WoW
The Ampitheater of Anguish
Aug 23rd
A friend of mine ingame, Candy, got his Paladin to 75. It was always his pride and joy, after the amount of time he put into it in vanilla, I really can’t blame him! He asked me, “What level can I do the Ring of Blood thingy?” I said 75, and off we went a little bit later. Of course I took Soupdragon, mostly because it’s much easier to be smacked in the face and Death Strike than to remember a class I haven’t played in a while. While I was waiting, I noticed a couple of players had wiped on the last bit of the Ampitheater quests and the mammoth was just standing there, obviously bugged. They seemed to be struggling so I decided I’d let them sort it out, tag it, and I’d tank it for them, however, the Warlock jumped in the mammoth and stupidly I attacked the other guy.. and tagged it. It was a bit of a mess, we all died, ran back over, I hopped into their group, helped kill it then got on with helping Candy, who was pretty damn happy to get a new hitty stick.
A little before that, while I was flying around on my Gryphon (this is important, I’ve played as Horde for so long the default Gryphon mounts Alliance get are, to me, gorgeous and I’m so jealous!), I noticed something I’d never stopped to be able to notice before. In the Ampitheater of Anguish, and I guess you’ve all seen this, but I’m an unobservant doofus sometimes, there is an audience. Walking around the audience is a Goblin vendor who sells snacks and occasionally lobs a bag of peanuts at one of the spectators! I thought this was excellent, and I wish I’d noticed it all of those times I’d been here before.

Our Cataclysm Guild Plans
Aug 18th
First of all, I’m going to have to apologise for the mess.. again. Yes, seeing as I’m planning a new header, and that I’ve never been completely crazy about my current theme, I have decided to go with a new theme. I’ve found one which looks a lot tidier and should hopefully clean up my sidebar a bit (3 columns!), so I’ll get on with that soon along with a bunch of things I want to do in order to just tidy the place up, and hopefully this time I’ll stick with it, the theme isn’t too simple or too “complicated”, so I should hopefully be pretty happy with it, without wanted to fiddle with the CSS and then getting frustrated because I’m too bad at CSS. Anyway, back to the post.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, in fact I probably haven’t, but a few months ago we decided that the best way for us to enjoy the game was to make our own guild for Cataclysm. Especially when they announced the change to 25 man and 10 man raiding, one lockout per raid per week, we knew we’d be able to settle down with a few friends and raid some 10s. So, for months we tried to come up with a guild name, to no avail, everything one of us said we liked, another didn’t.
The plan almost fell apart, which probably would have led to me eventually quitting not too far into Cataclysm, until a few weeks ago when we went to have a bit of lunch before seeing a movie (Inception) at the cinema, we sat and discussed all sorts of Cataclysm based plans and decided in the end to stay on our current server (Vashj, PvP, EU). It’s not an ideal server, by any means, but we all have a bunch of alts here with different professions, and it would have been a lot of effort to move however many people decide to join come the expansion. Plus there are a few people who might be joining who wouldn’t have moved. Finally, we discussed the guild name again, and decided on ‘SlashPat’.
We won’t be doing any raiding until Cataclysm, perhaps a little in 4.0 before the expansion actually hits while we wait around but right now we don’t have the people, and aren’t really interested yet. We still need to sort the ranks out, and the guild websitei, but we are also going to be looking for a few social members. People who aren’t too interested in raiding, perhaps one or two that can fill in for people when they’re away but that’s something to sort another time, who would like somewhere relaxed to be while they play the game they want to play. It would be awfully nice to play Cataclysm with a social aspect to the guild, as well as the raiding aspect.
At the moment we only have 5 members, and we’re not exactly recruiting yet, we might still need one or two raiders as well, it depends on who decides they’re joining and who doesn’t, but if it sounds interesting, keep us in mind. We plan to have fun while we raid, and we’d also like to get the job done, do the hardmodes and achievements, so when we do start looking for raiding members, we want serious raiders who want to have a laugh, basically. Our social members, of course, don’t need to be serious raiders, just be friendly and a bit social!

