Oh, great – Grimm’s making us all take turns at this. Says it’ll be nice to see some of us that don’t talk much, get face time. Bah, and all that good stuff. My face is fine where it is.

An Eh Way. Here’s what interested us during the week. Your mileage may vary.

• Tamarind find out that blogging and being in a guild is a difficult situation, and takes the nuclear option. Fortunately for us, he’s still blogging. Unfortunately for him, being in a guild may be an incompatible goal.   Later on, Larisa riffs on the subject in more detail.
• What do you want to bet that either Curse or WoWInterface use this opportunity to talk more trash about WoWMatrix?  Cheap shots, we haz them.
• Now that we’ve sorted out how to control gravatar images for the various characters, Meta has started replying to some blog posts in-character.  This can only end in tears…
• Eyonix lays it on us with regards to how our stats are going to change in Cataclysm. There were a few surprises (Weapons skills going away completely – ORLY?) and some tantalizing hints (Reforging).  Possibly the most annoying side effect of this was that wow.com ran a full article for every variation of “Stat and System Changes for $SPEC_AND_VARIATION $CLASS.  I think they even ran one for pipe-smoking lesbian Nelf priests, specifically.
• Last week, Baron Soosdon’s Youtube account was suspended, and that, as he said, was that – end of the road, no more WoW machinama for him. But then, this morning, a miracle – the account restored, so therefore …. meh, he’s probably still calling it quits. Way to be a tease there, fella.  And, nevertheless, thanks for all the great stuff. I will miss it.
• A good laugh every now and then is essential to the soul. No Stock UI highlights one tool that can be used towards this end – Comix.
• Digressing from lore-restricted issues for a moment, Greyseer explains why he isn’t a big Knaak fan. He also demonstrates exactly why he’d make a great warlock.  He has his inner Palpatine charged up.  Later in the week, a review of Knaak’s latest work.  The reasons for Grayseer’s frustration are really obvious when you get a look at this thing.  I really can’t disagree on any point.
• Kaelynn at Azure Shadows provides some great non-specific tips for putting together your UI – design decisions, usability, that sort of thing. I can’t say I live up to all that – my UI is SERIOUSLY functional, meeting the feedback criteria quite well, but esthetically it could peel paint off a ‘79 Volvo wagon from fifty paces.  I’ll work on it, K, I promise!
• Gnomageddon ruminates about the departures from the blogosphere that we’ve seen recently – and ends with reassurances that he’ll be sticking around for some time to come. Yay!  Also: one of the commenters raises the question: what about Empowered Fire? They’ve been quiet!  Hours later – an answer!
• Part 2 in a series: Frost Mage PvP: 102 is posted by Spicytuna. \o/
• Sweet baby titans! Wow.com has apparently cobbled together the basic script for the upcoming Gnomeregan event from the updated sound files in the PTR client’s latest update. Spoiler-rific!  Apparently there’s one for the Echo Isles, too, but I haven’t got much invested in that. Aw, hell, WHO WANTS PIE?
• Tamarind @Righteous Orbs and Miss Medicina @ … Miss Medicina are colluding on a new project, the creation of a bloggish guild on Argent Dawn.  Tam has organized <Single Abstract Noun> on AD/EU, and Miss Medicina has organized <Single Abstract Noun> on AD/US.  We plan to be there in some form, just haven’t figured out what to roll, or if I’m going to transfer Grimm Jr or the belf flower picker warlock.  You’ll see it here, first, when  we decide!

To make it clear: all the voices on this blog live in the same head. The blog subtitle should give it away, but in case that wasn’t clear…

Still, we try to make it flow as if there were a team of distinct individuals living and blogging here. It’s a little game, of sorts, that may or may not have some intrinsic value, at least to me.

The one thing that kills this suspension of disbelief – for me, anyway – is posting an entry as, say, Flora, getting comments, and then seeing my mustachioed countenance looking back from her comment box. Well, that’s my gravatar, what am I to do?

Gravatars are cool, but they’re tied to email addresses, and I’m not that thrilled by obtaining and maintaining twelve (at current count) email addresses.

GMail, however, for whatever reason, has an answer.

If you look at the most recent post, you’ll notice that Jasra’s responded to one comment, and she has her own gravatar. If you had admin access, like I do, you’d see that she has an unusual email address: grimmtooth+jasra at gmail. This is my email – grimmtooth at gmail – with her name added with a plus sign.

