Ventchat

Podcast 38: Slip Up Saturday

Fen — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 06:18:16 +0000

We got a lot of laughs out of the R2D2 translator this week. Fen and Turdhat decided to have a Sober September, except for the night of this recording, which was called Slip Up Saturday. Esta got yelled at by some random person for having a low gear score on his alt, and actually voted to kick them. We talked about the funny search terms people use to find us. We also talked a little about Turdhat’s contest. In our phone calls this week a listener found a clip of someone that sounds a lot like Esta, so we played that and forced Esta to say the same stuff to compare. We answered listener phone in questions as well. We hit the relevant news topics of the week and dove into our discussion topic: What would you do with a billion dollars if you had to assign it to a project? Thanks for spreading the word about the show this week.

Music from this week’s show:

Kate Orange – Instrumental: Oops

Bobfucile – Instrumental Maddness 2: B-Power

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 37: Broken Hearts And Beautiful Minds

Fen — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:31:04 +0000

We start the show talking about a lasagna sandwich…with mayo on it. Then we talked a little about our week, and Sauce’s new fan. The Turdhat contest winners are announced, and Sauce talked a little about raiding with his alts. One of the two Twitter holdouts also got an account this week! When we got into the listener calls, we found out one listener had a little too much to drink and left over a half hour worth of messages (no we didn’t play them all), including a pair of impressions you won’t want to miss. In the news we talked about China getting the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and a federal lawsuit filed by Blizzard against a gold farming operation. When we hit the discussion topic, we talked about all of our worst dates, and the listener’s worst dates or boyfriends/girlfriends. This was a tad depressing, but afterwords we introduced a new segment to the show: Stuff We Like, about all things the Ventchat crew likes. Lots of interesting and often free stuff. Then we dove headlong into a long discussion about everything we know about Esta, almost to an insane degree, Beautiful Mind style…and a quasi-contest developed. We’re inviting listeners to post their own drawn pictures of what they think Esta looks like. There may not be an official prize, but Esta will pick out the closest one to reality and at least blow you a kiss. This continued into the aftershow, and more fun and more thrills.

Music from this week’s show:

Tab: The Freak Out Tent – The Freak Out Tent, The Life Aquatic

Revolution Void: Thread Soul – Biomythos

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 36: Brokeback Ventchat

Fen — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:16:53 +0000

A lot of show for you guys this week. If you’re looking for the place in the show where we got the title, it’s from minute 94-104. Turdhat also announced a contest in this show, listen for details. We had great listener calls this week that sparked a lot of…discussion. We talked about Blizzard winning a lawsuit against someone running a private server, and that got us talking about private servers in general. We talked about long socks versus short socks, consoles, favorite vanilla instance, and a million other things. Discussion topic was worst thing you spent money on, and we also had a new song. In the aftershow we talked late-night with fan Smokingkillz, who served 4 years on a Nuclear Submarine. Fen asked him everything you could think of about his job. 4+ hours of show, and you WILL laugh. Enjoy.

Music from this week’s show:

Savium – Pensive (Consoling The Treacherous Whore)

izak147 – Quel’Delar

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 35: Fen’s Voice Is A DoT

Fen — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 04:36:32 +0000

We attempted to tell all of the user submitted (and our own) jokes this week….poorly. The laugh track started to help, but Turdhat proclaimed at one point during the show that Fen’s voice is like damage over time, and all hope was lost. We had plenty of phone calls, and also in the news we went over how much profit Blizzard made this last quarter….and how there are no new raids planned until Cataclysm. The profit numbers compared to their costs will stagger you.

Music from this week’s show:

Zero-Project: Gothic – Gothic, Lost Kingdom

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 34: There’s No P In Canteen…Until Now

Fen — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:45:39 +0000

If you haven’t guessed already, I’ll leave you guessing about the show title. Let’s just say once you get to the part of the show where the title is from, later on it actually gets even better. We talked a lot about the internet when we we’re kids, or in some cases lack of it. We talked a little bit about strategy on a few different WoW encounters, some listener calls, and we found out what cool stuff our listeners have done with our discussion topic. You’re either going to laugh at this episode or you’ll be disgusted, as usual. Enjoy.

Podcast 33: Draechen Pulls Into Our Harbor

Fen — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 03:17:10 +0000

This week Draechen, half the duo of Draechen and Jeg from Dregcast joins us. First off we recapped the epic 7+ hour show from last week. We had positive and negative thoughts and reviews about not only recording a show that long, but also the content, and we talked about everyone’s reactions. We got into viewer calls and emails, and had an interesting call from Jeg about Draechen. We discussed some impressive “most embarrassing moments” from listeners and ourselves, and somehow we also talked quite a bit about Sauce’s disembodied head. We managed to keep this one to under 3 hours, so join us won’t you?

Music from this week’s show:

Butterfly Tea: Feeries 2010 – Soundtrack, Asian Wonders

Syntharmony: I shall remain alone, I shall remain alone

Dydjej_Inja: Jazzyk (Fourth Day Of The Condor)

Podcast 32: If It’s Clean The Light Is Green

Fen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:03:25 +0000

If you want to find out what the show title means this week, you’ll have to make it to roughly the 3 hour mark. Look at how long this show is! We know! A listener (Macgruff) who is getting shipped out this week asked for one long last super-show before he heads off for an “undisclosed location”. Well…beware of what you wish for…because this is the longest show ever. WoW news, a “play” from Sauce, an incredible song from Jeg of Dregcast, listener calls, and we talk about all of our phobias. On top of all that it was Fen’s birthday, so he was “celebrating”. The show itself is probably a couple of hours…Wait until you hear the aftershow. Two lovely ladies, Forresst and Arcy join us for a rip-roaring flirtatious sexy good time. We talked to Forrest about her days as a Psychic Phone Friend, a Sex Phone Operator, and an Armored Car Tech (and she wrote a musical!). Nearly too much fun to fit in one show but we pulled it off. Enjoy.

Music from this week’s show:

Dustaman – Focus On Trifle: Typing

PeerGynt Lobogris – Bluemoon V Forgotten Spirits: 15 Years

PeerGynt Lobogris – Bluemoon V Forgotten Spirits: Wild Side

Podcast 31: Esta Has A Beard

Fen — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 06:52:56 +0000

For whatever reason this episode we talked about Esta quite a bit. We found out he has a beard and we were fascinated by this. We had 15 calls from one person, and though we didn’t play all of them many were interesting. Turdhat had chiggers apparently, Sauce has a contest going to recommend a back tattoo for him, and there were attempts to get Esta to snap. We hit some WoW news including the Developer Twitter and the new guild leveling perks. Join us and listen to the other 37 things we talk about.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Wowathon raiding money for Child’s Play Charity

Forresst’s Contest Recap

Turdhat’s Rash

Friday Night PVP

Raiding – One Night To Lich King

Sauce’s Priest

Mexican Beef Jerky

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

NEWS

Developer Twitter

Guild Leveling Perks

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Internet Privacy. Does it exist? Tell us your stories!

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

PHOBIAS – What are you afraid of and why?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

Grim Shit, Neutral Wings – Final Chronicles: The Future of Our Children

Dark Sky, Biohazard: Eye of Jupiter

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 30: Real ID Real Dumb IDea

Fen — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:56:55 +0000

Well of course we talked about Real ID this week, and what a mess it all turned out to be. We also talked a little about the talent tree changes. Turdhat joined us from the get-go, and a little bit of the aftershow was clipped into the start of the podcast to give you a taste of what you’re missing.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Forresst’s Contest and Fun Run (if you weren’t there you missed it)

Giant Spider

Turdhat’s Rash

Friday Night PVP

Star Wars Concert

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

NEWS

Real ID

Talent Tree Changes

DISCUSSION TOPIC

What do you believe makes a great video game? What do you look for when buying a game?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

PRIVACY ON THE INTERNET

Does privacy on the internet exist anymore?

