Among a part of the community.

I was listening to last weeks Convert to Raid podcast when it hit me the hardest.

Preach was a guest on show #99, he has a Youtube channel where he posts vids about the game. He was there mostly to talk about a recent vid he’d done about game accessibility and community apathy. As an experiment, he took a level 90 bank alt, geared up through heroics and LFR, with a twist.

The twist?

He intentionally did zero dps, and as a capper,he stood in the fire. All of the fire.

The point?

Supposedly to see how a brand new player would see the game, what the game was designed to teach them to improve their performance, and also to see how the community would welcome such a player.

The hosts were gushing all over Preach, and all I could think was, “This whole thing reeks of bullshit.”

Preach made some points about how horrible it is that he would make a level 1 alt, and he would immediately get invited to a guild, such guilds wanting nothing more than to take advantage of new players who don’t know that guilds want low level players for no other reason than to have levelers feed their coppers into the guild coffers.

Another point made was that, as a level 90, by using every trick currently in the game for gear boosting and factions, he was able to get from 90 and no gear to having completed Throne of Thunder on LFR and killed Lei Shen after just a day. To paraphrase his point, “I saw everything the game had to offer in just one day at the level cap. Why bother joining a guild or trying to do normals? If you describe a normal raid, it sounds too much like work.”

Hey, so you’re a player who knows nothing about the game or how to play, but you’re also a player that knows every trick to gearing up and getting to the next LFR gear threshold fastest? Fucking bullshit.

And the final point… he was doing zero DPS, and standing in every horrible thing to be an active pain in the ass and make healers suffer, and nobody ever, ever said anything to him about it. Nobody offered any suggestions on how to be better, nobody raged at him, everyone ignored him completely… even in heroics. And that means the community fails.

My opinion is, this was nothing more than a way to get attention and buzz and get people talking about him, so I guess congratulations, because here we are.

The underlying assumptions are just bullshit.

His conceit requires we assume a player who has reached level 90 with no idea how to play a character at all, no idea that standing in things is bad, no guilds, no friends, nothing but a single player game of WoW, isolated and alone.

And then this player, having reached level 90, now for the first time asks in trade chat “How should I prepare for raids” and then follows the only advice he is given, to “Gear through heroics, then do LFR.”

Underlying assumptions. If we start with them weighted heavily enough, I guess we really CAN prove whatever the hell we want.

You know what I did?

I decided to test the first underlying assumption. That the community is full of apathy and nobody will help anyone, and those level 1 guild invites are evil.

I made a level 1 alt on a different realm, chose a name at random that was vaguely fantasy-ish, and started playing. No heirlooms.

Within 10 minutes, I had a guild invite and accompanying whisper.

I accepted the invite, and was greeted in a friendly way by several people.

I said, “Hi! Thank you. I’m really new to the game, um, can anyone tell me where I can find something to tell me what these buttons do?”

Guess what?

Holy crap, did I get a lot of help.

It turns out, people seem to know an awful lot about this game, and shocker! They are not only willing to share that knowledge, but they seemed very happy to be able to give advice to someone that didn’t already know it all.

I got suggestions of visiting Wowhead.com to be able to see what my specific abilities do, a suggestion to visit Tarou on Youtube to see many guides to current content, a warning that most of the videos were guides to help make gold in-game but lots of other stuff too, suggestions of MMO-Champion for the latest news, and one person took the time to take me step by step through my Spellbook and teach me how to see what I have, what specs and Talents are, how to move them onto my bar and move them around, and finally, a suggestion that I pay attention to the level 3 quest I will get that has me test an ability on a training dummy, and how I should remember that because when I get new abilities, I can put them on my bar, go to one of those training dummies in any city, and try them out.

I was also introduced to addons, DPS meters, and where to go, the Curse website, to find them.

So, an anomaly, right? I just happened to find the one guild that invites brand new players that is helpful, normally they are all evil and such. It was a fluke.

Maybe it was because I made a Draenei Hunter, and everyone loves more Hunters. Or knows they need all the help they can get.

Maybe there is a Hunter Outreach Program, people who watch for new Hunter players, and intercept them to stop the noobs.

Stop the noob. Almost sounds like a public service announcement, right?

So I went to a completely different server, and this time I made a Night Elf Warrior.

Within 15 minutes of normal playing, I got another invite to a guild.

This time, I didn’t take it. I was noobish right from the beginning, asking what the invite was for, what a guild was, etc.

They were patient, talked to me for a bit, assured me they were helpful to new players that were leveling, and I accepted the invite.

Same thing. Bunch of people, this time over 25 people online in the guild, many of whom said hi to me and ‘Welcome!’.

I said hi and admitted to being brand new, asked for help/advice, and was again drowned in a deluge of link suggestions, Youtube guides, and websites.

Amusingly enough, one of the suggestions was I should visit Preach Gaming to see his guides on how to play your class at max levels for a good idea of not just abilities, but their use in the game, addons and UIs.

So, what do I get from all this?

I get that if I were indeed that level 1 brand new player, and I did get that guild invite, and I didn’t have a preconceived impression of such guilds as selfish or evil and discarded them out of hand, if I actually gave them a chance because I wasn’t trying to build a completely bullshit point by ignoring inconvenient facts, then maybe I might get some interesting suggestions on how to learn more about playing the game. By talking to new guildies and interacting with the guild, its even possible I might make some casual acquaintances that would like to run stuff WITH me.

They might even grow to become friends, and allow me to enjoy some of what an MMO can be.

So what about the other end? What about helping people in LFR who aren’t doing as well as others, the lack of outreach, community apathy?

Here is the thing.

If I see someone in LFR, and that person is doing zero DPS, I know that in order to do nothing, nothing at all for DPS, that person has to be working hard to intentionally not touch anything.

It’s not a question of not knowing what to do. Unless that person played as a pacifist to 90 and only did Fedex quests, they have buttons that eventually kill things. To do zero, they are either on follow, which breaks on damage, or they are actively choosing not to use them to be trolls.

I have seen players like that before. I’m going to make a wild and crazy assumption; you have too.

I don’t offer them helpful suggestions, instead I put them on ignore for the worthless trolls they are. not even one point? That takes skill, yeah, um fuck you troll, bah bye /ignore.

That’s not even taking into account seeing him standing in ALL the fire.

So that just throws out anything he did in heroics or LFR. Why would you do that, and assume anyone would reach out to you to help you perform better? You’re being an asshole in a way that takes an effort. Completely worthless results.

It was only when he started to do Rogue DPS without poisons and to Rupture to be on the meters but low that he started getting any data worth a shit, and even then, how many runs were those? And again, why does he think that other players are responsible for watching what the fuck HE is doing instead of focusing on their own performance and duties?

Do you do that? Do you spend half your play time in LFR looking at each person on the meters to judge for yourself how he or she is playing their character, looking for people who need you to tell them how to play?

If so, please put Bigbearbutt and Buttflame and Beartrap on Azuremyst-US on ignore. I never want to see you, in any content, ever. You are an asshole. Focus on playing your own character, unless of course you think you fucking know everything and exist to tell other people how to play, which again, put me on /ignore.

I liked how he had to make the point that other people were lower than him on the meters. /facepalm.

To buy into what Preach is selling you have to agree with his underlying assumptions… and the key assumption to me was, new players are too introverted and shy to ask anyone in an MMO anything. Ever.

New players apparently need someone to be assigned as their friend, to tell them these things.

Worse,  in Preach’s world new players aren’t capable of finding anything for themselves. They don’t look anything up, they’ve never heard of Google, they don’t look for guides, they are oblivious to anything and everything having to do with WoW, except for the login screen.

Is it that he does videos where he teaches everyone how to play their classes? Does donning the mantle of the great teacher mean everyone else is an idiot? Does he get so many stupid questions that he thinks everyone but him are stupid?

The thing that struck me the most about it was how the crew of Convert to Raid just thought it was the best thing ever, so awesome, they couldn’t stop gushing about it.

I have a big problem with so many of his conclusions, but the one that annoys the most is that the community within WoW has failed him and let him down, because nobody else took the time to see what he was doing, approach him in the LFR raid, and offer him advice on how to improve his DPS. To point out that if he equipped poisons he would perform better. Nobody took him under their wing and helped him to fly.

