Farmvile > WoW ?

I had an interesting, and somewhat alarming realisation this evening. I'm enjoying Farmville more than WoW. It has trees.. they are pretty colours. And pigs... and cows....and chickens... and a Christmas tree with real presents....Oh and goat topiaries....

I'm in too much shock to say anything more. Instead I'll just leave you with this:

Can you pull your weight?

Our raid group currently has an interesting dilemma. Our alliance has a teenage member who doesn't have a static raid spot and signs up for every raid going. This player has reasonably respectable gear and the enthusiasm to go to every instance in existence. Unfortunately, despite his gear level he has consistently failed to deliver the goods in terms of his dps performance. He's recently offered to heal also. Now whilst I've never seen him heal, I'm not overly confident. In my experience if a player can't deliver the goods as a dps then they're not going to be a great healer. Given that the success (or not) of most of the boss fights these days is driven by the skill of healers I'm not planning on placing my life in his hands any time soon. And by that I mean...ever.

I can recall several raids he has been in where he has delivered less than 1000dps - despite the majority of his gear being i213 or above. On a good day I've seen him put out about 2000dps. I suspect his lack of dps is due to a number of things - inexperience, not understanding his class mechanics, and untimely deaths. I'll be honest, this guy dies a lot. He disconnects a lot. I hear he has about 5fps in raids. All in all the sort of person that I have zero desire to raid with.

All of that has sounded rather negative, and I must balance this by saying that this kid is the most enthusiastic player I've ever met. He has at least double the energy and enthusiasm of everybody else I know. That in itself means that when I think of him it's always with a smile on my face. He is well meaning, polite and well mannered. Whilst he will roll on every piece of loot that drops regardless of what it's made of or what stats it has, he will always pass if asked to and told it's better for another player. He just seems happy to be along for the ride.

So now to the dilemma. Pugging on Aszune is currently dominated by the need to be able to link achievements. No achievement no pug. This kid is the king of the puggers, and he wants to be able to pug the top level content. He really wants to get the ToC clear achievement so he can spend his time in game pugging this - oh the enthusiasm of youth. Our raid leader, being a compassionate soul (after all he does date me!) seems happy to let him come for a ToC raid as we *are* good enough to carry him through it. I on the other hand strongly object. My objections are:

(a) I don't believe in gift wrapping achievements on a plate, they have to be earned. Yes we probably can 9 man the instance (which is what we would effectively be doing), but it's a damn site harder, and I like an easy life.
(b) ToC is hard! We proved this when our highest dps (a shaman) decided to bring his vastly undergeared warrior along for the ride. I've blogged on that raid previously...it was a disaster and one I don't want to repeat any time soon.
(c) I don't want to set a precedent. If we do this once, we'll feel obliged to do it again. Where do you draw the line? I'm more than happy to take and play with spotfillers - we do on a regular basis and without them we would not get our weekly slice of the raiding pie. However I expect a spotfiller to be able to make a reasonable contribution to the raid. If they suck then they're not coming back.

We have previously taken another player with us who wanted the achievement so he could pug. However there was a big difference - he could deliver the dps. OK, he is generally referred to as 'X the dying' due to his lack of survival ability, but he did manage to deliver the goods. He researched the tactics and watched the videos. He played his part in the raid. Yes he did die, but no more than anyone on their first time to the raid would have done. In short we didn't hand him his achievement gift wrapped on a plate. And more importantly when he goes out pugging and linking that achievement with our guild name above his head he's not going to embarrass us.

So tonight I'm going to do a vote before our raid as to whether we should carry people to achievements. I know which was I will vote.

Dressed to kill?

Last night, during our fortnightly 25 man raid my attention was briefly diverted from more serious matters by a conversation with Lamagra regarding the virtues of dresses. Well more specifically the fact that real gamers wear dresses. This has been something of an ongoing topic of conversation between five of us for some time, which all started in a rather surreal evening of Headless Horseman fun.

We plotted a little alt guild called 'Dressed to Kill'. I really like the sound of that and I may have daydreamed slightly about it at work today. Well it made a break from my usual daydreams of plotting how to cause the untimely demise of various of my clients.
So... imagine youself as a member of Dressed to Kill. Of course all guild members would have to wear dresses. The wearing of shorts or any other form of attire would of course be met with an instant gkick for disrespecting the guilds founding principles. Ranks would of course all be suitably titled. This is something that I'm still working on, having got stuck at 'mini-dress = recruit'.