- which I’m going to be dealing with. Dan’s asked for a simple guildomatic site though I wouldn’t mind using something else, something more customiseable, either way I have plenty of time to sort it and a lot of other things to do in the meantime [↩]
Loremaster Number 2 Please
Jul 30th
I realise that most of you think I’m crazy for having 2 characters with Loremaster, and of course, it was a little bit dé jà vu, but I did most of it on my Priest early last year, then rerolled to my Hunter before I could finish Kalimdor. Of course, assuming I was sticking with my Hunter, I went through it all again, with the brains to realise it’d be best to do Kalimdor first THEN Eastern Kingdoms. When I went back to my Priest, I had 80 quests left until I had the achievement. Did you really think I was gonna leave it like that? Noway! Anyway, so, I’ve slacked a bit but finally:


I think when it gets to the point when you have 2 characters with Loremaster, you reach the point where ‘the Insane’ seems like an excellent idea. I just need to find a bit of insanity first.

Pulling Tips
Jul 23rd
Within Azeroth there are many lonely hearts, so I’m here to help out. Ever wondered how to get that sexy little Gnome to notice you? Or perhaps you’d prefer a much more strong, tentacley type? Whatever your type is, I’m sure there is a line in here that could.. *cough* grab their attention.
You can’t go wrong with the classics. Trust me, crude lines may sound funny, but you’ll be leaving with many a red hand/hoof/paw print on your face.
- “Get your cloak, you’ve pulled.”
- “You can be my Guardian Spirit any time.”
- “Do you use Cartographer? I keep getting lost in your eyes.”
- “You must be one hell of a Rogue because you pick pocketed my heart from across the room.”
- “Is there a flight plan nearby, or is that just my heart taking off?”
- “LF1M, party in my pants.”
- “Have you just come from the Stockades? It must be illegal to look that good.”
- “Are those trousers from Outland? Your butt is out of this world.”
- “You’re so sweet, you’re going to put strudel out of business.”
On a small sidenote: there are some really crude and hilarious chat up lines out there! Got anymore?

Faith Restored
Jul 9th
For the time being. Read this.
We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.
I can’t get the fact that they have kind of sold out and tried to share our private details with the public without technically asking first, but – they have at least listened. The way I see it, the amount their subscribers must have dropped over the past few days must have been pretty terrifying, that is a lot of lost, ongoing payments. Even so, the masses got what they wanted, however it came about, that is still cause for a good, old fashioned, “woo hoo”. And no, I don’t mean the Sims kind, but hey, if that’s the way you roll don’t let me stop you.
As long as Real ID remains optional, and names are the only thing being shared,i then I don’t mind it being there. In fact, bring it on. Just – keep it optional. Well, okay, I’m not a fan of Facebook integration. I particularly don’t like the vote up/vote down idea for the official forums but whatever floats your boat, Mr. Blizzard.
Now, can I get back to Desperate Housewives, my Cataclysm excitement, and my attempt at thinking up a new blog topicii in peace for a bit? No more big community shake ups?


Lost Faith
Jul 8th
Yeah.. I said I wasn’t going to post about Real ID, and technically I’m not, though it has definitely sparked a lot of emotion in a lot of people. Now, of course, this has all come from Blizzard saying that in order to post on the official forums in Cataclysm, your real first and last names, as you gave to Battle.net, will be shown when you post in order to “combat trolling”. A heck of a lot of people don’t like this. My name’s damn common in the UK and the US. On Facebook alone I find 511 others that share my name, so while I don’t think that my name being out there is a huge security risk,i for some people it’s much bigger, and with such a huge uproar against this, you’d think Blizzard might back down? Wrong.
Now, I’m not pretending I know all of the details, in honesty, all I really know is they’ve signed some big deal with.. Facebook? And they won’t be backing down. Well, hurray for treating your customers well! Usually, when people churn out the usual “I pay £9 a month for this game and deserve better service than this” I might perhaps scoff a little, because usually that’s a pretty lame argument - you pay a monthly fee to play the game. However, when something Blizzard does makes you realise they really are just one huge multi-national, commercial company, well, it kinda makes you lose faith a little bit.
I personally thought that Blizzard cared about this game and well, this has shaken the community. A lot of people feel alienated, using your real name online is a privacy risk. Sure, some people do it, at their own risk, but when you sign a privacy contract, then they say they’ll give up your personal details that easily because of some other contract, guess that makes the internet dragons seem a little less worth the £9 a month. I’ve heard of so many people quitting the game over this. Some are doing the “ugh I’m quitting!” and then logging in to raid Icecrown or whatever, but a lot are actually cancelling their accounts and this time I honestly cannot blame themii. The worst part? This is exactly what businesses out to make money are like.
Incase you’re wondering, I haven’t made a decision on how annoyed at Blizzard I might be right now, being on a break myself at the moment I don’t care as much as I otherwise would, but I’m enjoying catching up on the years of Desperate Housewives I’ve missed. Why did nobody ever tell me I should watch this show before?