It is Looking For Raid. It isn’t Looking For Friends.

It is not Blizzards responsibility to build in a Looking For Friend matchmaking service.

Despite that, they actually DID take a stab at this in the recent past, or is it inconvenient to the narrative Preach is selling to recall the Guild Mentoring Program? If that wasn’t a “Looking For Friend” trial program, well, it was the next best thing.

It is not the responsibility of Blizzard to help new players make friends. Blizzard makes the MMO, and if anything, tells people “If you bring the friends you already know into the game with you, you get rewards like boosted leveling, teleporting and mounts! So go get your friends hooked too!”

You know what I took away from his video?

What I learned was you can be an intentional troll, and in some LFR groups some people have stopped spewing forth the venom and hate of Cataclysm, and instead they grit their teeth and work harder to get a victory despite your trolling.

People are indeed focused on accomplishing the mission and moving on in LFR, because it is a place where you are there for yourself. You are presumably not there with friends or family, and you are not there for progression. You enter LFR to obtain Valor, item upgrades to help in progression raids, to keep pushing on your Legendary questline and to hone your skills and improve your own game, unless you think you already know it all.

If you’re going into LFR looking for opportunities to teach other players how to play their classes, well, just damn.

LFR is just not the place for that. A huge go go go mission focused environment? A place where, just as Preach said, people are there to get the job done, and are generally moving too fast and are too successful to even leave a minute or two free without something being pulled.

That’s not a situation where you even HAVE the time to open a dialogue with a complete stranger from another server to broach the topic of playstyles and potential improvements.

You need a place where, after the raid, you can talk to the person you’d like to help in a non-stressful environment, and do so without being accusatory or threatening or derogatory.

Oh shit, look at that, Flex Raiding incoming. How about that.

Flex Raiding, easier than normal, harder than LFR, and designed for you, a group of friends, AND any pugs from your server that you’d like to bring along to help because loot isn’t competed for, it’s individual.

Guess what? By making it a mode that is good for forming pug groups on servers, it provides an opportunity for new players who haven’t raided before to join a group where people could actually see them, talk to them on the server after the raid is over, and have a lingering conversation on improving performance without publicly calling someone the fuck out.

I will say it one last way, and hope I get through.

If your expectation is that the player is not responsible for trying to improve their own skills, if you expect that the game and the experienced players within the game are responsible for seeking out under-performing players in the wild and take the steps to approach them and coach them, then you’re fucking delusional. 

Helping other people is nice, but it’s not your job. Your job is to have fun on your own terms without hurting other people. Anything beyond that is gravy.

I’m going to conclude this with facts.

I went to Google, and typed in this simple search phrase; “New Player Warcraft”.

Top result?

World of Warcraft Official Forums New Player Help and Guide thread.

Yeah, it’s so damn hard for new players to find information about how to play the game, or get better. It’s just terrible.

Oh, if only a new player had a resource on the internet to help them! Oh, if only someone would make a website! Or a Youtube channel! Or a twitch stream, or a twitter account, or an official forum, or guilds, or or or…

Fucking get a grip.

What are these new players…. Amish?

If you require Amish to play the game to fulfill the requirements of your argument, I think it’s time to fall back and regroup.

/drops mic.

DeGei, this one is for you, man.

We are going to level a pet from 1 to 25, in exactly nine fights. Ready? Let’s go!

First, we pick our team.

To level pets from 1 to 25, I use three specific level 25 pets as the carrying team.

The three pets are the Anubisath Idol, the Emperor Crab, and the Ash Spiderling.

The Anubisath Idol is picked due to having the Sandstorm ability and a very strong humanoid Crush, and the Emperor Crab is chosen because it’s got a ‘always goes first’ aquatic Surge, a Renewing Mist and a Shell Shield, making it one whopper of an endurance pet.

The Ash Spiderling is simply my crutch when leveling pets at low levels. By Applying Brittle Webbing first, every time an enemy hits you, it hurts itself. Also, by being webbed, every time you hit the enemy with Leach Life, you get twice the healing. On enemies that Swarm, Brittle Webbing makes them darn near kill themselves. It’s wonderful. But your third pet can be whatever you like, the two absolute key pets are the Anubisath Idol and a crab.

How I Prepare

The first step is to get your pet high enough level to survive a few hits from the Burning Pandaren Spirit team. I usually level my pets to 8 somewhere else, then bring them to the trainer in Townlong Steppes.

I use an addon called PetBattle Teams to allow me to make premade teams with selected abilities.

Lots and lots of teams.

In fact, as you can see here, I originally made about 75 teams of level 1 pets at one time, went to my starting zone, and just started leveling them up to around 6 – 8 to prepare them for the big leagues. As a pet reached 25, I delete the team.

I’m in absolutely no rush to reach some leveling achievement, but I like playing with a wide variety of pets at max level, so I figured might as well be organized for those times I feel like doing a leveling binge.

Right?

Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, to begin our leveling journey, we take our level 1 pet and the Spider/Crab combo to Un’goro Crater.

I like Un’goro Crater, because the pets average level 16, high enough to score some decent XP but low enough not to one shot a level 1.

Usually.

Your mileage may vary.

My advice to you?

Avoid the moths, they’re a royal pain in the ass.

Stick with Diametrodons, they’re cute and fun.

We will open each fight with the pet we’re leveling, let it survive just one round, getting a hit off before switching. It does NOT matter if you hit or miss, taking an action counts as being in the battle. Swap the pet out, bring in the Spider, and Brittle Webbing/Leach Life your way to a cheesy victory against the level 16 pets in the crater.

Within four battles, you will go from level 1 to level 8. Your first battle gets you to 5, then to 6, to 7 and to 8.

Congratulations, you’re ready for stage two. Prime time, baby! Bright lights, big city, strong winds and brutal fire.

Time to swap the spider out for the Anubisath Idol as your second pet in the lineup.

This process is a pretty interesting dance. The fun thing is, you can go a few different ways. All lead to victory, but one way plays it safe while the other risks all…

You always open with your leveling pet. Get off an attack, whatever you want to do. It truly doesn’t matter, so long as you DO NOT STUN THE ENEMY. If the enemy pet gets stunned, it gets swapped out, screwing over your planning.

The Dragonling will always go first in the enemy lineup, it will always attack you first, and it will ALWAYS cast Cyclone first. This means that the enemy spends it’s first turn casting a spell that will NOT do direct damage to your starting pet.

As soon as you get the chance, rotate out the leveling pet, bring in the Anubisath Idol.

Tornado? Phah. I got this.

Idol up!

The second attack the Dragon makes is always Lift-Off. The Dragon takes off, and hovers while you wait out your “I just got here” delay of turn.

On your next move, you can cast Deflection. It always goes before the enemy, so you can avoid the big hit he’s about to perform.

OR… you can cast Sandstorm.

The cautious way to play it, and the smart way when your leveling pet is only 8, is to cast Sandstorm.

What Sandstorm will do is seriously reduce the amount of damage Cyclone will do to your backline pets, which is critical when you’ve got the leveling pet back there and you’re praying it will survive. In fact, if your leveling pet is weak against Flying attacks, you might want to level to 10 to be safe before coming here.

The downside is… Sandstorm reduces everyone’s hit chance, and your Idol’s heavy hitting attack, Crush, is already an 80% chance to hit ability. This means with Sandstorm up, you miss. A lot. And if you don’t kill the Dragon fast enough, it WILL get off a second Cyclone, which is a real pain in the ass and increases the overall damage your leveling pet might take. Oh, and the Crab is weak to Flying damage.

In the screenshot above, eyeball the two cooldowns on the Dragon, the pet on the upper right. Those timers show you that the Dragon will only perform a simple breath weapon for at least the next few rounds. So hammer him hard.

As you can see, in this fight I did as an example, I had the crappiest luck ever, and missed something like 4 rounds in a row. So, a new Cyclone got cast, and he went into Lift-Off again… but my shield is up and I’m still in this for the long term.

Still, the many misses with Sandstorm meant my Idol died before finishing off the Dragon. Oh noes, right?

Not so much. You see, the Crab comes up next, and the Dragon was low enough I could use my Surge, which goes first, to finish it off.

Now, the Fire Pet comes up next. And it ALWAYS opens with the heavy-hitting Conflagrate. Big badaboom. Since I’m out of sequence, all I can do is eat it.