Of course all guild members should also be tailors so that they can make their own dresses. Suitable secondary skills would include jewelcrafting so that pretty shiney things could be added to your dress. Herbing would also be acceptable, as for some reason I associate pretty flowers with pretty dresses. Mean sounding professions such as engineering and blacksmithing would be disallowed. Leatherworking would be permitted, but only to the extent that it allowed crafting kinky leather gear for oneself and fellow guildies.

I suspect that Dressed to Kill is just a fantasy guild that is best left to my mid afternoon day dreams. However, it would be sort of fun to run the odd heroic or two with everyone wearing a dress. Yes that even means you dwarf tanky boy.

On a completely different topic, I've been told that I need to write in my blog more often. Point taken, I'll make more effort. What can I say... we're in the midst of a series of overseas visitors. As usual my job is crap, meaning that I'm having to make a big effort to be very productive during the day if I want to get home at a reasonable hour. However the main reason is that I've been too lazy. Oh, and a new series of Spooks has started.

Possibly the worst raid ever?

I think tonight we possibly had the worst raid we've ever had. One of those evenings where half way through you really wish that your computer would spontaenously disconnect and refuse to reconnect for the rest of the evening. Alas it didn't, and given that our RL was sitting next to me I couldn't exactly fake it.

It all started off well, I was in a good mood (having just found out I had a second interview for a job and seeing another quite interesting job spec on my email), and having found a healer to replace our regular heal machine. It should have been such a good night.

It actually started of sort of OKish... we had our usual wipes on Yogg, but we actually had a tactic that started to make some progress. Well sort of progress.. we had a few good goes, but we kept getting blown up by exploding adds at the end of phase one. But at least we saw phase 2 regularly this week...sort of.

Then we moved to ToC and tried heroic mode... it was alwasy going to be a bad idea without our heal machine and the first time in ToC with a spotfiller healer. And sure enough it was a disaster. Again, and again. I think some people felt we made some progress, although I'm not convinced. I think it was actually luck as to when and whether any of the healers got snobolded.. if we did we just wiped earlier. The ranged dps was either not high enough or not on the ball or too dead cos they couldn't move their fat lazy backsides out of the fire patches fast enough to kill the snobolds dead (I mean come on guys it's a f*ing huge big red fire patch and with a macro even I managed to target a snobold and I suck!)

So after that we decided to take it easy in normal mode.. which was a wipefest. For some reason the RL decided to let our highest dps bring his newly dinged 80 warrior... which turned up in a range of ungemmed and unenchanted il200 gear of a mix of dps and tanking variety and blues. I mean...wtf?! Sure enough he did less dps than the tanks. I may as well have tried to dps in tree form, I'd have done more damage (and yes I know you can't dps in tree form....)

The two healer approach clearly didn't work. Our spotfiller did his best, and given the circumstances I think did well. He was way off the mark of our regular heal machine, but to be fair everyone else always is (heal machine come back... I love you!). The other healer's an idiot. I've been designated the 3rd healer / dps and I've worked hard to get my dps gear and spec up to scratch. I've got pretty good dps gear now, but suffer due to a lack of set bonuses (I think that's really good for boomkins). Yes I know my dps isn't as good as anyone else, but neither's my gear. And you other healer dancing around in front of my in boomkin form saying you'll do better than me really pisses me off. Period.

Other healer pisses me off for a number for reasons:
(a) when he tries he's actually a bloody good healer, better than me. For some reason all of his heals seem to land a split second before mine. It isn't that which annoys me... its the fact that he's good when he tries so when he doesn't it's very obvious
(b) he has very very wierd ideas on gear.. he passes on gear which is clearly an upgrade for him (just as it doesn't have his precious spirit on it), and that gear would be an upgrade for him and improve our raid overall
(c) he can't be bothered to read tactics. He has rejoined our group after a long break and has been on 3-5 raids with us now. He claims to be a fast learner, and he used to be. The fights now are more complicated and he hasn't read or watched the tactics. He dies stupidly too often. At least when I die it's because an add ate me or a bloody Onyxia wiggled around a bit and got me with her head or tail. Yes I blame the tanks, it's obviously never my fault :)
(d) He made a comment about loot... something that I rolled on and lost to the RL (I don't mind, he is my BF afterall... however come 3.3 it is best in slot for druids...). After seeing I rolled, and rolled lower than the RL he said he'd have rolled if I was in the lead. What an A class tosser.

