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…

Hail, Warchief!

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. ~_^