But now, it’s all going to go my way.

You see, the Crab is powerful against the Fire Pet with Surge, and the Fire Pet is about to go on a long break from doing damage.

The second thing the Fire Pet does is cast Cauterize, the self-heal. Well, that’s fine, we didn’t do any damage to the damn thing yet, you just go ahead and waste that turn.

Then it casts Immolate on it’s next round, to set you burning.

So a quick Shell Shield to protect from periodic damage, a Renewing Mists to start building my health back, and look at that… once it has cast Immolate, it does nothing, nothing whatsoever for a couple turns, because it has to wait for the cooldowns on Conflagrate and Cauterize, and once you’re burning, it doesn’t cast Immolate again!

You have plenty of time for your Crab to build up health before the next Conflagrate, and your Surges do silly badass damage to him. Piece of cake.

But here comes the wasp!

The wasp… is a joke to the Crab. The first two turns, the wasp drops poisons on you… and so long as your Shell Shield is active, they are meaningless. Always cast Shell Shield when the duration is down to one round, and you’re golden.

Get your Renewing Mists up to build your health back to safe levels, but honestly. The only attack it has which can do damage to you is Swarm… and since the damage of Swarm is spread out into small chunks, your Shell Shield damage mitigation reduces it so many times over that you almost take no damage at all the entire fight.

I’m serious. I have had shitty Cyclone runs before where my Crab came into this fight with 80 health, and still won. Easily. You get your Shell Shield up FIRST, get Renewing Mists up to cover the small damage you do take, and it’s in the bag.

Only downside? Surge does minimal damage to a wasp, so it takes many rounds to burn it down. But hey, it’s a sure thing.

Our fifth fight, and our leveling pet goes from level 8 to 14 in one shot!

Okay, so what now?

Your leveling pet is 14. He’s got the health to survive some Cyclones, so long as he’s not weak against flying.

Why not go for a fast kill?

Take a look at this next screenshot. Anubisath is still alive with over 500 health, the Dragon is dead, and I’ve popped my shield in preparation for the heavy-hitting Conflagration I know is coming.

What was different?

In this battle, I never cast Sandstorm.

Instead, my leveling pet fired off a cheap shot and ran for it, my Anubisath Idol came in, popped up the Shield, and then went straight to hammering the Dragon with Crush. I ignored the Cyclone, let it do it’s thing, and counted on my hit chance being high enough to finish off the Dragon before he could cast a second Cyclone.

It worked. Cyclone had one turn left to go when the Dragon died. When the Fire Pet came up, I knew he would cast Conflagrate, so I cast my Deflection Shield.

Then I knew he would cast Cauterize to heal the damage he hadn’t taken yet (um, what?) and so again, I hammered the shit out of him with Crush.

Think back to what I said about the Fire Pet. He casts Conflagrate, which does a shit-load of damage. Well, we Deflected that. Then he healed himself, we got a free shot at him. Then he cast a measly little Immolate on us to set us on fire. Another shot at him.

Then he sits there doing nothing for at least two turns, waiting for those cooldowns to end! We get two more free shots before he is ready to Conflagrate, and if you watch his cooldown timers, you know when it’s coming and can cast your Deflection again. That is, if he ain’t dead already.

One last note… nine fights, level 1 to 25. Once my leveling pet was above level 14, I never used Sandstorm again, and I destroyed the opponents by using Deflection at the correct times to avoid Lift-Off and Conflagrate.

And I did NOT use, at any time, the BOA pith helmet reward that gives pet trainers improved XP. I felt it wasn’t fair to do so, since many folks starting out might not have one yet because they hadn’t gotten the achievements.

There you go, DeGei. A step by step breakdown of how to take the Burning Pandaren Spirit with a leveling pet and two 25′s, on time every time, and make it look easy.

The down side to this is, from what I know, once you have actually completed the Elemental Grand Master Pet Tamer questline, you can’t just fight the Burning Pandaren Spirit over and over again, endlessly. You only get one shot a day.

I don’t know, I refuse to complete the quest until all 400 pets of mine are level 25. :)

So DeGei… any questions?

As a side note…

The only other Pet Battle addons I use are; Battle Pet Count, Battle Pets List, PetJournal Enhanced and Pokemon Trainer, which is the nice addon that shows me the enemy cooldowns, and the little up and down arrows. I mostly use it for cooldown timers, though.

I hope this helps someone, because leveling lots and lots of pets can be such a pain in the butt if you don’t find a good system like this.

New Feature: Virtual Realms

• Virtual Realms are sets of realms that are fused together, and will behave exactly as if they were one cohesive realm. Players on the same Virtual Realm will be able to join guilds, access a single Auction House, join arena teams and raids, as well run dungeons or group up to complete quests.

• Players belonging to the same Virtual Realm will have a (#) symbol next to their name. (Source)

Now, I know I’m not going to be the first to think it, but I’m going to say it.

This spells the end of character slot limitations.

As soon as Virtual Realms go live, and we can identify which servers are linked into our Virtual Realm, we’ll be able to use each individual server as a new expansion to our ‘effective’ character slot list.

Already have all your character slots full on your ‘real’ server? No problem!

Just go to a linked server and make new characters! They can then join the same guild, friend all the same friends, group with the same people and act as a true extension of your server presence.

Will we be able to mail Heirloom items to them? That is but one of the questions that we’ll have to test in live, but I think the words ‘behave exactly as‘ would lead me to think so.

So… tired of trying to choose who to delete to make room for a new alt or test a new build idea, because you want to keep all your characters in your guild or on your server?

Rest your weary mind, for your troubles are, well and truly, over.

I for one welcome the end of the “Plz Blizz give me one more character slot plz plz” era.

Well played, Blizzard. Well played.

I have been working on this one for quite some time, and I think it is finally ready to unveil.

Behold, the power.

The majesty.

The unstable danger of….

Wow Wow Sauce!

Long recognized as the prized sauce of discerning Archchancellors, the method of its creation has long been a closely held secret. Granted, that’s mostly due to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms regulations that would classify it as all three and tax the living beejeebus out of it.

But no longer! Thanks to the efforts of yours truly, a hirsute ursine with a recent flair for the diabolical, the recipe has come to life and can be duplicated in your very own kitchen! Demon familiar not included, unless you drop some on your cat.

This sauce is a powerful concoction, and provides an explosive touch to a fine meal. You’ve been warned.

Once fully prepared, this sauce should be stored in glass containers, mostly because it tends to eat its way through anything else, as my wife and our floor will attest.

Ingredients; 
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup sriracha ‘rooster’ sauce
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp or two light dashes of crushed red pepper flakes

Tools:
Whisk
Saucepan
Glass container for storage (or a plastic squeeze bottle for dispensing, if you’re up to enchanting a bottle that is liable to melt in your icebox anyway and turn your leftover meatloaf into a ravening demon. Which is a horrible danger, since the demon might eat your bacon.)

The Steps of Divine Creation:
Special note: If you are looking for the pervasive fire of the one true ring, use a full tsp of the crushed red pepper. If you’re more in the mood for a tantalizing tease of heavenly heat, use just a dash or two.

Whisk together all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat.

Gently boil uncovered for 20 to 25 minutes. We’re aiming to reduce the volume of the liquid through evaporation, so you want a reasonable boil more than a mild simmer. Just don’t bring it to an aggressive boil, or to a fast boil, because it will foam up and then you’ve got serious trouble… and a heck of a mess on your stove top. Also, the sauce will take on the characteristics of its creation, and the last thing you want is a fast, aggressive wow-wow sauce on the loose.

Bonus points for any GM that creates stats to have a fast, aggressive wow-wow sauce as a random monster in your fantasy campaign.

Think of it this way. You are the mad wizard, or at least the mad wizard’s apprentice. This is alchemy, and you’re distilling the potion. Or, if you’re like me, you’re a fan of distillation in all it’s forms anyway, and that this smacks of alchemy is simply a fortuitous occurrence.

Remember that uncovered boil? After about 20 to 25 minutes start checking the volume, you want to be down by about 1/3rd. As it reduces, the flavors become more intense, and some of the vinegar is muted into a rich, mellow tone against the chili fire.