How “out there” are you? How careful are you about putting your info out there? Are you ever concerned for your privacy online? Has anything happened to you that crossed the line?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

Silence Is Sexy, This Ain’t Hollywood (Instrumental): This Ain’t Hollywood (Instrumental)

Silence Is Sexy, This Ain’t Hollywood (Instrumental): Talk (Instrumental)

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 29: 4th Of July VENTACULAR

Fen — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 02:39:08 +0000

Oh boy. This is longest show we’ve ever uploaded. We started off the show with revealing the Turdhat soundboard. Shortly AFTER…Turdhat joined us live. We had great calls again from listeners, PLUS we had a recorded Turdhat segment WITH Turdhat there. We ended up with a pretty long show, and then we went into the aftershow…The aftershow ended up making us laugh so hard we had to leave it in.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Forresst’s Contest

Fen’s dogs

Hallion

Fen’s Fire Festival

Turdhat’s Rash

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

NEWS

Ruby Sanctum Debackle

Cataclysm Beta Is Live

Dungeon Keys

Threat In Cataclysm

Dungeon “Unlock”

WoW Tap Chat Pedal

Heirlooms

Sam Raimi

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC

THE INTERNETS: FIRST AND WORST
What was your first experience with the internet?
What was your WORST experience with the internet?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

What do you believe makes a great video game? What do you look for when buying a game?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

Juanitos, Soul Africa: Soul Walking

ZamalSka, démo; Dance Cleopratra

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 28: 3.3.5 Karate Chops

Fen — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 01:23:03 +0000

We had a ton of FANTASTIC calls this week from listeners that left us rolling. A story from Sauce at the top of the show nearly left Fen dead from laughing so hard. Also, Forresst is running an event with prizes on her server, you can find out more about that at the top of the show. We got back into heroic 10s this week, along with a little bit of 25s. The servers also took a BIG crap on everyone this week due to 3.3.5. We had no Turdhat live, but he called in and we played what he had to say. Out discussion topic this week was a little controversial and got a lot of response.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Forresst’s contest!

Heroic 10s

Hanging with Turdhat and his kid

Servers crap on our 25 man raid

Fen healing?

Warsong Gultch Friday Night PVP Super Fun Time

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

Fantastic phone calls this week

NEWS

Real ID

Fire Festival

E-Peen Mounts

Fun Quest Items 1-60 Gone?

Inspection Throttle / Gearscore

Epic items In Cataclysm

Premades For Rated Battlegrounds

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Age Restrictions And Gaming:
Does your guild or guilds you’ve been in have age restrictions?
Do you like them, or do you think things like age restrictions themselves that are fair?
Would you play on a server that only allowed people around your age (either adults or kids) if it existed?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

THE INTERNETS: FIRST AND WORST
What was your first experience with the internet?
What was your WORST experience with the internet?
It could be seeing XXXXXXX for the first time. It could be getting hit on by a 60 year old dude pretending to be a girl. It could be getting your passwords stolen. TELL ME YOUR STORIES!

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

Sweet Mother Logic, The Ascension Island EP, Pruning Song

Sweet Mother Logic, The Ascension Island EP, Ascension Island

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 27: Path Of The Taquitos

Fen — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:28:26 +0000

We did an hour and a half of show for the podcast, and a total of 7 hours of show for the chatroom. No joke. You should check in on when we go live, it’s pretty fun. So this week we talked a little about our raiding this week, and we’re filling raids which is great. We also had a few epic phone calls, and we talked with Turdhat about quite a few topics. Fen had a bad experience with Taquitos and Turdhat claimed it was a half an hour story and told Fen he talks to much. There were a few big news items this week, then later we got to the discussion topic. Again, after the show, the “show” went on for about 4 hours. Some of us were live on Ustream until dawn of the next day.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Sindragosa

Shots on the Lich King

Sauce’s Shaman

Fen’s taquito issues

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

Esta I wish you were a door…

NEWS

Path of the Titans OUT

Guild Talent Trees OUT

10 man legendary? IN

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Do you play other games besides WoW, and if so what? Is there anything on the horizon that makes you say “I could quit WoW for THIS”?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

Age Restrictions And Gaming: Does your guild or guilds you’ve been in have age restrictions, and do you like them, or think things like that are fair? Would you play on a server that only allowed people around your age (either adults or kids) if it existed?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

KCentric, Butta Fly’s Jazz Handz, ccMixter

Antarhes, Voodoo Dream, Breathin’ Again

Brad Sucks, Fake It, Out Of It

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 26: It’s All Geek To Me

Fen — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:08:06 +0000

After we run through the Warcraft stuff this week, we examine every listener response to our discussion topic “What’s the geekiest thing you’ve ever done” and declare them geeky or not geeky. We dig pretty deep here and hit some good topics. Give it a listen and tell us where we are wrong.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Holy Sausage

Esta Rep Runs in ZG

(Esta 5-Knee)

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

NEWS

War Games Battleground Mode

Wintergrasp Balancing

Cataclysm Talent Previews

Blizzard Survey

Video Games Live (Concert)

Cataclysm Beta Guild Contest

Adobe Flash Player (Again)

TURDHAT

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Conventions. Do you go to stuff like Blizzcon? What’s the geekiest thing you’ve ever done? Let’s hear it!

WE RATE YOUR GEEK!

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

Do you play other games besides WoW, and if so what? Is there anything on the horizon that makes you say “I could quit WoW for THIS”?

MUSIC

Ruin Roads – Death March To Sun Fun City, ccMixter

Neurowaxx – Bean Bag, ccMixter

Scomber – About This Love, ccMixter

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 25: Live

Fen — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:35:04 +0000

So this was our first live show. I’ll apologize for two things. First we (I) need to ignore the chatroom a bit more. I loved the chatroom but I was like a kid with a new toy, I couldn’t stop talking to you guys. Second, I’m going to try and cut back on the beers just a tad, I got a little goofy. Overall though I think things went as well as to be expected, we were live and people were able to hear us. I enjoyed the hell out of it, so I hope you’ll join us live for future shows.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Sindragosa

Esta and Fen Friday night PVP sesh

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

We give a try at Pugcast’s bit, the FMK, but the listener asks us to FMK each other!

NEWS

Cataclysm Twin Peaks Battleground

Blizzcon

TURDHAT

We’re really having him on the whole show so I’m using this as a placeholder for what we talked about. We hit a lot of stuff but some include:

What’s the geekiest thing you’ve ever done?

Tattoos

World’s Biggest Penis and the problems that go with it

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Show changes, and Worgen boobs! Turdhat gets to sit and listen to you jerks tell him he sucks!

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

Conventions. Do you go to stuff like Blizzcon? What’s the geekiest thing you’ve ever done?

MUSIC

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Anitek, Anitek Instrumentals Vol. 3, Jadason

Robert Pieculewicz (Steve Allen), Blue Metal, Castel

Podcast 24: Show Changes And Danglers

Fen — Mon, 31 May 2010 02:13:10 +0000

We’re considering some show changes, nothing for sure but some possibilities. I think they would be positive, I think they would give you guys some things you’ve asked me about, but we want you guys to tell us what you think on the forums. Before you make any judgments, listen to this episode and what we’re considering, then post in the discussion topic. We also hit some WoW news, there’s some Turdhat stuff, and Sauce also talks about danglers.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

In this section we talk about the changes to the show we’re considering. Give it a listen.

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

NEWS

ICC Buff up to 20%

PTR: Operation Gnomeregan and Zalazane’s Fall

Class Balance in PVP

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC

The auction house app. Does it give people who pay more an unfair advantage? Are you ok with Blizzard charging for services like these or do you think they should be included in your subscription?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

Do the changes to the show we’re proposing sound good? Should we change other things, leave the show alone, or what? Make sure and listen to the show this week before you respond.