My Gametime Ran Out
Jul 4th
Now I have your attention! I’m not quitting, just taking 2 or 3 weeks off to do other stuff. I want to try out Aion a little now the population has died down – I never really got bored of it before, just that I had a problem with rubberbanding and Brewfest came out, BREWFEST IS IMPORTANT. Besides, I hear they’ve patched a few things, like more quests to make it a bit less grindy. This time I might try an Elios, to see a few different quests, though I think we all know Asmodians are way cooler. Also have a pile of anime I want to watch, working through Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood now, after finishing Fullmetal Alchemist and the movie. Everybody keeps telling me that Brotherhood is much better and I wanted to see how they ended it in the new series! I’m weak. Was going to watch Clannad.
It seems that yesterday my friend got me a going away present. I sat waiting for this pug group to form for.. probably around 40 minutes, right as I was about to leave they magically filled the last 4 spots. By this point, I couldn’t be arsed. However, I’m too nice and don’t like to piss people off too much so I thought, meh, it’ll get it done. Cleared through the first room, got to the beginning of the last room and about every Skeletal.. whatever they’re called in the place aggroed. Of course, the tanks let the mobs run around the raid while they tried to pick those up and cleaved people, then we wiped. Ran back in, one tank ran off on his own grabbed a Skeletal Giant, cleaved the Warlock, both died and he screamed at the healers, who were nowhere near him. Then everybody left, hallelujah. One guy decided to call that tank a ‘nigger tard’, and I decided to report his ass – don’t you love reporting douches? I decided to log off for a bit, watch something while my flask was on, and my friend popped up on msn asking if I wanted to join his guild’s alt/main ICC 10 raid.
I wasn’t on vent for the entire thing (do need to sort that out), but even so, we got a bunch of hardmodes donei and on Gunship, lo and behold, I finally managed to replace the bloody Sundial! *hugs Muradin’s Spyglass* I actually think this may have been one of the happiest moments in WoW, as I have never had good trinket luck in my entire time of playing.
Next, I do my usual squeeling over Stinky (because he is way better than Precious *nod*), then murdering Precious, and woop it’s my loot, and oh, nice one. Precious’s Ribbon.
By this point I’d also worked out why my game kept freezing when we pulled certain bosses, Gunship, Blood Princes, and Dreamwalker, had happened in the last ICC raid I did too. Each one has a health box in the UI, so you can see how much health the gunships are at, how much health the Princes have, how much health Dreamwalker has. Each one of them froze my game on pull.ii
Finally, we killed Sindragosa, which was in fact the first time I’ve seen her dead, and then Lich King tries. Wow, suddenly quite glad I read the tactics and watched the TankSpot video back when I joined Supreme because I have an inkling on what’s going to happen. My friend also explained the way they do it to me in whispers, and to be honest, it doesn’t sound like a hard fight at all. Run to adds with the debuff, go on the ledge, kill adds, move off ledge kill Val’kyr and move out of shit on the floor, move back to ledge, kill adds, finish off adds, kill Lich King, move out of shit on floor. I think we wiped 3 times and then downed it. Honestly, I may have been just a little speechless. I didn’t expect to kill the Lich King before the 4.0 mega nerf patch, maybe even 85, so killing it when I was actually able to take part properly and not feel boosted (25% buff helped, obviously, but you get my point) was absolutely amazing! So now I’m a Kingslayer, and I’m hugely grateful to my friend for getting me the raid spot, I had a really good time and achieved a few things I never expected. I’m still going to use ‘Hand of A’dal’ because that is my favourite title, but it’s nice to know I have it.
You know something? I finally feel a little proud of my character again. She has geared up nicely because I’ve put in a lot of effort, I loves her Brewfest Ram, and Windrider Cub, and she has achieved things that my Hunter hasn’t. Now I’m going to take a break so that I can continue playing without taking things quite so seriously, and I don’t intend to stop blogging. I may even mention a few non-WoW related things, for starters, I’d like to talk a little about my initial thoughts about Aion this time around possibly, but don’t worry, it’ll only be 2 or 3 weeks.

