News

First things first. Sartharion with 3 drakes is dead. The screenshot is terrible, I know. My first plan was to photoshop Boxxy onto it, but after several days I realized that joke wasn’t going anywhere. So instead we have the original screenshot as is, unflattering as it may be.



Then again, there is something of value in killshots like this. Ok, imagine a war. This is basically a photograph of a battlefield. You see the soldiers, battered but victorious, some of them not looking at the camera, some of them dead, some in several pieces. Regular killshots, cleaned up and cropped and airbrushed, are like the soldiers standing in a formation and clean uniforms far from danger, holding children and kittens. The soldiers are smiling. The prisoners about to be executed are smiling. The children and kittens are smiling. Bear and Nevvy, who are holding the children and kittens, are smiling widest of all.

So, as many have pointed out, this update was a little longer in coming. And, like I told some of the less patient individuals, this is because I was struggling to find a theme.

At which point Kazajin said "That’s easy, just put screenshots of our kills and add a bunch of running jokes about me and Dan."

And yes, that is indeed what usually ends up here. But this time I’m going with something else, and we’ll leave $400 Prada belts and little sisters found in motels 3 states away until next time. This front page update isn’t going to be about Kazajin or Danrax.

This one’s about crocodiles.

First, let’s get some facts straight:

CROCODILE FACTS:

1. Crocodiles have very weak muscles for opening their mouth, so it can be held shut by duct tape.
2. They feed mostly on vertebrates like fish, reptiles, and mammals, sometimes on invertebrates like MOLLUSKS.
3. A crocodile’s tongue is held in place by a membrane that limits movement. As a result, crocodiles cannot stick out their tongue.
4. The average crocodile will completely consume any human that gets within 4 feet of its mouth.

Malygos eats squid, cannot stick out his tongue, and destroys anyone that comes anywhere near his head. So according to the above facts, Malygos is a crocodile. He ALSO lives in the Matrix, and Liquid Snake lives in his beard (confirmation ­here and here). If that isn’t the definition of a bad-ass raid boss, I don’t know what is. So here’s the killshot of that:



Ok, now imagine you just attempted to steal about $1500 worth of silk shirts from your favorite clothing store, by wearing all of them at once. A man at the door notices you walking out with about 17 popped collars, and gets the feeling that something is slightly out of place. Before you know it, you’re missing the raid because you’re in jail for the night. Your parents are NOT pleased, so they lock you in a closet without food or water. You raid from there, sure, but sometimes you see moving shadows beneath the door. It could be your mother. It could be a crocodile. It could be a crocodile HAVING SEX WITH your mother.

To tell the truth I’m not sure where that particular example is going, so let’s jump to something else.

To get the Undying title, you must essentially BECOME the crocodile. Going into it with the mindset of "we’re all going to play our best and get the title" is like a crocodile charging headlong at a herd of giraffes. Even if you know EXACTLY what you’re doing, the giraffes will just laugh and run away and stick out their tongues, and you can’t do the same in return.

Of course, you can also try to calculate probabilities and stack the group with only very specific individuals, using the sheer force of mathematics to your advantage and approaching the problem from an unexpected angle. But that’s essentially like a crocodile climbing a nearby palm tree with the intention of dropping down on the giraffes from above. Best case scenario is you somewhat injure the giraffe before hitting the ground and breaking most of your ribs, or at the very least becoming stunned. At which point a man will walk up to you and begin poking you with a stick and saying "crikey!" over and over before duct taping your mouth shut.

You see, to hunt such elusive prey you have to outsmart it. Like the wise crocodile, you must gently float along the surface of a river, pretending and FULLY BELIEVING that you are a harmless log. You quietly float up to your goal, maybe dodge a cinnamon pastry that was thrown at you by tourists, and get as close as possible to that baby giraffe on wobbly legs that is bending down to drink. Then, before anyone can react, you scream at Twillside to use bloodlust, pop all cooldowns, and grab the giraffe by the neck and do a running backflip cartwheel back into the water, surfacing for a split second only to tilt your head backwards for a lasting image of baby giraffe legs kicking that will hopefully soon appear on the Discovery channel.

