Ruffled feathers, perhaps?

So, I got email notification earlier last night that I had a new comment on the blog, on the post that details my primary issues with WoW.com, Mr. Chase Christan and Mr. Adam Holisky, particularly with respect to the holy paladin position there.

I then got another email notification about another comment, on the same post. Curious, considering the post was written nearly a month ago.

Both comments were, shall we say, not particularly flattering. ;)

It would appear that I ruffled some feathers, somewhere and our rogueadin’s fans have decided to come by and speak their piece.

The comments are automatically moderated; all comments are by default, even by a registered user, until I approve the author at least once. I haven’t made them viewable yet. And I’m not going to display those comments in that set of comments, for two reasons:

1) Approving the comments will allow the two posters the freedom to post anything anywhere on my blog.

2) My rebuttal of those comments will be right here. In this post. And I’d like anyone who ends up reading those comments to read this post. I think that’s only fair, considering it’s my website and, therefore, my rules.

What I’ll do is post the text of the comments here (and even the screenshots to show that I’m not hiding anything) and address them. Point by point.

First up, the screenshot of the first comment.

You can click for a larger version, but I’ll be quoting it, line by line, below.

http://www.guildox.com/go/g.asp?n=Trademarked&r=Azgalor-US

Trademarked of Azgalor is obviously a 10man strict guild.

Uh, yeah. Didn’t I say that? I thought I did. Oh, look! I did.

“Now, there are no 25-man equivalent achievements listed for his toons, but that’s okay. Just because I go to 25-man content almost exclusively doesn’t necessarily make me a better paladin or anything.”

Granted, this could be viewed as me saying “ha, ha, he can’t do 25-man content!”. What I intended it to mean, however, and thought was fairly clear, was that I am willing to accept the premise that 10-man raids are equally as challenging as 25-man raids. True, this isn’t my general opinion on the matter (some fights on 10-man are just much easier than on 25-man, due to the room you have to spread out) but I was willing, for the sake of argument, to consider 10-man achievements/raid content cleared to be at the same level of difficulty as 25-man achievements/raid content cleared, particularly at the “strict” level.

What’s that, you ask? Well, let’s talk a bit about the 10-man “strict” tag that the commenter talks about. According to guildox.com, the above-linked site that does these rankings, a 10-man “strict” guild is a guild that basically doesn’t raid 25-man content that has gear that is a higher ilvl than their 10-man progression content. So if you’re a strict 10s guild, you’re looking at 251-level gear, which means that ilvl 258 (Trial of the Grand Crusader 25m items) and ICC 25m progression would essentially disqualify you from their listings. Guildox.com doesn’t get cranky if you run VOA or Ony 25-man, though, and emblem gear and crafted gear is also fine.

From their website:

“What is the 10-man ‘strict’ criteria?

Guilds will be excluded when they earn any Icecrown Citadel (ICC) 25 normal kills or any TotGC 25 hard-mode kills. Guilds must also have their 10M Progress World Rank be better than (lower than) their 25M Progress World Rank.

We have added a special trigger for the ICC 25 normal kills that will exclude a guild from strict rankings when 8 players achieve it over time.”

Not sure why the exclusion from 10s limit is 8 players, but hey, not my website, not my rules. It should be noted, however, that Mr. Christian has completed the Lower Spire on 25m, since he has the Storming the Citadel achievement. This isn’t enough to disqualify him or the guild from guildox’s rankings, but I thought it should be noted because it appears as though they may not quite be as strict as the commenter made them out to be. I could be wrong; the strict 10s aim could have happened in January or something and so they’re still new to it, but one could ask how dedicated to this strict 10s goal can a guild be if the guildmaster did 25-man versions of the content in late December. I’m just sayin’.

It sounds to me that Mr. Holisky was trying to let you down easy, and that in fact, your application didn’t jump out at him.

I am absolutely comfortable with this possibility. I knew Mr. Holisky was placating me and I was okay with it. I was. I even said so in my post. He was trying to smooth things over with the paladin community. There were some PISSED OFF paladins when it was “announced” that Mr. Christian would be taking over the job. I was probably NOT the best person for the job. But I have yet to see anything that will let me think I am not as good as this guy is.