Day Of Much Squee
Jul 1st
I’m going to start with my second Violet Proto Drake. For me, it really HAS been a long strange trip, as I started Fae’s achievements alongside everybody else. I rerolled to my Priest in the first January, in which time I started them all on her, and then rerolled back to Fae in, I guess it was August or September, in which time I started doing them on Fae again. I kept doing my Priest’s so that I wouldn’t have the hassle of, “oh I wish I’d kept doing them” and I’m damn glad I thought that way now I’m back on her, but Fae had to wait until this Midsummer for her Violet Proto and I finally completed my goal today. Hooray!
My next priority was to knock out some raids on my Priest. I need a short WoW break, I cancelled my account the other night after getting a bit ragey because I didn’t want to be getting ragey, so I just stopped my account to take a breather. I might play a little Aion again, try out some things I didn’t get chance to, see what the new patch is like, or maybe I’ll just watch a bunch of anime, either way I’ll try to keep blogging while I’m on a break. My account time runs out on Sunday, so I gave myself a few priorities, and today I’ve managed to meet them. Fae’s achievements, and Seithir’s 4 set. I did a VoA25, then found an “8+ bosses, HC Gunship” group, figured I need to do ICC, what’s the worst that can happen? We cleared everything but Sindragosa and Lich King. After Dreamwalker the raid leader decided to leave it at that and honestly, I couldn’t care less that was an awesome pug! Heroic Festergut, Professor Putricide, all one shot? I’m still just a little in awe, and my measly 7-8k dps made me look like such a terrible player against these people! However, not only did it get my Ashen Verdict rep upto 9,000/21,000, it netted me enough emblems to complete my Tier 10 4 set, and I also managed to grab a token!! Squee. So that was nice, got a VoA10 out of the way too.
After the ICC, I found this little guy in my mailbox:

I’d been waiting all day for him to arrive, and if I could be bothered I’d show you the picture I took of the battered box and the ‘Please handle with care, fragile’ notice on it. My God they were lucky it was a plush toy. Anyway, once I got him ingame, I decided his name is Bertie. Yes, he’s a cuddly toy, so he needs a name. I spent a while playing with him, watching him run about and fly around. Bought a pet leesh and ran around a bit, then played some fetch. MY GOD this is the cutest thing since the Polar Bear Cub with a little red ball on his nose.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m gonna go with: SQUEE!!

Real ID: Pros and Cons
Jun 30th
We still haven’t quite got Real ID in the EU at the time of writing this post, however, I’d like to share my thoughts about it.
I’ve had my doubts, when I first read about it, I think my thoughts were, “They get to see my full real name?! AND all of my alts? Including secret hidey alts and bank alts?!” These things are still a minor concern to me. A lot of people know that my name is Hannah, but I’m a bit dubious about sharing my last name. I guess 10 years of using the internet and hearing paranoid news broadcasts tend to drill it into your head that sharing your real name is a bad thing, but really, it’s not like it’s the first time, is it? I have a Facebook account. That uses my full name, and I’m not exactly picky about who I add on there, so why worry so much about it on Real ID? It’s not like my name is uncommon and scarily easy to find, and not everybody on the internet is a creepy stalker.
The thing with hiding alts, well, that’s always going to be a concern for me, especially with bank alts. I like to keep my bank alts anonymous. I don’t want people to be persuaded one way or another to buy or not buy my stuff because it’s me selling it, equally, I don’t want people to be pissed off when they notice I’ve undercut them, because I do, it’s how the auction house works, and I’d rather stay anonymous to avoid any hassle and just enjoy making gold. Though I guess my Argent Dawn bank alt isn’t too anonymous, being in SAN and called some variation on ‘Jaedia’. It’s something I can make myself get used to. And the question of hidey alts, well, the broadcast message aspect of RealID can easily fix the “I’d like some me time” issue. I can inevitably use it kind of as a ‘DND’ message if need be. I don’t have any secret alts anyway, so it’s not a problem.
There have been some great posts in the past few weeks about Real ID, some saying why it’s bad, some saying why it’s great, one that really stood out to me was Psynister’s post, because he summed up what Real ID does so well that it actually convinced me that it’s worth using. Not to mention his post about the problems with Real ID, he has given some great advice on how to deal with any problems you might potentially have it it. We’ve been asking for a cross-server friends list for so long and now we have one. Okay, so we still probably won’t be friending the awesome people we meet in random dungeons, but it’s a start. An appear offline feature specifically for Real ID might be a nice idea, but then again you don’t have to add everybody you know, you don’t even have to use it, there are plenty of ways to avoid talking to people when you’re not in the mood. Personally, I’ve decided I’m going to give it a go. It’s a shame that it’s not going to work cross-seas, there are some US/Oceanic server folk I’d love to add, but if you’re EU and you’d like me to add you, send me a mail or a DM on Twitter or something. I won’t add everybody who asks but if I know you well enough I probably will. Happy patch day!

