I have been meaning to turn this comment into a post for a couple of weeks now, but I have been struggling to make it better by putting my words around it.

What’s worse is I know I took note of the original post, the url, the title, the blog name… I had it all.  It ever appeared in the half-arsed WordPress “My Comments” section of the blog control panel, when the blog owner made a reply.  Unfortunately, the half-arsed WordPress “My Comments” section is one page long.  If a dozen comments appear in quick succession, well, you wont know about the older ones unless someone comments again pushing it to the top.

So I’m hoping that either the blog author, or the commenter (Feralan) stumble across this post and remind me so I can give proper credit.

Then it occurs to me, why do anything more than drag it from the obscurity of a comments thread?

So here is Feralan’s response to a post over at ___FILL_IN_THE_BLANK___

Edit: Found it just prior to post going live, and I can’t be bohered rewritting… so the credit for the post that contains this comment goes to Wildgrowth with the post No PuG Left Behind. You can’t blame a Mage for forgetting a TreeBlog’s url can you?

Feralan said:

This is really a joke.

I’m one of those much-hated “casuals”, and a roleplayer to boot. I raided a while but burned out from it and quit last autumn. And you know what? I’m PINING for the days of the TBC heroics, and so are my equally casual, roleplaying guildies. I cannot imagine how anyone could consider these constant “nerfs” to be a good thing.

If you’re going to raid later, you have to learn certain skills. You have to learn teamwork and situational awareness and how to recover from mistakes (yours or another players’). If the non-raid content can be “facerolled” with one thumb in your nose and the other in your butt, how are future raiders supposed to learn to actually play their class and role half-decently?

If you cannot or don’t want to raid — yes, people like that exist and NO we are NOT all a bunch of no-skill whiners with an entitlement complex the size of the solar system, in fact I see THAT more often in wannabe-hardcore people — then heroics are the only challenge you can look forward to. Take that challenge away and guess what? The motivation to play goes with it.

(And if you are already raiding and think heroics are for worthless n00bs and your epixxed-out uberl33t self doesn’t have to pay attention to what you’re doing or mind your aggro or whatever, then by golly I want to see you splattered all over the instance for your arrogance when you fail to move out of the cleave or the ominously colored bad stuff. Just sayin’.)

TBC heroics could be a pain, and party composition could be too restrictive if you weren’t overgeared. But they were a challenge. They kept you on your toes. That made them FUN. Now that more classes have more reliable CC, why is that CC never expected to be used anymore? (I especially feel for hunters whose prized chain trapping skills have no worth anymore. I miss watching a skilled hunter do that.)

Wrath heroics aren’t fun, overall. They are bland, uninspired, mindless AoE-fests. And the few fights that WERE fun get nerfed to hell and back to make them as boring as the rest. I bet they will remove Insanity next, or Loken’s nova, or anything that actually requires a half-second of engaging your brain instead of spamming AoE until the hotkey breaks.

Yeah, so really I didn’t have anything extra at the time to add (I  could just applaud) … and I still don’t.

I think I said I was going to turn the comment into a blog post.. little did I know I was basically just going to put it in quotation marks and get you all to read it!

Gnomer and Out!

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

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/02/10/an-excellent-comment/

Do you miss natural gatekeepers?

I know I do.

Of course at this point, you have no idea what I’m talking about.

This thought occurred to me while I was chatting to SlikRX/Balthazario, who has become a regular, like a real guildy, in Armaggedon’s Coming.

How regular?
He brought his wife as well!

Anyway, I was chatting to Balth while I was running VoA. The raid leader clearly stated from the outset that it was a whole clear.

• Toravon – Slushy
• Koralon – Toast
• Emalon – Raidbreaker

That was when I discovered that the raid I had joined, the one committed to clearing VoA was 1/2 full of one-wipe pansies.

Back in the good Old days

Which got me thinking and chatting to Balth.

He’s young enough, (/wink) in game terms anyway, that he didn’t experience the joys of gatekeepers in the Burning Crusade.

Kara is the perfect example of this.

We will ignore the attunement process, we will call that an un-natural gate keeper. Well go straight to the 1st boss.

Attumen the Huntsman

He was fundamentally a dps race, but there were enough twists that you had to keep it together avoid wipes and earn the right to go beyond him.