Turns out you can do that with any name, and most email-keyed services do indeed see these different email addresses as unique to each other. Thus, Flora and Jas both currently have gravatars, and more will be added as needed. They could even have their own Facebook pages and Twitter accounts if I really wanted to get silly.

There are other benefits, too. For example, I can filter emails to my toons based on the t0-address, and then sort them accordingly.

Naturally, this assumes you use gmail. If not, you’re on your own.

I hope this proves useful to some of the other bloggish-rp-ish beings out there. Happy blogging!

Over the past 48 or so hours, there has been much trash-talking about the Ensidia world-first kill of Arthas (and subsequent fallout).  People are weighing in on both sides.

One prevailing viewpoint of the pro-Ensidia crowd is that Blizzard failed to test the software “properly” and thus, somehow and ergo, Ensidia is blameless in this situation.

What utter, profound crap.

Let me essplain.  No – it is too much. Let me summarize.

There is a rule of thumb in the software testing world, which boils down to this:  “to attack the software properly, you have to think like a criminal” – such as , for example, when dealing with things like credit card processing – the storage of account numbers and so forth, especially. The designer will tell you how it’s supposed to work under normal conditions. You get to figure out what he didn’t think of, the cracks in the shell that you can exploit.

So; this rule of thumb helps one find good testers, but it begs the question as to how to “catch a thief”! Until you’ve sat in the seat of an interviewer, you really don’t know how difficult it is to find a mediocre tester, much less a world-class game buster.  To “catch a thief” to work on your team, you kinda have to think like one, too.

So that’s one issue.

Another issue is what I like to summarize as “the view is really good from the cheap seats”. Really, until you’ve actually been put in the place of finding bugs as your bread and butter, you really have no idea what you’re talking about when you criticize the work done by the testers in this situation. You really, really, don’t. You have no idea what kind of guidelines they were given. You have no idea what level of knowledge they were given about how the encounter was supposed to progress, nor how complete the testing environment was. You have no idea, at all, how this was tested, or even if it was testable.

So sure, go ahead and talk trash all you want, but those of us that work in the industry know exactly how hollow and foolish your critiques are.

Walk a mile in my shoes, and we have common ground to talk.  You can make real critiques at that point, not a bunch of generalities that mean absolutely nothing.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Regarding Ensidia; Grimm said this elsewhere, but I will reiterate now.  You don’t play this game for five years, earn a seat in one of the premier raiding guilds in the world, and somehow not know that this was an exploit. Saronite bombs are to be thrown at the enemy, not collapsed portions of a platform, and the enemy was not standing on collapsed parts of the platform. No, this was deliberate. And anyone that’s been playing that long would know it.

To whine that they’re victims of faulty QA is disingenuous at best. That QA team didn’t make them toss bombs off where they would (theoretically) do no good.  That QA team didn’t force them to take the achievement. That QA team didn’t keep them from reporting the issue.The QA team didn’t make them crow at their achievement.

-=-=-=-=-=-

An analogy, and then I will shut up on this topic.

You are walking through a mall. Ahead of you, a woman’s purse has a broken strap, and the wallet has fallen out. When it hits the ground, a bunch of $50 bills spill out on the ground. She continues on, unaware of the incident.

If you take the money and toss her wallet, who’s in the wrong?  Sure, she should have fixed the purse, secured the wallet. But does that in any way excuse theft? I don’t think so.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Ensidia, I’m sorry that you didn’t get a nice set of steak knives, but maybe next time you will use your heads and not risk your reputation on something so obvious. Or if you do (and I suspect you will), I hope you can at least own up to your stupidity next time.

Oh, and gratz to Paragon, that did it without exploits.

Can you feel it? It is calling in the air.

I’m not naming names. I’m not even promising to be true to the gender involved. I’m not trying to start a fight. I am making an observation. Kapitch?

What happened to me this morning is that I was reading what is considered by all to be a well-informed, rounded blog specific to one specific class.  I have been reading that blog for some time. But, today, for whatever reason, I while I was reading it, I realized, of a sudden, that I had no idea – none at all – if the author was actually enjoying the activities described therein, or if it was just another notch, just another boss, just another data point.

And that got me thinking.

