This week's update brought to you by my complete inability to break a non-real promise to have these uploaded by 9 server time. D: Also, by a rather productive Monday! Remember, the funnier you guys are, the more screenshots on my desktop (106 screenshots became this 24 shot update) and the quicker I get irritated and actually upload them. I like commas.

This week, we start with a kill shot, Dragonhawk. This was a night of about ten million wipes, and also the night I pulled a raid boss with vampiric embrace. Luckily, people were in a fairly good mood and no one got mad about wiping since we were making consistant progress; TAKE THAT ATTITUDE INTO SSC PLEASE OK THANKS.

Either I've been cranky or you people have been quiet, one or the other, because my desktop is void of funny things to post. SO I'm just gonna post em as I get em :(

Also, some of the ones I've taken seemed to have disappeared :(

Remember you can always send me screenshots -- whisper me for my for reals email address. I'll love you forever.

Because I can't take Mardull's icy silences anymore (APPARENTLY MSPaint drawings aren't good enough for him!) I'm updating.

Being at work means that all my screenshots are at home. Had I been a clever person, I would have brought my laptop in with me and uploaded pictures, but I am neither clever nor, as you can see, skilled.

So I just wanted to show you all what my experience last night was. Because I was having connection issues, I'd get dc'd and come back to a scene similar to this. Note -- dead tank, lurker back up, Sacreddemon behind me frantically trying to kill the naga that I haven't switched to because I'm lagging from the dc, and a friendly sheep at my heels. Not showing are FoL spamming pallie, outraged boomkin and dot happy warlock aiding sacred; also not shown are the other two islands FILLED WITH DEATH.

ETA: Ok, now shown is the outraged boomkin and islands filled with death. I'm bored.

That was fun guys :)

So there I am, minding my own business, looking forward to my new arena pants when BAM! The servers go down for 2.4.

So I had some time to kill.



Speaking of minding my own business, there I am in Shatt, ruminating on the nature of life, when this happens :( BAD TOUCH.




Now, I have a phobia of being inspected when in PvP gear. I don't know why. I hate it SO much -- I can barely tolerate guildmates doing it, and if someone else has me targeted you better believe I'm running like hell. So, when queuing for arena, I tend to move out of line of sight of most people. Merq, my 2s partner, knows this and comes to find me before shouting something about people coming to inspect me.

THERE IS SOMETHING VERY CREEPY about looking up and seeing this. I think he's going to kill me now.




Timing!


Apparently the one part of this I missed was Madrick saying: one thing to know about our guild is that our management is crazy.




(and the one where Cele kicks him)






Zomg, I had no idea they were related! Or that Eave was Darth Vader! I'm scared now!












Merq had signed up for Kara as a healer:



Yeah, but Mardull, the mats are expensive and the method to get them is so not worth it.



You wear a money belt, things happen.


GET IN THE FUCKING COPTER!


Someone bitched about rogues in the wild, others agreed, so we put them to trial.






TROLLLING.


...I have nothing to say about this.




To conclude, a lovely shot of a Sunday afternoon in ZA. A little fishing in the foreground, a little picnic lovin' in the background.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, one and all!

Today we start with an accurate view of our guild on any av weekend:




Next, I would like to point out that rams are clearly the best mounts. Juggy danced for us, too.


Eagle Boss down! Yay for ZA :)



Who is the best hunter? Our hunters think they know the answer.


Amalar! Your luck came back!


Mardull wins the award for best custom emotes. Merq comes in second place, but his usually disturb me.




"Don't spoil the ending!" someone send of I am Legend. Thus, the following. Smart asses.





Who to tank:

Past two weeks have been quiet activity wise (although quite noisy otherwise), so just a short and sweet post today.

First, because I can: I has firefly. <3 Amalar.




Secondly, as cute as gnome paladins are, is there ANYTHING cuter than a tiny gnome on an elekk with a trio of pets? No.


Commas. They help prevent things like this.



Tea scares me! (But for some reason Druidkins is really cute).



Logic!



Merq hates healers! (and ignore party chat. My raid parties are always talkative, usually because we're busy being thrilled to find that we have a moonkin, warlock, shadow priest, or shaman with us. Also we talk smack about all the other groups).