You could only afford one wipe, maybe two if you were a bit overgeared – and that was just on the trash leading to the boss.

You had 30 minutes to clear the trash and take down the boss before the trash reset.

I know people scoff at trash these days, but I was in plenty of Kara raids where the group couldn’t jump this 1st hurdle.

In many cases people wouldn’t pass this gate for 2 or 3 weeks, or if they did they would fail at the next one.

Imagine that, 3 weeks to get past the trash leading to the 1st boss! These days we need Blizzard programmed gates to ensure an entire raid instance isn’t one-shot on the first night.

Moroes

Even if your raid made it past Attumen in those 1st few weeks, the next gatekeeper was ready to douse you in a cold shower of humility.

Sure some people got him on their 1st night, some even one-shot him, but for a long time he was the one that was likely to break the spirit of the raid.

Just because you got him once didn’t mean you would get him the next time. “On Farm” didn’t mean we had killed him once.

A bit of random boss selection, classes expected to use their skills, a defined kill order AND target switching mixed in with a fair dose of self survival skills made this a challenging, often frustrating, but always great encounter to finish.

The Curator

The Curator was easy, once you knew how, once you learned to quickly change targets and burn down the adds, once you could pump out the damage at the right time, at the right target (Mmm sounds like Emalon) and as long as you didn’t have a Hunter (for some unknown reason, Hunters always pulled The Curator early and could never understand the instructions on how to not pull Curator).

There was a reason I wrote so frequently about the Post-Curator black hole (PCBH). The natural gatekeepers did their job and often people just didn’t want to go another step further.

These days we have loot Pinatas

WoLK doesn’t have natural gatekeepers, it has loot pinatas. The reality is if you don’t have the achievement for a boss kill in the 1st week of it’s release you are a nub.

Unfortunately it has breed a entitlement culture.

I’m entitled to fight the final boss and if you can’t dumb it down enough for me to get through, then you better make it optional & skippable.

Emalon

Which brings me back to Emalon. This guy is a natural gate keeper, but Blizzard forgot to give him the keys!

Why is it that we can beat the new “hard bosses” but can’t beat him?

Why are we allowed to fight the new hard bosses without going through this natural gatekeeper?

I’ts good to fail… sometimes

I honestly believe the occasional wipe is good for a person. RL is not a series of one-shots, it’s a mix of close calls, one-shots and wipes.

I believe the true measure of a person is the ability to take a few knocks, scrape yourself off the floor and face the challenge again.

Some will suggest that this is a human nature problem, not a design problem. The thing is, I didn’t see this human nature before WoLK, so really the only design issue is that we can have a hissy fit and get bosses that are so easy that when we meet a natural gatekeeper we take our bat and ball and go home.

Gnomer and Out!

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

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/02/09/natural-gatekeepers

Australia is a bit weird in some ways.

For instance, we rant about our right to freedom of speech, but in reality we have no legislated right to freedom of speech. Usually people find this out the hard way.

We take a hard line on government censorship… China you bastards… Your net censorship is piss-weak in comparison to the incoming Australian net censorship!

• Internet censorship plan gets the green light
• Internet uprising overturns Australian censorship law
• Web filters to censor video games

Likewise we don’t mess about rating video games.

Good hunh. No R rating means a 5 year old could buy the most bloodthirsty porn filled game a shop.

It sounds like this is a good thing (ok, maybe not little kids with age inappropriate games). Not rating them has to be good right?

No rating = no limitations, right?

Wrong!

You see (officially) if something isn’t rated, it can’t be sold.

The best known game that is officially illegal to sell in Australia is… WoW!

Yep, it’s not rated, therefore it is officially illegal to sell it in Oz.

Occasionally this hits the news, particularly overseas because “Australia bans WoW” is a great headline.

I remember reading one of these articles and an official admitted they weren’t going to enforce it (in the case of WoW).

It doesn’t matter, until it matters

The problem with laws (and loopholes) like this is they never matter until they matter. It will only take one hardcore conservative (because we all know D&D and WoW are the tools of the devil. You know D&D was banned in some Australian states originally, now it’s banned in prison) to push the case and suddenly it matters.

Anyway, as bad as it sounds, the best way to ensure the availability of games now and in the future is to encourage the government to classify the titles, give them a rating.