What’s your first-best love?

Do you play the class you love the most, or do you play a class or spec that is needed, for whatever reason, more than your favorite?

If you blog about this silly game, do you blog about what you do, or what you want to do?

I’m reminded of the blogger that most influenced me at first, the guy that taught me that it was good to be enthusiastic and happy and, well, maybe even gush a little about how much fun he was happening.  BRK may be gone, but he is not forgotten, and the post that most reminds me of the outright fun he brought to the game would be the time he had Hobbes tanking the adds in the Moroes encounter.

He was analytical. He was helpful. But, most of all, he was having a hella good time.

He not only helped me enjoy the game … he got me to start playing the game again. I had quit. Deleted all my toons. I was just reading because WoW was, still, interesting in some way¹.  But this guy’s enthusiasm and joy in what he was doing drove home an important lesson to me – It’s a game! Have some fun, FFS!

When I tanked one of the Four Horsemen in Naxx, I had that in mind. This is how we huntard, babee! Bringing you Pewpew and RAWR in one handsome package! If I had Megan’s soul², I’d even do a song about it! Alas, the best you get from me is fish puns, and links to people with actual talent.

Contemplate, for a moment, this post’s titular question.

Frustration and sadness arise when you are kept from what you love. You may have a sense of duty, or loyalty, or something else, that drives you to do that which you do not enjoy as much.  Sometimes, we all have to be “grownups” and do what needs to be done, indeed! But if you don’t recognize that which makes you tick, and embrace it, and nurture it … what kind of experience do you believe you will get from this game?

I firmly believe that if you aren’t having fun, it’s not a game. It’s a job, and probably one with no pay.

Now that this love has overcome me …
Now that this fire is burning bright …
All of these words seem just beyond my reasoning.
Be still my soul …

---

1. I actually found him via wow.com, so let it never be said that they don’t have their moments. [↩]
2. No, not the ones in her shard bag! [↩]

I call it that since I wouldn’t be surprised if it was done again next year, assuming all goes well.

If you didn’t read about it on BBB’s Blog, today we had a joint Horde and Alliance run in support of a guildie of his in the Sidhe Devils that was diagnosed with breast cancer. Well, in support of all who have it or are at risk, really, but that guildie was the person that inspired them.

In preparation I rolled a doppelganger up on the appropriate server and proceeded to level up. I had to have me a white bear, see, so that meant I needed to be level 12 by then. And once I got there, I thought I should make level 20 for my mount, too. The latter didn’t happen.  Just short of 18. Bother.

My sweetie was there, too, on her female Dwarf Hunter – isn’t that sweet? She DID manage to out-level me, and I have to tell you it’s weird being the one being offered help through tougher quests.  Total role reversal from our main server.

So this is what I took into the run. Don’t laugh. Or at least be polite and avert your face while doing so.

The knickers are charming, aren’t they?

So we gather, and I see all sorts of names pop on. Hydra, Fuubaar and Fulguralis, Squidly and Miss Medicina come immediately to mind. I had a little bit of a fanboy moment.  I apologize for not mentioning any that I did see, it was chaotic and so is my mind afterward.

Finally, BBBBBB called it, and we were off!

Out of the starting area, over the rise, and down into the valley we went!

And tearing through Teldrassil we go…

I wonder what they thought of us as we passed through Darnassus.

We waited on the dock for the boat to come; that’s a lot of pink shirts!

Hydra must have been running behind, as she met us on the dock in Auberdine. After a brief /cheer we were back on the road, pouring through Auberdine like a stream.

With several Sidhe Devils flanking us all the way, we streamed through Darkshore. At one point we caught up with some confused fellow that was running the Sleeper escort. I don’t think he had a problem getting that one done, nothing stood upright for ten yards each way. But it had to be unnerving.

At the double time, you can really see the difference between Auberdine and Ashenvale.

A brief rest in Astranaar (I didn’t get any good pics since everyone kinda spread out), and then off we went for The Barrens.

Remember, you have to SNEAK around the guards, no matter how many of you there are, or the number of you wearing bright pink shirts. SNEAK.

And we were OFF THE CHAIN in the Barrens!

“Everyone – VEER LEFT! DO NOT ANGER THE GUARDS!” I’m guessing there was a treaty in effect for this event, so we had to watch our P’s and Q’s.