Also: Blizzard showed a Worgen female model with two breasts. A Wolf has a lot more…6? 8? Shouldn’t the female Worgen have more than 2 breasts?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Fireproof Babies – Swim Below As Leviathans ccMixter

Echoed – The King Is Back ccMixter

Kcentric – Butta Fly’s Jazz Handz

Lotagblanco – Slumlord

Podcast 23: Eat Your Carrots Twice

Fen — Sun, 23 May 2010 11:32:00 +0000

Where to begin. Well we had a couple of interesting news items this week, some great listener calls….and oh yes, a little story from Turdhat that explains our title. Thanks Turdhat for bringing yourself to tell this story, because it made our day. I think you will enjoy it too. We also have quite a bit of other stuff we cover in this show, but after you hear the story, I think you’ll agree everything else doesn’t matter much.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Lich King x2

Let’s Try Some PVP Achievements

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

NEWS

AVR Mod busted

Auction House App

Jay Mohr at Blizzcon

Multi Boxing

Patchwerk Solo Kill

Ruby Sanctum Up For Testing

Blizzcon Tickets Going Up For Sale In june

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC

You’re at the auction house and you see someone list an item that you know is accidentally listed for 10 gold when it should be 10,000 gold. Say like a chopper. You buy it and immediately the guy whispers you asking for the item back. What do you do?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

The auction house app. Does it give people who pay more an unfair advantage? Are you ok with Blizzard charging for services like these or do you think they should be included in your subscription?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW:

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Blancheneige – Royale Aero d’Inde: Crash

Blancheneige – Royale Aero d’Inde: Dents

Podcast 22: 13 Questions

Fen — Sun, 16 May 2010 22:24:32 +0000

13 questions are asked of Sauce, Turdhat, Esta and Fen. The gents answer them all and their answers may surprise you. What are the questions? Some are about WoW, some are…worse. Yes, we talk a little about WoW news, yes we have all of the listener emails and phone calls…but this episode is dominated by 13 questions.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Pugcast – Jeg quitting WoW?

Esta is the birthday boy

PVPing with Fen

Stuff!

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

NEWS

MMO Champ takes everything down that was “leaked”

MLG $15,000 in prizes for PVP arena gaming dealy

Cataclysm Beta Opt-In

Cataclysm professions preview

Ruby Sanctum PTR Testing

TURDHAT’S CORNER

13 Questions

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Leaks! Are they good or bad. Do you want to know everything early or would you rather be surprised? Are these leaks ultimately a good or bad thing for Blizzard?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW:

Hevius – Derrière la lumière, Derrière la lumière

Pitx – ccMixter, Nothing (ft. Fireproof Babies, Barry Phillips)

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 21: LEAKS Take Them Or Leave Them

Fen — Sun, 09 May 2010 14:06:06 +0000

Eivez joins us to talk about the priest changes in Cataclysm. We talk about a few listener emails, then we discuss what can only be called the biggest WoW “leak” in history. We turn Turdhat loose on a listener to offer advice about transferring servers, and we go into our discussion topic involving the change with the raid lockouts.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Children’s Week – Let’s fustercluck PVP for everyone for a week

Sauce on vacation misses his drop, poor baby

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS

NEWS

LEAKS, HUGE LEAKS, MASSIVE LEAKS

TURDHAT’S CORNER

BGO’s guild transfer questions answered

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

How will the “proposed” change to 10 and 25 man raiding/lockouts change your play? Will you be moving to only 10s? Changing guilds? Trying to run 25s? What effect will this change have if it is implemented?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Leaks! Are they good or bad. Do you want to know everything early or would you rather be surprised? Are these leaks ultimately a good or bad thing for Blizzard?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW:

Olley Raey – I’m Giving Up, I’m Giving Up

Trafic de Blues – Fin de cavale, Time to funk

Hemplicitt’ – Hemplicitt Demo, Boris

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 20: One Lockout More Like One Cop Out

Fen — Mon, 03 May 2010 08:33:48 +0000

Oh there be some changes a-brew-ing. Some of them aren’t so pretty in the eyes of the old Ventchat crew. Sauce is on a well deserved vacation this week, and the other boys were planning on taking a week off….but then the news dropped…and Esta and Fen knew they HAD to do a show. This is the type of news that has far reaching sweeping implications for many many guilds out there, not to mention all of the other proposed changes. YES, we know that not all of these changes will make it to a server near you….we HOPE not all of these changes make it…because the results could be less than ideal.

Beyond the big news that dropped, we also have our usual Turdhat segment, some impressive discussions from the forums, listener emails, and a whole lot of otther goodness you won’t want to miss.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Putricide, Dreamwalker and Blood Queen down in 25s

Esta got his Iron Bound Proto from Ulduar 25s

Turdhat’s Worst Contest In The World

Forums BLOWING UP

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS!

NEWS

Dude you’re going to have to just listen to this one…seriously. This is why we got off our asses and did a show this week. I’m not going to repeat it all.

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

The relic/wand/ranged/idol etc slot. Do we change this to be something “the same” for all classes, if so how, or do we leave it alone?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

Frank Thorstien: Patent Pending – Lag dot com, Jovian Dawn

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 19: Random

Fen — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 05:08:06 +0000

We’re all over the place this week. We talk about some raiding with heroic Putricide, we talk a little about mods, we talk about battlegrounds, arenas…stuff IN WoW and stuff OUT of WoW. If you like listening to things with your ears, we’ll probably talk about something you will like.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Fen DPSing in healing gear on Saurfang heroic

Heroic Putricide

Esta and Sauce arenas

Storytime with Fen

Is the PJC LOST?

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS!

NEWS

More about THE STEED

AVR Mod

Lich King Heroic 25 U.S. first kill by Premonition

Upgrading the 16 slot backpack

Haste spells in Cataclysm

Heroic leap and other “old” abilities

2010 Arena pass service

Starcraft 2 beta keys

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Two parter, first part from Umbrage:

So I know you’ve talked about pvp vs pve before, and now I’ve read that the emphasis is going to be on rated battlegrounds not arenas. This obviously changes things, because balancing for 3v3 is different than 10v 10 or 20v20. Do you guys think this is a step towards pve and pvp mechanics being closer or farther apart?

Second part:

Would you take part in the prune juice challenge for a chance to win 5k gold, or are we nuts?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

The relic/wand/ranged/idol etc slot. Do we change this to be something “the same” for all classes, if so how, or do we leave it alone?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

Keep Cool Vibration, Conquest of the Empire – Let My Children

Dabra, ccmixter – Maybe I Should Stay

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 18: The Aftermath and Class Changes and Regret.

Fen — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:48:55 +0000

Oh man. This week we go over our experiences in The Prune Juice Challenge, some of the class changes, plus a lot more. Let me tell you…this particular offering isn’t for the squeamish. We will be releasing the entire PJC later this week or the following week, but this episode definitely goes into some of the highlights of that endeavor…If people talking about things like that give you issues, turn back now. If you find such things humorous, if you enjoy hearing about others painful intestinal issues, if you are a fan of schadenfreude…you’re going to love this episode. Oh, and we also dive into the first three classes worth of class changes: Druid, Hunter and Pally. That plus much much more is in store for you, if you are strong enough to listen.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

The Prune Juice Challenge…Let’s start talking about it.

Sauce: Icy Hot on his privates? Or no? A Pugcast Journey.

Esta Pugs Yogg+1

PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS!