If you’re not sure how much it’s reduced, don’t sweat it. More or less is fine, we’re wizards and this is high art, not to be mistaken for the art of getting high. Eyeball it, and if you like the deep, black color with red-tinted edges, call it good.

Remove the pan from heat and let your sauce cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.

When your immediate needs are, ahem, satisfied, place the rest in your icebox for use anytime. Remember, we added no unnatural preservat… oh, I can’t even finish that line with a straight face. Store it in the icebox for as long as you like, but remember, fermentation may be a thing. Along with explosions, fires of unknown origin, black oozes and random unexplained detonations in your pants. You’ve been warned.

I recommend storing it for no more than a week myself, since you know… I may be a Warlock Bear, but even I am not impervious to litigation. You store it for five years, drink it and then explode, it ain’t my fault. You’ve got one week. After that, it’s your ass. Be told.

Suggested uses:
Wow Wow Sauce is a good dipping sauce for meat or poultry, like chicken nuggets, and also as a glaze for pork chops or chicken on the grill. For those kinds of uses, the ‘dash of pepper’ method may be a more universally accepted taste.

Where WoW WoW Sauce truly shines is when you toss all thought of moderation to the winds, and go for broke. Especially if you go for the tsp of crushed red pepper technique.

Here’s what to do. Make some exceptionally crispy chicken strips, preferably quite thin and not those big honking KFC-style things that are simply whole chicken breasts dipped in batter. They’re good, but they detract from this particular experience, the point of which is the maximum conveyance of sauce to your mouth.

Take your fully cooked and hot super-crispy chicken strips (or crispy wings!) and put them in a metal wok-shaped bowl with a generous portion of the warm sauce. Shake and swirl and spin to coat the chicken well, then set the chicken on a rack over a shallow pan to drain the excess sauce off. Give them a minute, then pick up with tongs, shake, and plate them suckas.

Serve your WoW-WoW Sauce wings/strips on a plate with a side of cool, soothing ranch dressing for dipping. I think you’ll agree with me that they’re magical.

Trust me on this, if you whip this up when you’re in the mood for a walk on the wild side of buffalo wings, you’re going to be a devilishly delighted devourer of succulent snacks.

Thank you for your time, and remember to hug the chef!  It gets you within range of melee attacks.

Is it really that simple? Does all the bitching, pissing and moaning boil down to everyone wants to be a special little snowflake?

Ever since Flex Raids were announced as a new feature, I’ve been silently observing comments, discussions… remembering where I’ve heard these same old stories before.

I’ve pieced together the bullshit behind a lot of the discussion.

Put simply, it is this belief; “Blizzard ruined the game by dumbing everything down in ICC to get more people carried in raids, then even stupider with bonus LFR idiocy in Cata, and now any moron or baddie gets to feel like they should be allowed to raid in Pandaria. Blizzard wants everyone to be able to raid, and when everyone can raid, then there is no point for real raiders to play the game because there is nothing special about being a raider anymore.”

Reminds me of the nefarious plans of some super-villain. Can’t quite put my finger on it.

“Some content should be exclusive, only for those who earn it. Baddies don’t have any right to see it, but now since Blizzard caters to them, the game is ruined and they think they have a right to see content. In the same tier it’s current, no less!”

“If some content isn’t exclusive, if there aren’t cool rewards for the hardcore raiders, then why should they play? There has to be something for the baddies to look up to, to aspire to become, although they are too bad to ever put the effort into getting better. Because they’re bad.”

“That is what exclusive rewards are for. To give someone the feeling that they are special, different… better.”

“That’s why the game is an MMO instead of a single player RPG. So other people can be my audience and bask in my radiant glow of awesome.”

Is that really what it comes down to? If people don’t get to be special snowflakes and feel superior to others, the game isn’t worth playing?

Adapt or die, motherfuckers.

Maybe the game was about that in the beginning.

Maybe it has been like that for years, and maybe those roots run deep and will never entirely go away. Rare pets, rare mount drops, insanely low drop chances, heroic content, PvP ranked ladder matches, races to world firsts that ding special snowflake achieves.

Competition with winners and losers is a part of the game.

Problem is, those of wee brain have missed the point that it’s a big ass game, and the competition is just one part of it, a part that is easily ignored if desired.

It’s a big motherfucking game. It spans worlds, ages of legend and despair, times of triumph and trial.

There is room enough for love, war and everything in between.

If you need to feel better than others around you with rare mounts, world firsts or achievement points, good on you. I laugh my ass off at you, and I’ll do it in your face, but good for you. I’m glad you have a place to find life affirmation.

Exclusive content? Exclusive significant group content that I am to be denied because I don’t now nor will I ever invest the time someone else does in the game? I said bullshit years ago, I say bullshit now.

Every time a new method of bringing friends together is added, I rejoice inside. Battletags and RealID friends. Cross-server raid groups. LFR options available whenever the PLAYER is able to have time for one rather than an entire group. Hell, Queueing for LFR with a handful of friends and chatting along in Vent while a bunch of silent stragglers roll right alongside.

Now, even more fun friend flexibility. Cross-server Flex Raids for current content that requires more coordination and commitment than LFR, but fewer solid ‘numbers’ of people.

I cannot count how many times I’ve seen a raid group of 18+, who are left with no choice but to “Go to the General Chat to look for more or the raid is canceled.”

Oh yeah, those must be bad players, because they only had eighteen players in the group. Good thing they weren’t able to raid.

Are you kidding me? Go suck a drainpipe, Luigi.

Would I love to see it work with eight players? Yes. Or even nine.

I would like to see a Flex Raid system where you need two tanks, two healers and three DPS for a core team, and then you grew it from there. Maybe, for every additional four DPS you added, you’d be best served to add one more healer… or even a DPS/healer hybrid.

Regardless of how it eventually works, this isn’t Vanilla WoW anymore. The game grew up, how about you do too?

The game and it’s content is not exclusive to those who have the most time to play, and does not belong to those who do more than it does to anyone else. The hardcore raider spending 50 hours a week raiding heroic modes in WoW is not an exalted King, gracing the rest of us with his or her majestic presence.

Fuck them, we also play who cross-server raid with our friends whenever we damn well feel like it.

Tired of it. Tired of the same old tired entitlement bullshit.

That’s what it is. Someone who wants the ‘best parts’ of the game tailored to a small, special sub-set of the paying player-base. The rest of us are supposed to pay our monthly subscription fees and help fund the content that they experience, while we stand by and admire from afar.

Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Hey, if you want an exclusive experience that nobody else will have the privilege of seeing, code your own damn game, play it in single player mode, and then delete it. Grats, you won.

Oh, wait, are we playing a single player game? Oh, no it’s an MMO. A group game, a dare I say it SOCIAL experience.

Things have changed. That’s what this is all about, and it’s what keeps bringing the complaints and the cries of “WoW is dead”.

WoW has changed. It’s not all about you anymore, and it hasn’t been for a while. So bitch all you want, sit in your bird nests and open your little shrieking mouths to cry for food, Ji-Kun ain’t gonna cram exclusive lore down your throats anymore.

The game has been opened up for the masses. And those masses, for all you fucking cry about it, hey it turns out a lot of them are pretty damn good raiders, no matter how much you want to deny it and call them baddies.

I run in LFR. I do it all the time. And for every ‘baddie’ I see, I see four self-important egotistical little shits and twenty other people who are doing what they are supposed to in a raid, and doing it well.

Newsflash; it’s the self-important egotistical little shits I put on ignore.

So keep crying.

You play the game your way, I’ll play it mine, and we’ll see who has a better time of it.

From the looks of things, you’re going to have the satisfaction of reaching the server-first “Choked to death on his own bitter bile” Achievement. Grats.

While you’re doing that, and bitching about the death of WoW and how much it sucks, I’ll be talking to folks about cross-server Flex Raid groups and looking forward to having fun.

Remember back in the bad old days when gold sellers were everywhere in game?

Oh, those evil gold sellers! Just waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting account, hack it, loot all your stuffs, and all your guild banks belong to us!

It’s so nice that all that went away, right?

Or, at least it all got a lot quieter. Subtler. Whispers and Battletag friend invites and calendar hacking.

Of course, with all the hate directed to gold sellers over the years, funny how little rage or attention I see get directed towards gold buyers.