I figured I’d add our Kil’jaeden "killshot" from a few months ago for the sake of completeness, since it was never posted before. Unfortunately a legendary bow didn’t drop, meaning that pictures of Despina in the shower that Kaz sent me are going to have to wait for a future update.

A few weeks ago some of us were at a bar, where some of us may or may not have drank Raspberry Cider to assert our manhood. The conversation turned from football and weight lifting to more manly things like "what Anubis looks for in girls", as salad was served and some of us ordered another round of Raspberry Cider with sugar. The commandments made by Anubis were written on the backs of three beer-stained coasters, which like the Mormon discs that Pezz prays to will soon start a powerful religion.

The point is, after that was done some others made similar discs. Bear’s list of what he looks for in girls began with "has a tail". This is similar to his approach to most things, like raid compositions and strategies. These tend to be better and more bulletproof than anything Bake is capable of, since they use principles and theories that are made up by Bear himself and do not actually exist.

Of course, it may be just me. As Bear himself often says, "I come from a world you may not understand".

Until next time.

So it’s been a few weeks since our last outing, and, the day we managed to marshal enough squid to form a raid we cleared the Dread Citadel:



I’m not going to post screenshots of all of the bosses, because quite honestly, they don’t deserve it. There’s a problem when it takes longer to explain a fight than to do it. There’s a problem when you not only 1-shot a boss with 25 people alive, but also manage to get an achievement you never knew existed. Even Thaddius, the biggest squid net in the instance, goes down within half an hour of attempts. Four Horsemen are simpler than Attumen the Huntsman, Sapphiron was done without people knowing what "frost resist" MEANS, and the mighty lich Kel’Thuzad would have died on the first attempt if I had been looking at void zones instead of attempting to cast vigilance on squid across the room.

But this front page update isn’t about Naxxramas.

It’s about a man named Loken.



Ah, Loken.  A hatsmith by trade. The last boss of Halls of Lightning, for those unaware. Danrax and his trusty companion Tom Brumbler have tracked this man across the millennia, battled him across worlds. Together they have succeeded where whole armies failed. Just ask Dan sometime when he’s been drinking. He’ll tell you a tale and show you the scars. He travels here and there they say, joining channels on vent silently when he senses a Loken encounter to be in progress. He listens, without saying anything, feeding on the tears and failure of squid, chuckling to himself as he pours another glass.

Let me explain to you how a typical encounter with this man goes.

You enter a large circular room with coffered ceilings. A giant model of the world spins in the center, glowing with light, as golems and constructs patrol about. At the far end of the chamber a set of stairs and a pulsing white line lead to a large rune-etched throne, on which sits a man made of stone. He idly taps his fingers as he waits, head leaning on one hand. When you approach, he laughs, and speaks of worlds which he has shattered, whole empires and civilizations of squid turned to ruin. Rising from the chair, he holds up one hand-

-and then you void your bowels, and realize, and unconsciously say out loud: "We’re all about to die".

And then, as you hesitantly charge to meet him, one of two things happens: either somebody stands too close when they shouldn’t be, or too far away when they should be humping his leg. THAT PERSON becomes a hat, instantly, hitting the ground faster than a holy priest in Primal Mooncloth healing during a pull. Or, in this new age of raiding, faster than Rooraman on the wrong side of Thaddius.

Ah yes, Rooraman. This post is about him too. A man that was once the most powerful warlock in the guild and probably the world, with a throne rivaling Loken’s. A man who has seen better days. Now he watches us fight the Lich King’s lieutenants, looking upwards from the ground, from the spot generally reserved for Nevvy in raids past. Due to a phenomenon described only as "affliction combos", and having to play from a laptop after his liquid cooling system "drooled", this man can be counted on to be dead every single time, on every single fight.

Well, some say, it’s not THAT bad. I mean, how many fights do we realistically go through with having all 25 people alive?

