Category Archives: fun

221B Westfall Street

“Ah, are these the villain’s tracks?”

“Indeed they are, Mr. Holmes.”

“Hoofprints? This rules out most races except draenei and tauren, but it’s most unlikely that a tauren would travel this far. Besides, here and here we see traces of moth dust found only in Azuremyst Isle. Now we can further deduce from his tracks that this villain moved around a lot, although it wasn’t to back up, rather, it was to get closer. This indicates that he is a melee class–”

“Or an uninformed hunter?”

“Unlikely, Watson. I see no animal prints or feathers.”

“A… fantastically uninformed hunter?”

“Very doubtful. As you can see, the surrounding ground is charred by holy fire…”

“A paladin?”

“Quite.”

“Brilliant, Murloc Holmes!”

“Elementary.”

Fun Times in LFG

So, I love the new LFG. I think it’s one of the greatest things ever to hit WoW and I’m sure most of us can agree.

It has, however, led to a few interesting situations. My favorites thus far:

* Wound up in a group where everyone was speaking French. I’m not exaggerating. I couldn’t understand a word these people were saying. Oh wait, I understood one phrase. “Le boss”.

They were all from different servers, too, so it wasn’t like they’d all queued up as a group. Apparently I just managed to stumble onto the super-secret Québécois contingent of the North American WoW servers. I blame my Men Without Hats obsession.

I think they wanted to do more heroics afterward but I wasn’t sure, because I had no idea what they were talking about. So I said “thank you” and hearthed. Everyone understands “thank you” right? … hey, don’t look at me, I took Spanish in high school and Japanese in college, I have no idea how to say “thank you” in French.

I actually sent a ticket in to Blizzard asking if I’d somehow messed up my settings and was queuing up in another language without meaning to but apparently it’s a “known issue”. So. Now you know!

* Died about five seconds into Anub’arak in Azjol-Nerub (was one-shotted by the guy) and still got Gotta Go! Making it more impressive (and embarrassing)? I was the healer.

* Actually had to leave a Blackfathom Deeps group that I entered mid-run because I had no idea how to navigate the place and the group wasn’t coming back for me.

“But Pike, I thought you liked big epic sprawling instances!”

I do, when they meet at least one of the following criteria:

a.) are being led by somebody who knows where they are going
b.) are not being started in the middle with me stranded at the entrance portal
c.) are not a part of The Grand List of Instances Blizzard Designed Specifically to Annoy Pike.

The Grand List of Instances Blizzard Designed Specifically to Annoy Pike consist of the following:

Wailing Caverns
Sunken Temple
Blackfathom Deeps
Sunken Temple
Maraudon
Sunken Temple
Temple of Atal’Hakkar … oh wait.

(When BabyLock gets to the mid-40s, I think I’m just going to stop using LFG and quest until I hit BRD level.)

Ah, LFG. I do love thee, though.

In other news:

In Which There Is Much Cane-Waving

Cranky*Pike hobbles out with a cane*

Gather round, whippersnappers, Granny Pike’s got a story… see… I bet you all don’t remember the war! Yes, the Frostwolf-Stormpike war. Hey now, none o’ this crying and “But I learned this in schoooool”. Your teachers probably weren’t there in the trenches like I was!

See, I was a part of this war effort quite often, and the brackets always ended in a good even number. 51-60, 61-70, and then in Wrath of the Lich King, 71-80. That’s tradition, it’s always how it’s been done, dadgumit!

So then I retired from the wars and went off to fight dragons and the like instead. Now now, Granny Pike’s not done tellin’ her Alterac Valley story yet.

Today I decided to go back there: I have a couple of level 60s now, see, and I wanted to see how my beloved Nightfall Horde 51-60 bracket was faring. Not good, unfortunately. I can tell you the reason though, it starts with an “E” and ends with an “verybody rerolled Alliance Death Knights”. But now I’m just ramblin’.

I get into this battle and I’m all ready and rarin’ to go and these grasshoppers all start up with some nonsense about how “The end is near! The patch ruined my AV!” because level 60s are in their bracket. Now I may be old, but I know my AV, so I says to ’em, “What’re you kids flapping your gums about, that’s how it’s always been!” But they didn’t listen to me, or… perhaps they were already halfway to Tower Point because my wheelchair is Not a Very Fast Mount.

Regardless, I decided to leave Alterac Valley for the youngsters and consulted the Internet for an answer. It seems as though at some point between now and when I last played AV in the good ol’ days, they had in fact changed the bracket to a top level of 59, and this latest patch was just now changing it back.

And you know what I say to that? I say GOOD! You don’t go changin’ around a classic with newfangled rules! That’s just wrong!

*at this point Pike is waving her cane around frantically*

Ah, well, I’ll let you young’uns go now. I have a lawn to chase kids off of. Tell ya what, come back tomorrow and I’ll bake cookies. …if I can figure out how, anyway…

*Pike hobbles off, mumbling to herself*

The Curious Incident of the Penguin in the Blog Post

This is a blog post that started out as a couple of rants and then turned into me negating one of my own rants.

See, it happened like this…

I was cooking up this whole blog post about how I rather dislike the fact that Blizzard really pushes the whole Horde vs. Alliance thing. Like, that Twitter “battlecry” contest or the current photo mosaic thing. I don’t like it, because I love both Horde and Alliance. Why do they want me to choose between my babies like that? And why won’t they just let me say “FOR THE EVERYONE” or hold up signs of both faction emblems? Why can’t we be friends?

