Will we be back? It’s entirely possible.  It’s also possible we won’t.  For now, though, we’re going to give SWTOR our full attention.

But first, I want to say Thank You…

My TEAM HEAL –  You guys crack me up every single raid.  We never snipe, we never fight, and we just complement each other.  This is the strongest heal team I’ve ever had the honor to be a part of.  I can’t say that any of us is the “cornerstone.”  That’s a good thing.

The Effers - You are all awesome.  Instead of trying to find like-minded people on a server, we found like-minded people and brought them to the server.  It has been incredible being part of a team that has the same drive to succeed and similar priorities about balancing gaming and real life.

The Wow Blogosphere – We are such a wacky bunch.  I’ve loved reading your thoughts, commenting, and discussing.  Though our opinions are diverse, there is a core of respect for each other and genuine friendship.

The Commenters – I’m not sure if I could have blathered on to an empty room.  You were invaluable – especially when you disagreed with me and forced me to rethink my position.

The Readers – The silent majority is the reason why I write.  So that you might find something useful or amusing within the chaos.  Thanks for sticking with me.

The Future

As I mentioned before, I have a new blog for SWTOR.  (The husband is blogging a bit too at his guild’s website.)  Now, if you’re not playing SWTOR why would you read my blog?  You wouldn’t.  I don’t expect that you would.  But if you ARE playing, maybe you DO want to read it.  No pressure.  It will be the same old shit that I do here plus uh… blasters and hawtpants.  Don’t ask.

And with that… MRGLMRGL!

And then there’s that weird dance.  Like, I don’t care if they plop down a tent in my living room for a week, I got nothin better to do.  But they don’t want to impose and be an ass (which I get) and I don’t want to be needy like OMG I NEED COMPANY /CLAWSCRABBLE… but once we got over the initial awkwardness, it all worked out ok.

So, this week Takk (a rogue in our guild) is in town, and Twig has decided he’s her new BFF.  She cried when he left last night.  CRIED.  And asked about him this morning.  I think she might have a fit when he leaves town on Friday.

Also, it’s pretty damn cool to meet your guildies in person… I mean OBVIOUSLY you have the same interests and know each other.  You’ve talked for HOURS.  It’s much more fun than awkward coworker conversations.

And in general they’re normal.  They’re usually not Francis-like supernerd.  In fact, none of my online friends that I met IRL has turned out to be a total weirdo.  Normal.  Srs.  OK, well normal if I consider myself normal if slightly socially awkward… so we’re all ending up on the same end of the normal spectrum, mostly.

But I’m babbling. Maybe it’s because Twig woke me up at 5am and THEN asked me where her new friend was.  Hrm.

Back to guildies.  Alas, our fearsome GM (ominous music here) will be here at the end of the month and it will be FUNSIES.  I even made sure to schedule Mama Murloc to visit during that time so I have a babysitter (this is a very clever ploy, no?).

I’m gonna try really hard not to food poison any of them with my cooking.   In the meantime, your homework is to meet a guildie IRL.

We just got into SWTOR beta.  We’re spending a lot of our available game time playing it rather than WoW.  NDA is lifted.  And it’s pretty badass.

Will you leave WoW for SWTOR?

Uh, maybe?  ATT is leaving for sure and I am pondering.  There are various complicated factors involved, including:

• Whether I continue to enjoy raiding in WoW in 4.3.
• If I have time for both games (which depends on the time commitment of each).
• Whether I end up liking SWTOR, and if so, how much.
• What is going on in Eff.
• Whether I can reconcile myself to the Mists of Pandaria.

If I do end up unsubbing to WoW, I’ll obviously let you know.

Do you have a SWTOR blog?

Yes, yes I do.  It’s called Hawtpants of the Old Republic.  Probably focused on healing (duh).  Not much there at the moment since I have barely played the game.

And now Ragnaros.

I know, progression takes a lot of tries and learning, but knowing that I’m in for a night of 10-15 wipes is really disheartening.  To answer Beru’s Question: Are 400 pulls fun? NO.

I feel like I have nothing new to write about because all I am doing is the same old thing week after week.  It’s like groundhog day.

Anyone else stuck on that jerky firelord?  Come, cheer me up.

Just so we're clear, I'm not taking credit for THIS here picture, that is clearly from icanhazcheeseburger.

I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s going to be posting about this… but this cannot be allowed to stand.

*edited to correct confusion re: TGN-TV and TGN*

Hey everyone. It’s Alas here. I’ve been winning lately. Seriously #winning. I think I might have some sort of large cat blood running through my veins. I mean, look at how awesome life has been for me lately: no more Kooky, a new job, husband with a new job and a better commute, baking shenanigans that have resulted in decadent croissants, Brandon Sanderson talking to me like I’m a real person, and let’s not forget that whole awesome Gnome Clone thing people are talking about.

Since I am clearly living the awesome life and am so on top of things that my very presence is like totes magical, I told Zel that I’d kick a guest post her way. One that explained how to be awesome and raid lead with style.

Because that’s how I roll all the time! Awesomely and stylishly.