You don’t seem to understand. This man is GUARANTEED to be dead. "24-manning every encounter" does not even begin to describe it - this isn’t dying once per boss fight, this is dying multiple times PER TRASH PULL. Per pull of ONE MOB. If you were to count, I would not be at all surprised if the inhabitants of Naxx killed Roo 3 times for every one of them we killed. Everything you can possibly die to in that instance, this man has died to. Everything you CAN’T possibly die to, this man has found a way to die to. He dies outside of combat, he dies without taking damage, he dies to HEALING SPELLS, and attempts to resurrect him usually end up autoreleasing him and/or dropping him from the internet.

Back in Burning Crusade, in the days of SSC, we had a running joke about Bear dying 5 times in two Lurker attempts. That, I am sad to say, is nothing now. Now, we raid with 8 druids. EVERY ONE of those battle rezes is used on Roo, every fight. He is given more healers than the tanks, he is given a cane and a seeing-eye dog to guide him around and show him what is bad to stand in, and still, if I turn around for ONE SECOND, he trips and falls and lays waiting for a rez and a repair bot in a puddle of drool.

This man spaces out in the 3 seconds between a ready check and a pull, which conveniently places him in an alcove with a group of angry undead. Needless to say he gets torn into about 15 parts on the spot, and said undead, with pieces of Roo still in their teeth, proceed to wipe us on Kel’Thuzad before he is done making his intro speech. Note that unlike the drawn-out monologues of Kael and Illidan, his speech consists of "Minions, servants, soldiers of the cold dark- obey the call of Kel’Thuzad!".

I can’t even find a picture in my collection to describe the level of fail here. Here’s one anyway, though Roo hanging in power lines I’d consider a great success compared to some of the things I’ve seen this man do.



Up next is a powerful dragon man with a beard, who might take a staggering FOUR attempts to kill, making him the hardest boss in the game by far. Stay tuned. I for one can hardly contain the excitement.

Patch 3.0.2 came out 2 weeks ago, and introduced some buffs to all of the classes. Then, since clearly this could make some of the current raid encounters HARDER in ways that only Blizzard understands, every boss and trash mob in the game was nerfed by about 30%.

And that led to this:



Let me tell you a story about a man named Danrax. Dan wakes up at 6 a.m. every day, puts on a dry-cleaned suit, his best shoes, and grabs his hat and suitcase full of pictures of cats. He goes to his local McDonald’s, orders a cup of coffee, and sits back to read a newspaper. He then goes home and plays Warhammer Online. This daily ritual is known as "pretending to go to work", or as he puts it, "practicing for when I have a job".

So basically, at this point our "accomplishment" is about as real as the job that Dan pretends to go to every day. Most guilds have been working to clear these bosses since January, and here we are spending one laid-back night learning each. More often than not with about 22 people in the raid. Sure, it LOOKS like the real thing, the bosses SOUND convincing when they tell us that the world will burn and we’re about to be turned inside out and wear our asses as hats, but in reality we’re in the Special Olympics right now. It reminds me of the track and field events they had for the handicapped kids back in elementary school:



That’s us right now. Sure, within a week we’ll have the "Kill Kil’jaeden" achievement, and with time nobody is going to remember patch 3.0.2, but somehow it’s still not the same.

Speaking of achievements, the Adventure Seekers club has also been busy. The standard procedure for most weekends involves consuming all alcohol in sight and boldly venturing into the forgotten dungeons of the the pre-BC era. Some of us remember these places. Some of remember the weeks of Vaelastrasz, which turned powerful guilds into whimpering squid. Those to quit the game first were the lucky. Some go mad and begin yelling unintelligibly when they see the steps leading up to the Suppression Room. Others see the glowing square of light in C’thun’s hallway or the ground moving as Ouro is about to surface, and run for their mothers and teddy bears.



Fifteen drooling drunks can now beat difficult bosses that broke guilds and destroyed lives two years ago. In a few hours we can easily do fights that took organized teams of 40 people weeks to learn and months to perfect. And pretty soon, Illidan and Kil’jaeden will be about as difficult. Though to be fair, for that C’thun kill we had to use the Cock Phone to contact Dr. Conq, who arrived at the raid with pretty much every squid in Shattrath at his back. Most of whom got lost on the way to the boss despite being given PAINFULLY clear instructions and were subsequently eaten by beetle-people.

