The Funniest Guild Application Ever

The awesome-tastic ladies of Girls of Elune posted recently about some interesting characters applying to their guild, and it reminded me about the best guild app my guild ever received. Yes, that's me posting this exact thing in their comments. The following was actually posted in our guild-only application forum, and is quite hilarious. It doesn't necessarily apply to Ret Paladins, but it's my blog so I get to do what I want. Don't like it? Tough!

... okay, maybe I'll make it up to you with a Ret-related post later. Please love me!

Character Name: Pancakes
Level: 5 High
Class: Delicious
Spec: YU/MY/UM
Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/gimmesomefuckingpancakes

BT/Hyjal Attunement:
Vashj? yes
Kael? yes
Alar? yes

The following are our raid nights, how often can you attend them?
[Wednesday 7-11 servertime]?: Maple
[Sunday 7-11 servertime]?: Blueberry
[Monday 7-11 servertime]?: Strawberry, too!

Have you installed:

CTraid/oRA?: yes
Omen?: yes
Deadly Boss Mods?: yes

Are you able and willing to use Ventrilo? yes

HEALERS/DECURSERS: Do you understand mouseover targeting? yes

What other guilds have you been in, and why did you leave?
An Ode to Pancakes:
Pancakes are delicious
and if I had three wishes
it would be for some more
stacked ceiling to floor
with a whole bunch of syrup
I would eat them and burrrrup
but I’d say ex-cuse me
so please don’t abuse me
’Cause I mean no harm
I just love when they’re warm
But when they need heatin’
I still can’t stop eating
PANCAKES OMFG GODZ I LURVE THEM SO FARKING MUCHO! PANCAKES!

What is your level of raiding experience on this character?
Pancakes are a delicious and nutritious addition to any meal (…even a salad!) In fact, they’re known as the ”hearty-man’s salad,” and a short-stack should be eaten with every meal (or snack) to ensure proper daily nutritIN MY FACE PUT PANCAKES THERE NOW I MUST HAVE MORE PANCAKEYS IN MY FACE-HOLE! PAAAANCAKES!

Tell us something about yourself, either in-game or IRL, that we wouldn’t think to ask.:
I’m a vegetarian who enjoys yoga, walks on the beach, and origami. If you think we sound like a match, pleasSTICK PANACAKES IN ME BWAAAAAAAAAH PANCAKES PAAAANCAAAKES GIVE ME PANKNKNKNKNCAkSE! POUR DA SYRIP IN MY GODLESS ORIFICES ALL OF WHICH THROUGH I SHALT DEVOUR PANCAKSE!!!oneelventyuno

Common alts to contact?: Flappyjacks (Warlock)

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Now is that pure, unadulterated win or what?

The End of the World (of Warcraft)

Larisa posed a hypothetical question to the Blog Azeroth community that Matticus had used in a past interview:

Let’s hypothetically assume Blizzard goes out of business and decides to shut down their servers and WoW for good. You have 5 hours before the server shutdown is permanent. What would you do in 5 hours?

An interesting question, to be sure. Armageddon is striking Azeroth and Cathmor's only got 5 hours to live? Well, I'd probably start by logging into my character and engaging in panicked discussion with my guildmates, lamenting the imminent loss of our main source of after-work entertainment. After that went on for about 10-20 minutes, I'd strap on my PvP gear and muster as many people as I could for an all-out attack on a major Horde city. I'd probably go after Orgrimmar or Silvermoon City - Undercity and Thunderbluff confuse me. The combined might of the Alliance would be thrown at the front and back gates of Orgrimmar simulataneously as we attempted to sweep through the city and assassinate Thrall. I've never killed a faction leader, and I want to do so before I quit playing.

After an hour or two of city raiding, I'd probably indulge my RP side and make a pilgrimage to Uther's Tomb, paying homage to the first Paladin of the Order of the Silver Hand. Letting the moment sink in, I would move on to the gates of Stratholme and cleanse the city of undeath one last time, taking as many other Paladins in there with me as I could. I'm thinking a 5-man all-Pally group: 3-4 level 70 Ret Paladins, 1 level 70 Holy Paladin, and 1 Prot Paladin depending on how many Ret's I take. We'd clear the city completely, purging the Scourge and the Scarlet Crusade from the once-proud city's streets.

Upon completing those tasks, I would most likely take down some contact information for the players I'd like to stay in touch with and log out, likely back in Stormwind in the Cathedral of Light. I wouldn't stick around for an end-of-the-world party, I'd just hearth, park, and log. And that's that.

Synergies Between DPS and Tanks/Healers

Saladfork and Phaelia made very insightful posts about the relationship between tanks and their assigned healers a while back. What about the DPS'ers though? We might not have the same instant bond those two share with their assigned life mate in instances, but I definitely have a budding relationship between myself and specific tanks & healers.