The first thing you need to do to raid lead with style is to make sure that you have the proper raid composition. I’m not talking about crap everyone knows here. I’m just saying, when you’re making sure you have the proper balance of tanks to healers to dps, also make sure that you’re bringing the following:

• Two whipping boys (4 if 25-man)
• One person with a disco ball
• An enchanter
• As many mages as possible

If you can’t find most of these things, then just bring the two whipping boys. That’s the most important part. You’ll learn why below.

Once you’re all in the instance and getting ready to rock, the first thing you’ll need to do to start the raid out on the right note is to give a little speech. You’ve watched movies, right? And whenever an army is about to go to war and they’re basically standing around in some field with bushes tickling their asses and looking like they want to let loose with some sort of bodily function or other, their leader always comes up with some brave and inspiring words about how totally awesome they all are and how they’re gonna go pwn faces.

Your raid needs to hear that, too! I always let my speeches come to me on the fly, because you obviously don’t want to use the same one every night or people will start to think you’re not sincere in your belief that they are capable of beating these raid bosses. And, you know, of course you’re not. But part of being a good leader is to pretend.

• Pretend you care how your troops are feeling.
• Pretend you actually remember their names.
• Pretend you don’t want to reach out and choke the life out of them yourself.
• Pretend you believe in them.

Anyhow, a typical speech from me usually goes something like this:

“Alright guys, tonight we’re facing down ______. It will be a challenge, but I know we can do it. We have great ______ tonight. And I’m convinced that ______ isn’t going to be a total fuck up like he was last time. so as long as ______ doesn’t _____ again, we should be fine. We can get this. I mean, sure, most of the other guilds out there have already killed _____ upwards of a dozen times and we’re lucky to even see the second phase, but you know, we have to work with what we have.

“If what we have continues to cock things up, we’ll be opening recruitment and getting rid of ____ and ____. So if you want to see those two stick around, then you better be prepared to keep carrying them. Or we better all pray for a miracle and hope their apparent strategy of facerolling the keyboard pays off for once.

“Is everyone ready? Great. FREEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOM!”

Assignments are super-importante. The mark of handling those with style is to over-pull the trash and while everyone is freaking out about how to deal with the third pack of trash that just took out the healers, you scream over their panic about how the tanks need to be TANKING ALL THE THINGS, and DPS, stop hugging the floor and DPS ALL THE THINGS.

Healers? Healers are always on their own.

Look. They think they’re so fucking special with their little channels and their special addons and the way they don’t even try to help kill anything, ever, except for some priests and even then, have you seen their results on the meters, what a joke I mean really amirite?

So you just tell those guys, hey, you think you’re all smart and special or whatever. So why don’t you figure it the eff out?

They’ll still whine at you about needing tiiiiiiime, but you can just say HEY. None of the dps or tanks needed a plan. I don’t see them dying.

Shuts them up every time.

Now your raid of awesome style should be well and truly launched. The last thing to keep in mind throughout the night is to maintain the style. There are two really effective ways to go about this, and I recommend you employ both. It helps to keep people on their toes.

The first method is the crotch punch. We use this in EtI all the time and it’s super useful when you have so many couples. The concept is simple: pit those husbands and wives against each other.

Say a tank fucks up (easy to imagine since it happens all the time). Just tell their significant other to crotch punch him for not using the cooldown when he was supposed to. A few times of that happening and that tank will be on the ball (heh) when it comes to using his cooldowns appropriately.

The second method is slightly less effective because there’s no physical pain involved. However, employed wisely, it can reach those raiders who don’t have anyone around to threaten them physically, so it has slightly better reach.

I speak, of course, of the verbal abuse.

They key here is to be inventive and keep things mixed up. Here’s a little chart I keep taped to a monitor so I can pick new combinations. Just take one from column A and match it with one from column B and you’ll have a wide range of slurs to hurl at your raiders.

Be awesome and stylish like me and everyone will love you. It works for me. I’m still winning!

It’s Book 1 of the WoW Iliad broken up into … 9? parts to prevent wall o’ text.  If you like P&P, you might enjoy this.

Gnomes are awesome!  However, I just flat-out don’t have time to be doing such tomfoolery, as much as I’d like to.  So, in honor of the project, I have changed my main’s hair to match the gnome army.

OK, then, I confess, I changed it right back because OMG is that hairstyle UGLEH.  I know, I know, I’m in the minority on this opinion but… UGLEH.

But I digress.  If you want to hang out with bloggers and PvP, or just engage in unabashed silliness, go forth and make yerself a gnome.  Instructions on how to participate are here.

I revived my link friday doodad to say… Tales of a Priest is back!  Please rely on Derevka, not me, for your srs bzns priest info.  I hear he does math.

Also, if you haven’t subscribed to Warchief’s Command Board yet, you fail.  Do it!  From Cool Things About Being Warchief to The Monday Mailbag to EPIC VERSE!  P.S., Fuck You, Varian.

More?  Ok.

• Check out Guild Mum’s Fun with Ogres.  I admit that I suck at reading the flavor text as I TL;DR my way through quests.  But… this is hysterical!
• And Bravetank’s Quiz to evaluate group mates.  I think my pugs are mostly “(c)” answers.