I guess raiding is the end all of the game. I guess people only have one character their entire history on WoW, and I guess that people only roll one character of one class on one server, ever. You know, like you did? Oh wait..

Oh, oh, oh, mortal wound! <clutches chest> Right to the heart! Except not. Even apart from the fact that I clearly state that I could be wrong, or that things appear to indicate certain conclusions, even apart from my willingness to admit I’m 100% dead wrong, let us please re-read a quoted portion from Mr. Holisky’s mail to me:

“He has cleared all content at all levels an in all expansions with both characters, and has exceptional knowledge concerning both classes.”

That’s a lie. I mean, really, no kidding, that is a lie,  or the man is unaware of his staff’s experience. Mr. Holisky is telling me, right there, that Mr. Christian has cleared ALL CONTENT at ALL LEVELS in ALL EXPANSIONS with BOTH CHARACTERS to which I was referring (his rogue and his paladin).

Sorry. That’s not true. There is nothing on either character’s armory to indicate heavy Molten Core experience, much AQ40 experience and zero, that is ZERO, experience in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple. How is that all content at all levels in all expansions? Perhaps Mr. Holisky was exaggerating to justify his choice? Perhaps he was lying intentionally? Perhaps he was blissfully unaware that his choice as the paladin columnist hadn’t even met the Ashtongue Deathsworn? I don’t know. But I do know that if he was willing to tell ME about Mr. Christian’s supposed experience (which was a common concern with many other paladins and just flat-out many other healers, as well as raid leaders!), what would stop him from telling other applicants the same thing.

I suppose that one can not understand the math behind a class without raiding in it 40 hours a week in 25man ICC progression.

That’s funny, really, it is. Perhaps you also enjoy exaggeration? Oh my goodness, wait! You’re Adam Holisky, aren’t you?!

Seriously, it’s not the math I have a problem with. I’m bad at math. I freely admit it. It’s the lack of experience I have problems with. In my other post, the one that followed the one where these comments were posted, I go into specifics as to my issues with Mr. Christian. In brief, I feel strongly that his apparent lack of experience has led to some missed subtleties about the class and spec and, perhaps more detrimental to the community, I think he’s missing out on some important subtleties about healing in general.

Also, I raid a modest twelve hours a week, thank you kindly.

I can see why you didn’t get this job, honestly. Far too many conclusions drawn from two wow armories and a screenshot.

So, the implication here is that I didn’t get a job in which I need to know about my class because I have an inquisitive mind and went poking around to satisfy my own curiosity, once I realized the content was not up to my standards? That seems odd to me. That I didn’t get a job because I was too curious? Because I was asking questions that other people were asking and wanted to verify the answers I was given? So, in your opinion, I should be complacent and I should accept information at face value, and that would make me a good class columnist at WoW.com? Okay, if that’s the case, I concede your point to you, Mr. or Ms. Superdooperfuntime; if the stipulation is that the columnist should be complacent and lazy about researching something that doesn’t seem right to them, then I am absolutely the wrong person for the job.

In my opinion, You are a freaky person. You stalked someone that got the e-job that you wanted to get. =/

Hm. According to Merriam-Webster, to stalk is “to pursue obsessively and to the point of harassment”. Uh, let’s see. I haven’t pursued Mr. Christian in any way. I don’t comment on WoW.com, I don’t have a toon on Azgalor, I have never attempted to contact Mr. Christian or done anything specifically to be noticed by him. I have no intention of ever contacting him. I’m merely asking questions and voicing my opinions on my own website. I haven’t gone to wow.com and posted that I think the guy sucks and that people should read my site instead. So, let’s see… no pursuit, no harassment… therefore, it’s not stalking.

Did I visit an official website, which is provided by Blizzard, in order to verify claims made to me? Yep. I did. Did I visit one of the better-known, fan-run information sites to see if they had any information on the guild the characters I armoried were in? Guilty. But that doesn’t make me a stalker and leaves me wondering how on earth you (or anyone else, like our second commenter) could liken a couple of visits to the WoW Armory and WoWWiki to something as sinister and potentially damaging as stalking. Seriously, people, what is up with the love of exaggeration?