Then, that rant segued into a sort of ponder about how I have a hard time understanding people who are really die-hard loyal to one faction. Both sides have such great storylines and great races and great locations, and both sides have good days and bad days and good people and not-so-good people. I mean, I can understand “well, all my friends are [insert faction here]”, I mean, I 100% understand that. But what about the people who won’t even roll an alt on the other side? They’re missing out! I simply didn’t understand.

So I was in the middle of this all and I felt something on my shoulder. I tapped at it, but it didn’t go away, and I turned and saw this:

zendams-coolangeltux

sitting on my shoulder and giving me “the look”.

“Bwah?” I said, rather surprised (as you might expect). “Wh… who are you?”

“I’m Tux,” he replied. “And I’m the global collective conscience of Linux geeks everywhere. And you are being silly.”

“Me? Silly? Nonsense!” I replied in a rather miffed tone as I spun around in my computer chair.

“Look,” said Conscience-Tux. “You’re sitting here writing this blog post about how you don’t understand faction loyalty in World of Warcraft. And yet you whine and gripe anytime you have to use your Windows partition and you just LOVE coming up with excuses to show off screenshots of your Linux desktop and you get all defensive and noble and “patriotic” when people bash it, oh, and did I mention that your whole NaNoWriMo book is a freakin’ allegory for the Open Source Software movement? Hrmmm?”

“But, but, Tux! People just don’t understand!” I babbled. “They don’t understand the chills that go up my spine when somebody says ‘Free as in freedom’. They don’t understand the thrill of breaking and rebuilding your own operating system when you have to. They don’t understand the deep satisfaction that comes from solving a crazy computer problem. They don’t understand what it’s like to be the underdogs, tearing and clawing your way into using something as simple as a driver, and they don’t understand what it’s like to be a part of this great community and group effort…”

Tux held up a flipper to silence me. “Oh, and yet you don’t understand why some people have chills go up their spine when they hear ‘For the Horde’? And you don’t understand why people are loyal to their little virtual community? No, I think you understand perfectly well. Your heart has just already been taken. By a sexy flightless bird, no less.”

I sighed and then grumbled “Fiiiiiine, you win.”

“I always do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must be off. I’ve got an appointment with Richard Stallman in about five minutes.”

“Wait, you hang out with Richard Stallman too?”

“Oh, all the time. Why else do you think he’s so nuts?”

“Hrmm. Point taken.”

“Regardless, it’s been fun. And I hope you learned something from this little meeting of ours.” And with that, Conscience-Tux mounted up on his Gnu and disappeared into the air.

And so it came to pass that I was forced to adapt my blog post into saying, okay, die-hard Hordies (and Allies, though there aren’t as many of you running around), I getcha. It’s kind of a weird, roundabout way of getting you, but I do. …still wish I could say “FOR THE EVERYBODY!” though.

And that is how it went. True story. Even the part with the penguin conscience.

…what’s with the funny look…?

A Very Merry Thanksgiving…

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you that are celebrating it today (such as yours truly!) In honor of the day, I present to you a short list of things in WoW that I am grateful for:

  • 30 minute hearthstone. Yeah, yeah, we can all get together and talk about how “back in the day we had an hour long hearthstone and mounts at 40 and we had to walk through the Wetlands at level 6 to get to Stormwind from Darnassus”, but really, would YOU go back to having an hour long hearthstone? I didn’t think so ;D
  • Mechanostriders
  • Memories of the greatest raid in the world
  • All the friends, guildmates past and present, Twitterati, and fun people I have met through playing this game and blogging about it
  • Lil’ KT iceblocking something and cackling
  • Applebough, and dancing with him when I am on my Tree Druid.
  • Tree /cower
  • The Skybreaker, because guys, I seriously love the Horde, but the Alliance just owned the Horde in the airship department. Balloons are so last week.
  • The Safety Dance. I swear it’s WoW-related. See?
  • Addons that I couldn’t live without
  • The 30-39 and 40-49 battleground brackets. Post-twinks (for the most part), pre-Death Knights. Sooo delicious.
  • The fact that Argent Tournament dailies, while they make me want to bang my head into a wall, still somehow succeed in being over nine thousand times more tolerable than the Shattered Sun dailies
  • Coming up with the perfect name for new pets
  • Putting something expensive in the Auction House and waiting for the little mail icon next to your map to light up
  • Heroic Mech and running it a million times for a tank friend
  • Druid Epic Flight Form quest… quite possibly the best questline in the game.
  • The Mag’har, because they actually made Nagrand awesome, oh and while we’re at it,
  • Defending/attacking Halaa
  • Onyxia Whelpling
  • Baby Murlocs
  • Female Tauren, because we look awesome and there aren’t enough of us!
  • Snowman Costume, Picnic Basket, Orb of the Blackwhelp, Steam Tonks, Pygmy Oil, Haunted Memento, and all the other toys I carry around in my backpack

I could keep going, but alas, I should keep this list a decently manageable length before it turns into my blogroll or something. Above all though, thank you Blizzard for making an awesomely fun game, and thank you to all of you for reading and sticking around this long ^_^

Okay, Really Quickly Here

Please tell me I’m not the only one having really awesome “Milo & Otis” flashbacks:

pug

(Thanks for the pic, MMO-Champion!)

I say we pair it up with the Cornish Rex. Sooo cute x_x (And really, it’s about time we had a proper dog minipet, and not just a mini-worg.)

(Yes, this is a filler post. Yes, I apologize. I’ll try to have something slightly more interesting up shortly!)