Without an eager market with money in hand, services that cost money to provide go away. Like website hosting and the buying of WoW accounts to spam people with gold seller crap.

It’s a time honored formula. People have websites and accounts that collect gold (or are receiving accounts where hacked characters can send gold), and there are the mules farming gold making items and the people hacking the accounts to loot.

You want to buy gold? Then you find a website (following the link from that spam you got in your friends list yesterday will help) and if you trust them enough to give them your money, your real money, and your character name and server, maybe they mail you golds.

Or maybe you are tired of being level 34 on your main, or on your alt, and you want to be level 90 right now to raid with your friends. Or maybe you suck at PvP, you’re so bad you’re ashamed, and you wish there was a way you could just be famous for PvP without having to actually DO the PvP.

You go to one of those websites, and now comes the true moment of faith. You give them your real monies, and your account name and password, and trust that they will play your character FOR you, winning in random battlegrounds, earning loots, making levels.

All supposedly without trolling everyone on your server, joining guilds to try to loot their banks, using your character to farm golds for their other customers, whatever.

There have to be people who think that sounds good, otherwise how are these people still in business? And make no mistake, they are still in business.

But they’ve gotten smarter about it. We’ve gotten smart, we’ve gotten authenticators, closed off some of the more outright larcenous ways of getting something for nothing by hacking our accounts, so they have to entice customers by addressing the biggest concern you can have;

Faith that they’re not using your account for evil shit.

I got an email from someone looking to advertise, looking for a marketing partnership, as I often do. A good rule of thumb for me is, if someone contacts me thinking they can advertise on my website, that means they’ve never visited my website. Um, no ads. No paid reviews. You either haven’t visited my website, or you really think highly of your gold making guide, don’t you?

So the email I get today is for one of these marketing ad partnership blah blah blah. As usual, I don’t reply to it, but I do check out the link.

Prepare to get your mind blown.

They aren’t really gold sellers, they’re more than that.

They focus on the whole “we take over your account and play your character for you” market.

Want to own in rated battlegrounds? Buy their service and they’ll hook you up. You’ll be leet in no time!

Want to be level 90? They can power level you!

Want to have that ultra rare mount that takes a complete raid achievement of all heroic modes and achieves? They’ll get it for you!

Just make an account, give them all your infos, no problem they’ll hook you RIGHT up!

And while they’re doing it…

They provide you with a link to the live stream of them playing your character.

Yep. That’s right. So you can have absolute faith in them, they live stream everything they do while on your character, and you can watch on your special channel and see everything they do, everywhere they go, when they’re pretending to be you.

….

JUST WHAT THE ‘SQUIRREL FLYING OUT THE NORTH END OF A SOUTH-BOUND MOOSE’ IS GOING ON OUT THERE?!?!

I can’t even… I’m trying, and I can’t believe it.

There is so much to discuss on this, and I’d love to delve deeper into the whole idea, maybe we can do that in the comments, I don’t know.

What I do want to know is, who out there doesn’t have the time to play their character, but does have the time to watch a live stream of someone ELSE playing their character?

How have we finally gotten to the point where someone is willing to pay someone else to have fun playing their character, ans watch them do it?

Holy bacon on a stick, Batman!

Oh my God, is this how professional sports got started? First we enjoy playing the sport, then we got older and had free time, money and careers but didn’t have the athletic skill to play anymore, so we started sponsoring other people to play at higher skill levels while we watch and drink beer and admire the game we used to play ourselves?

What comes next?

Do we start betting with other non-player spectators on our favorite PvP players that we’re already paying to play for us? Is that it?

Where do I find my cyber-bookie, and what are the odds on the DeGei vs Gulvan pet battle deathmatch? Can Rades and Vidyala host the event with AngryOrc giving color commentary?

Just WTF, people?

I’ve been focusing most of my efforts on running the Burning Crusade raids that can now drop pets.

I was super-excited the first night of the patch. I ran Karazhan, and in the Opera event, Barnes started talking about not believing your eyes. Yay! Big Bad Wolf! I might have a chance at the Lil Bad Wolf pet first time it’s up!

Well, I did have a chance, and yes the pet dropped. Wow, right? First week?

I began to suspect something was wrong when the Curator dropped a pet. And then so did Illhoof.

Oh, shit, is this bugged? Is Blizzard going to take my pets away because the thing was bugged out and giving pets every time?

On the other hand, what if it IS bugged out, and they don’t take pets away? No sleep ’till Machie!

I’ll kill the suspense here, it turns out it wasn’t bugged, in that and four more runs, I haven’t seen the pet from Prince, or from any other boss again. It was only that first golden run that was blessed, and I’ll gladly take it and treasure my good fortune.

In fact, I consider this whole ‘pets in old raids’ thing a massive success, because I’ve seen several people on my friends list announce they’ve gotten the Ashes of A’lar on runs in The Eye, Elizabella of the Epic Questions podcast and the Elizabella Chronicles to name one you likely know, and I can’t help but think it’s the incentive of going in and getting pets that is encouraging people to go back in there again after all these years. Well played, Blizzard. Well played.

Blizzard has sure succeeded in getting my butt out there to do stuff I normally wouldn’t solo. With the addition of pets, I went out to SSC, The Eye and Karazhan, and for the first time I really tried to solo the end bosses of each. Well, in the case of Kara, soloing Chess.

The only real stumbling block I had in soloing anything was the Chess event. Kael’thas and Lady Vashj are now quite soloable, no RNG at all.

I tried zerging the enemy King in Chess my first night, and it didn’t go so well. Sure, I can solo 25 person raid bosses, but a damn Chess match…

Cassie suggested I do it the smart way, and follow the guide written by Tikari back in January.

Oh, right. RIGHT!

Um, okay. And of course, it worked flawlessly, and after adopting the Tikari Tactic I soloed Chess three more times in a row. Or four, I’ve lost count. If anything, now that we’re post the 5.3 nerfs, Tikari’s guide works better than ever before.

While I’ve been running old raids, Cassie has been doing some of the new scenarios.

She decided to break out her Priest and run the new Blood in the Water scenario for the quest chain, and found something that was a great wake-up call.

She queues for it and gets two strangers in the group, someone running as a healer, and a Warrior that Cassie described as “the squishiest Warrior I’ve ever seen”.

On a personal note, I truly hate running scenarios with people there as dedicated healers, players who insist on only healing. It’s one thing to be a Smite-spec Priest doing damage and incidental healing on the side, or any other healing spec that is also firing off some damage once in a while. What I don’t need is you walking around behind me, tossing overhealing on my already topped-off bar, while I do all the killing. The scenario mechanics give you healing options if you need them, all you are is a boat anchor slowing us down. It’s one of the reasons I prefer doing scenarios with friends, if we’re gonna do it, let’s just do it without wondering why that jackass is standing there looking cute with a whopping zero DPS.

So Cassie runs the scenario, it takes a bit with only two people contributing to kill all the trolls, but they get through it. They downed Hekima in the final battle, get the Hekima’s Heal-Halter achievement…

And the Warrior and healer drop group, first the Warrior and then about 30 seconds later the healer, leaving Cassie all alone with the scenario unfinished.

The other two players apparently saw the Achievement spam for killing Hekima, thought that that was the ‘Scenario complete’ spam, and dropped group!

Cassie had to kill the rest of the group of bad guys all by herself, but you know, she took care of that little task, all the while shaking her head in amazement. She was still shaking her head in disbelief when she told me about it minutes later.

How do you fight that far in a scenario, only to drop group the second you think you won without, like, checking? I know I’d wait at least a few seconds to make sure, oh wait, I DID wait a few seconds, because I saw the achievement spam the first time I did it and thought, “What a strange place for an achievement, we’re still fighting, we ain’t done yet.”

Again, well played, Blizzard. By putting the Hekima achievement where it is, you’ve just made sure that anyone running these without actually paying attention is apt to get a surprise. A big surprise.

It’s a classic example of someone who didn’t have the time to finish the rest of the fight, but they’re gonna have to find time to run the whole damn thing over again, now aren’t they?

Sneaky, Blizzard.

I guess maybe next time those two should stay and pay attention to all of the lore and storytelling Blizzard took the time to put in the damn game, huh?

What, do they think Blizzard is programming all of this for their health? That’ll teach ‘em.

So, what have been your favorite things to come out of Patch 5.3 so far?

