Do you know a Dum-Dum?

WoW is a social game. All MMOs are made that way. You can get to the end game without interacting with people if you like, but they are regardless. In your travels, you will most likely meet many new people and even make a few friends. A few of these friends may be dum-dums.

These are the people that you play with whose company you enjoy.....but they are generally terrible at the game. They are usually called noobs. Since they are a friend, they are dum-dums instead. We have all seen them......they will make you facepalm in oh so many ways. These dum-dums are usually teachable. Since they are your dum-dum, feel free to do the teaching.

You may be wondering...."Darraxus, how do I know if my friend is a dum-dum?" Well I am glad you asked!! If you don't know if your friend is a dum-dum, you may in fact be a dum-dum yourself. In case you are the dum-dum (which we know you arent because you are smart enough to be reading my blog duh), I will list a few sure ways to spot if your friend (or you) are dum-dums.

1) They gear like a dum-dum: Your Deathtard friend gets to level 80. You inspect him and see defense gear mixed with spellpower gear and a few pieces of leather or mail. You may even find them wearing a piece of cloth gear. This is a sure fire sign of a dum-dum. If they have been wearing the same boots since level 19, they may be a dum-dum. If they only choose items that match regardless of stats, they may be a dum-dum....unless its an RP server, then they can have both.

2) They spec like a dum-dum: All of their talent points in one tree? Check! This is one mistake that a lot of dum-dums seem to make. They dont fully research their class and hear that "x-spec" is the best for their class. They then dump every point into that tree. These are usually the ones that you find in a oug that are doing 900 dps at level 80. They try.....but they are dum-dums.

3) They use rotations like a dum-dum: A rotation is the proper order that you should be using abilities to maximize your DPS or threat. Healers are different in that they need to be reactive. If their rotation includes throwing in abilities they should not be using or their rotations are too loose, they may be a dum-dum. Make sure they are using the max rank of their spell too. True story about a friend who may have been a dum-dum and has since improved.

He was a hunter. He was beastmaster until well after he hit 80. He was doing 800 dps. We changed his spec. He started doing 1000 dps. We told him to make sure to send in his pet immediately. He started doing 1200 dps. We told him to tighten up his rotation and had him set up his buttons in order of priority. He did 1800 dps. Then he figured out he was using rank one of explosive shot and black arrow! DPS went up to about 2500 in 5-10 mans and 3500 in 25s. Dum-dums can get better. They just need to be pointed in the right direction.

4) They make gold like dum-dum: They do not know how to use their professions to make money. They barely know how to use their profession to their own advantage. Instead of using the auction house smartly, they vendor everything they get. They don't know the value of anything. They sell too low and pay too high for items. Especially items they dont really need.

If your friend appears to be a dum-dum. Give them help immediately. They will thank you for it. If you appear to be a dum-dum....well.....do some research and quit being so lazy...dum-dum.

Things that make you "LOL" or smile

One of the great things about WoW is that they throw in those little things that make you laugh and smile. There are tons of things in game that have given me these reactions. Here are a few examples.

Druid Forms: Not so much the feral forms, but the Boomkin and Tree make me laugh. How can you not enjoy a giant lazer shooting owl with a fat ass that dances like Chris Farley? The tree is another of my favorites because they are so damn ugly. Not to mention their /cower animation is gold. The thing that I find silliest about them is their tree form casting animation. Especially the instant cast spells. Sometimes it looks like you are the only one in the crowd doing the wave.

Extreme Mouse Spinning: Obviously mouse turning is a good thing. What is extreme mouse turning? Making yourself spin in ridiculous circles. This one is mostly for my wife. She will literally laugh out loud every time I do it. It looks especially ridiculous on the Ram mount.

Training Mobs: Not training as in teaching and not mobs as in Moffia, but the act of pulling a ton a mobs at the same time...and running like hell. I used to do this so that my wife would not get knocked off her mount. This was yet another thing that gave her some good giggles. There can be some very comedic results when a Hunter tab targets Midknight in Karazhaz through the wall and sends his pet in. Now that is a train.

Pop Culture References: There are pop culture references everywhere in the game. Starwars, Startrek, Starship Troopers.....OK, so there are a lot of Star movies. One of my favorites are the Arathi Battle Master in Shattrath. The one who looks like He-Man and is named Adam Eternium. He even has his Battle Tiger along for the ride.

Eating Shitty Food: Literally. You eat nuts. Quest giver gets mad. Makes you shit out nuts....next person comes along and eats nuts. MMMMMMMM. Another one that made me laugh was the quest where you bring the rotten eggs back to Tobias the Filthgorger. He throw up and causes everyone else in the area to hurl uncontrollably. Definately one of my favorite quests for laugh factors.

To me, this is one of the things that seperates WoW from the competition. They are kind of like the Family Guy of MMOs. Tons of obscure references and shenanigans fitting together into a nice package.

Weekend Update

This weekend was super bust IRL so I only got a bit of playing in over the weekend. Unfortunately, I have not been able to run a raid or anything of the such for a few weeks now. I am still dying to get into an Onyxia run. Anyways, here is breakdown of some of the weekends activities.