Listen. JUST BECAUSE I'M A NOOB WHO PULLS AGGRO...I don't need ANY help generating threat, tyvm.


Eave describes what happens to a character after getting keylogged.



How to tell when you're dealing with an imposter polypocket. (Poly's reaction the next day to finding himself arcane/fire specced: WHAT THE FUCK.)

Last time my excuse was that I was on the moon with Steve. That was a good excuse, but unfortunately I don't know if I can top it. Let's see. I was...in jail for trying and failing to be funny. They let me still play the game, though.

I now present to you:

A LONG OVERDUE INSTALLMENT OF WOW SCREENSHOTS!

(this will now be a regular Monday thing! So start being funny again and get me some screenshot fodder, kthx).

For prince's death on Sunday.

I just wanted to say one, very important thing.

1) Nasty is pot specced (seriously, this made me laugh every time I thought of it last night, and seriously, apparently puns crack me up, especially when they're not intended, and seriously, apparently I really, really like run-on sentences with a lot of commas).

2) (I lied). PANTS WILL DROP. This also has been cracking me up for many days straight, because I keep remembering how I answered the question in all seriousness and then it slowly dawned on me and I couldn't stop laughing.

3) You know the rules: MORE FUNNY THINGS in chat, less funny things on vent :( QQ.

We feature Rchngl, who was on some kind of a roll this week, man, and cracked me up.

First, a warning! Do not attempt to finish your Simon Says quest in Ogri'la with a bored Paladin (who has just killed many horde and therefore is feeling kinda good) standing in the middle of your crystal. It's really fun trying to hit red red blue green red yellow with this helpful advice:







Next, I'm not sure how much CELE was laughing but I am not ashamed to admit I sat in Shatt reading this conversation and literally lol-ing.





So I'm laughing at this point -- as you should know by my previous stories, this would have been sweet sweet justice. All of a sudden I see Cele's health drop -- and she's dead. And I see rch's health drop...and freeze.










Yeah. I really honestly couldn't stop laughing, again. Cele grudgingly admitted that it was KINDA funny.


And, a guest appearence by Rch's brother:




(Very accurate question, Kalwindo)

Yeah, we got him. Our second real week of facing him. Nice work :) Drops tonight were: Drape of the Dark Reavers to Jaysama and  Aran's Soothing Sapphire to Eave. We also cleared chess again, netting two void crystals, heh, and Battlescar Boots

Congrats to all!




Also on the agenda for this week? This bastard's going to die.


And finally: we need to find more for our hunters to do. This went on for many, many more lines of chat. Perhaps hunters should have their own dedicated chat channel to settle their differences?

Sorry about the long time in between updates. My excuse? I was on the moon! With Steve!
(Reference: Eddie Izzard's Strategic Sheep/Do You Have A Flag) -- towards the end here. I love me some Eddie Izzard.





ANYWAY, in this week's edition of How the Guild Turns, we down Big Bad Wolf, Curator and Chess, gnomes make the world a scary place and everyone is a little crazy in guild chat!


FIRST, Kills:



BIG BAD WOLF: Got him two weeks in a row! This is actually our second kill because it's a better picture. I don't bother trying to get people to line up for these because everyone's too busy chattering over vent. Besides, action shots are better!

BBW really hates those Woods brothers. There are so many bad puns I could make about Little Red Riding Hood in the woods and woodsman who kills the wolf and maybe even the three little pigs, but no one likes puns.


CURATOR:

A+ on the dps check. Nice to see those flares die so fast :) And yes, Dranthos was right, deadly boss mods made life a lot easier here, hehe. Confession time: I really like Curator's voice over.


Does Chess count as a boss kill? It's free loot and oh so fun :) Way to go on ... not screwing this up, guys! :D

FESTIVITIES:

First there were the gnomes:



Hehe, Cele is bald!




(forgot to crop this one, but whatever) gnomes look SO CUTE in arena pally gear, omg.


I will have nightmares for the rest of my life. FOR EVER.



This is what my screen looked like for two hours straight the first night of brewfest. Good thing Eave (standing behind me in the above picture) was there for make fun of me for random disconnects! I think my computer might be stuck in the prohibition era.



HALLOW'S EVE:

Adonex is ... a daddy? a pimp?


EAVE THAT IS PERSONAL SPACE!





