Catching Up

Kurn / / raiding, ramblings

Oddly, I have posted almost every day so far this month and I have said remarkably little about what’s going on for me.

I’ve been dogsitting. For 10 days now. Gah. My parents should have landed and my brother should be picking them up at the airport by now, so I get to go home tomorrow after Easter dinner. YAY!

The backlight on my laptop died. The screen works, but it looks like you’re reading stuff from behind six pairs of sunglasses. So I went out and bought an external screen, which is what I was planning to do already, since my shiny new computer will be arriving in a week or so. I also bought external speakers and a new desk lamp — and then today, I bought a new desk chair that’s being delivered on Wednesday.

In-game, I finally, finally got Shackles of the End of Days off Cho’gall on our 9th kill of him.

Yes, I also got Superior. The plate healing bracers never dropped for me in regular Grim Batol or heroic GB or heroic Deadmines. Painful.

This week… well. I guess we’ll see what next week brings with it, but this week was pretty underwhelming in terms of attendance. So much so that we cancelled Thursday (along with Sunday, for Easter), leaving us with one, count ’em, one raid night, on Tuesday.

Boy, did we take advantage of that.

Off it was to Bastion to kill heroic Halfus. Done!

Off to Blackwing Descent to clear it, with pulls on heroic Chimaeron for a little bit. Done!

In three hours, we killed 7 bosses, including a one-shot of Nefarian, which was pretty effing sweet.

For some, seven bosses might not be impressive. For us, that’s pretty significant. At least it shows us we can do that sort of thing every week if we really want to.

So we’ll see where we end up in terms of attendance next week. If it’s still super craptastic, we’ll have to open up some more recruitment spots. As it is, I eventually heard from my AWOL moonkin and we’ll have to replace him due to RL stuff, I think. Pretty sad, because he was a great player for us.

I haven’t done much this week in WoW, to be honest. I think it’s a good thing we cancelled Thursday — I think some of us could really use the break. I haven’t missed a raid since we started raiding on January 4th, for example, so it’ll be nice to log in on Tuesday (assuming the servers are up, if it’s patch day!) and really WANT to raid and kick some ass.

Anyhow, that’s it for now. Must pass out. :)

Day 20 – Last Day Playing WoW

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

See, I’ve always seen my last day of playing WoW as something I wouldn’t know was happening at the time. I envision myself not being guilded, not logging on much and then, one day, not logging on at all until I realize… hey. I’ve stopped playing WoW.

As such, this is a bit of a difficult challenge. If I were to consciously stop playing WoW, what would I do on my last day?

Let us assume that, in order to stop playing WoW, certain requirements have to be met.

1) For one reason or another, I am no longer in Apotheosis. Whether that would mean that the guild has fallen apart or that I’ve just moved on is irrelevant. There’s very little chance of me choosing to stop playing if I’m still in Apotheosis and we’re still an active guild.

2) Majik and Fog must also have stopped playing. I had a lot of fun on alts with these two bozos during Wrath, so I imagine I’d still play, even occasionally, if they were still playing, too.

3) My friends on Proudmoore must have stopped playing, or have stopped playing during times when I can conceivably play with them.

4) Choice must no longer exist, since I’m fairly sure that if anything goes wrong with my guild and we fall apart, I’ll high-tail it to Choice, if they’ll have me.

So with all of those conditions met, there wouldn’t be a lot TO do in the game for me. No running dungeons with friends, no raiding, nothing of the kind.

I think what I would do is load up Kurn with all my money (which, at the moment, is a fairly modest amount) and go to Darnassus and Teldrassil and give out 1000g to a variety of lowbies, until all my money is gone.

The lowbies would have to be unguilded, not wearing any heirlooms or anything of the kind. They would have to be actual new players to the game.

Once done with that, I’d probably go try to kite Spellmaw to Everlook in my T0.5 gear for the fun of it and then hop on to Madrana to log her out in her T0 gear in Stormwind.