A Rant About Tanks 2: Electric Boogaloo
Jun 10th
Jae’s Note: Guest post. Again I’m sorry, but you all seem to love them anyway, enjoy.
Warning: I swear, a lot.
Recently, between the time I’ve been levelling my new rogue in WSG (mother FUCK hunters), playing random Xbox games I’ve rented from Love Film, finding out ‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’ or ‘Dragonball Z: Star Wars Edition’ as I call it is a boring, twitchy, rush written sack-o-crap that made me sad to my core. Playing KoTOR again to feel less sad about the Star Wars franchise, before sadly re-watching Episode One and remembering there is no more hope or God in the world, watching all 6 series of Hell’s Kitchen USA because the idea of a show where an insane OCD Scotsman with anger issues shouts at Americans is like Christmas and Ramadan rolled into one. Shouting at people in call centers who for some reason think EE sounds like 13D due to the fact their parents must have been drinking a mix of paint and powdered idiot when pregnant with the little cock smiths and generally being annoying to my poor dear girlfriend, I’ve been subtlety that it’s rude to put “part 1” on something then proceed to ignore it while I play Mass Effect again as Renegade (“this girl appears to have deep emotional scarring and is mildly psychotic, shoot her in the face with a sniper rifle before I beat you to death”-Commander Kari “Skullfucker” Shepard).
So anyway, back to the point, I think I had one – AH YES, Tanking. I’ll be looking at a few of the aspects of tanking when I can be dragged away from the nothing I normally do. Today I look at the joy that is dealing with you arseholes in the greater world, no I’m not insulting anyone in particular, just most DPS and healers don’t seem to know the cardinal rule that is at the heart of all the good tanks out there, one of the two simple rules that deal with everything we do and stand for in the World of Warcrafts, these rules are simple:
- Use your hurty attacks to make the mean people not kill everyone.
- Every last healer and DPS is a wanker.
Rule 2 is the rule I will be explaining today (mind at some point if I get fed enough white chocolate cookies I might do an in-depth guide to rule 1 when levelling your new paladin).
On the WoW forums at the moment there are several topics complying that most tanks think they’re some kind of perfect being, and that anyone else is lesser scum only fit to bask in our almighty glow. Now in my case this is correct, but for the rest this is just a misunderstanding. I won’t judge the tanks who I will call “DPS that respecced for an instant queue” or “death knights” as they’re known, most tanks are simply just jaded, hate-filled husks bored of dealing with “them”. What’s “them” I hear you ask random person reading a blog who never actually said that but I will ‘cause it keeps the post flowing? It’s that DPS/Healer that ruins everything, it’s that being whose mere existence is enough to make me so angry I could punch all Hannah Montana in her stupid fucking face and then eat her empty Disney owned soul, it’s the person who has 2 DPS settings, slow and offline. If you still don’t know what I’m on about, it’s you.
If you’re still struggling with this concept, you’re an idiot, here’s a guide.
Please note, this is also a cheat, if you are a DPS, please replace the word ‘Tank’ with ‘DPS’ and if you’re a healer, sorry mate you’re on your own, LOSER.
1) GOGOG Gang.
I realise this is a bad place to start, this is meant to be a sarcastic take on what people do, not an all out rant, but fuck you guys, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I usually pull my heroics at a speed that closely resembles sonic on meth, but even then I get told to gogog by the DPS which I’ve covered below. How is my 20 seconds to buff and get a food buff going to affect your day of queuing and whacking off to drawings of the Lost cast, you annoying temple of arse.