Leveling: There was a little bit of leveling over the weekend on my part. I got a few bubbles of XP for my Warlock. The AV nerf has really hurt the XP. I am getting about 5k less XP per objective now which really adds up. And I am getting a ton less honor. It may be time to venture back into the world of questing. So far the other BGs still seem to be sucktastic for XP. I also dusted off my level 69 Hunter to do a few quests with a friend who recently reactivated his account. He quit just after the scourge invasion during BC and picked up Wrath just a few weeks ago. We smashed a few of the Kaluak quests before I had to head to bed.

Brewfest: I am still grinding out Brewfest tokens so that I can get the title. I am not doing it to get the Violet Protodrake. I left too many unfinished Hollidays for that. I am doing it because a Dwarf with the Brewmaster title if full of win. It is unfortunately a pretty slow grind. I have saved all of the tokens so far so that I can pick up the clothes for that achivement, do the dalaran achivement, go back to the Brewfest grounds and trade the clothes back in for the tokens. Then I plan on getting the Brew of the Month thing and the pink ellek. I have not been motivated to do Direbrew as all.

Auction House: This is probably where I spent the majority of my available time over the weekend. The Glyph Market is still down, but it also seems like some of my main competitors may be slowing down. The big sellers over the weekend were Snowfall Ink, Iron-Bound Tomes, and Runescrolls of Stamina. Snowfall Ink is only going got 10 gold a piece but they are coming out my ears. I have been selling 1-2 Iron Bound Tomes a day for 450 gold each. That is a nice profit considering the mats used. The last is the new group stamina scroll. To make a stack of 5, it takes 10 resilient parchment and 1 snowfall ink (I believe that is correct). Inks are going for 10 gold and resilient parchment are 40 silver each. So for around 14 gold, I make 5 Runescrolls which I then sell for 11-14 gold PER SCROLL. I have sold a bunch of them.

Other than that, I was busy moving and getting things set up at a new place. How was your weekend?

Friday Linkage

Yeah Im being lazy today. Big whoop wanna fight about it? Figured I would link some of the blogs I read incase you never actually visit the blogroll on the right side of my blog.

Arioch at Clearcasting is comparing haste to swedish fish. At least she didnt compare it to candy corn....the red headed step child of candy.

Tarsus the Stupid Tank (Scarlet Crusade Represent!!!) wrote about the tanking goodies that Onyxia drops for those of you too lazy to go to WoWHead or dowload Atlas Loot!

The Ancient Gaming Noob recounted his experiences as a pirate at brewfest......pirates....with beer. WHO WOULDA THUNK IT!!!!!

Aggro Junkie is being even lazier than I am!!!!

Doctor Moocow over at WTFspagetti is looking for a new home. Holla back at him.

That will conclude my laziness for today. I am far to busy being delicious!

MMOs...the way we look

Humans in MMOs have often been somewhat odd. The men have too many muscles and the women have too many boobs (thats a problem??!!?? Buh duh duh). Some people want to play with these kinds of characters. Others probably dont. Birdfall has been talking a lot about customization lately and for me thinking. We need more customization in MMOS.

This is specifically for our characters. We shouldnt have to have a musclebound mage or priest.....especially when they have 40 strength. You should be able to create a skinny mage if you want....or a fat priest. Sure there are the other races that are already ugly, but you should be able to make your human avatar as ugly as you are :)

For a warrior toon, I would probably ideally make a male character that would be ugly as sin. Tatoos across his body, a perpetually broken nose, scar running down his face. Perhaps an eye missing. They are warriors and have been in many many battles. They should be ugly. I would also make mine with a beer gut. He would fight hard and drink harder. These little customizations are what make a character that much more fleshed out. In WoW, you can basically choose skin color and hair style. Gear will make you look a bit different, but many end-game characters are identical because they want the same gear.

The second part of customization should be your gear. You should be able to change the color, add spikes, effects, etc. It would be awesome to make your own gear that looks like your own gear. You may want to wear a pink leather gimp suit. You may want to wear a suit of spike clad plate mail. You should have the choice.

Warhammer had some of the things I wanted as far as customization....just not enough. And the gameplay sucked. If we could get a character creator that would let us drag things to places we wanted and expand them or shrink them. You could have a three inch scar on your face...or a 3 foot scar down your leg.

I love WoW as a game. Unfortunately the customization is really at the bottom of the MMO heap. Maybe it will change a bit more with future expansions. They already added the barber shop and perhaps a dance studio in the future. Maybe we will be getting more customization as well....and will be able to make ourselves ugly without stooping to the Hulk Hogan hair cut.

If WoW were Real Life

Shit would be pretty interesting if WoW were the same as real life. Some random thoughts for this Wednesday morning.

1)You could summon your car. You would have no need for a garage or parking spaces. You could just go stand in the street and summon your Toyota. You would also be able to make your car jump and spin ridiculously.

