Armaggedon's coming!

• Just because I stand near a flag the whole battleground.
• Just because I give Arcane Brilliance every few minutes.
• Just because I chat in single abbreviations.

Right after purchasing my Arathi Basic mug the other day. In fact inspired by my purchase, I hit AB for a bit of fun.

We got off to a great start, in fact I had capped 3 bases before any had the chance to completely turn over.

Strange, I thought I already had that, but maybe it’s my lack of the achievement that speaks to my dedication for a team win over personal achievements.

• Before I left LM, I checked for a guard. We had one, so I moved on.
• Before I left Farm, I checked for a guard, we had several.
• Before I left BS, I checked for a guard. There was none, so I stayed.

For the rest of the game I called troop movements and fought off attacks at BS. A couple of these I had to do alone, a couple the cavalry came to the rescue.

Whatever happened though, there was one thing you could be sure of, when everyone else had run off and the dust had settled, Gnomeaggedon would be guarding BS.

A bot might sit by a flag, but sitting by a flag does not make one automatically a bot!

I’m buffing your back!

Lucky too really, as Horde owned (or is that pwned) Lumbermill and there was a constant stream of Mage assisted enemies floating down to BS.

I wasn’t twiddling my thumbs between killing sprees, for one thing I was buffing.

I could see by the steady Rez stream that we were taking heavy casualties. Death tends to clear buffs and normally people are too precious about mana, or too busy to rebuff after the game starts. On guard duty I had the luxury of both mana and time, so every few minutes I would toss out an Arcane Brilliance.

A Buffing machine I may be, but a Buff Bot I am not!

Short talking

It’s less that I am a short Gnome and more that everyone is short of time.

In the heat of battle it is significantly easier to write:

BS, 3 BS, LM, ST etc…

than…

I spy with my little eye 3 Horde approaching the node starting with B

Not only is it easier to write, but it’s easier for input overwhelmed bloodthirsty warriors to read in the heat of battle.

My BG comms may be short (without a related Gnome causation), but they are not short due to artificial intelligence.

Saved by a Lock

I hate to say it, but I was saved by a Lock, not just any Lock, a Horde Lock.

You see I had been doing my work far too efficiently, some might same mechanically, too much like a bot.

If it wasn’t for the Lock taking the near-death dive from LumberMill, I may have been AFK’d out of Arathi Basin with less than a minute on the clock.

I didn’t notice until I had raced over, dispatched the Lock and one of his friends, before being sliced up by the third arrival, but someone had been probing me to see if I was a sentient being.

The first whisper was a cryptic question regarding my activity, or apparent lack of it, or maybe mechanical nature of it (this Mage received my Focus Magic each time he respawned and ran past the BS flag.)

The second whisper was basically “Lucky you went after that Horde then”.

I’m not sure if I was actually flagged for AFK at that point. It’s one thing I don’t like about the AFK flagging system, usually the 1st time you realise you are flagged is when you get ported out as a deserter. Likewise there is no “vote this AFK flag off me option – you do damage fast, or you are out!

What I do know, is if I hadn’t broken my golden BG rule of never leaving a post unattended, I would have been quick. If it hadn’t been a Lock that invited a quick dispatch, I would have been gone.

What is it about this hyperactive, talkative crazy green-haired Gnome that might suggest bot?

Organisational Learning

I have had the immense pleasure if fighting & dying side by side with Zahraah, who you may know as Pugnacious Priest over this weekend. OK, I have been doing the dying… she likes to point out that there is one area of the BG Scoreboard that I dominate… Deaths.  Luckily I have my trusty BG mug vendor on my side, who assures PP that because I am a Fire Mage, the Original Glass Canon, things are working as intended.

How might I spend the weekend in BGS consistently fighting by the side of a Priest from another Realm?

QueueQ Premades.  We were in the same vent channel, thus 9/10 in the same BG (or maybe we would both miss the BG, but we were still side by side)

Anyway, she had a(nother) great post the other day QueueQ Premades – What have they taught you, whch goes to the heart of this post.

If you report a player, a node guard, AFK when in a QueueQ premade, you will in turn receive a kick from the channel.

Sedentary beings receive their due status and the heroes of the BG.  The ones that are prepared to forgo the action, the HKs (yes, even the deaths) to ensure that the rest of the team can focus on winning the battle, not back capping lost nodes.

There was a time where I too would look suspiciously on idle players at nodes, my 1st reaction being they must be bots.  Now, after vigorous training the in the Academy of QQ (well at least their organised BGs), I look carefully before reaching such a conclusion.  In fact it reminds me of my 1st encounters in AB, where not understanding the map or the machinations of the BG, I sat at Stables watching the to and fro of the battle, coming to understand what would be expected of me were I to leave the false safety of the Stables.

So people, before reporting at bot, check what the “bot” has been doing.  Are they involved, calling troop movements, calling incomings, defeating incomings?  Give them the benfot of the doubt… in fact if they are there and you own the node, there is no good reason to report them even if they are a bot.  Their mere presence may be discouraging an attempt at the flag.  Better a worthless bot performing a noble task at a node, than resting in a graveyard.

Curry night for Fire Mages

Well not really, but the name Runzwithfire just makes me think of diarrhea the morning after a good hot curry. He tells me that if he realised he was going to be refered to as Runz at level 80, he might not have gone with the name

Ohh Noes.. the raid now with extra Runz!

Me, I would have chosen the name specifically for that outcome.

Anyway, what I am about to show you has absolutely nothing to do with shit, rather with some personal excellence which I am unlikely to ever come close to.  I admire people that try new things, go out on a limb, then make it public.

Runz has entered the world of Machinima, with the included video.

The most important things to note (to my narcistic self) are:

1. The not-so-hidden reference to the Mana Obscura Mage Forums, and
2. The cameo of a hot little green-haired Gnome… Me of course… not once, but twice.

Actually there are a lot of Mage bloggers represented in the video.

So go play where’s wally, find me, find the other Mage Bloggers and keep your eye out for future installments from Runz!

Learning new Respect

Keeva has taught me a lesson, one that I put into action with a couple of people on my realm and in my BG.  Just in case you are one of the few people that haven’t read the post, go do yourself a favor.

Habitual and negligent intolerance, or how I came to realise that I enable bigotry

Once you have read it and the 180ish comments, you will know that the guilt you share for not speaking out is not yours alone, it is shared.  But then we can also share in recapturing the chat channels, Vent speak, forums and our guilds.

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/10/10/im-not-a-bot/