2) ‘How do I mine for fish???’ Brigade.
They say you should gear for what you want to do not what you do, which is why I’m wearing crotchless pants. These are the people from whom the concept of learning while levelling, or just the basic concept of learning is as foreign as the concept that caps doesn’t make you sound louder when reading it. The people who manage 1400 DPS with t10, the people who spam AoE on single targets, the tanks with 20 parry gems, healers with 10mp5 gems, the 0/0/71 specs and the meleeing hunters. The people who when you question them say they’ve played since classic and they have Heroic Lich King on their full Heroic sanc geared mains in Paragon(see 7) and that you’re just a scrub to him, these fucking wastes of sperm.
Okay don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of these people are just new or don’t know better, who when told so will change or learn. Not these people, I like them, they’re blank pages for me to print my horrible manifesto of pain and hatred upon, to further my dark plans for this smeg pile of a planet. I mean the fucking idiots who can learn, but are so far up their own arses that they are at least 30% Nickleback.i I don’t care if you’ve been playing since classic, it just means you’ve been shit at something for 5 years, now stop using Arcane Missiles as your main DPS spell and sod off.
3) Need offspec cunts.
Ask, ASK, “Hey, anyone need this? I could use it for my offspec.” Don’t just blindly need, if the tank that has been farming that trinket in normal Trial for weeks and you need it ‘cause you “MIGHT do some tanking at some point but probably not”, then well done, you’re worse than Hitler.
4) <AFK>
Not a word is needed. If you do this I hope a fox eats your child. (too soon?)
5) No speaka the engalnds.
I’m not going into BNPesque “YOU IN OUR COUNTRY SPEAK OUR LANGUAGE”, but you’re on an English server – pony up and stop speaking moonspeak before I start spamming Welsh, AND YOU DON’T WANT THAT, TRUST ME, IT SOUNDS LIKE A COW IS EATING AN APPLE.
6) XxKillerDKSweXx
Not Swedish people but “these” names, the people with names that have their nationality or are the same names as ANYONE from a Shounen Jump manga or the names that features more than one of the same letter unless that’s the make up of that word, need to fuck off, have a proper name like me, Ryyus…
OH SHI…
7) My main has/is X.
No it doesn’t, it has t9 and at the most ‘of the Nightfall’. Go away.
^_^ =DDD!!!! <3!1
Ah smilies, I know this has nothing to do with DPS, but you know what, this is my blog post so if you feel like complaining, BLEH.
Stop it, just, stop it, you’re not a cat, you’re not Kirby, you’re not Asian, if you are, you’re not an Asian cat. If you say something sad, or happy, or zany, you don’t need to then back it up with a rough estimate of your face if you were to over act your current emotion while having a stroke. If I wanted to see that I’d watch a Michael Bay film.ii
I don’t know if it’s just me and my cold, dark, dead heart, wanting to threaten puppies in front of their owners and spending my time looking for Derrick Bird jokes, but this concept annoys me.
Simcraft)Simcraft
SIMCRAFT
SIMCRAFT
SIMCRAFT
SIMCRAFT
SIMCRAFT
SIMCRAFT
Sorry that last one is nothing to do with anything, but on the whole if you come under any of these groups, then you are a bad person. How bad? Derek Smart bad. If you look at any of these arcetypes and think, “This represents me.” Then you are a terrible person and will die alone.
Oh, wait, I’ve said literally nothing about tanks… This is probably the worst post about tanks since the World of Raids paladin tank guides.
Anyway that’s me done, this has been fun, well I say fun, it’s been good, well I say good, it’s been bearable, well I say bearable – Kill me with a hammer.
To paraphrase Mr Brooker: There’s the post, now Go away.