One of the chain games stores here is running a petition to get classification introduced.

Until February 14th.

So if you are a game playing Aussie, or know a game playing Aussie, direct them to this website (or their local shop) to sign the petition.

To be honest, I would feel so much better knowing I was playing R-rated WoW than G-rated WoW. At least them I could claim I was playing an adult approved game

Edit: WoWinanhour pointed out that WoW did finally receive a M rating in October last year.  Great news for one game, let’s make sure that other games don’t have to go through the same hoops! Thanks for the update Gaeldar – Go Aussie Bloggers!

Gnomer and Out

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

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/02/06/grow-up-australia/

The one you are playing right now!

Yes, I admit it, I was out of my brain on THL yesterday at work… (just quietly, between you and me… I never really liked (past tense) The Hunting Lodge, didn’t think it would last more than a month… proof positive that Gnomes Gnow Gnothing!)  I sure as hell hope work don’t start podcast testing, cause I would fail every test… I am constantly high on podcasts (If I can’t read ‘em, I might as well plug into ‘em)

So the purveyors of all things illicit (errr Hunter topics + more) were talking about what is in store for the next few years and they believe what I know I joked about in the past, that we will see WoW live as long as characters with 100 levels.

Which got me thinking, well something like thinking anyway.

Hero classes were going to be BIG!

We all had an idea on what the next Hero class would be after getting screwed over by Overpowered Death Knights, Healing Mages… Spell casting tanks, DPSing Priests… Ohh they do that already (Notice how the Shadow Priest stigma has gone over the years… tell someone you didn’t heal cause you were shadow 3 years ago and you got laughed out of the instance… if not the game).

Anyway, I digress. (I digress better than staying on topic, so hell, play to my strengths I say!)

So Cataclysm is on the horizon, or in the earth’s crust or something, and with it comes 5 new levels, 5 more points for our talent trees, but… no more talents on which to spend them.

Whats more, they are going to rejig the talents so they give us boosts in different ways, or remove some of the redundancy.

So the Point(s) of this post is…

So now we have 71 points to spend as we wish.

Soon we will have 76 points to spend how we wish.

What if come level 100, we have no more talents from which to choose from, just an additional 15 points…

How you you spend yours?

Where would you put your 91 points?

Would that make you a Hero class?

Gnomer and Out!

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

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/02/05/the-next-hero-class-is/

• Gnomeaggedon is “of Gnomeregan”
• Squidly is “THE Patient”.

I’m not patient

There is nothing patient about Gnomeaggedon beyond a title tucked away in the character screen.

Sure he’s prepared to wait for his Frostfire Bolt to launch, but not his Pyroblast unless it’s instant.

LFD, sure I’ll wait the 15 minutes, but I’m not sitting idle. Loremaster, dailies, screenshots, there is always something to fill the time.

I think that’s one of the reasons Gnomeaggedon is loving battlegrounds again. Short casts, instant casts, quick deaths.

Neither is he!

Squidly on the other hand has, for some unknown reason, less patience.

Maybe it’s the quick buffing… Drop 4 totems, buffing complete.

Maybe it’s Riptide’s fault – cast & forget (but that cooldown drives me crazy).

Maybe it’s DPS taking avoidable damage, causing me to spam chain heal, causing me to drink, causing me to scream a little inside.

I’m not sure what it is, but I often find myself looking at “The Patient” title and being reminded to take a deep breath, relax and be patient.

I’m still impatient.

When it reaches it’s crescendo I bring up the character window and flick through my bottomless list of titles…

• Merrymaker
• Patient
• Merrymaker
• Patient
• …

I realize pretty quickly that I’m not feeling very merry, so I leave it at “the patient”, take a deep breath, relax.

Did they have this in mind?

I wonder if the designers realized this title would be floating above characters heads while the banged their heads against their keyboards in frustration?

I wonder if the designers realized that the new players would enter an instance, see “the Patient” hovering over other player’s head and sigh a deep breath of relief that they were playing with patient people.

I wonder if they realized that a simple title would have such a mental, maybe even emotional effect on the players.

A certain Irony

I know there is a certain irony, as many instance runs suggest anything less than patience.

Gogogogoogogogogo!