2) You would not need to eat or drink. Unless of course you wanted the plus career skills and sex appeal buff from your Grandma's chicken dumplings. You would only really need to eat after you got the crap beat out of you for tracking mud on the carpet.

3) If you died, no biggy. Just run back to your body and live again. If there is no body just run back to the place where you died and you will get a new body (equally sexy as the last one).

4) You would all be buffed and/or have a huge rack. There would be no more fatties or ugly people. We would all be really really ridiculously good looking...like Zoolander....or like Jong before he went Alliance.

5) There would be no more real jobs. You either ground meter maids and IRS employess for cash or you sold stuff on the stock market. People would stand around with a hat with an exclamation point on it if they needed something done. These people never move or change at all.....and they have the same task for everyone. Somehow they do not end up with a giant stinking barrel of East LA Crypt eyeballs sitting behind them.

6) Everyone would be homeless. And you would disappear from view when you fell asleep. When you "woke up", you would be well rested and get twice as much satisfaction from running over your third grade teacher with a Zamboni.

7) Nobody would need to go to the bathroom. Unless you ate the peanuts at the tavern....you werent supposed to eat those and must now crap them up for the next person to eat.

8) Everything would be settled with a duel. You have an arguement? Challenge them to a duel. Whoever wins is right. Since everyone is buff and equal, these would be relatively even....except the people who keyboard turn....they lose.

9) It would be funny when your friend died in some ridiculous way. Since people dont actually die, that tragic fishing accident where your friend got impaled on a whale penis is actually hilarious. Bonus laughter points if you are the one that causes them to die....such as unsummoning your Toyota when you drive off the grand canyon.

10) You could only do one dance per race. Mexicans get a salsa dance. African Americans get the MC Hammer dance. Anglo Americans do the waltz. Asians do the robot. All of them. DOMO ORIGATO MR ROBOTO.

Anyone have any additional things to add to the list of our make believe world where we get to be much bigger bamfs than IRL?

Fun with Direbrew

Last night was perhaps the first time I had a group of people I know in RL do something as a 5 man. It was my wife, Occeleta, Grimir (Hunter), Marlyna (Mage and actually a guy IRL), and myself.

I grabbed my Warrior first and headed over to the instance. When I got there, something incredibly strange and annoying happened. I couldnt go into the instance for some reason while everyone else could. I tried running in and out several times and never got into the actual instance. I did however get stuck in some weird ghost instance that was actually outside the instance. I could not see anybody outside and I was stuck in one spot. I could chat with people, but not move. To top it off, I could not Hearth and the auto-unstuck feature would not work either. It would disconnect me from the server every time I tried to use it.

So, I put in a GM ticket and logged onto my Paladin. To my surprise, Darraxus was still online! Not only that, but I he was taking up a spot in the group despite not actually being in the group. After at least 15 minutes of trying to fix it, I was finally able to be invited back to the group.

It was decided that I would be the tank.....as a ret pally. The healer was....NOBODY!!!! We had a ret pally, Rogue, Boomkin, Hunter, and Mage to start. First try, I had to bubble to survive and ended up dying anyways. I think one other person may have died. They managed to burn him down while he was trying to smash all of the other DPS....I watched from the comfortable position of face on stone.

Second time.......second verse same as the first. We burned him down with just the Hunter still standing. Oh was it ugly. He three shotted me before I could even bubble or heal myself.

Third time was a little better as I decided I would heal myself during the fight. I survived for the first time......I think we may have all survived on this try!

4th time I got rofl pwned again when he was starting to get low on HP. He then went and squished out Hunter before being taken down to China Town.

The last time I had my wife heal and nobody died. I could have saved 30 gold in repair bills had I thought of this earlier...../facepalm.

We then did a few switcharoos. My Warrior was still somehow going on and offline and still stuck in place so I grabbed my Druid. Occeleta grabbed his hunter and Marlyna grabbed his priest. No instead of having no tanks or healers, we had no tanks and two healers. While waiting for the rest of us to show up at the instance, my wife pulled out her Elwynn Lamb.....who was promptly killed by an Elwynn Wolf that came out of nowhere. Grimir originally thought that it was his pet Wolf. They tried to get it to happen again with no luck.

The rest of the instance went very easy (or at least easier with the two healers). With no tank, the mobs pretty much ran amok. They were all over the place. The adds would latch themselves to the healers pretty good. Thankfully they did not really hit that hard. I actually had to heal more than I would in a Heroic Dungeon lol.

It was a lot of fun getting all of us together for the first time. My wife got two new trinkets (spell power and crit trinkets) which replaced the mid 70s green and Wrathgate trinket she was sporting previously. Marlyna upgraded a trinket as well. Occeleta was the lucky bastard of the night winning the roll on the only Kodo that dropped for us.

Eventually, I was able to get Darraxus back as a GM contacted me and transported him right outside of Ironforge. That was one of the stangest glitches I have ever found in game. It was like I was in an instance outside of an instance where nobody else was. And I couldnt do shit about it.

Anyways, if you are really bored, you too can do Direbrew shenanigans with no tanks or no healers.....or all tanks....or whatever whacky combos you can come up with.