Amidst the press puffing were a few kernels of fact, kernels which are popping into corn all over the place.

One of the most interesting things to be revealed wasn’t part of the planned presentation, it came out of the Q&A afterwards.

On the new Xbox One console, which offloads a lot of information to ‘the cloud’, when you want to play a game for the first time you install the whole thing on the hard drive of the console. Once you’ve installed it, the disc is of no further use to you. You can toss it, or file it, you won’t need it to play.

Now, that was an interesting fact, and immediately spawned questions on whether a 500 gig hard drive was going to be large enough to accommodate all of the games a player might own (even with the cloud), but it wasn’t the surprise reveal. They were up front about the cloud and the install, as though always having to be on the internet and not needing the disc in the console to play were big advantages I had always wanted.

The surprise reveal came when someone had the guts to ask what that meant for used games. If the entire game is installed on your hard drive and tied to your Xbox Live account so you are “free to play it anywhere, on anyone’s Xbox when you sign into it”, then what does that mean for used games?

Microsoft, what is to prevent someone from installing the game that they can now run without the disc, and selling the disc to a used game store?

Well, they weren’t glad that question was asked, because the answer, the official answer, is that if you want to play a game from a disk on your system that someone else already registered, you will have to pay Microsoft a special fee.

That’s right. If you buy a used Xbox One game, you will have to pay Microsoft to be allowed to play it. If you borrow a game disk from your friend to try it out, you’ll have to pay Microsoft.

Oh, but it’s all okay, because if it’s really your friend lending you the game, you can just log into your Xbox One as HIM, and play the game with appropriate permissions on HIS account.

I guess people borrow games differently these days than when I did. I don’t recall having my buddy over for a sleepover camping in my living room for a week because I wanted to borrow his Halo 2.

Now, that fee could be anything Microsoft decides. No way now of knowing what it might eventually be, what structure it might take. The system isn’t even out yet. Maybe they’ll have one set fee, maybe there will be a higher fee based on ‘premium’ games or on games exclusive to the Xbox franchise, maybe there will even be a time decay structure so the longer a game is out in the world from it’s date of release, the less the fee would be.

“This game is two years past it’s born-on date. You are free to play.” Blech.

Who knows? Maybe if the stink reeks enough before launch, they’ll drop it to a token fitty cent, get the worst of both worlds, too low to generate much revenue, enough of a fee to outrage people that a fee exists.

The point here is that with that one announcement, they have killed any possibility that I or my family will ever buy one.

We won’t buy an Xbox One because we are not early adopters, and we don’t have to play the latest content to feel like we’re keeping up with the gaming joneses.

When my family buys a console, we buy it only after it has been out long enough to have a decent selection of titles available at a used game store on the cheap, and after most of the software bugs have been worked out. Typically, we’ll hold off until there is a really nice ‘Black Friday’ sale over Thanksgiving, or some other serious cost savings to getting it.

See? I am not the target market Microsoft is pitching to, so what I think shouldn’t make any difference to their marketing plan. Their game will be a hit or a miss the first year entirely without our dollars stirring the shallow end of the pool.

The key point is, if we buy a game console, and we have friends with games we could borrow, or we find a good deal on a game that got decent reviews at the used game store or online, we’re good. We do our gaming on the cheap. We just don’t have the inclination or the capability to spend thousands a year on games.

Any console that will charge us extra money, whatever that amount may be, just to install and try a used game is doomed.

Gamefly is a service that is the Netflix of games. It’s a pretty cool option, one I’ve looked at for when our son gets old enough he wants to start playing some of the same games his friends inevitably will. Likewise, if we want to try out a game on the Wii or PS3, you can rent games for a day or two from the local Redbox dispenser.

We’re not going to rent a Gamefly or Redbox game and then turn around to pay Microsoft their ‘rental use’ fee before we play it. Just, not going to happen.

And the idea we’d do the teenager route of dropping $60 or more on every new game that comes out that sounds cool? Man, that’s something kids with disposable income do, not us.

But here’s the thing.

Whether you like the idea, hate the idea, or dislike it but think it’s inevitable, don’t make the mistake of thinking this is the result of “greedy corporation lusting after your dollars.”

I know the tendency will be to paint Microsoft as evil and greedy.

Please, be original. before you jump on the hater bandwagon, take a moment to think about what drives these kinds of decisions for them.

Microsoft, along with all other publicly traded corporations, are responsible for reporting their revenue streams, profitability and plans to their shareholders.

Like it or hate it, the market has set expectations. Your company must not just be profitable, it must be more profitable than your previous year.

You literally cannot simply make money, or be profitable, and survive. You must have ‘growth’, and that growth is defined by making more of a profit, or ‘profit before income tax’, then you did the previous reporting cycle.

You must grow to be successful in the market, because the market said so. If you simply continue to be really profitable each quarter, then your earnings to shareholders are ‘flat’, and the market will count you as a failure to dump.

There is a lot behind all this, but in the end the core metric is simple to understand. A stockholder takes $1000, and buys a block of stock in some company that makes widgets or game consoles or whatever, and that block of stock was valued at that moment at $1000.

From then on, so long as you own that block of stock, you can make money one of two ways.

One, you will get paid a few cents on the dollar each quarter based on how much money the company made as profit. Those are your earnings, for owning the stock.

OR, you can play the market like a casino, and hope that the company will get some rocking good news, sound like earnings are going to go through the roof and be a ‘good investment’, and someone else will be willing to pay you more than you spent on your block of stock. A short term quick profit.

If a company experiences ‘growth’, if they keep making more money in profit each year, then their stock is considered desirable, and you could flip your block of stock next month for maybe $1200. You just made $200 for picking the winning racehorse, and bailing out before the company revealed they had a union strike in Malaysia and profits are going in the shitter next quarter.

If the stock continues to grow every quarter, and the earnings continue to grow for your block, then the perceived value of your block goes up. Ooh, this month my stock is worth $1500! I wonder what it will be worth next month. Microsoft, make me some money! More profits! Make people want my block even more, so I can dump it and make buckets of dough!

So, think about it.

Corporations are about greed because shareholders are about greed. A corporation must always be looking at ways to be come more profitable than they were a year ago, because if they don’t the shareholders will respond by dumping the non-performing stock, and when your stock price falls it be bad, yo.

If you invest or have holdings in a 401K plan, congratulations. You’re part of a huge shareholder block that distorts these things, too. 401Ks and pensions funds that represent huge numbers of employees have enormous power over the market, and they aren’t interested in what the product is, they want increased growth. So before you bitch about greedy shareholders, consider that you might very well be one of them, or at least are represented by one.

You financial pitbull, you. Grr!

It absolutely does not matter if a company made a billion dollars in profit last year. If you only make a billion dollars in profit this year, your earnings were flat and you are a FAILURE, your stock price will drop because you’re not an easy cash cow for day traders to flip your stock for easy profits, and the drop in stock price triggers all sorts of bad things.

“But… but we made a billion in profit last year!”

Yeah, but how much more than a billion will you make next year? You won’t make more? No growth for you! LOSER!

It is this core philosophy that drives corporations to look frantically at new ways to, sigh, ‘monetize’ their intellectual properties and any asset they can find. It is what drives automation, efficiency efforts, reduced benefits for employees, reduced headcount and layoffs, outsourcing manufacture to cheaper labor markets, and yes…

It is this kind of thinking that can drive a Microsoft to look at used game sales, and see that as money being left on the table.

Nobody in Microsoft was sitting over there, wondering how to screw gamers on a budget. There was little to no malice in this decision.

No, if you think about how the market game is played, you can see that for every executive, the drive is to come up with new ideas for getting as much possible profit and residuals out of their products as they possibly can, to continue to have growing profits quarter over quarter.

So, somebody had the great idea of designing the architecture of the system so that you’ve got your DRM on the ‘cloud’, someone can buy a game and register it to their Xbox Live account, and if someone else tries to use that same code, they have to pay. Makes no difference if the game disk was ripped or sold to a used store, Microsoft won’t care, because every time a code is registered, someone will pay.

Personally, I hate the whole idea, but I can see where they’re coming from. A new launch is costly, and they want to be able to show the shareholders that the new system architecture will result in more robust residual sales and reduced losses from theft or pirating.