However I expect these days that those “I pull whole instances in one pull” people aren’t sporting their “the Patient” titles, they will be wearing their special titles:

• I hate nubs!
• Greatest Wanker on Azeroth
• Champions of the Inflated Gearscore
• Boremaster
• Of Gnomeregan!

I think we have reached the stage where the funkillers have their Triumph badges, only want their Frost badges, have discarded their “the Patient” titles, probably already forgotten they have a Perky Pug.

I think now when you see “the Patient” it will mean one of two things:

1. A new character with nothing else to show, or
2. A person that relates to the title and wears it with pride.

Whatever the case, they will have a constant reminder that being patient is title worthy.

————————————————

There just aren’t enough hours in every 24

Speaking of patience, I beg some patience of you readers and those of you blog writers as well.

I’m not sure whether it’s any one, or a combination of the following:

• Work is busy.
• Single fatherhood sucks time out of your day.
• Random Heroics are just too tempting (maybe just one more…)
• Battlegrounds are awesome fun
• Cat wants attention
• Dog wants attention
• Odin wants attention
• Lawn needs to be mowed (goodbye 2.5 hours)
• ex-wife’s lawn needs to be mowed (yes we are on good terms)
• Blog posts need to be written

Whatever it is, two things have suffered and I am feeling irrationally guilty about them.

• I am not responding to comments as regularly as I really want (like immediately, every time), and
• I am struggling with my feedreader.

Comments:

I like to give immediate (well ASAP) responses to everyone’s comments, but this is rarely possible at the moment.

I feel guilty when I respond to one, but not the other 10 comments.

As it is, I am sleep-writing many of my posts lately (as you may have noticed from the less that usual average quality).

Feedreader.

I feel guilty.

My feedreader is full of so many awesome blogs and awesome posts. I know that there are new bloggers starting up every day. The TNB introductions drives daggers of guilt through me…

What New Mage Bloggers? New Shaman Bloggers…? Noooooo!

I do try to get around to my favorites (which is ummm, kinda all of you), but I’m lucky if I can get through the back issues of any one blogger per day.

If you are a blogger and find one seemingly random, half baked comment on a post from 2 weeks ago… assume this means I have struggled to read them all and have squeezed one more minute in to leave a Gnome sized footprint.

How bad can it be?

I got my feedreader down to less that 1,000 unread posts last night. At that point I only had 896 unread posts… When I woke up this morning, the number of unread was back to 965.

I could ask you to stop writing (some bloggers have 30+, even 40+ unread items), but that would be like asking me to stop writing.

I wouldn’t ask that of anyone… The stuff Arioch (awesome series), Euripedes (Maging and the saddest story for a Monday ever) and many more have been writing lately is of such high quality, that I could never ask you to bottle the creative juices. Let’s not mention Ratshag… his return has just made the feedreader panic (Once again all the best for you and Julie!).

Still, I feel guilty, so I figure if I apologize up front, I can move on.

I am reading & loving it!

So if you comment here, or write there, know I am reading what you have to say, furiously nodding or shaking my head… Just not getting the time to acknowledge your efforts.

GJ folks!

(Geez, that was a blog post on it’s own!)

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

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

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/02/04/why-the-patien…s-a-good-thing/

Nymesis writes:

Seen the 3.3.2 patch notes yet?

Check these out for the inner WARlock in you….lol.

Keep up the awesome posts man.

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)

Affliction
•Shadow Embrace: Now stacks 3 times (Up from 2) Healing reduction effect reduced to 2/4/8/10% (Down from 3/6/9/12/15%)

Demonology
•Demonic Pact: This talent now increases your spell damage by 2/4/6/8/10% (Up from 1/2/3/4/5%). The buff effect to the party or raid members is unchanged.

Destruction
•Conflagrate: Periodic Spell damage increased to 40% (Up from 20%)
•Empowered Imp: Damage done by imp increased to 10/20/30% (Up from 5/10/15%)
•Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases Shadow Bolt damage 2/4/6/8/10% (Up from 1/2/3/4/5%)

I been sitting on that for a few days… needless to say I was somewhat gobsmacked… I’m been walking around the house now for days in a kind of stupor…

It’s good to know my readers care enough to taunt me… My Warlock readers no less…

Of course there has to be some good new in the patch notes…

PvP

• All healing abilities (including items such as potions) will be decreased in effectiveness by 10% when in Battlegrounds, Arenas, or Wintergrasp.