We hooked up with our counterparts outside of The Barrens. A mighty sight it was. I looked for Jong, and didn’t see him. /me sad, since I knew he had planned to attend.

Finally, our mighty army of pink shirts was unleased, and we headed for Rachet!

As we waited on the dock, I noticed Hydra getting excited. Why? JONG! I gave the customary fanboy /cheer.  Here’s a picture of us together.

Finally, the boat arrived and we piled on. This is the best shot I could get out of four, but none of them do justice to the tide of bodies.  The amazing thing was – no real lag, to speak of.

Once we arrived in Booty Bay, everyone piled off to the inn. If you look closely you can see people leveling up all over the place.

At long last, we arrived at the in, ran through it, and commenced to party atop the bank while someone ground faction against Booty Bay.

This was a wonderful event and a great opportunity to rub elbows with some people I seriously admire.  Just standing on the dock with Jong was pretty uber. But of course the big thing was to show in some small way a measure of support for someone going through a hard bit of life right now. I hope things turn out well for Julie, and I hope that someday we find a cure for this and other forms of cancer.

My thanks to BigBearButt and his guild the Sidhe Devils for getting this all together. It was awesome.

Perhaps in honor of GeoCities’ demise, Miss Medicina is doing a web ring thing. At first I decided against doing it because all the interesting blogs in the world had already done it, and there wasn’t much that I could offer over that. But then this post of Jong’s inspired me. Yes. I will share with you my healing things, because being a Disc priest is just that awesome. I’m not tagging anyone. There’s nobody but Matticus left to tag now, and nobody wants that on their conscience.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Jasra, Priest, Dis ::crack:: cipline with a side of Shadow¹.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

I’ve been healing five mans, Heroics, and 10-man raiding for months now, usually as MT healer in raids and group healing 5-mans.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Tough call. I would say Power Word: Shield, because I like bubbles.² Bubbles make me think of carbonated drinks, which reminds me that it’s time to freshen my RumandCoke.

But let’s be honest here. Penance is about the coolest thing out there. Not only do I get to heal with it, but in a pinch it’s an offensive weapon!  Not only that, but when you slap your MT with this baby, he knows it. His or her whole body jerks as the healing energy gets in there and kicks butt.

“The path of the righteous is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of epic bosses. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through Naxx on badge runs. For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost loots. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious Smites those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Healer when I lay my Penance upon you.“

Well, something like that.

The thing with Penance is that it fits in with healing as if Jules Winnfield had chosen to play a priest after he gave up life as a professional assasin. The same verve, passion, and exacting attention to detail as he, invariably, would have brought to the table.  I’m not saying you need a hand-stitched wallet with BAD MOTHER FUCKER embossed on it, but I’m not saying it would exactly hurt, either.

Except I’m fine with bacon. Bacon is delicious!

Anyway. Penance. It’s cool.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Greater Heal; when I rely on that, Jas is OOMPriest in no time. My spec has and glyphing has perverted Flash Heal into my “slow” heal of choice. For the really big heals, see “penance” above.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

Priests are really the jack of all trades when it comes to healing. We can be point healers, raid healers, or even emo shadow-loving trickle healers and mana battery bitches. All other classes have at most one healing spec.  All of our specs can heal, for some value of ‘heal’.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I like tree Druids and resto Shammis in raids because they compliment my point healing. The only down side of the shammi is that chain heal is unpredictable at times and we end up overwriting each other a lot without meaning to.

What is your worst habit as a healer?

(1) Situational awareness. I’ve been known to die without realizing it.  (2) Renew. I drop that sucker on everything. Tanks, DPS, pets, shrubberies and other decor… No wonder I go OOM so much.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

(1) People that attempt emotional blackmail and indirect methods to get you to come heal thier group.  Listen, just ask directly, OK? And if I say I’m busy, don’t try to bargain.

(2) Playing alongside Captain Obvious types. In other words, I don’t like healing stupid people. However, if they shut the hells up, I might toss a frisbee their way.  QUIET stupid people are moderately tolerable.