Even now it’s starting, Black Temple and most of Sunwell is a joke. I remember the glorious days of SSC and Vashj, where legendary bows were whispered myths and those that fucked up were dealt with strictly and quickly removed:



Back then there was a long road ahead, content was hard and conversations in vent were highly intelligent. Now we raid from a channel called "The Gay Fort", and a typical conversation looks somewhat like this:

"So a few nights ago, when we were in AQ, my girlfriend went outside and returned with her back all wet."

"Was it raining? Or do you have a pool or anything?"

"No. I think that maybe someone jumped out of a tree and peed on her."

Because, that’s DEFINITELY the first explanation I would come up with, sober or otherwise. In fact, it’s a pretty common occurrence believe it or not. Often I go out for a walk, minding my own business, and a man leaps out of a tree, urinates onto me, and then vanishes. I can definitely relate. I don’t know what you’d have to be like in real life to come up with things like this, but I predict you would look something like this:



Until next time, which will likely be the last update before the expansion, where we will look back before continuing forward.

I remember the first time we attempted Kalecgos - 10 minutes until trash respawns, and when a portal appeared, it was like squid swarming around a feed bag, flailing at it with their soft jelly-like bodies trying vainly to get in.

­

But he’­s dead, finally. And of course the actual boss flies away, and instead that demon comes out and leaves behind what appear­s to be a shiny lump of toasted feces. Well, at least our positioning in­ the killshot is much better than usual, so we might be onto something here. And w­hile the lack of a proper boss corpse is somewhat disheartening, the feeling of actually beating a difficult encounter is exhilarating. No matter what differences and personal issues we have with each other, no matter what kind of drama clusterfucks people start on the long wipe nights, when that boss goes down we ALL briefly turn into squealing 12-year-old girls in gymnastics uniforms and jump on each other and make out.

­
­
Ahem.

So now that we have that out of the way, on to more important things: for instance, finding out which way the guild "dresses to", left or right.

Not sure what I’m talking about? You’re not the only one!



From the data we managed to collect from last week’s raid, it would seem that most of the guild dresses to the left. Either that, or they’re saying it just to be cool and fit in with everyone. Which incidentally is exactly what happened when the topic of circumcision was brought up some months ago.

I think we’re going to need to make this an interview question or something.

By the encouragement of several members of Group 1, I have extended this informal study beyond the guild, in the name of science. Doing an unofficial survey at work and amongst the people on my AIM and Facebook friend lists, I’ve found 1 guy and 2 girls that dress to the RIGHT.

"What Mister Kain?"

"How can girls "dress" like that?"

Behold:



That’s taking things a little far, sure. You figure nobody would EVER fall for that. But then again you also figure that the first instinct most people would have when they see fire, for instance, is to not stand in it. Nope. Not here. Here the neon glow of the flames attracts squid like the fluorescent lights in the twilight pools where they feed, and they tumble over each other in a mess of ink and drool trying to be the first in the fray. Or, in this case, the trap.

Which is what happened the LAST time I posted traps on the front page.

"Wow Kain, that girl in the news post is hot! Although I don’t really get the joke…"
"Dude, are you retarded? It’s a man."
"What the fuck, no it’s not!"
"Look closely. That’s not a fold, it’s a penis."
"Oh shi-"

At this point realization seeps in, and though we haven’t lost anyone to this yet, their lives will likely never be the same again.

You have to remember also that our raiders essentially look something like this:

­

One-legged stream hoppers, rat goblins, a goat man that eats paint chips, and some sort of swamp toad that looks suspiciously like an unholy merger of Kazajin, Illside, and an aborted duck fetus.

But it’s ok. We have a foothold in Sunwell, and have proven to ourselves that we can work together and overcome challenges that require moderate coordination. Next is Brutallus, as Dan put it, "that guy that makes hats out of people".