I want a gnome shadow priest SO MUCH.


GUILD AND PARTY CHAT FUNNIES



lol, wut. He didn't come back online. This was about 3 am. Hehe.



Poly has a dream for us!



(Not guild chat but). Giveth with one hand, taketh with the other. I DON'T LOOK LIKE AN OGRE, OKAY OGRES.


MISC:



A ding shot! I just happened to be here in time to catch it :) If you all have ding shots, feel free to send em on to me :D just ask me in game for my real email.


GUEST SCREENSHOTS:

Courtesy of Amalar this week:





Hunters are so op, I BELIEVE he was planning on soloing mech. Heroic, no doubt. /mourn sherekhan, btw.




Hmm, Cele and Amalar went somewhere a little more private...





Lawl, Rch in his natural habitat. And not afking! Zomg.


ALL RIGHT, that's it for this week. And, um, I'll be better about not waiting like three weeks in the future. I'll try to avoid the moon. And Steve.

I never did post the screenshots (they are uploaded, I'm just lazy) and now I have more to add to it. This makes me happy! Awesome work taking down curator last night. All the hard work and effort everyone put into upgrading their gear really shines.

Pics in this post by the weekend. I PROMISE.

Dear guild,

I'll post some screenshots at some point, but can I just say that I love you guys?

~ Drunk people on vent
~ Promises of a drinking fest (on vent) when the Red Sox DESTROY the Rockies yes you heard me right.
~ Comment bombs on myspace
~ staying up till the wee hours of the morning because gchat is too funny to walk away from
~ our "alcoholic" guild (we sure do talk a lot about drinking)
~ running anything with guildmates, either one or all.

Keep being awesome, guildmates one and all. I'll keep loving you for it.

/emer feels the love

Gather round the campfire, children, it's story time.

Once upon a time, in the acid-trip mushroom filled forests of Zangarmarsh, a few of your friendly guildmates decided to go to SteamVaults. But there was waiting to be done, of course, and I think I've made it clear how dearly we love waiting! Waiting means exploring or dancing or drinking. This day, it was time to explore.

You see, right there in coilfang resovoir, deep under the water, there is a big door covered with a waterfall. And through that portal is the lovely deadliness of SerpentShrine Cavern.

So, a hunter, a priest and a pally walk into a cavern. I'm sure you can see how this will end.

We walked around. Not much to see in the beginning. A huge, vast tunnel going down with an erratic elevator. A long path. Another elevator.

And then there were mobs. A handful of naga, a couple of spore bats. A bog lord walking a little further off. Having, I thought, gone as far as we could I turned around. But some movement caught my eye, and I turned back to see a very suicidal pally running straight into the group. And dying. Swiftly. And then instincts kicked in and I started moving. This was not unfamiliar to me.

Oh, I survived. But don't get too comfortable, children. This is a horror story.

So Amalar and I lived. Warily we got back on the elevator and I went to resurrect the dead paladin. Only those mobs? Those trash mobs that take 25 people to kill? They have a big aggro range. And I just don't move fast enough to escape omg wtf 12k crits on my poor cloth armor. Amalar didn't make it, either, since it took them a breath to kill me.

Dead. All dead.

Oh, you are thinking, the worst is over. Oh, you poor, deluded fools.

The fourth player to join the party signed back on from her disconnect. "I want to see!" she said, so we obligingly went back in. We walked to the edge of the elevator and waited...only not all of us managed to wait. That's a long fall. Amalar was dead, again. Laughing, I got on the elevator and rezzed him as we reached the bottom. As I stepped off the elevator into the cavern I suddenly noticed...he was dead again. "I fell!"

Laughing harder, I rezzed him again. Rchngl joined us. Two hunters, a priest and pally walked into a cavern. WHY DID NO ONE THINK ABOUT THIS? Why did none of us say to ourselves, gee, I wonder what is going to happen next? It's a classic horror movie plot. The audience should have been screaming "Don't go in there!" at us.






I don't even know how it happened. I am thinking goblin rocket launcher, since he managed to live. It was all too quick and so bloody! OH THE HORROR.



At this point, I am DYING of laughter (there's the horror for you) because for some reason suicidal messed up paladins causing me to die makes me laugh. I suspect a gnomish mind-control cap was involved.