NEWS

Druid class changes in detail

Paladin class changes in detail

Hunter Class changes in detail

Developer Twitter highlights

More micro transactions

Mount Hyjal

Vashj’ir

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC

What get’s you PISSED in WoW?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

Two parter, first part from Umbrage:

Second part:

Would you take part in the prune juice challenge for a chance to win 5k gold, or are we nuts?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

Art Yenta – Ferme te jolis yeux(Barbarie thème), Funky – Landing

Pitx – See You Later (ft. Fireproof Babies, Bmccosar) – CCMixter

JT Bruce – Rigel – Universica

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 17: Heroic Dreamwalker’s Big Red Portal

Fen — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 09:43:14 +0000

We took down heroic Dreamwalker this week, and we go into how that went for us and the strat we used. We also ran a bunch of battlegrounds this week so we spent some time bitching about that as well. Aim from our guild made a video about Holysauce, the Prune Juice Challenge details are finalized, we dig into the news, Turdhat’s corner makes fun of Fen and MORE!

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Dreamwalker Heroic Down!

New Holysauce video from Aim!

Battlegrounds Battlegrounds Battlegrounds

Starfall is silly

Prune Juice Challenge April 16th

Turdhat sends prize…refuses to explain WHAT

NEWS

Latest Account Scam

ICC Buff At 10%

Eyonix Leaves Blizzard

BB says Cataclysm beta to start in April

Aprils Fools stuff everywhere

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

What’s your gaming environment like? (THE BAT CAVE!)

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

What gets you MAD in Wow? Do you get ticked off when you PVP? Does wiping on a boss over and over or losing a roll on that one drop you need piss you off? WHAT FIRES YOU UP???

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

GALLARA – GALLARA 3: Il grande colpo dei 4 uomini d’oro

PeerGynt Lobogris – Broken Dreams: Siete lunas

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 16: More Heroic ICC…And The PJC

Fen — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 06:22:08 +0000

We pushed quite a bit further in heroic ICC 10s this week. We go into detail about the fights we faced, and what worked and what didn’t. The new patch hit this week, Blizzcon dates were announced, and we hit those topics as well. We also talked a bit about the PJC. What’s the PJC? You’re going to have to tune in to find out. Let’s just say….it’s quite a cleansing experience.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Pugcast

Broken Razer Naga

The PJC

Heroic 10s:

Saurfang

Rotface

Festergut

Princes

Blood Queen

NEWS

Blizzcon Dates Announced

Cryptozoic and the TCG

Pets and the ICC buff

Gold cap in cataclysm?

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Do you get teased/hassled/bothered about playing WoW, and do you not tell certain people you play WoW?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

What’s your game room or gaming environment like? What do you HAVE to have in there? Blinds open or closed? Do you keep it clean? Do you have a cave like Sauce, or do you game from a laptop anywhere? Tell us about your set-up!

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

trustno1: Butterfly – Butterfly

Manuel Galan: Open Song V1

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 15: Heroic ICC The Journey Begins

Fen — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:29:47 +0000

We started working on Heroic ICC this week, and we talk about the fights we’ve seen. We also went back and did Yogg +0, and we go into detail of that fight as well. After that we talk about the minor news this week, and pass along some World of Warcraft statistics from a really fascinating video. Then Turdhat joins us and gives us nice long rant. Join us for this week’s shenanigans.

OUR WEEK

/Slash2

Yogg +0

Heroic Marrowgar

Heroic Deathwhisper

Heroic Gunship Battle

Heroic Saurfang

Esta is a LETHAL WEAPON

Phrases people use to find the show

NEWS

Little XT

Strath opening skippable

TED talks Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world

Reclaiming Gnomer will be in patch 3.9

World first Shadowmourne

3.3.3 should hit this week

TURDHAT’S CORNER

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Do you or will you go back to old content, and if so why? For achievements? For gear? Just to see it?

(Will you head back to kill Yogg, Lich King, or any other kills you may miss?)

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

Do you get teased/hassled/bothered about playing WoW, AND do you NOT tell certain people you play WoW so you don’t get hassled?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

trustno1: Sit Down And Clap Your Hands – Publishers

Dust Harvesting: Для рисования – Йинн + Я не верю в русалок

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 14: The Anatomy Of A High End Raiding Guild

Fen — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:40:24 +0000

First off this week we talk about our own Lich King kill!

Then we have an absolutely fantastic interview with Skroesec from Tyranny from the Drak’Tharon server, and we get an inside look at the inner workings of a high end raiding guild, one that’s been raiding at a very high level for literally years. We talk about their entire process for tackling new content, from testing on the PTR all the way to killing a new boss for the first time. We talk about their craziest kills, all of the important questions and not so important ones, all the way down to “Do you yell at people on vent?”. DON’T miss this interview.

Then we hit the news, and THEN Turdhat’s contest pic is revealed and the winner is chosen! After that we tackle our discussion topic, and mention our video of the week.

OUR WEEK

We kill the Lich King! We talk all about our kill, and we go in-depth into our experiences with this LONG LONG fight.

Deluxa and Turdhat get hacked!

Deluxa authenticates and can’t find the app on his phone mid raid, and button-pushes (We love you Deluxa)

INTERVIEW

Skroesec from Tyranny with GREAT insight into all things high end raiding. We pull back the curtain and take a look at how they do things. They also offer tons of video content at their site, along with some really funny stuff.

They raid Sun-Thurs 8pm EST to midnight. Go take a look over there and if you think you would be a good fit, see if you have what it takes.

They stream much of their farm content and some of their progression content, so again, go take a look over there. http://anarchy-guild.org

Our thanks again to Skroesec, we hope to have him back in the future.

NEWS

Not a lot of news this week, but we cover what’s there:

UK PC Gamer 6 page article sheds possible confirmation on rumors in Cataclysm

Major Horde Lore Changes

Deepholme: Possible major Horde/Ally battle including Airships in caverns and flying mounts

Raids and dungeons: 8 dungeons released not including Shadowfang or Deadmines, and FOUR new raids at launch. Grim Batol and Uldum to be patched in after launch.

Harrison Jones will be back with the archeology system

Looking for GUILD system!

Frozen Orbs will be GREED only in 3.3.3!

TURDHAT’S CORNER

We discover exactly what the contest picture is, and who our big winner is!

DISCUSSION TOPIC

Do you care about Horde or Alliance, or is it all the same thing with different pixels?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

Do you or will you go back to old content, and if so why? For achievements? For gear? Just to see it?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

trustno1: Resonance – It Doesn’t Hurt

trustno1: Resonance – Spacerun

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 13: “Lucky 13″ The Podcast That Almost Wasn’t

Fen — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:32:44 +0000

This week after Fen was on Pugcast his recording computer exploded and there was almost not a show. With that fixed, they boys hop right into it and talk about The Loony Festival, raiding this week, and the news and blue posts you just HAVE to hear about. Also Turdhat.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Fen is on Pugcast

The show gets a new Logo

Loony Festival

We get Festergut, try Putricide

NEWS

5% ICC Buff

Lich King Heroic 10 World First Kill/World first Glory of the Ice Crown Raider

LOTS of raid nerfs…

People with Authenticators HACKED

Interesting blue posts…Skipping content, Voice Chat

BattleCry Mosaic Complete

Patch 3.3.3 PTR Highlights

Cataclysm Gear Changes

TURDHAT

Lots of stuff…just listen

DISCUSSION TOPIC

If you were the boss at Blizzard what’s the first thing you’d change about this game?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC

Do you care about playing Horde or Alliance, or is it all the same thing with different pixels?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW

Hermelin – Hermelin LP – avv revisted

Hermelin – Hermelin LP – intro/i felt xetrov

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 12: DevTwitter Means Yes But No Promises

Fen — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:49:18 +0000

This week we find a new Dev Twitter session, chock full of information and “Yes but no promises”. We go over that, Sauce gets a sex change, Turdhat hates gum and Fen and anyone chewing on vent, and we talk about everything that happened this week.

OUR WEEK IN WOW

Sauce gets a sex change

/Slash2 SupaFan

8.8 Quake

Esta’s 7 minute Anub kill

BOOB PIC!

ROBOT UNICORN ATTACK: Play this thing! http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn…

Terrible random finder

NEWS

Ruby Sanctum – We have more details

Recapturing Gnomer – more details

Seasonal bosses – Why only in dungeon finder?

