Tuesday night my guild did Naxx (in under 3 hours, actually…pretty decent, no wipes) and we STARTED with Thaddius.  Why?

Because he lags like a MOTHERFUCKER.  My roomie, who is on a totally different server (and plays Alliance) has the same complaint about Thad, and Naxx in general.  But the thing is, the later in the evening you hit up Thadd, the WORSE the lag is.  And you REALLY don’t want to be lagging on a fight that is so dependent on movement.

It’s laggy as hell.  WTF, Blizz?  As a caster it’s really annoying to not know if shit has been cast.  I mean, I know by now how long my spells take to cast, so I can do a semi-decent rotation without even looking at the screen, but still…need to watch those debuffs on Thadd!  Even if you DO watch them, you might end up dying on the first rotation…just like myself, and two other lagalicious raiders.

I need to share with you the most awesome graphic our MT put into gchat:

- +  –>

-   {BOSS}  +

<–  + -

If you’re using DeadlyBossMods or something else that gives raid warnings about polarity shifts, be careful on this fight if you’re having any lag, and make sure you double check your debuffs and where you are standing before moving.

I’m sorry, but that’s like me holding my fist out in real life and you running into it…repeatedly.  If you see a warlock of the opposing faction attacking EIGHT mobs at the same time, assume they are AoEing that shit down, and stay at least 15 yards away or you’re gonna get hit!

Needless to say, this pissed her off…well actually, she almost died from my seeds, then she DID die because she ran into the elite giant who basically looked at her funny and killed her, and so began our Ganking War.

She came back and killed me…while I was distracted, again, farming up six-eight mobs at once.  I had my voidberry out.  When I rezzed, I promptly pulled out my felhunter and flew around the area spamming /target Niecy in my chat window.

Found her!  Die.  Die a horrible, horrible death where I fear you into mobs all dotted up and you take dura damage.   Oh, and I give you a hug after you’re dead, just for fun.

I move on to another area, am kiting around another group of mobs when…she shows up again.  I dot her up, but die after wasting WoTF, and there she is blinking red with ticking haunt, corruption, immolate, curse of agony, and unstable affliction…and she takes the time to laugh at me.  Just enough time for her to get ROFLSTOMPED by that same elite giant.  Dura loss again, bitch!

Mage: 2, Me: 3.   Enjoy the repair bills!

Shackle, pull!!  Shackle, pull!  We made it through a lot of the beginning trash, until we hit a point where we were pulling six mobs at a time.  We just needed a little more heals.

Which is where “snotty shaman” comes in.  “Snotty Shaman” being the son of a friend of my friend, who also lives up in Quebec City, and insists on speaking French in party chat.  It’s ok, because I can read French pretty well (much better than I can speak it, that’s for sure).

After we wiped from lack of healing, I told this kid “look, just spam chain heals, OK?” and we go back in and….wipe again.

I look at recount and would you look at that!  Haunt is healing me MORE than this fucking shaman!  WTF?!  I call him on it, and he proceeds to bitch and moan (in French, mais oui!) claiming he’ll heal his mage friend because he is “mon ami” but not me because we need a real tank.

Yo, punk- I *am* the tank.  Which is why I need two fucking healers on me before these stupid ghosties make me go pop.

Needless to say, we gave up on the idea of Kara until we can get in there with my druid friend.

Teenage boys are the worst. Yeah, that’s right; the finicky French-speaking Shaman was…13.

I wonder, when duel-spec comes out (Tuesday, supposedly!) if I should go Afflock/Destro…or Afflcok/Demo, for the felguard.  Felguards are pretty badass tanks…I did heroic Underbog once with my felguard tanking after the actual tank DC’d.

1. Spam “invite” in general chat
2. Get into a raid
3. Hang waaaay back and rack up kills

Why hang back, you might say?  Because the moment a warlock enters PvP battle (especially one such as myself with NO PvP talents and NO PvP gear) they are slaughtered.  And now that we have our new “hero” class, I usually go flying across the battlefield in death grip in the middle of banishing the healer.  And without instant Howl of Terror…ugh.  The worst.  One stun and I’m all done.  Blizz, please do something about this.  We are officially the worst (and least played in Arenas for this reason) PvP class right now.

While I’m bitching about lock shit, stacking soul shards would be nice, too.  Y’all will get right on that, yeah?