(3) People that stand in stuff. JUST DON’T.  If you make a habit of it, I will let you die.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Classwise, yes. Specwise, as long as I stick to my strengths.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

I don’t do healing meters.  I know if I did my job, if my charge(s) is/are still standing. If we downed that boss.  And I know when I didn’t do my job.   Recount is good to evaluate how you used your heals, but the HPS meter is useless, in my opinion.   But if I see a certain spell’s healz to mana ration is low, I get interested.  I don’t ignore analysis tools, but I only work with appropriate ones.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

That we’re everyone’s bitch. I run with a good bunch of people, so largely I am given proper respect as a person. It doesn’t hurt that a lot of them have healer alts, so they appreciate my work, and I theirs. That helps a lot. But there are so many people that will abuse a healer’s very nature.

While I’m on the subject, my favorite NON-healing role is the Tank. More than anyone else, the tank earns the healer’s respect and loyalty. A good tank knows the healer’s got his back, and a good healer knows that tank will take a NUCLEAR WEAPON IN THE FACE for you as long as you keep those heals coming.

In a way, it’s kinda a co-dependent relationship, but it’s the axis around which all over roles revolve. Discuss among yourselves.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

(a) Situational awareness. Almost everyone knows to load up Grid and bind things, right? But learning what to do when circumstances change … that’s the rub.  Don’t stand in stuff. Stay alive. Learn to heal and be mobile (something I still need work on).

(2) Know when NOT to heal and conserve mana. Again, guilty. Sometimes it’s unnatural to not be doing anything. I recommend playing with your wand in those cases.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of over healing, low healing output, etc)?

They would likely see that the resto shammi was outhealing me and /kick me. Buh bye.

Seriously, Disc priests are not chart toppers. Single-target heals with little splash compared to multi-target heals with big splash. It’s like comparing Blizzard versus Frost Bolt.

Haste or Crit and why?

Crit, then haste, because Crit has greater immediate effects. Haste has a downside, too: faster on the mana drain.  So something that gives me moar healz for the same mana makes me happy.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Holy Palli. I really have no idea how that works. I need to work on that.

What add-ons do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Grid. Clique. Decursive. Quartz. X-Perl. Rating Buster.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

I tend to overbias on a stat until I reach a point I am happy with, then work on others. For example, for the last two months I have focused on SP over regeneration; recently I have decided I went too far on that so I am now biasing more towards regeneration until I can heal Iron Council without sweating bullets. Once I am happy with those two, I’ll probably work Crit.

Of course, if I can get all four in an upgrade, I’m ecstatic.

There you have it. Enjoy, if possible!

---

1. Shut up, Flora! [↩]
2. See wut I did thar? [↩]

A story.

Bob was hitting his hand with a rock, over and over again, causing himself much pain.

Sandra asked him why he was doing that.

“I wanted to punish you for wearing that ugly hat,” he said, hitting his hand once more.

Thus is the logic of the /emoquit.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

We took down Sarth+1D last night. Truly, much tougher than one might suspect, or at least if you’re not prepared for it, it falls apart f-a-s-t.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

As you might have guessed, more /emodrama. I give up. Go sit in a hole and weep bitter emo tears. Come back when you can envision yourself typing “I disagree with your desision, GM, and here’s why” instead of “/gquit”.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Headless was kind to us last night, in which he dropped his mount for one lucky guildie (not one I am fond of but oh well) and at least three squashlings, one which I received. /petcheer

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

It saddens me that the esteemed Ratshag at Need More Rage is hanging up his blogging togs, and presumably the rest of the team as well.  Not counting WoW Insider, his was in the first three blogs I started reading, along with BRK (also now gone) and Hydragyrum (formerly “Liquid Silver” over on Vox, currently Almost Evil).   And, due to Meta’s early exposure to his musings, he’s largely to blame for much of the way that this blog came to be. True story!

There are many Ratshag favorites out there, let us share ours:

• What he likes about being a warrior
• The Helm of Evil Laughter. Also, it has groupies.
• That other – tupid – hebet. Redux.
• Emo Kinnavieve
• Quite possibly, we’re not saying, inspiration for this.
• Five words: Nipple chain.  Maybe. Maybe not.

Thanks for the memories, you big glubberthumper.  And you’re always welcome to drop in here if you want a taste of true obscurity.

As I’ve said before, occasional Megs is better than no Megs at all.

WOOHOOO!

Sorry, Flora got a little excited there.

But, yeah.

Big shout out to the illestretpalli EVAR for makingithappen.