Umm yeah… OK, maybe not…

Ohh hang on… what’s this?

Mage:

• Working as intended
• Will still deliver Warlock’s Imps on a platter!

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

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

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/02/02/whats-bloody-new/

Are you being called to the battlegrounds?

OMFGICAN’TEXPRESSTHEFUNIHAVEHADINBATTLEGROUNDSTHISWEEKEND ANDUSEPUNCTUATIONATTHESAMETIME!

I had a LAN this weekend, 1/2 dozen of my closest mates.  Tree Hugger Dave even flew the 2,000 odd km down to join in.

We had some WoW obligations (raids etc), but the rest was up to us.

We did a bit of CoD (Call of Duty) Zombie hunting… man that just makes me want to do head shots all day long…

It's my flag... MY Flag I tell you!

Mmm head shots…

I managed to drag Mr. Z into some battlegrounds.

He’s one of those PvE Rogues… the ones where the guild doesn’t even bother to raid unless he’s there.

PvP… he’s scared… he doesn’t even have the bread-and-butter PvP Rogue skills on his toolbars!?! (I didn’t know you could roll a Rogue unless it was a cheap-shotting mongrel)

That changed pretty quickly when Mr. Tree and I took him on a tour of some of the BGs.

He enjoyed it.. once he realized Death was a natural part of pwning the opposition he just slipped right into the frenzy that is PvP.

Sweeping the trash out

I got the taste for blood.

He enjoyed it…

I couldn’t get enough.

I have been in and out of one battleground or another all weekend.  When I got tired of blasting, I healed.  Tired of healing, I blasted.

Once again, WSG was the one that really caught my mind.  I spent plenty of time in Arathi Basin, Strand of the Ancients, Isle of Conquest. Wintergrasp of course, but in the end, it was Warsong Gulch that got my fireballs pulsing.

Who plays this game for fun?

Win or loss, was irrelevant.

Quality of the battle was the thing, and in some of those I was firing, not that your would necessarily see that in the scoreboard, there are some things that scoreboard cant show.

I do wish sometimes that the BG achievements weren’t one-offs.  It’s great when you get the 1st achievement, but I would love it if they popped up every time you met the criteria.

Something like in Unreal Tournament when you score a Double Kill.. some little thing to make your pulse race a little faster, something to spur you and your team mates on.

The 1st of many (well there were many, but pre-records)

Easy Mode, Hard Mode, whatever gets you into the battlegrounds

It’s definitely easier hitting a BG as a healer for the 1st time, while your targets aren’t static, your healing frames are and at least you know where your heals are coming from – you.

Don’t let that dissuade you if you are DPS, even DPS without a single PvP oriented skill on your task bars, it really is fun as hell doing your best to slow and then stop the opposition – remember your key targets are the healers… you must remember that.

• Your healers will win the game for you by keeping you alive.
• The opposition’s healers will lose the game for you by keeping their DPS alive.

Sucks having a server imbalance in our favor

But, don’t be afraid of death!

PvE teaches you that death is bad and comes at a cost, a big cost in lots of ways.

• Durability & therefore repair costs.
• A long ghost run back to the last spot in the instance
• Probably a wipe, not just your death, but the deaths of your group mates and the frustration of banging your head against the brick wall.

PvP teaches you that death is:

• A momentary respite in the chaos
• The chance to regroup and attack another front
• An opportunity to rejoin the battle at full health and mana.

Dying can be a part of the fun, knowing you were bested, this time…

Next time make the killing blow, then watch your house mates come running when they hear your cackling with joy.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that you should just throw your life away, but sometimes, knowing that you made a difference and helped get your fellow battlegrounders over the hump that is the pile of dead opposition bodies, is enough, if not more than the joy of being alive to loot them.

1600 v 1580 doesn't count? Damn!

Never say die! (unless it’s to the opposition)

Don’t give up if your 1st battle, 1st 5 battles, 1st 20 battles, result in your team being ground into the dirt.

Get up, scrape the dirt off and have another go.

I know that I am always happy to drag myself back from a defeat and give it another go.. you need to be positive in the face of death!

