Meeting guildies in RL

DON’T you ever get curious about the people on the other end of the keyboards? Of course you do, we’re human beings and humans are naturally inquisitive people.

So when me and Mrs Draigg planned a visit to some relatives in one part of the country one of our guildies said there five of them who live nearby, so let’s meet up for a meal and a drink.

Of course Wow, like any other online game, can be a great hiding place for weird and strange people. It’s alter-ego land. But we’ve know these guys for sometime .

So we felt safe enough to take up the invitation – and we had a great night together on Friday. The thing is as GM you have to be able to suss folk out and know who you can and can not trust when it comes to hooking up in RL.

Now someone is suggesting a guild outing to Alton Towers. Could be an epic day out.

Talking of which, I’m about to climb aboard my epic flying mount in a few hours and head off to sunny Malta for the rest of the week to visit friends and relatives.

I know, a week off Wow is a trial, but I’ve taken the tablets so should survive.

/wave

Talent Tree Tango

Alteritis: I can’t find the word in the Oxford English or a medical dictionary, but language is nothing if not evolutionary. So there’s a new word for your lexicon – free of charge.

I suffer from it. Badly. Truly badly.

So when THAT patch finally landed, well it was a nightmare for us sufferers. I haven’t got my shammy, lock or hordie rogue out of the box since.

The reason can be nailed in two words. Talent Trees. All those decisions over points.

It’s hurt my brain sorting out my main chars, the hunter and drood. Yesterday I caught up with the fact that we’re getting all our druid talent points back again in the next patch (which hits us probably next week).

/faint

Something about changing casting points around. Humph.

So I come to my shadow priest who has undergone a major metamorphosis. He was called Daffyd and had reached the giddy heights of 40. Then I lost interest. For ages.

I gave him a new name, Bowjangles, pounded my way up to 50 something and then thanks to the patch, gave him new hairdo. Gone are those deep blue Nightelf locks (I must have drunk something deeply suspicious when I created him) and he now has a priestly white hair and beard.

I was going to switch him to holy when hitting the Outlands, especially given all the whispers I keep getting such as: ‘wanna come heal in BRD’.

But this shadow stuff is sort of fun. Evil. But fun.

The weirdest bug from the patch?

Well it’s a good question. Look at the cat. That’s my one of my pets Iceshadow - not a main dude I grant you - a huntress from Winterspring.

I called her Iceshadow because of her colour and the fact that she prowls. Pure white and disappearing from time to time. Nice concept eh?

So what’s with the stripes I hear you ask. Well I have the same question because she’s gained them after the patch.

Weird or what?

The sound of thunder

I was going to write about our guild run to Kara and about how stunningly quickly we were knocking aside the bosses.

All the sweat, blood and tears of fighting the likes of Moroes and Maiden seemed a dim memory in the wake of nerfed Kara. I was going to ask questions about whether Kara was worthwhile now – but Big Bear Butt beat me to it.

So I do nothing more than offer this link - http://thebigbearbutt.com/2008/10/18/full-kara-clear-say-wut/- and commend his piece which is much along the lines I was thinking. So instead, I’ll stick with Kara – but bring you an aspect of the new patch that is going to give us all a headache.

I actually ran with my feral druid Cadmus. I wanted to see how his new tanking/feral spec dished out the dirt.

All I will say is that while in his kitty gear on Curator he landed a 12.4k crit! And several 5k plus ones. I even checked my combat stats in the new Achievement panel to make sure I’d read the screen right when the figure flashed up.

Anyways the thing is this. We had two hunters with us and – like a zillion others – they had gone out and grabbed themselves new pets. One had a core hound and one a devilsaur.

The noise was crazy. Their stomping and thumping around with accompanying screen-shuddering effects was, to be honest, a pain in the butt.

You hear them all the time – in the battlegrounds, the bank, the auction house. I don’t know how the hunters cope with all that racket.

It would certainly drive me nuts and I have no plans whatsoever to go and grab one for Draigg.
The other problem is when you’re tanking – as I found out.

With all that stomping, lava breathings and huge animals filling your screen you can hardly see a thing.

I’m opening a book now on how soon we see these pets gradually disappear from the hunters’ repertoire as the row gets on their nerves.