So I get rezzed. I sit and drink and eat and heal while I watch Rch rez his own brother, his own flesh and blood, on the top of the elevator. Do you know what happens when you accept a rez on top of an elevator that has since gone back down? Well, you hang in the air for a minute, a nod to Wile E. Coyote, and then you fall. To your death.

At this point I can't catch my breath. I can barely see the screen. The 7g repair bill was worth it, so worth it.

THE END.



(PS, I was laughing again as I typed this. Good thing there's no one around).




Cele, you're not jaws. Stop that this instant.




And because I don't have enough other things to post (in my wow screenshots file are a lot of shots that I took and discarded for not being funny enough), BEHOLD! A new ui.


I started with this. Fairly basic. I like having all my spells in one, small space. I like having my damage log visible at all times (saves me when I see [hordeplayerx] gains stealth). And I really don't like the default blizzard unit frames. But there was a lot I didn't like about this ui.


Many hours later, I had this:




So much prettier <3 All my important spells where they always are, a nice clean minimap with all the extras nicely hidden. I know I probably use too many mods. I can't live with the default ui, though, and I like to be able to tweak things. Currently, I'm using mostly ace-2 mods for space and elegence reasons -- they are so nice.

I use x-perl for my unit frames. For bigger raids I might consider switching to grid, but for 10 mans and less x-perl works great. It's set to show me only debuffs I can cure or dispell, and it colors the party character's frame to show I can dispell something. This works great in tandem with clique, the one mod I don't think I could live without. I bet a lot of you, especially healers, use it too. Smart buff, not shown, is a gentle reminder to reapply buffs that I might forget about otherwise. I have it set so that all I have to do is scroll with my scroll wheel and it'll apply the buff. It's great, but it used to crack me up as a wee priest when it would have me buff eave with my measly little level 62 fort.

I don't use any chat mods, though there are plenty. I have my chat window separated into three tabs -- the general one, which includes everything, guild chat and party chat. Easier to filter out stuff I don't need to pay attention to that way, and way easier to catch up on missed convos after being afk. Before I started using WiM!, I had another tab for whispers. WiM is very, very handy though -- any whispers sent to me while I'm out of combat pop up in aim like windows. Any whispers from people on my friends list/guild mates are automatically saved, which is a blessing for me and my short term memory. I keep my combat log on the right. It's super handy for saving me from horde -- I'll see the "[hordeplayerx] gains stealth" message and usually have enough time to mount and get away.

I'm currently using trinity for my button bars. I previously had bartender, which worked nicely and was VERY simple to set up, but I didn't think it had enough customization options. Mostly I just wanted circular buttons, and while I know cycircled is supposed to work with bartender I couldn't figure it out. Trinity also comes with a really handy rep calculator that can be changed in an instant. It takes some time to customize, though -- enough so that I haven't messed with it on my alts yet. Too annoying.

My map is just squareminimap, which -- shockingly -- makes my minimap into a square. I also use minimap button bag, since a lot of the addons I use have buttons that attach themselves to the minimap and it was getting cluttered. They're all hidden behind a single button now. I forget which addon I use for coordinates, but I've had it forever and it works well -- better than Cartographer's defaults sometimes.

I also use cartographer, of course, though I find the instance maps annoying and useless. I use gatherer to keep track of herbs and mines as well.

Fubar is on the bottom. I use questfu, goldfu, farmerfu, honorfu -- think that's it right now. Oh, and flightfu for telling me exactly how much "afk in flight" time I have to go.

I'm toying with archud (the circles around me above) and sct at the moment. I kinda like archud for keeping track of my mana, for telling me how long a spell cast by a mob is going to take and other such things. I'll probably end up keeping it. SCT, scrolling combat text, is kinda cool because I get to see my crits closer than I would otherwise. But honestly, I don't crit often and let me tell you, ve and vt do a number on my screen with sct. I can barely see the action in front of me for all the "+29 mana, +78 mana, +114 health" messages scrolling. I am too lazy to enable/disable for instances so it's probably getting discarded.

I'm using swstats for my dps meter, but I am almost certainly going to uninstall. I start paying too much attention to my spot on the charts and not enough to, you know, aggro. That's an exaggeration of course, but it does make me a little more competitive than I would be otherwise.