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

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

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/02/02/its-sooo-much-fun-getting-over-quick-deaths/

Some  people can PvP,

Others can’t but give it a good hard crack.

One  thing that is certain is that Battlegrounds are about HONOR!

Honor in Battlegrounds

Whether you are For the Horde!, or For the Alliance! battlegrounds are about honor.

There’s just one little problem…

The Definition of Honor.

Definitions of honor on the Web:

• award: a tangible symbol signifying approval or distinction; “an award for bravery“
• bestow honor or rewards upon; “Today we honor our soldiers”; “The scout was rewarded for courageous action”
• the state of being honored
• the quality of being honorable and having a good name; “a man of honor”

Most people have no patience

Most people have so little patience, they can’t be bothered reading to the end of a sentence, they read…

award: a tangible symbol signifying approval or distinction

They skip:

“an award for bravery”

I meet a lot of these people in Battlegrounds, I met a pile of them in WSG on Saturday night.

You are fucking dishonorable cowards!

Whoops.. excuse the French…

There are 10 people in a WSG “raid” group, by the end of this battleground, we would have had 30 people through our group.

You know that the problem was?

The Horde were better than us!

You know why.. they try… they learn, they wipe their bloody shirtsleeves with our pathetic arses…

Well, let me rephrase that.. they were better than you (deserters)!

I got so jack of it, I uttered the words at the beginning of this post.

Notice the line after my comment…?

Emgee, you are a pathetic, dishonorable scumbag!

No you weren’t the 1st… but you know what… you were the last.

I laid down a challenge and you failed, you showed your true colors.

I wont just crow about my side.

Being the honorable Gnome I am, I think it’s fair that I recognize the Horde that carted our corpses from one side of the battleground to the other as well as the Alliance that had the balls of fire to stick it out to the end.

Good Job you scumbag Horde bloody mongrels… you fought an excellent fight, and unlike out side, I didn’t see one /spit!

My idea of honor.

I don’t think a deserter buff is enough.  I think it’s time to make the scumbags on both factions realize that your don’t deserve the “honor” when you run from battle.

I think it’s time that deserters get a negative honor, equivalent to the highest honor gain in the battleground.

It’s time to learn that people that Booooo!, QQ and /bgquit are not honorable and deserve to take an honor hit.

A message to Caronde of Thaurissan

To be honest I don’t know if the scoreboard does you justice… I know you were a mongrel to take down.  I know that after chasing you up the battleground as you chased our flag carrier.  After you disposed of me at least once.  After catching you again, only for you to nearly lose me (while you did lose the Rogue). After all that, I felt honored to finally take your life.

/bow Caronde

Well played!

A final message to the honorable losers of the Alliance side.

I know I said this in game, but once again:

Good on you guys for fighting till the end!

Gnomer and Our, Squidly and Stout!

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

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/02/01/honor-in-battlegrounds/

• I always thought Squidly was loved for his tentacles.
• I hoped he was loved for his heals
• I was accepting of being accepted for his DPS.
• But I’m only loved for my Heroism?

I guess that’s one advantage of playing Gnomeaggedon, there is no real doubt about why he is accepted in a raid.

Sure it might be an Intellect buff (how the raid cried the other day when there was no Mage for Intellect), could be for his table (presented with a smile and a /bow), maybe even because the raid leader has a Gnome fetish.

However I can be reasonably sure that I am loved for my potential DPS (maybe for Spellsteal – but that’s a gift to a Mage and if there is no Mage, you can always purge). This isn’t TBC where Mages have fallen out of favor, replaced by Warlocks, loved only for consumables and buffs, no this is WoLK.

What is it you want from me?

But Squidly, I think Squidly’s heals or DPS are an afterthought.

Ohh he can heal as well, he can support the other 2 healers…

But make sure he is alive for Heroism!

I feel a little guilty sometimes, it’s like I’m a sexy young thing whisked to the front of a woman-starved nightclub queue.

• Crap GearScore – check
• Zero Achievements – check
• Got Heroism – come on down, who can we kick.

Am I complaining?

About as much as I complain about being a healer in a random dungeon queue.

It’s a natural advantage, and like boobs, I’m going to use it to get what I want.

Now all I need is some boobs on Gnomeaggedon to get some raid invites.