Did I want the job? Yes. That’s not a secret. But as soon as I realized that Mr. Christian’s experience on his rogue and his paladin had been falsely represented to me, I lost any and all interest in the job. My interest now is primarily to put out my own information about the game and class/spec that I play the most, because that’s what’s most important to me — getting the information out there. In some cases, that means referring to Mr. Christian’s publicly-available articles at wow.com and proving or disproving his information.

As to being a freaky person, I’m so glad that you think you know me based on my blog posts! Man, if only they could harness those instincts, those people skills of yours, eh? You could totally use this to get your next job and be some kind of awesome serial killer profiler for the FBI!

Good luck on the next job you want. I mean that seriously. Have a nice day.

Well thank you, Mr. or Ms. Superdooperfuntime! You have a great day, too!

And now on to the second comment, which kind of made me laugh.

LOL are you kidding me.. THIS IS SO FREAKING FUNNY. Kurn you are a freaking stalker. Chase is an amazing player and you are absolutely hilarious. Please say this was a troll cose it is definitely 10/10. Your just butt hurt Kurn and you know it. Your a terrible paladin and I’m glad you didn’t get the column.

Uh, okay, so, let’s see. This is the second comment on the same post in the span of about five hours. It is the second comment on the same post to call me a stalker and to use the word (or a derivative of) “freak”. Methinks someone has, somewhere, called me a freak and a stalker and linked to that particular post. Can’t wait to look through my server logs!

To respond to the actual content of the comment:

Thank you, David, for your spiffy comment. To answer your specific accusations, no, I am not kidding. No, as previously mentioned, I’m not a stalker, freaking or otherwise. Mr. Christian may be an amazing player — I have never stated that he isn’t. You know why? I’ve never played with him. What I have stated is different than stating “he sucks” or “he’s terrible”. I have stated that it is my opinion that Mr. Christian is of a numbers/DPS mindset and that I believe he is missing the subtleties and complexities that come with years of practice at playing a holy paladin and a healer.

This post is not a “troll”, as those familiar with WoW parlance refer to posts that are not serious and are designed to get a rise out of people due to the idiocy contained within. I’m quite serious and I am further amused that you would rate this 10/10 if it were a troll post. My inner troll thanks you for recognizing her natural talent, though!

As to being “butt hurt”, I can assure you that while, in the beginning, my pride (and only my pride, but I thank you very much for your concern regarding my rear) was slightly wounded, it was before I made that post that I recovered from the small disappointment I experienced. Since late January, I have not been hurt or upset or angry that I didn’t get the position. My posts are not sour grapes. My posts are out of concern for the greater WoW community, particularly those among us who play healers and holy paladins.

This is where things degenerate just a wee bit. I’m a “terrible paladin”? Really? That’s funny, I don’t remember playing my paladin while grouped with you, David, so how would you know that I’m a terrible paladin? At most, you would be able to assume that I am a terrible paladin. But hey, really, thanks for weighing in with your opinion! It really means so much to me, David. Oh, and guess what? I’m happy I didn’t get the column, too.

By the way, just as a way of demonstrating just how freaky I am, I thought I’d enlighten you on the grievous mistake you made in your comment. “You’re” is a contraction for the words “you are“. “Your” is a possessive pronoun.

Honestly, if people are going to post insulting comments, they should at least strive to use proper grammar and spelling and even maybe be a little creative. Calling me terrible? A troll? Butt hurt? Pedestrian insults, David. Were I not a sociologist who’s done her statistics and research classes, I would think that there was a correlation between fans of Mr. Christian and lack of creativity, but I’m educated enough to know that a sample size of two is not necessarily indicative of the population.

Having said that, I probably won’t post any other comments that are along those lines, unless they’re truly spectacular. So some people out there think I suck and think I’m a freak or a stalker, or both. That’s cool. They have their opinions and are entitled to them. I have mine and are entitled to them. This, however, is Kurn’s Corner and it’s where I post my opinions. While I welcome corrections and discussion on the blog, so long as they’re done respectfully (and preferably with proof), this isn’t anyone’s platform but my own. I posted these because I was honestly amused to see that anyone would take the time to disagree with me, much less two people, and then decided to address their points because the responses amused me more than the original comments did.

(R, this is why I don’t have a forum.)