I hate the idea, because I play PC games for the online experience, I play console games for the single player or multiplayer sitting in front of the TV experience. If I lose internet, your cloud based DRM just bricked my console. Screw that for a game of soldiers.

Anyway.

If you are intrigued by how shareholder concerns and business conditions in the market can directly impact the businesses that create the stories and movies we dearly love, I highly recommend the book “Disneywar” by James Stewart, a gripping account of the inner working of the Eisner-era Disney Corporation, written by a journalist that was given amazing levels of access for purposes of a biography.

James Stewart witnessed and accounts firsthand the events that led to the creation of Dreamworks, among other things. A fascinating book that takes the things we as gamers and geeks love, and shows you the money matters and profit driven concerns that shaped them. Considering they now own the Star Wars and Marvel brands, the book is even more relevant to us geeks today.

As a side note, you’ll also learn the secrets behind the Disney VHS and DVD timed release strategies.

In conclusion, I think the Xbox One media event just confirmed for me that this is not the console I’m looking for.

At the same time, I don’t think they’re being greedy and hateful to gamers. I just think they are allowing the real need to please shareholders and increase profits any way they can to drive their design, and it’s gonna bite them in the butt in the long run.

The solution?

There isn’t one. We have a market economy, and for small businesses, the holy grail is to take a company public and hope the stock will go through the roof, make you as the owner a millionaire overnight, and then you turn the company over to the people who have to start riding the shareholder accountability train.

Companies that are not publicly traded don’t have to cater to market pressures. Smaller companies can actually be satisfied with flat growth so long as they can make payroll and expenses, and reinvest the rest into improving the quality of their products and even, and this may shock you, provide better benefits and wages to their employees.

You sometimes hear of these companies out there, where the owner pays employees great wages and benefits, and still makes lots of money for himself, and turns out a great product or service. They are the exception, not the rule, but they are out there.

Things are rarely as simple as they seem, and sometimes understanding the system, what it is, and seeing how it pressures others to act as they do helps us see what we can expect.

It looks to me as if in this case, Microsoft is feeling their position as the number one selling game console with the 360, and is looking at ways to increase revenue streams with the next launch rather than consider that if they do things like this, they may lose the crown, along with a big chunk of market share, to someone else that is giving away the store to bring in more customers.

Comments and criticisms and opposing points of view very welcome!

How embarrassing is it to be a gamer dad and have the only kid in the class who can’t play modded Minecraft games?

The Cub has wanted to play various mods on Minecraft ever since he found out we had it, but the Feed The Beast system I tried for whatever reason was just crashing the game. And my computer. Fine. Whatever.

I have finally taken the time to learn how to install the Minecraft Forge API, set everything up properly and tested, and have a ‘mods’ folder all set to drop mod zip files into to mod the game.

So.

Um, okay.

Given a Cub that has never run anything but the stock game, I am looking for your suggestions on what mods would be small, bite sized pieces of awesome fun for the 1.5.2 game client.

I know he has stated a desire for the Portal Gun mod, and apparently there is also some kind of ‘aether’ world or something that is the opposite of the nether, that you can create a portal of light to access, and ignite/activate the portal with gold and wool or something. Um, what?

I know many of you are experienced hands at Modding Minecraft, and I hope you can guide me to which mods would be fun ones for him to start with.

Nothing says ‘you’re old’ quite like getting your game modification lessons from someone whose voice just changed. I learned how to get the game set up and tested by this outstanding Youtube video, which I strongly recommend if you’ve been as slow as I was to get started with mods;

A long, long time ago, Matticus the wise and powerful interviewed me as part of his series on getting to know other WoW bloggers better.

I was very flattered, and as long winded as you’ve come to expect, and what it turned into was my first storytime. One of his questions I just ran with and ran my mouth off with, and I had enough fun sharing that story that I decided to continue doing that off and on over the years.

These storytimes are pretty much a fire and forget missile. I send one off, and it’s in the past. I don’t think about them much anymore. I was there when it happened the first time, I was there when I wrote about it as a nostalgic tour, no sense going back to, like, read it, y’know?

All this to explain why I was surprised when Ganluin sent me an email to tell me the link I had on my blog to the interview over at World of Matticus was broken, and to give me the correct link.

My first thought was, “Matt still has that up there? Wow, I guess stuff on the internet really does linger on like the scent of a bad cheese.”

My second thought was, “Crap, I didn’t know anyone ever read those things anymore. That’s ancient history. Maybe I should, like, go back and spell check my shit.”

I fixed the link, but in following the link over to make sure it worked, I took the time to read the interview through.

I’m going to repost the story part down below, just to save it on my own site for posterity. I’m amazed it never occurred to me that I might like a copy of that someday. I’ve always thought of Matticus as living and blogging forever. He is an icon. An immortal, a living legend, the bringer of priestly fire. What if he were to fall? What if he got abducted by rabid wombats tomorrow? Wombats that needed the best healer in creation for a secret wombat mission?

What if, over the course of his quest, Matticus was overcome with mad wombat lust and chose to make his life among them, his new wom-batty people, and never returned?

What would become of his site then? What of my interview?

Anyway.

Reading through the interview, I realized on top of wanting a copy of the story, I had left out some key visuals that would have helped the picture I was painting.

I’m going to kill two Mogu with one swipe here, post the story bit from the interview, and include a few pictures afterwards that ought to make a key bit of the story a lot clearer.

From the interview with Matticus, my first storytime;

Your blog states that you served in the US Marines. You willing to share any good/humorous stories during your time there?

I assume that the statute of limitations still covers… yeah, okay, so those are out. Hold on, let me think. What can I say that wouldn’t incur legal fines or liability?

Right, okay.

I’ll be nice and limit myself to a Marine story, and not include the subcategories of drinking, practical jokes, drinking, crazy physical stunts… oh, wait, that reminds me. Okay, I’ve got one. And I don’t think I can be arrested for anything in it.

So, I’m in the barracks with some friends, in the desert of Twenty-Nine Palms, California. And there are a bunch of us, and we’re bored, and it’s Saturday morning.

One of the guys has a car, which when you’re all PFCs or Lance Corporals, is a BIG thing. So someone suggests we get a shitload of alcohol, bundle some camping crap into the car, and head for Yucca Valley National Monument for some serious drinking and barbequeing, maybe stay over for the night.

Now, at the time I was the ringleader of our little clan, the resident Game Master of our gaming group. (Hell yes, Marines play role playing games. Best groups I’ve ever had in my entire life were with Jarheads. Intelligent men and women, tactically proficient and possessed of wondrous imaginations and low and evil cunning. God, I miss gaming in the service. Oh heck, where the hell was I? Oh, right.)

Right, I was the ringleader. And I usually organized games on the weekend, followed by everyone drinking, listening to Dr. Demento, and then having a steak and lobster tail barbeque in the beer garden outside. Beer garden? Don’t ask.

So I get us all organized, sort out who is going to bring what, then we hit the package store (where you buy your alcohol on base) and off we go out into the High Desert.

And we drive for miles, and miles, and miles. When we finally approach a likely looking campsite near some particularly fine rock formations, we are waaaaay out there.

As the car rolls up to where we’re gonna park, the engine makes some knocking noises… and then with a loud bang! we watch the hood of the car lift up with the force of a massive blow. The car stops. And I mean, right then and there.

So, we look at each other in the back seat, and then we look at the owner of the car. With a deadpan emotionless tone of voice, I say, “Engine threw a rod, Mark.”

He says, equally emotionlessly, “Yep. Looks that way.”

I say, “It’s a hell of a long walk back to the main road, man.”

He says, “Yep.”

I tell him, “Better carry a case with you when you go. And carry a bag. No littering in Yucca.”

He says, “Yep. Damn it.”

So off he went, with a case of wine coolers, to go flag down a ranger. Which he did, eventually.

In the meantime, heck, we had food, alcohol, and lots of free time. This was years before cell phones, so nobody had any way of getting the word out but by walking. Fortunately, it was Saturday, so we had two days to figure out how to get back to base before we’d be missing a movement, namely Monday morning formation. No worries.

Well, at the time I fancied myself a fair free rock climber. I went out fairly often, and enjoyed taking a camera with me to take shots from “How the hell did you get there” angles. I didn’t have any gear with me, but some of the rocks out there were pretty easy grades for a novice. I left the other guys to their drinking, and headed into the rocks.