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

PS: I hope you enjoy the old Skyhooks videos… yeah old.. my childhood old, but still great to have blaring at a BBQ… especially if it’s a beach BBQ.

PPS: If I had boobs, then I’d want to have Euripedes‘ babies!

He followed up his awesome Fire Mage PvP How To (Dear Mr. Gnomeaggedon, Sir) with answers to questions posed in the comments (Fire Questions Answered) and now has pretty much summed up the changes that I would love for Fire PvP… if not survivability, then make people pay for targeting me! (Fire Mage PvP: Problems and Solutions).

Thanks Rip!

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

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/01/29/you-only-love-me-for-my-heroism/

Welcome to the post where I ramble incoherently for a while.

No, not rant, just ramble.

Bits and pieces, observations etc from the last month of “weekends” , which admittedly has included weekdays.

Solo’d this yet?

I know people like to solo stuff, to do the impossible, but has anyone taken on this “world event” yet?

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I suffer from Questtextphobia – I can’t bear to read it!

So my 1st trip through the Dark Portal involved several ghost runs through the demons, before I realized that I just had to talk to one dude that would safely take me to Honor Hold.

When you become you own non-combat pet’s dinner

Apparently cat food comes in rabbit flavor...

Squidly saw some Ulduar

The raid leader wasn’t convinced I hadn’t been before because I didn’t cause enough wipes..

But then we all know he is epic!

Even if it was his totem (wink wink) that took the longest

The stars of the WoWBloggingverse continue to drop by

For which I now drop my pants and Gnomeslap my new guild mates… I like to warm them up with a little dance off 1st.

Squidly does Onyxia

Which is much better than Onyxia doing Squidly.

Some pugs believe in tough love

I guess it’s better than a gear check

Squidly was more Maker and less Merry in the end

but still not half as disappointed as Gnomeaggedon, who went from…

The Gnome Sex Machine

What is more sexy that this hot little number?

To the least sexy Gnome under the moons of Azeroth and beyond

Why, Oh Why, would you transform the Gnomest Gnome in town into this?

Yet it would be rude to say Baaah Humbug!

I guess it’s one more thing I have in common with the Queen of the Gnomes.

Would you invite this guy to your raid?

Even with a GearScore of 8,000 I would be hesitant to have a Resto Druid by this name in my raid.

Still better than a dumb Ninja alarm

He was like a guard dog harassing the policeman while the real burglar sneaks out the back… note the rest of the raid discussing the Ninja Looter than had run off with the rest of the loot…

Apparently people don’t like to receive bad news in game either.

Last time I do an NPC a favor.. At least she didn’t call the guards down on me.

Spot the odd thing out

Can you see it?

Here’s a clue, someone got blasted to high heaven on a For the Horde! run.

Or Magni Bronzebeard had a bad curry that morning

Mr G!

If I ever see him, I’ll tell him where to shove his Snickers.

At which point I will need…

As a matter of fact, I think I need some right now, looks like the people in this guild already have some.

Little Less Conversation

A fun, social guild, where some of the people talk?

He nearly had me, but then I saw free gear being handed out…

People were really scared of this “guy”

Didn’t seem all that difficult to me, maybe he was for those people that bumped into him 4 years ago.

Anyway, soon we will have bigger things to worry about

Not that I’m scared… Not that I would ever run like a chicken

Best coppers ever spent

Elixir of Water Walking… How I love you!

Every time I log in, I see…

Ohh once I logged on to find the battle in progress… shame I didn’t log in on Gnomeaggedon.

Did the Gnome kill the vehicle, or the vehicle kill the Gnome?

I kind of feel guilty.. of course not as guilty as…

If I meet that Ninja Alarm again…

Of course I got this long after Onyxia’s dagger dropped… some would argue I used Onyxia’s dagger to get this loot… I know I will.

Did I really say I missed Barren’s Chat?

Don’t know how when I can get it at a city near me.

Have you ever noticed how the guy with the biggest QQ…

Has the lowest Dee Pee Ess?

Ever noticed how the bigger the event of importance…

The more you need to use the facilities?

Yes that is Gnome’s burning ring of fire… don’t read the newspaper on the loo when a Fire Mage had a Vindaloo the fight before…

Squidly was forced to find fresh meat for his new companion

Took me a while to carve him a Ony Wing.