Then back on to Kurn to log out, in the T0.5 gear, just outside the entrance to Strat Undead. Strat UD was my favourite classic instance and probably the second high-level instance I ran. I know every nook and cranny of that instance, every mob, every pull. I did the 45-minute run three times, although the first one didn’t count because either my cat, Whisper, or Tia’s imp, Volloz, got the killing blow on the Baron. The second time was at about the 43-minute mark and essentially had our buddy Football “tanking” by virtue of hamstringing the mobs that were trying to kill Tia and Tandrace. The third time, my cat tanked it and we did it with Crypt, Tia, Tan, Majik and myself. And we did it in 39 minutes.

I loved running that place and it seems fitting that Kurn would log out in the hallway leading to the instance entrance, in T0.5 gear that was acquired thanks to one of the more challenging questlines in the game, part of which took place there.

I still think it’s a lot more likely that my interest in the game will wane over time and that I won’t know it’s my last day when it IS my last day, but if I made the choice to stop playing, that’s pretty much what I’d do.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the end of the 20-Day Challenge! Thanks so much to Saga for writing it up and challenging us all to do it. I had a lot of fun. :)

Yesterday: In Your Bags/Bank
Tomorrow: Possibly nothing at all!

Day 19 – In Your Bags/Bank

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Oh, God. If there’s one thing more cluttered than my UI, it’s my bags and my bank. Click on the images for much larger versions.

First up is Kurn’s bags and bank.

And now Madrana’s.

Feel free to ask me any questions about any item you see, haha. Most of the things in my banks have long, storied histories. The stuff in my bags is stuff I want that’s easily accessible, mostly. In the case of Madrana’s bags, this includes my laughable ret gear and my laughable tank gear.

Yesterday: Your Favourite Outfit
Tomorrow: If this was your last day playing WoW, what would you do?

Day 18 – Your Favourite Outfit

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

I have two favourite outfits.

The first is the Beastmaster Armor set. I worked so hard for that stupid Tier 0.5 quest chain and it took me forever, FOREVER, to get the Beaststalker’s Chest, which was the last piece I needed for the quest chain. I don’t even particularly like the look (although the shoulders are pretty iconic) but that 8/8 just means so much to me.

And the other is the Lightforge Armor set. Though I never really used most of it to heal, I wore it whenever I wasn’t actively healing. Just putting on the shoulders made me feel like a “real” paladin. And it goes so well with the Stormpike tabard!

Yesterday: Your Favourite Spot
Tomorrow: In your bags/bank

Day 17 – Your Favourite Spot

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

I am actually having a lot of trouble coming up with a favourite spot, either in or out of game.

I think it’s made more difficult because so much has changed in WoW. New zones, revamped old zones…

Well, let’s look at what “favourite” means to me.

A favourite spot has to be quiet, familiar, pleasant to look at and relaxing, I think.

I think maybe Nagrand is that to me. I spent a lot of time in Nagrand in Burning Crusade. I farmed a lot, both at Elemental Plateau and over by the Clefthoofs, I fished a lot (again, Elemental Plateau and elsewhere) and really, just enjoyed the zone a great deal. Except for Corki. But it’s the one Outlands zone I actually make an effort to go through when I level. It’s just such a beautiful place and it’s so quiet if you’re just questing or farming.

I don’t really have a favourite spot IRL, to be honest. There are plenty of places where I like to go, but too many to pick a favourite. And many of those places are dependent on the time of year and the company I’m in! :)

Yesterday: Things You Miss
Tomorrow: Your Favourite Outfit

Day 16 – Things You Miss

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Well, this is a bit of a list, really.

– Hunters using mana. No, really. I miss my mana bar. I’m getting used to the throttling of our damage provided by focus, but I miss my mana bar.

– Divine Plea on a 1m cooldown.

– 100% Beacon healing.

– Sacred Shield. I REALLY miss Sacred Shield. A lot.

– I miss wanting tier gear. I just picked up my T11 shoulders because they dropped and because they’re marginally better than the Chimaeron ones in terms of base stats (crit vs. mastery). That might be the only piece of tier I pick up.

– I miss the old lockout system! If you zoned in to an instance that was already partially cleared, you were saved. If you were in a fresh instance where you killed a boss, you were saved. EASY. I know, many people enjoy the flexibility, but we ran into more lockout issues tonight. Total bullshit.