A wise man with a beard once said, "The value of achievement lies in the achieving."

I’m not sure what that has to do with killing Illidan, so instead of thinking about it I made a sticker:



It didn’t come easy. After coming all this way a number of people apparently realized that they’d rather not see Illidan die, and went on to better things. Half the roster had to be replaced, and as it stands the raids look very different from what they were a month ago.

There were discussions in private vent channels that lasted long into the night, summits with ambassadors from rival guilds, and conferences to address the rampant paranoia that spread through binds and tells like parasites on an Illidan phase 1 gone horribly wrong. It took a lot of time, arguing, and compromising to get the whole thing back on track. Let me share with you an excerpt from one of our most heated debates:



But all turned out good in the end. We solved the attendance problems, everyone learned to get along more or less, and as a result we have a very smooth Illidan kill to show for it.

Ok, that last part is a lie. And so is the screenshot at the top of the page. The kill actually looked more like this:



And sounded kind of like this:

[Raid][Ilon]: Fuck! Kain is dead!
[Raid][Mordral]: Dicks.
[Raid][Soco]: Fuck shit bitch
[Raid][Arcnova]: He’s at 3%!
[Raid][Bake]: Fuck it just wipe
[Raid Leader][Kain]: YOU MOUTHBREATHING CLOWNS, IT’S DEMON PHASE, I DONT TANK
[Raid][Bake]: O shit, that’s right!
[Raid][Bake]: Burn him quick, healers help dps!
[Raid][Yukomo]: what the f*ck, keep Trusken healed!
[Raid][Amahu]: *bong bubbling*
[Raid Leader][Kain]: SPREAD OUT SHIT
[Raid][Nevvy]: warriors stack on me for rage, quick!
[Raid][Dalmation]: Burn him burn him omg
[Raid Leader][Kain]: KILL THE FUCKING SHADOWFIENDS
[Raid][Cdubbz]: *bong bubbling*
[Raid][Psyche]: fuck i have shadowfiends
[Raid][Sarrlock]: me too
[Raid][Anubis]: fuck i do too
[Raid][Arcnova]: lol look Trusken has them
[Raid][Choko]: fuck I have them too
[Raid][Choko]: fuck
[Raid][Kazajin]: oh wieners i’m dead *slurp*
[Raid][Trusken]: dps him he’s at 1%
[Raid][Leapidus]: more dps on illidan!
[Raid][Choko]: he’s kneeling wtf?!
[Raid][Soco]: fuck it’s the transition
[Raid][Auxi]: he’s at 1% still
[Raid][Ilon]: FUCK
[Raid][Yukomo]: f*ck mothertrucking b*tch sh*t
[Raid Leader][Kain]: wait i think we killed him
[Raid][Kazajin]: what?
[Raid][Psyche]: did we?
[Raid][Bake]: maybe
[Raid][Ahwawa]: wtf this wasn’t part of the minigame
[Raid][Dalmation]: he’s talking or something
[Raid][Yukomo]: wait he’s dead!
[Raid][Everyone]: omg omg yay woohoo etc.
[Raid][Ilon]: i think i just came
[Raid][Kazajin]: wienerz

There was some failure. And if it was Bear instead of Tolandruth in the raid, we wouldn’t even have an ankh to recover from it, and the loot would have despawned. Which is probably what we deserve after a shitshow like that.

But as they say in Canada, a kill is a kill, and after rezzing everyone and equipping our new items we’ll stand around and pretend we’re pro or something.

We’ve come a pretty long way. Addiction was made a little over a year ago, and here we finally stand at the end of the content we set out to conquer. The journey was long, and many people came and went. This first kill is dedicated to all those that stopped playing due to real life issues - believe me, I know how you feel. Often I myself questioned if all of it was really worth it. But then I remembered what "real life" was like. Let me tell you a story of a typical college party, an episode from a few years ago:

It begins with myself and a few friends standing around on a lawn outside a frat house. The night was uncharacteristically quiet. The beer pong tournaments were over, the drama was over, the fights were over, the cops and ambulances had come and gone, twice. With the slam of a screen door a girl walks out onto the lawn. Let’s call her Kelly. She was stumbling somewhat, eyes glazed, all thought concentrated entirely on putting one foot in front of the other while trying to balance a plastic cup filled with hard lemonade and cherry vodka and other girl drinks that you’d have to ask Bear about.