Random Dungeon Kick Timer – GONE

Overcloak (I think we forgot to mention this!)

Developer Twitter! We go over the highlights…and lowlights

TURDHAT

TURDHAT’S GAME! Head to the forums to see the pic we talk about, in the “Talk about the show” section!

He hates chewing…he hates gum…he wants more boobs! Listen to what else he has to say this week!

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

How do you balance real life and WoW?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

If you were the boss at blizzard what’s the first thing you’d change about this game? Making pvp mechanics independent of pve mechanics; more holiday events; more classes; a third faction; more story based gameplay? (These are just some examples)

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW:

Luminous Flesh Giants - Duma I Upadek: Horyzont zdarzen

Luminous Flesh Giants – Duma I Upadek: Wyprawa do reszty Swiata

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 11: Cataclysm is 3.3.3% Done

Fen — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:30:18 +0000

This week’s news? Another patch before Cataclysm is coming, which means Cataclysm is that much further away. We give you our opinions of the ins and the outs of what is changing. Fen is boozing, Esta is cracking jokes, and Sauce gives us a new song. Join us as we take your calls and destroy our own egos in an attempt to make you laugh.

OUR WEEK N WOW:

Love is in the Air

Fun with the Dungeon Finder

Lich King 10s

BONE STORM!!!

NEWS:

3.3.3!

Gnomer no more?

Vendor to sell orbs, eternals and lotus?

Extended deserter debuff for true deserters

World event bosses in the dungeon finder

Titansteel cooldown GONE! Tailoring cooldowns GONE!

Auction house changes = auction house mods

WINTERGRASP: EXPOSED!

Battleground and honor changes, random daily battleground ahoy!

Frost Lotus drop rate increased!

Pandaren sales, 1.1 million given to Make-A-Wish

Tom Chilton interview thoughts

YOUR PHONE CALLS!

TURDHAT’S CORNER!

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Holiday Achievements: Do you like them or are they a waste of your WoW time? Would you like to see more “tangilbe” rewards for holiday type achievements like the 310 speed mount, or should rewards be left to raiding?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

How do you balance real life and WoW? Does WoW take the place of other leisure activities? Do you set limits on your play time? Do you only play certain times or do you just play as much as you like?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW:

Le Zaarth – Evolution, V § R T 3 X

Sonar – Celluloid, Kalamar

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 10: Turdhat 2 Electric Boogaloo

Fen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:42:33 +0000

Turdhat joins us for the whole show this week. We talk about our attempts on the Lich King and our other current events this week, then we dive into the news of the week. At that point the show heads completely into Turdhat territory. We turn the tables and ask Turdhat the tough questions, like the ones he’s been throwing at us in past shows…no holds barred. Also this week there are two terrible, terrible songs….one sung by Fen and one sung by Turdhat. Oh dear…

OUR WEEK IN WOW:

Dreamwalker on 25 kicks our butt…

We fight the Lich King! We dive into some of his mechanics.

Holiday stuff is here! Hooray?

Esta is healing!

NEWS:

Limited attempts removed from normal mode ICC

Probably no more 40 man raid encounters

Ice Crown difficulty

1v1 balance?

More content coming before the next expansion

Lovely Charm farming nerfed

Vanish still screwy, staying screwy

Rawrcast & wow.com…hmm (I said rawr.com but meant Rawrcast.com, my bad!)

Authenticators for andriod

New plushies

Activision Blizzard 4th quarter info

TURDHAT INTERVIEW & SONGS

Oh man….

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Where do you draw the line between clever game mechanics and “cheating”? Is beating a broken encounter cheating?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Holiday achievements: Do you like them or are they a waste of your WoW time? Would you like to see more “tangible” rewards for holiday type achievements like the the 310 speed mount, or should rewards be left to raiding?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW:

JT Bruce, Universica – Bellatrix

Jt Bruce, Universica – Altair

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 9: Cheating or “Clever Use of Game Mechanics”

Fen — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:03:52 +0000

Are game bugs used to your advantage “cheating”? Are strange mechanics in game that are used in ingenious ways “cheating”? This week we tackle that topic, the news, our thoughts on the new bosses released, Turdhat’s corner, discussion topics, and more. We even spend a solid ten minutes talking about balls. Enjoy.

OUR WEEK IN WOW:

Fen was sick this week so the boys talk about fighting the new bosses.

Dreamwalker

Sindragosa

NEWS:

Ensidia: Did they cheat or was it clever use of the cards they were delt. This is our in-depth view, based only on what we know. We want YOUR opinion on the forums.

We dig DEEP!

Also, go check this out…

Go check THIS POST: http://ensidia.com/muqq/blog/4078/

Versus the end of (bottom of the page) THIS POST: http://www.legacyofsteel.net/oldsite/arc27.html

Look quite a bit alike? The first is from Muqq from Ensidia, the second is from Jeff Kaplan, Lead Game Designer and FORMER Everquest end-game raider….posted YEARS ago.

New Weekly Icecrown Raid Quests!

Dungeon Finder loot system changes soon?

Dungeons made faster…except for Stratholme…

PVP healing 10% nerf

Love Is In The Air holiday stuff (new boss)

New I-Phone Auction House app on the way

WoW Facebook dealy

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Using gear designed for other classes

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Where do you draw the line between “clever game mechanics” and cheating? Is beating a broken or bugged encounter “cheating”?

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW:

Jardin de la Croix: Pomeroy – Antioquia, Polyhedron

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 8: The Rating Of The Lich King

Fen — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:31:18 +0000

We tear apart everything from this expansion and rate it. All of the raids, and as much of the new stuff as we can handle. Tune in and find out what we did this week, our ratings for everything WotLK, interesting news, Turdhat’s Corner, our discussion topic…and so much more. Check it out or you’ll be sorry.

OUR WEEK IN WOW:

Our raids this week! Guild gets realm second achievement!

Esta and Bacon “pug” Nax 10 for the Immortal achievement…

The Aftermath…

Sauce’s random dungeon story

THE RATING OF THE LICH KING

We rate EVERYTHING to do with this expansion, rating A-F…

Turdhat sends us something to rate…

NEWS

Invincible Mount

DPS race fights

Titles mistakenly given out to 2v2 arean teams

Are trinkets the new tier sets?

Tier 10 tank armor changes

Night Elf Mohawk – GONE!

Gunship Battle development article: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/gunship-battle.xml

6 points about Cataclysm talent trees

TURDHAT CORNER

Class in WoW with the biggest…”jerks”?

Guild Leader and Raid Leader roles, and discipline

Turdhat’s poem

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

If you could add a new boss encounter, what would it be?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Using gear designed for other classes. (So potential questions to answer may be:)
Is it ok? Has it ever pissed you off? Are you happy changes are being made in Cataclysm to promote wearing “your” gear? Etc.

MUSIC FROM THIS WEEK’S SHOW:

Daniel Bautista, “15″ – Fuego Camina Conmigo and In The Desert

Podcast 7: Lady Gamer Roundtable (LADIES NIGHT)

Fen — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:52:38 +0000

On this episode we have four amazing women who not ONLY are tanks, healers and DPS that play World of Warcraft, they raid at an endgame level. Fen, Sauce and Esta chat with Val, Sachi, Arcy and Eivez about their experiences as WoW players, gaming in general, and anything and everything else…no holds barred. The ladies are even subjected to a few filthy questions from our old pal Turdhat. Hold on to your hats, you’re not going to want to miss a minute of this one.

OUR WEEK IN WOW:

Meet the ladies!

Pugcast rocks, listen to them.

Authenticated.

Esta is OVER 9000! (What’s wrong with you!)

How many achievement points do you have?

Our raids this week:

Blood Prince Council 25/10

Royally screwed on Queen (UPDATE: Got her right after we recorded this, tune in next week!)