– Auberdine. I spent a lot of WoW time in Auberdine while levelling Kurn. And a friend of mine from one of my stats classes was farming furbolgs for Timbermaw rep and he made his hearth the inn in Auberdine, way, way back in the day, before BC came out. I was at his place once and he showed me his toon (level 60 warlock) and showed me why Auberdine was his hearth — one flight point from Darnassus (AH/bank/etc) and one or two flight points away from Felwood, where he’d spend most of his time.

– I miss the occasional true tank-and-spank fight. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of the newer mechanics we see… but sometimes, a tank’n’spank is just what I crave. :)

– I miss Valithria Dreamwalker! Well, not her. And not flying. But I miss the fact that it was a “heal this boss to full” fight as opposed to yet another “kill this before it kills you” fight.

– Most of all, I miss the knowledge that I had accumulated over 2 or so years. I’m stuck relearning everything, all the mechanics, all the player abilities and such, so that I can do my job of leading raids better. I just wish I could know it all NOW, you know?

Yesterday: Your Desktop Background
Tomorrow: Your favourite spot (in game or outside it)

Day 15 – Your Desktop Background

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

My desktop background is moderately boring, but I’m happy with it.

That is the logo for the Montreal Metro system — our subway. It’s actually a photo I took of the logo in one of the shopping malls in downtown Montreal, indicating there’s metro access from that mall.

I spent some time (two years!) in Virginia in the US and it was always the Montreal Metro I missed when I was there. When I’d come home to visit, I wouldn’t feel like I was home yet until I rode on the subway. I’m not the only nut out there who loves the metro system, at least. :)

So it’s a plain background, but it’s one that’s pleasant enough to look at and tends to have a calming effect on me.

Yesterday: This Upsets You
Tomorrow: Things you miss (post Cataclysm)

Day 14 – This Upsets You

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, facepalm, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

All righty, here’s my last planned post for today, thanks for reading “Contentpalooza 2011”! ;)

Day 14 – This Upsets You

Oh, Lordy. This is almost too much to consider. A better question would be “this doesn’t upset you”. ;)

Actually, truth be told, in-game, not a lot flat-out upsets me. I know, I know. You’re shocked. What it is that really upsets me is the people. I’ll get into that in a minute, but here’s some in-game stuff that upsets me.

– Loot and randomness. Being able to kill Gandling in Scholomance 27 times and see the Beaststalker’s Cap twice (and losing the roll once), or being able to kill General Drakkisath SIXTY TIMES before seeing a Beaststalker Tunic is ridiculous. Even in Wrath, this held true. 24 kills of heroic Saurfang and 0, count that, 0 drops of the Heroic Belt of the Blood Nova. (Not that I’d wear it now, being that it’s mail, but anyways.) 13 Halion kills, 0 drops of the Foreshadow Steps.

And this continues today. 8 Cho’gall kills (that’s, you know, 2 full months) and 0 drops of Shackles of the End of Days. And I’m doing this on 25, so I’m getting 5 drops off Cho’gall each time (plus 3 tier tokens). That is 40 possible drops and we have had 0 bracers drop.

I’m not asking for things to drop every single time you kill a boss. Not even every 5 times. I’m not even asking for non-useless gear not to drop (ie: healing plate with no paladins in the group). I’m just asking for better odds than 2/27, 1/60, 0/13 and 0/8.

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 5/10 (Moderate)

– Raid Lockout Screwups. As detailed in my last post, this new raid lock system screwed us up last night, made us lose an hour or more of our raid time and has made us change our plans for the week. This isn’t limited to the new system, though, there were several “aw crap” moments with the old lock system as well. Still, at this point, I’d much prefer the old one. (For me. I know the new one makes a lot more sense for a lot of people, particularly those who aren’t guilded or those not doing their raiding in a guild setting.)

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 7/10 (High)

Everything else, game-wise, I can generally take. Getting stunlocked by a rogue or three, fine. Login errors? Fine, computers aren’t perfect.