She walked a couple of steps onto the lawn. "Walked" is a relative term, since her movements consisted more of falling onto the ground, crawling, getting up, taking a few weaving steps, then repeating the process. Anyway, one way or another she got to the middle of the lawn, not too far from where we were standing. At that point she stopped, thought about something for a second, then dropped her pants and took a shit on the grass.    

Now, taking into account all of the alcohol that was consumed, it didn’t seem too surprising at the time. At that point in the night, I would have likely believed anything I saw.

There was a man named "John" there at the party, a local legend of sorts, and an honorable member of the "party planning committee". As a college hockey player he had lost many teeth and even more brain cells getting into fights with angry Canadians during matches. This, along with a tendency to achieve feats of retardation that nobody even dreamed possible, was the primary source of his fame.

So John walks out that same screen door roughly an hour later (my sense of time may have been a little off). He’s barefoot, having lost his flip-flops earlier that night by throwing them first at girls that tried to leave with somebody else’s alcohol, then at the vehicle in which said girls made their escape.

Then there was my friend Mike. Mike is that guy that always wears a nice shirt and has a great smile in every picture, the guy that your mother always talks about and says "why can’t you be more like HIM?". He’s also THAT GUY that you sometimes see in the background of Facebook pictures, blacked out drunk, screaming at the top of his lungs and wearing nothing but a cowboy hat. He doesn’t remember any of these episodes of course, but at some point between the tenth shot and the fourth kegstand he starts believing that he’s the world’s greatest stripper, and hilarity ensues.

Anyway. John walks out the door barefoot. Mike fortunately has his clothes on still. He breaks off from our group and goes to talk to John, trying to tell him something, and laughing hysterically in the process. Mentally, John is somewhere between being utterly confused and beating someone half to death with a hockey stick. The two keep trying to communicate, but don’t get very far. To make an already long story a little shorter, at some point during all of this John steps into the feces that Kelly left on the lawn some time ago.

And he slips and falls. He says "fuck" in a loud slurred voice, picks up the now-empty beer cup, and gets back on his feet. Now, at this point he had not yet realized exactly what had happened. The lawn was wet, and parts of it muddy, so even a sober person may have trouble fully grasping exactly what happened. He then reaches down to wipe the "mud" off his leg, which means that it’s now on his hand, and this he wipes on his shirt. Then he smells the air. And a second time to make sure. And with a slight twitch in his face he realizes that something is very, very wrong.

Mike meanwhile is on his knees, holding his stomach and laughing hysterically. I don’t know if people can really die of laughter, but for a few terrifying seconds I was sure his head was going to explode or something. John meanwhile is staring intently at his soiled hand. His other hand drops the red beer cup, and goes to his stomach, and he proceeds to violently vomit onto himself and Mike, who may or may not have pissed himself right then and there while stale beer and EasyMac poured down from above.

College life is fun. To this day Mike and John and even Kelly view themselves as heroes for having played a part in such an epic event. And sure, I think it makes for a good story - but quite honestly, looking back at it, sitting home on a Thursday night and hearing "Who will be next to taste my blades?!" for 4 hours doesn’t seem so bad.

And now, the moment that we’ve all been waiting for, the reason why we tried so hard to kill Illidan in the first place. Below is the picture of Kazajin, the Master Squid himself. Just think of this picture every time he speaks. And remember that on every boss fight, the fate of the entire raid depends on this clown successfully applying a Misdirect to the correct target and getting off a few shots before dying. Be afraid.

I really don’t know what to say, except maybe "oh wieners".

Our adventures continue in Sunwell, where items are better and bosses are harder, and the first step to progression is ensuring that all squid are extinct. Join me next time.