent Spec (please discuss any unusual talent choices): 19/12/10 Humanities / Social Sciences / Sciences. I know my talents are spread around a little more than normal for my class, but I decided to go with a variation of the “Liberal Arts” cookie-cutter spec for added versatility.
What do you enjoy most about your class? Honestly? The minions. I love having minions. I usually try to queue for the classrooms in the sketchier zones, specifically so I can spawn classes with a lot of Delinquents – if I play it right and get them on my side, they can be all kinds of fun to use. Also I just finished the class questline for a Student Teacher companion, so that’s a whole new type of minion I get to start using.
Previous guild(s) and why you left: <West Coast Avengers> — disagreement over whether it was acceptable to miss raids due to kidnapping and near murder by psychotic apocalyptic cult; also subsequent disagreement over estimated proportion of poop in guild leader’s head.
Previous raiding experience: I’m still new to the game, so not much so far. At least in the game. In real life…ever hear of Icecrown Citadel? Dead Lich King? Yeah, I was all over that. Also, Tirion Fordring’s idiotic coliseum thing? That whole Horde vs. Alliance battle, where we squared off against each other rather than sparring with Tirion’s flunkies? Yeah, that had my fingerprints all over it, too. Also, I didn’t actually get involved with Ulduar, but I did trade a few punches with Varian that kept him from getting HIS grubby paws on it, either. Basically, whenever there’s been a situation where the Horde and Alliance have been at risk of being distracted by a common enemy, you can count on me to keep our attention focused on ripping each other’s throats out where it belongs rather than wasting our time on the pansy Tirion/Rhonin “We must all work together” song and dance. I fucking hate carebears.
Any time restrictions that might affect your raid availability: I’m the Warchief of the Horde. Draw your own conclusions. Also, being this awesome is a full-time job in itself.