The rest of the things that piss me off are things people do. True, some of them are made possible by game mechanics, but ultimately, it’s people in this game who piss me off.

– Racist/Homophobic/Prejudicial Language. Fastest way to piss me off is to throw a bunch of disparaging epithets into a sentence. People are people, dammit, and I don’t care what colour their skin is, who they love, who they worship (if they do) or any of that crap. They’re people. Even bad players are people. The fact that Trade Chat is typically filled with these various slurs means I spend a lot of time reporting spam on various people and, in the case of some really bad ones, I’ll open a ticket and explain precisely why the person’s language is upsetting.

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 8/10 (High)

– Not doing your job in a group. This goes for 5-mans, raids, everything. It drives me nuts to join a pug and realize that, out of the five people in the group, myself and maybe one other person are doing their role-related jobs adequately. It also drives me nuts if someone just cannot master a mechanic in raid content. I am not the fastest learner. I have a learning curve and, given my crappy-ass computer, it can be steep. But I learn, I adapt OR, in the case of Teron Gorefiend, I SIT MYSELF. My computer at the time didn’t allow me to be quick enough to get all my constructs — I’d lag on the transition and no matter how fast I hit my buttons, I’d only get a couple of my constructs trapped. This was okay if I wasn’t the first person targetted, but if I WAS, it was a wipe. So I sat myself out of the fight as often as possible. The very first Gorefiend kill we had, I was in on my hunter. I would feign death prior to his casts that would give you the debuff and so I was never targetted by his stupid ability. And I did pretty darn well in terms of DPS, too! But I did what I could to adapt to all the various mechanics and that was the one thing in all of Burning Crusade I just couldn’t adapt to.

It’s not a hard game, when you look at it. Don’t stand in bad stuff. DPS this when you’re supposed to, DPS this other thing when you’re supposed to. Heal who’s taking damage. Keep bad guys away from your raid.

That SO many people fail at these basics — I’m not even talking about things like interrupts or DPS classes dispelling things or any of that — makes me sooooo angry.

Don’t even get me started on people who fail at CCing or tanks who taunt to pull.

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 9/10 (Very High)

– Failing Like Faily McFailerson. What makes me angrier than the above is when I fail at something. I am not perfect, I get caught by Blistering Cold on Sindragosa sometimes, I eat Fireball Barrage on Halfus sometimes. I make mistakes. What upsets me is when I CONSTANTLY fail at something. Take, for example, our Al’Akir work from the other week. Had no idea that you could delay the Wind Burst by taking Electrocute so that when the Wind Burst/Squall Line combo coincides at the MT’s location, it’s NOT freaking impossible. I ate Squall Line a zillion times that night before I wrote that post after the raid. And if it hadn’t been for Selyndia pointing out that Electrocute delays the Wind Burst, it never would have clicked and I would have ended up sitting myself on that fight.

What makes it different from Gorefiend? Gorefiend was a technical problem. My computer wasn’t phasing me quickly enough to allow me to complete the mechanics required for the fight. It sucked, but at least I knew I had done my best. With Al’Akir, it wasn’t a technical thing. I just could not figure out how to be right up in front for Wind Burst and simultaneously halfway out on the platform to eat the gap for Squall Line. It was so frustrating that I felt like a total failure. It upsets me greatly to fail constantly at the same mechanic without issues stemming from my computer. :P

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 9.5/10 (Very High)

– Not being prepared. This relates to the above. Back in BC, there we stood, crafting last minute Shadow Resist gear for Mother Shahraz. And a rogue tells me she doesn’t have her Medallion of Karabor, that comes from the attunement quest. There’s more to the story (scroll down a long ways to get to the BC/Mother bit) but basically, I gave all the mats I was holding to one of the officers, made him raid leader and said to the raid that I was going afk for a few.

Right there in the middle of the raid.

I got up and punched the living crap out of my couch. I yelled into a pillow. I was SO angry that, even after all of that, I removed the rogue from the raid and instructed her to go back to Shattrath.