It’s good to see WoW.com accepting victory so graciously.  OK, OK, they do have some right after the slagging they took.

No, I’m not a fanboy. I’ve slagged them plenty. But saying “NO WAI YOU ARE WRONG NEWBZ LOL” without a shred of evidence to refute something is no better than saying that stuff will happen with no evidence.

Note that I didn’t say SHOW the evidence. They had sources they couldn’t reveal, but they did claim they had sources. They’ve not done this sort of thing in the past without solid information, and do not have a track record of wild speculation without clearly labeling it so.  The same goes for MMO-Champion. Like it or not, some people got a good lead and played it fair.

I doubt Blizz even minds. Up until the opening speech yesterday, there was still the unknown. All the MMO-Champion and WoW.com articles did was pique interest further, and probably drove more sales of the live feed. What’s not to like? 20,000 highly excited people showed up. The energy there must have been amazing.  Imagine having half that many people excited by anything you did.

When I heard the rumors I became excited at the potentials I saw, but knew full well it was all possibly a false lead or a red herring. I’m so very glad the rumor proved true, though, and at some point I’ll get into that.  There’s still news coming out. Stats simplified. New ways to modify armor. Odd new ways to enhance your talent trees. It’s a bit much, so I’m going to go back and stick my head back under the firehose.

So, all those that were sneering at MMO-Champion, WoW.com, and the credulous cretins that ate what they said up … owe them all a big apology.

At Blizzcon just a few minutes ago, Blizzard announced the name of and nature of the new expansion: CATACLYSM.

• New races, Goblin (Horde), Worgen (Alliance).
• Azeroth is shattered; looks like Wetlands might be gone forever, so hurry up and get that red whelpling!
• With the redesign of Azeroth, we’ll finally get to fly there since the “new” landscape won’t have the ’shortcuts’ that previous ones had.
• New class/race combos. I have seen many theories of how this may or may not fit into lore, and in most cases they make sense.
• New secondary skill – archeology?  I didn’t see that coming anywhere.
• Heroic SFK – what about others? ETA – the website makes it clear that MANY old-world instances will have heroic modes now¹.

There are those that are upset that their precious lore of old has been upended. While I am no fan of retconning, there is one think to keep in mind: today’s reality is tomorrow’s lore.  When the world is broken, a lot of things can change. Also, we’re running into the end of compelling lore threads here. There are one or two other loose ends (emerald dream, etc) that need resolved, but, really, this thing needs to move forward at some point.

I think it’s clever to use the breaking of Azeroth as an opportunity to revamp the landscape. It is a very elegant solution to a problem that has no doubt been giving them fits for a few years.

I have no clue on timelines or anything else, but I can say that I am very much looking forward to this.

---

1. Our GM just pointed out in email that we’ll probably be bouncing off those entrances, too. [↩]

Um, guys? If you turn up the contrast, the lens-ish thing is superimposed over a bog standard map of Azeroth that you see when taking the boat from Stormwind to Darkshore, etc.

Try not to get carried away, OK? You’re the professionals, I’m the amateur.

Over the past week we’ve gotten a lot of rumors about the next expansion for WoW, topped by this very interesting post at MMO-Champion. But it is not fact. I am starting to see a lot of otherwise respectable bloggers jump on the bandwagon and pass on this information as the real thing. “All those rumors you heard a few weeks ago are TRUE!”, they proclaim.

Um, no.

I didn’t really plan on commenting on the whole thing until I started to see that. Some people are being just a bit too credulous for their own good.

Listen, it sounds great. Exciting. It makes sense from a number of perspectives. But until Blizzard confirms or denies it, it is mere speculation. It may be well-founded speculation, but it’s still, until some form of bona fides are presented, just speculation and rumor.

So. Enjoy, speculate, daydream, be excited! Just don’t bet the family fortune on it.

My feeling? I think it might be the truth. But I can neither confirm or deny, so I am keeping it firmly lodged on the “rumor” shelf. But, it would be exciting! I’m dying to find out!

For some reason, this reminded me of Jong.  Supafly Ret Palli with Unicorn posse FTW.

God sent her back to keep us dancing.

An angel by any other name is still frakkin awesome.

That is all.

I think I may have a long lost twin sister (only a warrior type) on another server.

Seriously.

Ugh. What’s a girl gotta do around here to get an up to date portriat avatar? Huh?