Rotface/Festergut

LET’S TALK TO THE LADIES

Sachi – Tank -Paladin

Eivez – Healer -Priest (Disc)

Arcy – Healer – Priest (Holy)

Valerial – DPS – Mage

Do you visit “girl gamer” sites?

Have you met people that thought you wouldn’t be “good” or a knowledgeable gamer BECAUSE you’re a girl?

Have you ever embarrassed a guy in game and laughed in his (virtual) face?

Do people ever not believe you’re REALLY a girl?

Have you even been hit on in game? How do guys try to pick you up?

TANK GIRL!

Introverted male gamers and mixed signals…

Has the fact that you are female in real life ever been an advantage to you in game? Do you get treated better in game? Given free stuff?

What do you think about the female outfits in WoW or other games?

PUG GROUP HORRORS OF THE WEEK

All of our stories of terrible groups…

NEWS!

New raid boss fixes

Lich King unlocks February 2nd(US)/3rd(EU)

Resilience Changes (Val’s potty mouth!)

Hunter Ammo (Costly!)

Heroism/Bloodlust – More credit then it deserves?

Classes in general and power swings with patches

Healing numbers versus doing the right things in raids

Sauce pick-up line

PHONE CALLS

Deluxa!

TURDHAT CORNER

Have you ever tried to benefit from an exploit?

Turd’s message to the ladies

How did you get into gaming?

Val’s Japanese gaming experiences!

Our raid leader’s wife is more hard core than he is? (We kid)

What do the women wear when they game?

Turdhat’s song/send me your pics

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

What would you like to see changed about the way we acquire gear? Choices of set bonuses? More Badge gear, ALL tokens in raids (even for weapons)? Things only drop for classes IN the raid? More class specific loot?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

If you could add a new boss fight or encounter, what would it be? Fighting in the air on jetpacks? New vehicles? Underwater combat?

(Sauce has something in the works…)

ITUNES AND EMAIL SHOUT OUT!

CdubCity – You rock our socks, thanks man!

MUSIC FROM THIS SHOW

Orlando, Co2, Co2

Daniel Bautista, Recycle Bin, Fractal 1

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Podcast 6: Turdhat With A T (Is Sleezy)

Fen — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:06:33 +0000

To start off this week, Fen Esta and Sauce talk about the latest scam to get your precious account information. We talk about messing with “botters”, go over our raids this week, and then we hit the news. After that it’s time for Turdhat (with a T) and his call-in segment Q&A, followed by our weekly discussion topic.

OUR WEEK IN WOW:

Watch out for the armory scam!

Authenticators…waiting to be safe

Our 25s this week: Damn you Rotface

Our 10s this week…what the hell made Putricide easier this time?

Esta’s OVER 9000 Achievement Points Report

“The Insane” title

Why don’t we have speed kill on Patchwerk?

Messing with Bots

Bot on Bot action

Esta breaks A’Nub! (Fen eats his words!)

RAIDS:

Professor Putricide buff??? (Conan quote)

Putricide small fixes

Strength DPS rep ring on the way

ICC will be getting easier with the in-raid buff, but you can turn it off

No proc weapons in ICC 25 for Ferals or Frost DKs

DUNGEON:

Stratholme, Old Kingdom and Nexus changes

Quit the dungeon or stay with a slow (bad?) group…

Party leader rewards…gone!

PVP:

Battleground Armchair Generals

No one wants to stay at stables

Horde vs. Alliance hatred in Cataclysm

Meaningful world PVP?

Is burst damage too high?

Possible resilience, health pools, and healing changes

Slower kills instead of huge burst?

Last season before and expansion is a sandbox

PVE:

Proc per minute stealth nerfs!

CATACLYSM:

No “sanctuary’ city in Cataclysm like Dalaran

Heirlooms will work

No guild housing

Possible increase to initial backpack?

Realm-wide banking

Hunter pet scaling…have fun waiting

Tabard and Armor set storage

(Smoke grenades)

“Gimmick” fights

MISCELLANEOUS:

Esta’s creepy face

Armory changes!

RSS character activity feeds

Export in-game calendar data and keep it updated

(in game calendar sucks)

Calendar events in our guild mean you’re dumb

Elitist Group Add-on vs Gear Score

Gear score doesn’t equal skill

Mages need more than just main city ports

TURDHAT’S CORNER:

Have you ever peed in a jug to keep gaming?

Have you ever purchased ANYTHING with real money for a video game? (Turdhat HAS…and SAUCE???)

Have you ever pretended to be a noob to get stuff?

(Turdhat is sleezy, FYI)

Do you ever play naked? (Are you in the sweatpants club?)

Do you drink or do….other stuff…while gaming?

You ever uh…”help yourself” while on vent?

Turdhat’s poem…

And his call back poem…

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

What new abilities/talents would you like to see introduced in this next expansion, what shortcomings if any, would you like addresssed?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

ITUNES REVIEWS PLEASE!

MUSIC FROM THIS SHOW:

Temporal Distortion: Anomalous Material, JT Bruce

Looking Forward(Radio Edit): Binary, ED3-Studio

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Looking Back to the Start of Wrath

Fen — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:12:16 +0000

There are a lot of interesting things I think about when I look back to the start of this expansion.

There are people that were playing then that are no longer playing that I definitely miss, and many of us in my guild will reminisce for hours about funny conversations we had with various people back in the day. Most of the people I’m referring to left the game to either concentrate on school, work, and/or have a family, and though all of us knew we would miss them when they left, we all knew it was the best thing for them and we wished them well. Some of those people had been playing with the guild for literally years, so it’s hard to see them “hang it up”. Even though they stay in contact it’s different then logging into the game and vent with them on a near-nightly basis and just talking about the game, or their day, or something funny that happened.

There are also stories of people that still play, that I dare say none of us miss. These are people that were gone from the guild nearly as quickly as they came, and for the most part have hopped to probably a half dozen other guilds since ours. Most of those people were interested in joining our guild to try and “get” things out of us rather then all try and have fun as a group and work together for common goals. Usually these people can’t see the big picture stuff, like being generous with guild members will come back to you ten-fold, or that passing on a contested piece of loot this time will be remembered by everyone else you always roll against. Luckily we have very smart people in the guild and they can generally pick out people that are there just for themselves. There are still stories about recruits that would AFK in battlegrounds night after night for honor, or people raiding with us that we suspected of two-boxing and them claiming they were playing with their significant other.

I guess when I really look back at it I think our guild really came into it’s own with this expansion compared to the last one. We just started really raiding toward the latter half of Burning Crusade, and even then we were just getting started with Kara, then a second Kara group. Only at the very end of last expansion did we really get into raiding 25 man content, and even when we started raiding things like Serpent Shrine Cavern, Hyjal and Tempest Keep we still often were running short people and had to take what we could get from elsewhere. Sometimes this worked out great and we’d not only do well but meet new people, other times it would be disastrous. We were also obviously very late starting, so while other guilds were in Black Temple and Sunwell, we were still trying to kill bosses in SSC.

This expansion we started fresh with everyone else. While we are by no means a hard-core guild, we have been and do raid current content, and while we won’t be the first to clear everything or even run 25 man hard modes, we make good progress and have always been working on current raids. When a new raid would be released we would not only have learned from the previous raid fights, but we would be geared enough to walk into it on the day it released.

Last expansion I was also doing quite a bit of everything as a co-leader/guild leader. I was recruiting, filling raids, running raids, handling squabbles, you name it. I had help for sections of it but there were quite a few times I was on my own. That was something that burned me out badly and was something that is now definitely fixed. Our guild now has officers that all handle different specific tasks, and I can’t imagine doing it any other way. If one of us has something else going on someone else can help pick up their job without missing a beat, and things run much more smoothly then they ever did (I think anyway).