After months (MONTHS!!!) of posts and checking in with people about their attunement needs, their resist needs, we are finally at the fight we have been preparing for and this one dumbshit rogue is like “uh, I didn’t do the heroics” and had confused the attunement questline with the Champion of the Naaru questline. Despite the fact that I had taken two hours (TWO HOURS) one day to detail the ENTIRE questline on our forums and constantly reminded people to finish that up and let us know if they needed Al’ar or Rage or whatever.

I lost it. Dar calls it “the night Kurn drank the RED haterade”. I don’t think I’d ever lost my shit to that extent because of something someone did in-game before and I know I haven’t lost it to that extent since. I was SO angry.

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 14.72/10 (RED HATERADE TIME)

There are other things — I hate when people leave my guild, I hate missing progression fights, I hate losing valuable members of the guild due to circumstances that are unavoidable. But I think the above really sums up what really upsets me when I play this game.

Earlier Today: People That You Admire
Tomorrow: Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it

Apotheosis vs. Raid "ID" Lockouts

Kurn / / apotheosis, bastion of twilight, blackwing descent, facepalm, raiding, ramblings

Welcome to the second of three posts today, part of what I’m jokingly calling “Contentpalooza 2011”. In this post, I’ll talk about how Apotheosis broke our raid IDs last night and what happened to fix it.

Picture it: Azeroth, 2011. A band of 28 people wanted to raid and wanted to kill things. On the agenda, normal Maloriak (after spending about 3-4 hours on him on heroic on Sunday and Tuesday), normal Atramedes, attempts at heroic Chimaeron and then normal Nefarian.

I had 8 healers signed up, much to my joy, which meant I had more options for H Chim. But I also knew that we didn’t need 8 healers for the first two fights.

Being a healer, I decided to sit myself out of those first two fights. I hadn’t sat myself out of anything except Baradin Hold for at least a couple of weeks. This had the happy coincidence (honest, I didn’t plan it out this way!) of allowing me to watch just about the whole NHL playoff game between my beloved Montreal Canadiens and our hated rivals, the Boston Bruins. (The Habs, or the Canadiens, beat Boston 2-0 just as my guild was finishing off Atramedes.)

So with Maloriak and Atramedes dead, I made some swaps. I swapped out three DPS for two healers and another DPS. The healers were myself, our resto druid and the DPS I brought in was a rogue.

We zoned in together and clicked “accept” when warned that if we downed any bosses, we would be saved to this version of the instance where Magmaw, Omnotron, Maloriak and Atramedes were dead. We ran around the right side of the area in Blackwing Descent and got to Atramedes’ area and helped with the trash clearing to Chimaeron.

So there we stood at Chimaeron. I switched to my Chim healing spec and was talking on Mumble and such and our tank officer, Dayden, who had been raid leader to this point, made me the raid leader. While inside this instance, I switched the difficulty from 25 Player to 25 Player Heroic.

The druid, the rogue and myself found ourselves back at the start of the instance — on heroic.

The other 22 people were still in the normal mode of the instance, with an error message of sorts.

This is about the time when we started trying every variation of Dayden or myself as raid leader with 25/25H difficulty combinations we could think of. Bottom line, Dayden and myself could not exist in the same heroic instance together.

The officers were pissed. The raiders were getting cranky. I, of course, opened a ticket. I have probably opened about six thousand, eight hundred and seventy-three tickets in the five years that I’ve played this game. :P It’s what I do. Don’t judge me.

We headed to BoT and right before pulling trash, a GM wants to talk to me! Yaaaaaay, I got to stand in the back and do nothing to do with Halfus trash because I was trying to explain to the GM what the eff the problem was.

At that point, he wanted me to give him all the raid IDs and names of people. The trouble is, there no longer ARE raid ID numbers visible to us. It just tells you what bosses you’ve killed and which are available. And if someone from that group of 22 linked their raid ID, we were told we were eligible to join that raid.

So they get me to get Dayden to log off his toon so they can log on as him and look at the raid info available.

My guildies are nuts. Below, all instances of “Daydyn” are actually the GM, logged on to his toon. The rest are raiders who were in Bastion of Twilight at the time.