We butchered our way through ToC. The other healers said they could 2 heal it and I should go back to dps.. I refused, I'd lost faith in them. DPS dying is one thing, I can understand that, but tanks splatting within 30 seconds of the pull is just plain bad healing imo. Yes I was a part of that (I was painting my nails... our progress was so slow I could do a coat between pulls...), and it takes longer with less dps, but at least we might not all die.

We moved to Onyxia, where we wiped, horribly. We then tried again (past official end time), and very very nearly wiped again. It was horrible. Worse than the worst pug I've been in. Shameful. I had to keep telling myself that we're usually OK, somethimes even rather good, and not the complete bunch of loosers that we were acting like tonight.

Anyway, some good did come of it. I got some boots which are better for dps than my old ones and also solve my hit issues. I got a rather odd trinket, which I can put on to improve my par score to get into pugs (it sucks big time and yes I did petty roll on it to stop the other druid getting it and yes I did inspect him to see if it was an upgrade and ask him if he wanted it and he said no). But most importantly I got my 4 set T9 bonus. I'm now officially a grown up proper healing tree.

Camelenga the Hallowed

I'd just like to say what a wonderful boyfriend I have. Last night, being a Thursday, is one of my 'stay late at work nights' as Stefan usually goes out geeking (board game club / role playing). I think I ended up leaving the office shortly after 22.00. Whilst sitting there I was getting more and more annoyed at the amount of work I had to do before going off on holiday (I've been off sick for two days this week). What was annoying me more though was that I wasn't at home to run Headless Horseman to try to get my squashling pet...the one thing between me and the Hallowed achievement.

On getting home I saw a light on upstairs...and wondered whether Stefan forgot to turn it off before going out. I rang the doorbell just in case, and he answered. He hadn't gone out as he had a headache, but rather than ringing me and telling me (knowing that I would have come home from work and had to work during my holiday instead), he decided to stay home alone and let me think he had gone out.

It got even better tho... he'd decided to run HH for me...and he won the pet for me (sorry Issy!). He didn't even click on it, so I could and get the achievements....I instantly turned from a having a really bad mood to being really happy...

My happy mood even lasted this morning...where I may have been seen dancing around the house singing 'I love you squashling....I do, I love you squashling....I do...'

Hands off my desk you bastard!

I've recently moved desk in the office. After two years in my old desk (lovingly known as the James Bond desk due to it's number - 5W 007) I decided to move when my secondment ended. The James Bond desk had it's advantages...if I peered carefully I could see the River, the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, and it did have a cool name. However it also had many disadvantages, principally being just off the corridor in an open plan office so everyone could see exactly what I was doing at all times. Not good for the secret forum reader or blogger.

One of our partners (fondly known as licky lips - don't ask) retired at the end of June. He had a prime desk, which I was eyeing up. Prime as it's off the beaten track...it's as isolated as it can be in an open plan office and it's not overlooked. The neighbours are friendly, and have reasonable standards of personal hygiene (a distinct advantage over the old desk). It's also by the window with lots of space for shoe storage. Oh and did I mention it comes with it's own tree for above average oxygen levels to improve productivity....After debating with myself as to what was a suitable period of leaving the desk empty out of respect for it's previous occupier I put in the move request. I moved, unpacked, carefully arranged all my accounting books and made it home.

However it looks like my joyous new location may be short lived. One of our partners (who I will refer to as Weasel from Wind in the Willows due to the physical likeness and his generally weaselish personality)is coverting my desk. He's made various snide passing comments about what would it take to make me move. I've currently been offered two bottles of champagne. I told him where to stick them. Make it a case, a payrise and a promotion and I may reconsider. Otherwise go take a long walk off a short pier.

The thing that really pisses me off is that he could have moved to that desk when Licky Lips left. I estimate that the desk was free for approximately 68 days, 10 hours and 34 seconds (OK I made that up but i was well over two months). He only wanted the desk when I moved in.

So as far as I'm concerned the desk is mine. I've moved in my shoe collection (currently 6 pairs). I've staked my claim. And you Weasel boy can go fuck yourself.

Well I thought I'd investigate how to add picture to my blog...having some issues formatting it, but from left to right... Camelenga - holy, Camelenga - dps, Brachio - resto, Brachio - dps