Another thing that has changed since the beginning of this expansion is recruiting. Last expansion I remember it was like pulling teeth trying to find people to fill roles in raids, be it a healer (most of the time), a tank (occasionally), or a DPS (rarely). Now-a-days I couldn’t tell you the last time we had to recruit. I think we’ve turned away 3-4 people in the last couple of weeks interested in joining, not because we are snobs or they are not good people, but simply because we don’t have room in raids for them. We aren’t amazingly great, I think we get interest because at this point we’ve been raiding a while and people see the name and know we’re a pretty stable guild.

All things considered, this expansion has been a great one for our guild, and we’ve definitely learned a lot about working together and had a ton of fun along the way. I hope the the rest of this expansion and the next one bring more positive changes like that.

Podcast 5: Authenticated Funny

Fen — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:01:46 +0000

This week it’s just the boys (Fen even took a shower!) , but they’re joined by some very interesting phone calls, including one by the infamous Turdhat. If you don’t know, you better ask somebody! After introductions we hop into our week with the new raid content, then the week’s news, the phone calls, and finally the weekly discussion topic.

OUR WEEK IN WOW:

We talk authenticators, Fen breaks down and buys one

Hacked guild bank stuff is returned (again!)

The new Stinky and Precious trash & traps

Raiding Rotface

Raiding Festergut

Raiding Professor Putricide

RAIDING:

Lady Deathwhisper Nerf

Rotface 10 man nerf (snarky!)

Rogue’s won’t spring traps a mile away

Professor Putricide working as intended – One Abom

Wing end bosses meant to be harder

DUNGEON:

Occulus change rocks our sockkulus

EoE and Occulus drake drops

Halls of Reflection requires slightly higher gear

Dungeon finder screws up, welcome to 15 minute wait

HoR mob nerfs

“Slow down DPS, you’ll break the game”

PVP:

Arena season ends Jan 19th

What the hell do we spend arena points on?

New guy in VoA? Let’s see some more tier 10!

Low rolls with the “RNG”

PVE:

Deathbringer’s Will change

Greatness deck card still rocks!

Nibelung Staff buff

Heroism/Bloodlust DRUMS???

Rogue nerf, big or not so big of a deal?

Elemental tier 10 4 piece set bonus

Warlock damage in PVE getting buffed

Prot warriors may be nerfed, but just in PVP

Druid tanking boring?

Threat reducing talents out the window next expansion

(Can I get salvation please?)

MISCELLANEOUS:

Are authenticators going to be mandatory?

Blizz backlogged restoring accounts

Account admins encouraged to offer “care package”

Authenticate, Authenticate, Authenticate.

“Onioning?”

PHONE CALLS:

Who is Trudat/Turdhat?

Turdhat corner:

Who has secret alts? Bank alts?

Non-Vent users…are they quick to go?

Esta’s voice is HOT

Reading (or NOT reading) raid chat vs talking on vent

“Lady Gamer” Roundtable?

Turdhat’s Poem

Arcy’s call

Sauce’s…call

THIS WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Are mods making the game too easy? Everyone uses mods like DBM Grid, Healbot. Do these things make the game so easy now people don’t even need to think? Should Blizzard add these mods to WoW by default like they did with Questhelper and others?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

What new abilities/talents would you like to see introduced in this next expansion, what shortcomings, if any, do you feel Blizzard should try to address?

MUSIC FROM THIS SHOW:

Caf Connection: Morgantj

I Like It Like That(S.Thaens): Stefsax

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Starting A Guild Part 2: Recruiting

Fen — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 02:30:01 +0000

This is part two of a multi-article post, part one can be found here.

I start off this post again by stating I am by no means an expert with this topic. I’ve had plenty of trial and error though, and I can tell you what’s worked for me and what hasn’t, and what I believe you need to do to succeed in recruiting efforts. Again I’m assuming you are starting off from scratch, or with at most a very small handful of people.

If you take only one thing away from this post, remember this above all else when recruiting: If you do not assign value to being a member of your guild, you will attract people that also consider being a member of your guild meaningless and they will treat it that way. This is your guild, you have goals for it, you care about making it work, and you want members with similar goals to want to be there.

For those reasons, you need to be selective with who you recruit. I know it’s very very tempting to take anyone that is even slightly interested, but you will be doing yourself a disservice down the road by taking anyone without screening them at all. I’m jumping ahead a bit, so lets start off with what you can do to get the right kinds of people responding to you in the first place.

I’ll start with the most obvious one, which is networking. Hopefully you already know some people. They may or may not be interested in your guild, but you can at least get the word out that you’re looking for people. Odds are good that they also have friends that might be looking for a guild. Make sure and pass along exactly what your guild will be (as we defined in the first article).

I should bring up something that I consider HIGHLY frowned upon, which is what I call “sniping members”. This is when someone comes recruiting people that are already guilded elsewhere, and I try to be very careful not to do this. If you are spreading the word about your guild and that you’re starting one, that’s fine. If you are actively seeking out individuals already guilded and trying convince them to leave their current guild for yours, that’s not fine. As a matter of fact I like to point that out to anyone that comes and talks to me about joining my guild. I like people to let their current guild leader know that they are leaving, or I may even offer to talk to their current guild leader just so there isn’t any misunderstanding. Which guild a person is in is entirely their business, but how they get there can make major waves with guild leaders if you aren’t very careful about how you handle it.

Back to finding people.

The second option open to you are the official forums. I’m not one to really browse them much, because I generally don’t like what I see there. In this case though, you want to cast a wide net and hit every option available to you. Post a thread about your guild in your realm forums. Be as clear as humanly possible exactly what your guild is, and more importantly IS NOT. If you don’t take people under a certain age, say so. If you plan to raid, make sure you tell people that you are just starting out so they don’t expect to raid immediately, and also what times you are proposing to raid. Spell out everything that defines your guild. Make sure to include everything, anything that would offer someone looking for a guild a niche in your guild that other guilds may lack. If you have people already, make sure to mention specifically what you need, gear requirements if any, experience wanted, everything.

Also, check the realm forums often for people that post that they are looking for a guild. Again, make sure that they would be a good fit for you before replying to them or talking to them in game. Proactively looking for people posting was something I hadn’t been doing, and someone else pointed it out to me and it has actually found my guild several people when we needed them. People, even good ones, can be a little lazy, and you’re willingness to go find them where others aren’t can be the difference between filling a guild and quitting.

Option three is the dirty option of in-game recruiting. I don’t know anyone that enjoys doing this, but it works.

You want to come up with a clever way to get people’s attention via a macro in-game, and hopefully get the right people’s attention. I’ve tried this multiple ways, with varying degrees of success. Again, you want to cast a wide net so I suggest multiple options. You are limited in space with whatever message you want to convey, and I highly suggest avoiding more than one macro worth of text.

The first way to go is to state your raid times, what you’re looking for, and whatever other useful pertinent information you can squeeze into the space you have. Informative, to the point, and dry. It does work, and people looking for something specific will already be pre-screened before they contact you (they know that the raid times would work for them, or that you said you’re looking for a Warlock and they are a Warlock).

The second way to go is to add more flavor and less substance, and ask that people interested contact you. So for example (fill in the blanks) “Are you tired of ____ and looking for a guild with ____? So am I! So I’m starting a guild that ____.” Whisper me for more info.” Sometimes the funnier the better, it will draw more attention, but though you may draw more interest you’ll probably end up screening out more people since they don’t have as much information before contacting you.

A third option is to not macro at all, and actually type something very conversational and in the moment. If you do this, actually type something and use it just that once and re-type something new for the next time. People can get really “tuned out” to spam and sometimes a conversational approach will be something someone actually reads instead of just skipping right past what may look like “spam” to them.

So now you’ve got what you want to say ready, so where do you say it?