So I’m witnessing all this in chat, and whisper the GM to apologize for my “idiot” guildies who are harrassing him…

Naturally, I felt a compulsion to apologize.

He then asked us what we wanted to do — were we going to continue in BoT or BWD?

You’d think that would be the end of it, right?

Hilarious, no? Quite an interesting exchange. And throughout all this, the poor GM is sitting there on Dayden’s toon, being /cheered at, /hugged, /licked, etc:

Whew.

So after something like an hour, total, of messing with ID stuff and trying to get it resolved, we finally got to pull heroic Halfus. Now, we were doing this without Fog, one of our main spec tanks. The first few pulls were pretty bleak, but we swapped a couple of things around and somehow managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, then we went on to clear regular V&T and… yeah. The night was salvaged and we had an interesting time with a couple of GMs, but GOOD GOD, what kind of buggy shit is that lockout crap? I miss the old lockout system when something like this happens. I’ve never pugged a ton of stuff in terms of raids, so the flexible lockout thing is just irritating to be. I don’t need flexibility, dangit! ;)

Anyways. That was the raid night and we’ll see if we’re all propely saved or whatever for Sunday’s H Chimaeron/etc attempts. (H Chim probably for a bit, then normal Chim, Nef, over to BoT for Council and Cho. I think.)

Day 13 – People That You Admire

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, apotheosis, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Good morning and welcome to Contentpalooza 2011! I’ll have not one, not two, but three blog posts for you today! Two of them are Days 13 and 14 of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge and one of them will describe, in great detail and with screenshots, my raid night last night, which was both an exceedingly frustrating experience and one of the more hilarious raid nights I’ve ever had.

But first…

Day 13 – People That You Admire

This is supposed to be about bloggers and players that I admire. There are several of each, so let’s organize this into two categories.

Players

I admire my officers, all six of them.

– Dayden was basically born to be a tank. He’s outstanding at tanking and does a great job herding the cats in the raid. He does his homework and puts what he’s learned into practice. He’s a fairly reasonable sort and is Canadian and one of the best things I ever did for Apotheosis was somehow get him to be the tank officer. He doesn’t get frustrated terribly easily (last night, as you’ll see in an upcoming post today, was an exception) and I would not have reformed Apotheosis for Cataclysm without Dayden being part of my officer team. He and Daey and I made a great leadership team through T5/T6 in Burning Crusade and I can’t imagine being the GM of Apotheosis without Dayden, star of the guild-favourite game, “CAN DAYDEN TANK IT?!?!”, right there with me and the other officers. I admire his play, I admire his attitude and basically, I think he’s awesome.

– Daey. Daey, also known as “Football”, has been someone I’ve played this game with for about five years. He was in my first real guild, Fated Heroes, and, to this day, still gives me hell for choosing to bring a rogue over him for Zul’Gurub raids. My biggest reason? “Rogues can sap!” Yeah, I was a scrub. Daey turned out to be basically our best DPS ever throughout Vanilla and BC. He would have to go stand in a corner on Void Reaver and do absolutely nothing so that the tank could build up enough threat. Hell, we used to soulstone him on Hakkar so that when he inevitably pulled aggro, he could pop back up and have 0 threat and actually get DPS done. More than that, he’s a fantastic strategist who sees things on the fly that I would only see after an hour of scrounging through the logs. It’s his quick thinking that gets us through sticky situations and things like 8 waves of Hyjal trash at a time. BigWigs would announce the trash that was incoming and in those, oh, five seconds of lead time, he’d assign CC and tank targets. Doing Hyjal trash without Daey the few times we had to do it was seriously painful. This is another piece of the Apotheosis machine that I wouldn’t have done without for Cataclysm. He’s a great foil to me, we think in very different ways and see things very differently, but apart from the occasional butting of heads, we use our differences to work out what’s best for the guild in any particular situation. I admire his quick thinking, his amazing level of play, his fast reactions and his ongoing dedication to the guild. I also admire the fact that he manages to have a “real life” that includes playing a lot of hockey and respect the fact that he’s a die-hard Pittsburgh Penguins fan.