Can’t complain about a lack of tanks in random pugs

If you get two, might as well use them!

Anyone else like taking their Drake to the front door?

I just love landing on the bank steps, waiting for 5 seconds until I am dismounted (or flying right up to the teller).

I always wonder how many people are madly clicking on their flying mount button when they see my fly in.

We all know Gnome is hot.. but what about Squidly?

There you go Syrana.. you have collected my set.

Right now I think that Squidly…

Looks better with cloths on.

I think it’s the guild tabbard that sets it off.

Gnome looks better in this

Although it might make his arse look a little big.

As Odin’s father…

I think it is only appropriate that Odin’s son shows me a little respect.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him…

His chicken legs was covered in white mold.

My latest Guild member had the nerve to tell me I was casting spells at too low a level

Shame it was because he couldn’t handle anything stronger.

So I stripped off and Gnomeslapped him!

Of course, for all that is decent I left my tabbard on.

He actually did a point or two of damage

So I did what any smart Mage would do…

I teased him!

Before one-shotting him.. but then, my GearScore was still bigger than his.. and I was naked!

What’s all this big brown Mammoth business?

I want me a scary white one!

I don’t normally DPS while I heal…

But if it saves on healing, I might as well (note the tank is in 3rd position)

Gnome is filling his barn

at < 1gold a pop, why the hell not?

He looks good in Saber

Ram, Pony & Strider!

I thought the edge of the world was only in Outland

but apparently they always had one in Teldrassil

It’s a long way down

Do you know how I know?

I turned my head for one second…

Luckily I am a Mage… I had just used my hearthstone… I would have cried if I was here for a 1/2 hour.. it’s a nice place, but I wouldn’t want to summer here.

This was my 1st Epic flying mount

It was worth waiting for.  Worth all the scrimping and saving.  I still think it is the most beautiful mount in the game.

Get your own Effing Quests!

How Effing lazy can you be?

You spawn next to the Quest giver, yet you spam raid chat for people to share the quest.

People do this every WG session.. they want the DAILY… It hasn’t been a daily for Effing MONTHS!

I don’t know about your server, but the standard response on Aman’Thul these days is to share CLUCK!

I keep one in my quest log now for this very purpose.

OK, this is a cool mount too…

IMHO, better than the Proto Drakes.

Proto drakes are like old steam ships of the sky, where as the drakes are like schooners, cutting through the air.

They positively glow

not just that, but they

Compliment every backdrop

Have I mentioned that I love my small, but growing menagerie?

I’m getting smarter

In part because I…

PuG!

definitely not because I…

Smell better than the average Gnome

Tell me something… how come all the non-combat pets are so big?

On a relative scale, this is bigger than the average hunters pet!

I convinced a PuG to do the extra Old Kingdom bosses

That’s why I don’t like people skipping bosses in Instances!

It’s only taken 12 Effing months!

I got an invite to ICC25!

The stars had aligned…

It was Australia Day…

Furrypaws’ guild name is BEER BEER

Yet I said no.. I’d had my share of BEER BEER (and a few more) on Australia Day.

On top of that, Gnome hasn’t even set foot in Ulduar, let alone ToTC, ICC… Isn’t that the International Cricket Council?

Squidly has now seen the inside of ToTC… (2 bosses worth) after I hastily read up on the strategy.

So Furrypaws, if you are reading, I can’t thank you enough for the offer… if you offer again, preferably something not so progression that I will do nothing but make enemies in, drop me a line.. otherwise I think I better go read some strats…

Because we all know…

and you guys would be gutting Gnomes if I blew your raid through lack of knowledge.

Oh, Syrana… don’t even think of this!

I am not a Trophy Gnome!

Dedicated to one dedicated Bear.

This post is dedicated to THE Bear, who is taking a little time out.  I hope it reminds him that it’s the little, irrelevant, stupid things that we see and do that make the game and blogging worthwhile.

I’m ready and waiting to give him the honor of a good Gnomeslapping, but I would never back a bear into a corner.

Hope you enjoy your break (as you can see, I enjoyed my few weeks off over the summer break) and come back sooner rather than later.. later will be good enough of course!

Worst come to worst.. remember… BEER BEER!

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/01/28/gnome-weekends-that-was/