Omen is my threat meter. It meshes with KTM and I like it's interface a lot better, plus it's a lightweight ace-2 mod. The only downside is the constant updating -- I have to update it once a week to make sure it works correctly. It flashes my screen red when I have aggro, and pops big red warnings across my screen when I'm coming close to spot one on the aggro table. Helpful for having me lay off dpsing a bit.

DoTimer is my final mod, and it would be so hard for me to live without that now. I'm pretty good about refreshing dots and I basically start recasting them on instinct, but I love having the visual reminder, especially on fights where they get wiped out by the boss. Also keeps track of things like trinket/spell cooldowns, which I love.

Skinner provides the background for the bottom bar -- a totally useless thing but I think it makes my whole ui look more polished and put together.

I try out new mods all the time and discard most of them. I started out with the vanilla interface so long ago and moved, one mod at a time, to where I am now. There are some decent compilation uis out there -- mazzle and deuce come to mind -- but I don't like the former for being a resources drain and the latter for being too hard to set up.

AND THAT'S THAT.

Huh. I think I see something... I think I know that hunter. And what, what could that be on her back?


ZOMG yes. Two healers and a long wait (plus however many runs of slabs later), look who finally has her sonic spear. Now onwards to sunfury! (Bribes for the master looter at the ready!)



,. 

Ok, you guys, apparently our guild is now the Waiting Guild. It totally is fun. Really.



Good to know. I'd like to commend Rch on this brilliant, drunken insult:


Please don't get banned. Please. Heh.


Yesterday was patch day, and you know what that means! F'd up addons, server crashes and ... me starting rumors.




Also, they gave shadow priests the ability to fly through the air without a mount (bars included only so you can see the tree below me -- I wanted to prove I was in the air :-P)



Amalar and I agree: nerf lock dots killing you in midair! Wtf.






P.S.! We may be the waiting around guild, but we're also this guild:


And you know they're all jealous.

You know, I'm never going to have anything to post here if you guys keep saying undeniably laugh out loud things in vent only. Hi, a conversation about Rch having the face of mother Teresa on the body of a t-rex? Wtf. How did that convo even happen. IF I HAD SCREENSHOTS I might be able to remember!

The chuck norris jokes, though, those can stay on vent. I don't need screenshots of those :D

So, I had a fantastic week. I mean, maybe not as good as some who might have, I don't know, gotten MARRIED (seriously, that trumps all, CONGRATULATIONS fearless leader!) but you know. Getting a kiss on the cheek from Brad Pitt, that's gotta make a girl's day. And it did. (Yes, he really was in my office and no, thank you Howard Kurtz, I wasn't one of the women flocking in from other floors. *I* met him in the lobby)

Anyway. This week!



Well, at least everyone knows me well. The ogri'la dailes are better when drunk. Besides, I had to pre-game so I didn't die when I drank that heavy duty ale at the end!




I honestly don't know whether to be insulted or amused.



....MY EGO HURTS. And no, that wasn't a one time thing. He spent the entire freaking instance at or above my level of damage. TWICE. We ran it twice and this is what happened. AND he was (sometimes) healing. Nerf paladins imo.



That said, it was all worth it because loooooook. I'm never running slabs again (unless you guys need me to). That gavel, she's mine. And it looks awesome, too.








That's it from me, just a quick update this week. Keep on keeping on!

Gnomes! Gnomes in a row! Gnomes in a row dancing with me! You know what the world needs? More gnomes.




Best quest ending ever, btw. All those ogres. "She too pretty to be queen." Damn straight. Now give me more free booze.





DISCLAIMER:

So you guys, I know I complain a lot about locks in gchat, mostly because they seem to hate my shadow self. MOST CLASSES leave me alone, but not locks, oh no. Probably they're bitter because some undead spriest stole their Oblivion set, I don't know. So yeah, I'm not fond at all of horde locks. BUT when I say that I hate locks, I'm excluding alliance locks. I love you guys. You buff my damage, you soul stone my healer, you give me health stones. YOU ARE A-OK IN MY BOOK. I only get annoyed when I hear QQ-ing locks because all those damn nerfs to you are nerfs to me too, but other than that, <3 you guys.

Feeling guilty,

Emer (it took me three tries to type my name correctly. I suck).