– Fog. 4 years, 7 months and 1 week younger than me, my brother came to the game just after I did and he beat me to 60. He killed Rag wayyyyy before I ever would. I probably would have gotten the old crew back together without him, since Fog only stuck around through Gruul back in BC, but having him around usually makes things more fun — when we’re not yelling at each other, as siblings do. ;) I admire his insane ability to learn a class and a role with ease. He’s had four mains: Vanilla was his druid, Fog, and he was feral and he was resto. In late Vanilla, he rolled a rogue, Slovotsky, and carried that toon into BC, where he stuck with us through Gruul, as I mentioned. In Wrath, he played his hunter, Je, then rolled a paladin, Harvey, and he’s now tanking on Harvey for us in the guild. I admire the ease with which he picks up new classes and new skills. I admire his basic understanding of the mechanics of the game and his level of play that allows him to succeed at basically anything he does, in-game. He’s currently serving as guild bank administrator for the guild and is doing a fantastic job in terms of keeping up with EP donations and the mandatory flask “donations” we have in order to keep dropping Big Cauldrons of Battle. I envy him his organizational skills and leet spreadsheet skills! I am definitely not that organized and not that mathematical.

– Darista. Again, I’ve been playing alongside Dar for about five years, as she was also in Fated Heroes. She only became an officer for us in Cataclysm, but I’ve always enjoyed her presence in-guild and in raids. I feel like I should have promoted her to officer three years ago, given what a great addition she’s been to the team! I admire Dar’s level of play, which has always been very good — and if it hasn’t been “great”, she’s done everything she could to bring it up to a great level. I admire her tenacity; if there’s a problem, she will find the damn answer! I admire her ability to communicate her ideas clearly and her ability to do it in fewer words than I do! :) I admire her dedication and loyalty to this crazy group of people and her ability to persevere through stupid in-game issues, like when she couldn’t ever load Skettis or sometimes couldn’t log in to Dalaran or a variety of technical issues. She’s a great addition to the team and I’m so pleased she’s still with us. :)

– Toga. Another former Fated Hero, Toga was my original hunter protégé. I remember out-damaging him in MC. ;) Toga was also the original GM of Apotheosis, something he accepted willingly and humbly. We lost him for Wrath and I swear to God, that’s one of the reasons Apotheosis didn’t do so well. Toga is an excellent player, a really nice guy (no, really, he’s super awesome!) and he’s probably the most reasonable of any officer. If you need someone to cut the crap and get down to the brass tacks, you want Toga. I admire that about him — he’ll look at the big picture and the details and he’ll figure out what the best course of action is. I also admire his willingness to do the dirty work. He hits our gongs on Atramedes. He used to kite General Drakkisath in UBRS. Toga does the shitty jobs and he does them well and he rarely complains about it — and when he does, it’s usually good-naturedly. I adore and admire Toga for so many little things he’s done over the years that just make me laugh or smile or see reason, I can’t possibly list them all. Just know that I am so fortunate he came back to us for Cataclysm. I wouldn’t have gotten this thing going without him around, either.

– Majik. My partner in crime on Blessing of Frost, Majik and I have been playing together since Vanilla in Fated Heroes as well. Majik is a very smart, very talented player who, like Fog, can easily slip into any role or class required of him. He’s a great DPS, a great tank and a great healer. While that’s a great trait and I do admire it about it, what I really admire is his charisma and attitude. Majik was BORN to lead smaller raids. He’s hilarious, light-hearted and makes even the most soul-crushing wipes somehow fun. Apotheosis would not have been resurrected without Majik on board. He doesn’t always get to express his personality to its fullest in 25-man raiding, which I guess is just more serious compared to crazy 10 or 20-man runs back in Vanilla, but I know it’s there and I SO wish I had that kind of presence and charisma. This is the guy who, on off-lock-out periods of ZG for us, would convince 19 other people to go do “a 20-minute Venoxis run”. Why? Simply so he could get the 1H spell dagger off Venoxis. That was the sole purpose of the entire run. But somehow, he would convince 19 other people that it’d be fun and fast and they’d get rep and coins and bijous and… yeah. God help us all if Majik starts a cult and stops using his powers for… well, not “good”, but harmless things. ;) I also really admire how even-keeled he is. He just doesn’t take things that seriously, never really lets it get him down. I’m the complete opposite and so it’s amazing to look at Majik when I’m all blah about something and he’s like “hah, that was fun!” or whatever. I bitch about Majik a LOT, it’s just how our friendship works, but I think he’s awesome. And will deny ever having written those words. >.>