So I went on in a little valley twixt the steep walls of rock, picked an approach, and started climbing. And the rock out there is nice, there are frequent and easy to reach handholds, indentations, fissures, you name it. I was just climbing to have fun, stretch out a bit. I was wearing jeans, combat boots, and no shirt, because I thought I was quite studdly, and I wanted to get some Sun for a tan.

I am sliding around a steep grade, feet inching sideways on a narrow crack as I work my way over to where I can see the way up is going to be easier. I’m a long way up, but it’s cool. I am pressed flat against the rock, arms spread wide and hands out, kissing the rock good and close, just kinda inching my way sideways.

As I go across this flat steep face, the rock is pretty gritty, and it’s suddenly smooth. It’s like sandstone, with a very fine grade of loose grit on the surface. And I start to slide down.
I force my body closer against the rock, I’m desperate for the rock to love me long time. I mean, I am seriously bear hugging this rock in a way that should require a marriage license and a hotel room.

And as I slowly slide down, I can feel a tugging on my pants as my belt is scraping along the rock. And then, suddenly, hella pain. Somehow, I make myself stop dead, possibly through heretofore unknown psychic powers, I don’t know.

What happened is, the belt buckle post grabbed on the rock, and my belt worked itself free, and the buckle, looped through the belt, came out of the sheath, but was still caught in the belt, all tangled up.

Oh, did I forget to mention that I was an amateur real-life leatherworker, and I’d hand-stitched my woven belt? And I’d used a belt-buckle palm dagger (what is known as a push knife) as the buckle with a sewn in sheath? Sorry, that must have slipped my mind.

Yeah, so the belt buckle came undone, grabbed on the rock, twisted on the leather looped through it, and pointed itself up… into my stomach. Braced agasint the rock.

And I was slowly sliding DOWN the rock face.

Yep, paints a pretty picture, doesn’t it?

So, let’s recap, shall we? I’m way up a rock face, I’ve got a dagger sticking into my stomach, I’m wearing no shirt, and I’m starting to slide down. And as I slide, the dagger is digging deeper.

Now, I calmly access the situation. I am not panicking, but I am 100% aware that I am the stupidest person on the face of the planet, and I’m about to die, die by being stuck with the dagger I myself spent hours crafting into a belt, and the worst part is I have 6 Fosters Oil Cans at the camp that I’ll never get to drink.

Such are the thoughts of a single Marine. Just so you know.

Obviously, I didn’t die. Sorry to break the suspense, but I thought I should mention that, just in case you were getting worried.

Instead, I kept on hugging the rock face fiercely. I slowed my rate of descent, kind of hoisted myself by the skin of my forearms straight UP and then inched the rest of the way onwards to my destination, since I had traveled a hard way up, and then eased my way back down to the bottom of the gulley.

When my feet touched down on soft desert sand at the foot of the rock, I gently pulled the dagger from my stomach, I unthreaded my belt from my pants, and then I threw the entire damn thing with all of my might as deep into the rocks as I could possibly get it.

I assessed my injuries. I had a nicely bleeding, seeping really, hole in my stomach, and the skin on my inner arms, from my wrists to my elbows, was gone. Sinmply gone. my inner forearms were raw exposed meat from being abraded against the rock to stop my slide.

So.

I walked calmly back to camp, and I’ll be perfectly honest here… I derived a certain sense of satisfaction, knowing that my reputation as a bad ass was going to be ramped up a few notches by walking out of the desert covered in blood. Kind of a consolation prize for being a galactically stupid moron.

I proceeded to borrow a buddies’ shirt to wrap up my arms and stomach, after pouring beer all over my arms to try and wash away sand. I’m intentionally trying not to think about how bad that hurt.
I kicked back, had a steak grilled over an open fire, and drank Fosters for the next 8 hours or so, until Mark came back in a park ranger truck, and we carried our happy butts back out of the desert, and I made my way to the base sick bay.

And as I walked into sick bay on that Saturday night, contemplating how to possibly spin what happened so I wouldn’t look like such an incredible dumbass on the inevitable after action report… some corpsmen rushed a guy past me into sick bay on a gurney. And the guy’s mouth was covered in dried blood.

It looked like the guy took a punch in the mouth, but the corpsmen seemed VERY anxious to work on him, so naturally I asked at the counter what was up with him.

Turns out he’d been drinking with his buddies in the desert (surprise), saw a rattlesnake, and decided to show what a badass he was by biting the head of the snake off.

Except the snake chomped his tongue GOOD. And even though he succeeded in biting the snakes’ head off, the fangs wouldn’t release.

I stopped worrying about the reception my story was going to get. Apparently, on a base full of Marines in the desert on a Saturday night, my story wasn’t even gonna make the top three.

All right, so that is the story.

There was one key thing about that story that bothered me at the time, and when I re-read it, it STILL bothers me.

I know what the hell I was talking about with the knife belt buckle thing, and maybe a few other people who read the blog know what they are, but this falls under the category of exotic or obscure weaponry.

I know from some of the conversations I’ve had with many of you that I am not alone in having spent a large portion of my early years mastering exotic weapons. It’s too late for us.

If you are still in your youth, and you are about to embark on a year-long journey of tomahawk practice, this is a protip for you; not once in my entire life have I ever found it useful to be an expert with a blowgun, throwing knives, shuriken, tonfa, tomahawks or  butterfly knives. Not once… okay, well, yes. Once. The blowgun. I think I even told that story somewhere, the blowgun mouse hunter. Fine, but that was a fluke, and a professional exterminator would have been a better idea anyway, so it shouldn’t count.

The point is, if you are still young and eagerly practicing your throwing knife or blowgun skills for hours on end… that’s cool, and it’s fun for a hobby, but don’t neglect marketable skills.  The market for exotic weapons experts is on the down swing, unless a new season of Top Shot starts up.

Anyway, AGAIN.

In the story, I describe the leather belt I had woven, damn that thing was a piece of work. I spent hours weaving the leather and stitching it so it looked like it was grown that way. The belt buckle part was cute but stupid, and falls under the category of “I collect and play with dangerous things, maybe they’ll rub off and make me more dangerous, hur hur.”

I have not only found pictures of the exact kind of belt buckle push dagger I talked about, but also an example of it both in and out of a belt.

Taken from The Martialist, here are pictures of a belt buckle push dagger and belt almost identical to the one I had used in 1982.

If you look at these pictures from the excellent article at The Martialist, you should immediately see what I tried to describe. There is a steel post that sticks out of the knife body, goes through a hole in the leather belt, and continues to stick out far enough to fit through the tongue of the belt, holding it in place.

This clearly makes a belt buckle push knife one of the stupidest emergency weapons on the planet, since in order to get it into battle, you have to unbuckle your belt.

“Hold on, I’m gonna kick your ass just as soon as I take off my pants!” Impressive battle cry heard nowhere at all ever.

What happened to me was that the metal stud sticking out of the knife caught on the stone, and all of my body weight was on that one point, pulling my belt up towards my stomach as I slid down. The leather stretched around the stud, until I slid off the stud, causing the tongue to slide partly out of the belt, loosening the belt, and giving the knife enough slack to come completely out of the sheath, and then, still caught on that DAMN STEEL POST, twist around and get the knife point up, tangled int he belt which was still looped through and around my waist.

When I wrote it the first time, I knew what happened but I couldn’t think of a good way to describe it. I did my best, but i hope now with the inclusion of these pictures you can see for yourself what a galactically incompetent moron it took to almost get killed by my own pants.

I almost got killed by my own pants!

Still just amazes the hell out of me, and I’m the one that freaking did it!

I’m glad it happened. It’s moments like that, that are well and truly lived. I’ll never forget that moment in my life, everything that led up to it, the whole thing. What I ate that week, what I was doing on base, so much is gone and might as well have never been, but that moment, hell that entire weekend will live in my memory for the rest of my life, and that makes it part of the only life that matters, the part that I can remember and experience again, if only secondhand.

Please, if you take anything away from this story, anything at all, it’s to get your ass out of your house, get out there and do something, anything that is out of the ordinary, because the ordinary fades into nothingness, but the special, the unique, the crazy or weird will remain with you forever.

Provided you live through it, of course.