With the tanks...
The DPS figure out very quickly which tanks are threat monsters and which are just meat shields. The ability to dish out tons of threat and make a monster hate you above all else, even with fireballs and daggers shooting up that monster's a$$, is a prized skill for groups and raids. For every point of threat a tank can produce, each DPS'er can push out (roughly) two more points of damage without becoming an tasty Gnome-kabob or fresh floor ornamentation. We notice. When I can start outputting damage on a target as soon as a tank engages and lands his/her first threat ability, I notice. When a tank can go from off-tank to main-tank on a target when the main tank dies inexplicably, allowing the mob to start eating the faces of all the melee who were riding that tank's behind threat-wise, I notice. I definitely find myself a bit more contented when certain tanks are slated to tank rather than others, because I know that I can push that much harder and the mob will be dead-er quicker.

With the healers...
There are many, many situations where the melee DPS are assigned a dedicated healer. Void Reaver springs to mind immediately - the melee'ers stay right behind Void Reaver for the entire fight, stabbing away and bending their weapons on his thick armor, getting continually pounded by his PBAoE (that's point-blank area of effect spells, for the uninitiated). In that situation, Restoration Shaman and Circle of Healing Priests are receive my undying love. On Na'jentus too, I often get brain heals thrown at me for the entire fight. It's knowing that the heal is coming that allows me to keep pounding away at the monster's backside without having to stop and either a) bandage myself, b) drink a potion or chomp a healthstone, or, Light forbid, c) use my precious mana on a Holy Light for myself. If I don't trust the assigned healer with my life, my damage suffers, and then it takes longer for the boss to die, creating openings for healer-fail, surprise disconnects, or random acts of tank death.

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The relationships the DPS form with the tanks and healers tend to be one-sided, however. While the tanks and healers know who's assigned to whom and can know they have each other's backs, the DPS are simply told to unleash hell on X target, not to rush to the aid of Y tank or free Z healer's hands from shielding Y tank from certain death. Because of that, the tanks and healers don't really have an opportunity to bond with specific DPS'ers. The one exception would be the threat-monster Destruction Warlock or Fury Warrior who's always riding a tank's a$$ on the threat meter - tanks notice them, and grow to either hate them, or at least have less than warm-and-fuzzy feelings about them. Believe me, I know - I played Protection for a while, and the Elemental Shaman whom I have tanked for pushed me to new threat heights, and my first feeling about it wasn't "thanks for making me a better tank!" It was more like "/grumble, that gorram ele shammy is on my arse again..."

Relationships for the DPS tend to be with each other - friendly competitions to blast/stab/smash/gib monsters harder and faster than the guy next to you. Not exactly on topic here, but some players live and die by the damage meter, and take notice of the guy/gal who's challenging his/her spot at the top. On a ZA bear run last week, a Rogue and a Destro Lock had a running competition for top damage throughout the run, and kept jawing at each other until the final gun sounded and the full damage report was posted. I used to run with a Shadow Priest who would constantly update me about our relative position on the total damage meter, and would curse my name mockingly whenever I started beating him. These relationships tend to be mutual, unlike the DPS relationship with the tanks and healers.

Ah, memories...

Everyone who has played World of Warcraft has select moments in their character's or characters' travels that truly seemed epic, awe-inspiring, breathtaking, rib-bustingly funny, or plain memorable. If you had to list the 10 most memorable moments of your WoW career, what would you choose? The first time you looted a purple item? The time you and a friend stealthed through an opposing faction city and assassinated their food vendor? Or maybe it's that long-awaited first kill on a tough raid boss? Well, after brainstorming on the train home earlier in the week, I came up with a list of 15-20 striking memories from my Paladin's travels, and narrowed it down to a top 10. Drumroll please!

10. Hillsbrad Foothills 40 vs. 40 PvP

Who remembers the time before cross-realm battlegrounds? The only way to strike up a dependable large-scale PvP encounter was to attack an enemy town and illicit a response from the nearest major city. On my server at the time, the best location was the Hillsbrad Foothills, more specifically the ground between Southshore and Tarren Mill. Whenever I was in Ironforge and I saw an alarm go up in general chat or local defense that Southshore was under attack, I dropped what I was doing and hopped on a gryphon, because those massive raids battling it out for supremacy in Hillsbrad made for a raucous good time.

9. Completing the Soulforge set

I ran Stratholme undead-side to kill the Baron so many times just for the Lightforge pants to complete the dungeon set, and immediately turned them into Soulforge. Not many people finished off the dungeon set upgrade quest, but I did every single step, and was very proud of my accomplishment.

8. Standing my ground in Southshore

I was level 60 and on my way to Scarlet Monastery to run a group of level 30-40 players through a few of the SM instances. When we landed in Southshore, there was a lone Tauren, PvP flagged, standing just out of range of the Southshore guards. His guild tag was "and two stealthed rogues", which I perceived to be trouble. However, one of the lowbies saw a red name and went over and whacked the Tauren. Well, unsurprisingly, two Troll Rogues came out of stealth and stabbed my lowbie charge. I wasn't about to let that deed go unpunished, so I flagged up and bashed one Rogue good, battled it out with the Tauren and the other Rogue until they decided to retreat to Tarren Mill. My other lowbies beat on the Tauren enough to help me bring him down. The second Rogue did escape to the safety of Tarren Mill, but I was pretty pumped, having taken on 3 Horde effectively by myself.