Apart from those six jokers, some other players I admire:

– Fugara, the GM of Choice of Skywall. I only really got to play alongside her for a little less than six months, I believe, but Fug is the GM I wish I could be. I am nowhere near as organized or as settled into this role as she is. She was the deciding factor when I made my decision to leave my Proudmoore guild and find a new home where I could finish out Wrath. I’d narrowed it down to Choice and a guild on Hyjal and while the Hyjal guild was tempting — more progressed, offered free consumables, sizeable repairs, etc… They didn’t have Fugara. An excellent healer, a formidable leader, a great person. I admire everything about Fug’s play and leadership and she’s basically the GM I want to be when I grow up. ;) Leaving Choice sucked not only because I was leaving a good group of people, but because I was leaving Fug and leaving someone I knew I still could learn more from. So if you wonder why I constantly plug Choice and beg people to go apply there, it’s because of this woman and my overwhelming admiration for her.

– My RL Friend the Resto Druid. My friend, whom I’ve known for nearly 30 years, is the best damn druid healer I’ve ever seen. She’s an amazing player when it comes to the mechanics of the game and the encounters, but she’s just a fantastic druid healer. She’s rolled with the punches and learned a lot along the way, but she’s just hands-down fantastic. She also did an amazing job at being the healing lead for her guild despite not really wanting the position. Her dedication and tenacity in trying guild circumstances made me admire her all the more and so when I had to step in as healing lead for a couple of months while she dealt with personal stuff, I tried to be at the top of my game and get the most out of the healers the way she did.

– Fadorable. Fad is the best damn resto shaman I have ever encountered in my life. Topping dispells and healing on Yogg-Saron without even taking cleansing totem into consideration? FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC. And it wasn’t any of that stupid Chain Heal spam, either. Fad is a fantastic player and I would love to see her apply to Apotheosis (COUGH COUGH) and, by golly, I would make room for her if there was no room to be had.

Of course, I think very highly of just about every player in Apotheosis too. But these people listed above are not just amazing players to be admired for their play — it’s the additional contributions that they give. If I weren’t already at 2000+ words, I would go into detail about all the players I admire from the guild.

Bloggers

A shorter list here mostly because I’m already running super long on this post, but I admire anyone who can write properly (using good grammar and spelling — not resorting to “lol, me 2!” or “y u mad dawg” or such things) and about things in this game about which they’re passionate.

– Rohan, of Blessing of Kings. Rohan always has intelligent commentary on the game or various aspects of the game. He’s also been writing FOREVER. So not only do I greatly admire his posts, but his longevity. I mean, look at this first actual post from December of 2005 talking about, what else, paladins. Awesome post!

– Lissanna, of Restokin. Lissanna is just SO dedicated to druids, you can’t mistake her for anything else. She IS a druid. Her love (and sometimes frustration) for her class is evident everywhere. She is passionate about and dedicated to druids and it’s her long-term commitment to the class and helping others to learn about the class that I admire.

– Matt, of World of Matticus. I admire Matt as a blogger and as a GM and as a player, although the most interaction in-game we’ve ever had was him rezzing me once just outside of Stormwind during Cataclysm’s Beta. ;) Matt is a busy guy and yet still has time to have a team of bloggers blogging, still has time to GM a guild, still has time to do all kinds of stuff. I’m sure he makes mistakes, I”m sure he lets things slip, but his blog is his baby and the amount of time and care he’s put into it is something I really admire. I tend to let the blog slide when I’m busy with the guild, but Matt takes that extra step to make sure his blog doesn’t suffer due to his busy schedule.

All right, I think I’ll leave it at that!

Yesterday (well, two days ago): A Day in the Life
Later today: This Upsets You