I started playing WoW because Ploman bought me “Burning Crusade” for my birthday this year (May 24, and yes I have an Amazon wishlist, hint hint) and nagged me for months before to start playing with him and another friend. I already had picked up the original version after much nagging from another friend, but had never actually gotten past the multi-disk, multi-hour install.

WoW is not an easy game to get into. To begin with, when people start talking to you about the game, they tend to speak in wowspeak - and when you’re first starting out, you have no fucking idea what half the things they are saying mean. Ploman used to regale me with tales of “uber healz” and “ganking” every time we got on the tennis court (I think to make up for the fact that I consistently kick his ass) and I would spend most of the time smiling and nodding and not understanding 75% of what he was talking about. Catherine has complained to me quite a lot about this, since a few of her friends in library school play WoW and are constantly harassing her to sign up. I tried to get her to do refer-a-friend with me, but she wouldn’t. Sigh.

Then when you first play your character - in my case, a little baby undead warlock - the quests seem stupid: go kill eight bats; go kill eight skeletons; go kill eight zombies. But eventually leave the shitty undead starting area and move over to the Blood Elf starting area, where everything is pretty and the quests start to get more interesting. Then at some point you end up in Duskwallow marsh for what seems like an eternity, and you again question your sanity for playing the game because let’s face it, Duskwallow marsh just plain sucks. But finally you make it to 70, and start doing heroics, and maybe a few raids and dailies on the Isle and you start getting gear and stop being a walking target for Alliance rogues and the game starts to get more about theory and tactics and less about grinding mobs and running back to your [dead] body all the time.

And once you’re there, you find out that one of the most challenging things to do in WoW is to get a decent PuG going… I swear there are only four tanks in LookingForGroup at any given time, and three of them suck. And don’t get me started on the varied and vast ways a healer can repeatedly wipe a group - even just on trash (note: crappy healers will inevitably blame the tank, and crappy tanks will inevitably blame the DPS).

I think, however, the most difficult part of WoW is figuring out what kind of gear with what stats you need in order to best play your class. Followed by figuring out what kind of rep you need to grind to help along your gear objectives. Followed by figuring out how to best spend those talent points. This weekend I broke down and hit up the Elitist Jerks forums and printed out some information on Affliction, raiding, specs (believe it or not, there is serious math that goes into people figuring out which talent points will eventually yeild the most damage), DoTs, gems, glyphs, etc… It almost felt like work, it made me question my sanity, as does the fact I’m even writing this post.

So now that you’re probably thinking to yourself “man, this lady is mad nerdy, why am I reading her blog?” allow me to talk a little about why video games are awesome - in no particular order.

1. Video games are one of the few things not tanking in our economy. It seems that video game purchases tend to be immune to the waxing and waning of our fragile economy. The “biggest-spending customers are typically young men (the average gamer is around 30) with high disposable incomes who regard gaming as an important part of their lives, rather than a form of discretionary spending.” Also, video games are [relatively] cheap entertainment, that you can do at home, even with friends (who hasn’t played Rock Band with a bunch of folks?). Compare going out for drinks with friends and having two key lime martinis at $9 each, versus a monthly subscription to WoW; $18 for two drinks, or $12-$15 for a month of WoW subscription.
2. Video games help keep your brain young. “In a study of 40 adults in their 60s and 70s, researchers found that those who learned to play a strategy-heavy video game improved their scores on a number of tests of cognitive function.” The study “suggest that strategy-based videogames can enhance reasoning, memory and other cognitive abilities that often decline with age,” which makes me think that I really should nag my grandfather a little more about accepting that refer-a-friend invitation.
3. WoW makes people smarter. A “study of 33 laparoscopic surgeons found that those who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures and made 37 percent fewer errors than those who didn’t.” Scientists found that WoW players utilize “scientific thinking, like using systems and models for understanding situations and using math and testing to investigate problems.”
4. Everybody else is doing it. Or at least, over half of the adult population of the U.S. is playing video games; one in five play at least every day! I’m in the other four, but many of my friends are that one in five…which supports the survey’s assertion that “a college education means you’re more likely to play” video games. The majority of my friends have at least an undergraduate degree, and the majority of my friends play video games.

So if I have somehow managed to convince you to come play games with the rest of us, you can find me on U.S. server Burning Blade, Horde side. Look me up; Criphyrursol.