7. You have discovered the Gates of Stormwind

I played all the Warcraft RTS games. I had always wanted to see the city of Stormwind from a ground view, after playing through the previous games and reading all the instruction booklets filled with backstory and lore about the city and its inhabitants. When I walked through the gates to the human capital for the first time, I was not disappointed. The architecture, the statues of the fallen Alliance heroes, and the grandiose nature of it all was simply breathtaking.

6. My first Hakkar kill

Hakkar was far and away the most inventive fight I encountered before the expansion. Contrary to player nature, it was a fight where you had to jump into danger rather than out of it, and was fairly complicated for a 20-man encounter. My guild worked on him for a while before finally grasping it, but having the hunter pulling the Sons of Hakkar, the entire raid moving into/out of poison, the tanks all handling Hakkar, and simply the entire raid working as one unit was invigorating.

5. Stratholme

I loved everything about Stratholme. The hordes of undead. The embers in the air. The Scarlet Crusade holding onto the last bastion of life in the city. The realization that Balnazzar was in control of the Scarlet Crusade and was masquerading as a human. The 45-minute Baron run. Slaughter Square. The history of the location itself, being where Arthas descended into madness and started slaughtering his own people to save them from the undead plague. Everything.

4. Entering the Dark Portal

The day I loaded up The Burning Crusade, I stepped through the Dark Portal in Blasted Lands. The battle between the Legion and combined Alliance & Horde forces at the foot of the Portal, combined with the visuals of the sky and the new zone, with Hellfire Citadel in the distance, left me standing there just watching for a few minutes.

3. Tooooooo sooooooooooooon...

If you raided at all before The Burning Crusade, you know what I'm referring to. The first time Majordomo Executus summoned Ragnaros from the fiery depths in Molten Core was truly epic. A swirling mass of fire and brimstone, a gigantic glowing orange hammer, and a rumbling voice that reverberated the entire cave left me awestruck. After that, the encounter itself was intense! Several 1% wipes made the final kill that much more exquisite.

2. You have received [Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros]

Crafting my legendary hammer took me months of scrounging for materials and scouring the land for Sulfuron Ingots - my guild was pretty lucky with Eye drops so we had one drop before me, and the Warrior who received it used up the guild store of ingots. So I coordinated with both Alliance and Horde guilds to gather enough materials. The killing spree to the Black Anvil in Blackrock Depths for the final craft felt like a victory parade.

1. You have slain Illidan Stormrage

I posted previously about my guild's first Illidan kill. With guildmates falling over all around me and Illidan's health low, I hit Divine Shield and charged at The Betrayer with reckless abandon. To my disbelief, and with a little help from our Enhancement Shaman ankh'ing up and dropping his fire elemental totem, Illidan died with only myself and the Shaman surviving. It was, by far, the most intense moment of my WoW experience.

Well, that's my list. What's your's?

Business As Usual

This topic is in response to the shared topic on BlogAzeroth, entitled "Preparing for Wrath of the Lich King."
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Much like Larisa, I am not preparing for WotLK in most any way. Many others are feasting upon leaked alpha information, or are going into hyper-farm mode to build up stores of gold and crafting materials so that they can hit the frozen Northrend tundra running. As for me? I'm continuing to raid, play on as limited a schedule as I can force myself to play, and dabble in arena on the side. My play style has not changed one iota, and it will not change until probably a few weeks before the absolute, official, boxes-are-in-stores and we're-waiting-for-servers-to-go-live release date. Blizzard is notorious for delaying their releases, even after announcing a release date, and I'm a raider, not a farmer. Spending months prepping for a distant day is not my idea of a good time in Azeroth.

Nope, I'm just staying the course. There's an entire raid instance in front of me, with some of the most tightly tuned boss fights the dev team has ever imagined. M'uru calls to me, invading my mind and taunting me, calling me retn00b. Okay not really, but it sounded dramatic. Plus, Kil'jaeden's entrance into Azeroth looks massively epic, even better than Ragnaros's first appearance (which left me in speechless awe, by the way. Standing in a large volcanic chamber, lava flowing around me, and then all of a sudden a gigantic fire elemental, surrounded by swirling brimstone and wielding a face-smashingly huge orange glowy hammer, emerges from the central lava pit - awe-inspiring). I've got enemies to conquer!

I'll take the expansion by storm when it comes, but I don't need to be at the front of the leveling pack. I will take the content as it comes, and pretend I don't know that my epic armor will be outpaced by blues in a few months. Besides - blowing through content as quickly as possible means I miss all the little jokes and easter eggs Blizzard hides along the way. I want a full WoW experience.