First you have the “Guild Recruitment Channel”. This is a channel much like the trade channel, but it’s strictly for guild recruitment and spamming your guild’s recruitment. It’s only active in major cities (if I recall correctly unless it’s been changed), and if you’re in a guild it’s off by default. This is where you are SUPPOSED to be spamming your guild’s recruitment stuff. Don’t go nuts, but feel free to hit your macro in this channel every so often. Give it a few minutes at least between hitting it, or at least make sure your text has scrolled WAY off before hitting it again. People will definitely get turned off by over-spamming, and anyone else will let you know. Don’t be a jerk and spam right after other guilds. The idea is to MAKE friends, not make enemies.

The big downside to the Guild Recruitment Channel is….no one is in it. There are those nice few that are actually in there looking for a guild, but they are few and far between. They ARE there, I’ve gotten people from there, but not a huge amount. A lot of people don’t like to be guildess so they never see the channel, or forget they can join it and never do, or for whatever reason just never go in there.

That leads us to the dirtiest of dirty things: The Trade Channel. Let’s get one thing straight, you technically are NOT supposed to be using this channel for guild recruitment, and people will remind you of that fact. I personally don’t like people spamming in it, or recruiting in it, but the fact of the matter here is that it can get results. Though I may not like how the results are gotten, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it doesn’t work. I have literally spammed the recruitment channel for an hour with no bites, then hit trade channel once and ended up with 5 people wanting to talk to me.

IF you decide to mess with doing this in Trade, and I’m not going to publicly suggest that you do, there are a few things to keep in mind. Do NOT spam trade over and over. At MOST hit it once every so often. I can’t tell you how often, but even once an hour or 30 minutes is probably PLENTY. It’s an annoyance to people, and overdoing it at all can easily have a negative effect instead of a positive one.

Looking for people in the above in-game ways works, and you will get out of it what you put into it. Hopefully you have a TV or something else near you, because you can definitely spend some time doing this, and if you are determined to get a guild running you might need to go at this a while. If you are chatty talk up other people in town and spread the word while you do this. Plan on giving up time to do this, but if you are persistent and flexible to change to what works, you WILL get results.

SO…on to screening people.

The first thing I do is VERY briefly talk to people just to get the basics to double check if they are even aware of what the guild is about at a basic level. If so I then send them to a guild application on my guild’s website.

You can set up a guild website with your own application for free at many sites these days. On that application I have questions that I am looking for answers for that are more than “yes” or “no”. The questions are all important and should be ones that you already know what kind of answers you’re looking for. For example: “Are you currently in a guild? If so why are you leaving?” and “Have you had any suspensions or bans of your account(s), and if so why?” and “What do you want and hope to gain by being a member of the guild?”. I also ask if they use the in-game mods we expect them to use, and other things.

Those questions are screening ones yes, but also I’m interested in how they answer them. Can they follow instructions? Are they willing to put in effort? If the answers are no, then they are probably a “no” to the guild. By putting effort into their application, and by having someone fill out an application in the first place, you are assigning a value to being in your guild. If you want to be in the guild, I need you to do X, Y and Z. If you don’t want to do those things then I don’t want you here, because this guild is a good one, for people willing to do those things.

Yes it’s just a game, for fun. If you’re going to spend a lot of time playing though you want to surround yourself with people who want the same things out of the game as you do.

After an application (assuming all goes well), right before an invite, I chat to the person applying. Talk to them! Talk to them (whisper in game) for 10 minutes at least if you can. If it’s not someone you want to talk to for that long odds are good you don’t want them in your guild talking in /g every night. Again make sure that they know what the guild rules are and what is expected, so there isn’t ANY chance of “but I didn’t know x y or z”.

You’ll find the better you are with all of this process, the less work it becomes. The better you screen people, the less you will lose them for being unhappy. The less you lose people, the less you will need to recruit. The less you need to recruit, the better your “veteran” players will get. The better they get, the better your guild gets. The better your guild gets, the more people will know it. The more people know your guild, the more they will know your reputaion and want to be a part of your guild…and the less you will need to recruit.

Podcast 4: Happy New Year!

Fen — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:35:33 +0000

This week Eivez joins us and we cover the last two weeks worth of WoW. We start off catching Sauce professing his love for Esta’s buttery smooth voice (in a manly way). Good times. After introductions we jump right into it.

OUR WEEK IN WOW:

HOLY CRAP WE GOT AN EMAIL!
HOLY CRAP WE GOT AN ITUNES REVIEW! (Fen will do dirty things for more!)

We got Saurfang two weeks in a row, and we’re one/two shotting all four of the current bosses

We chat about what we’ve been doing to improve on Saurfang (yay for the achievement!)

Healers talk about Marrowgar and issues regarding healing that fight

It’s all on farm(?)

Someone is suicidal on the gunship battle every week

Another player in our guild gets hacked

New Dungeon Finder stories

Is Occulus still the worst instance?

Christmas Presents!

Razer Naga mouse opinions/what mouses we use

RAIDS:

New raid content opens this week!

Professor Putricide, Rotface & Festergut

10 attempts is kind of a lot! (For us)

DUNGEONS:

Occulus is indeed random, states blue posts

“Randomly” getting dungeons that no one else wants

What dungeons do you “randomly” get the most?

What’s the longest dungeon?

Sachi loves to pull LOTS!

PVE:

Earthquakes (out of game and in!)

Cataclysm starting events…

How does a floating city have earthquakes?

Blue post smarmy responses…

Why would anyone make 900 pygmy oils?

Mailbox snubbing

Winterveil gift 2009 was TERRIBLE

We reminisce of gifts past

We talk bank space/bag space

MISCELLANEOUS:

We talk about World of Raid’s “Biggest Surprises of 2009″ article

Why have we NOT hit up Blizzcon?

ToC wasn’t very exciting…2 rooms, 5 bosses

Why get rid of multiple lockouts for normal/hard modes?

Opinions on faction changes

Cataclysm by this summer or people will split

WoW the magazine!

Collector’s Editions and WoW art books

Mike Schramm leaves WoW.com

One authenticator will work for multiple accounts linked to one battle.net account, blue post says

Latest hacking in our guild may move more of us to get authenticator

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Cataclysm stat removal: Taking the math out of being a good player or dumbing down WoW?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

MUSIC FROM THIS SHOW:

La Sedia Vuota: Talco, Combat Circus

Silver Surfer: FOOL DADAZ FIRE, CNSM SESSIONS #1

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Starting A New Guild: Part 1, Before You Start

Fen — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:30:16 +0000

This is designed to be a multiple article post about what I would do if I were starting a completely new guild. I should say right off the bat I didn’t start my current guild, but I did become co-leader when it was down to few enough people to run even heroics together, and helped rebuild it. Also I’ve watched what has and hasn’t worked in multiple games both from a guild leader standpoint and a member standpoint. So with that said, take this for what it’s worth. If you can take anything out of this that will help you then great, if not then at least perhaps there is some food for thought here for you.

I’m going to assume you are on a server where you don’t know anyone or perhaps know only a few people.

First, there are a few things to think about before you even start a guild and some questions you need to ask yourself:

Do you play enough? You’ve got to be available (and ONLINE) a lot. If you log in once or twice a week you’re probably not on enough (depending on the type of guild). If you take a lot of breaks from the game then someone else should be leading.
Can you follow through? If you aren’t willing to do the not-so-fun stuff to make the guild work, if you quit when things get hard…don’t bother.
Are you capable of dealing with pissed off people without losing your head? No matter what happens you’re going to get WAY more complaints and pissed off people then people who tell you things are great.
Are you willing to give up some of your play time to deal with guild related things? Guild bank issues, messages from in-game mail, forum personal messages, guild management stuff….and lots and LOTS of whispers, daily. If those things are a problem for you then you should JOIN a guild instead.
Are you enough of a “people person”? If people generally think you’re an asshole they may stay in the guild to get what they want, but they’ll leave as soon as they get it. Not everyone likes everyone, but you have to at least be “likable” and somewhat friendly.
Are you capable of kicking people out of your guild or talking to them and trying to correct behavior you deem “unacceptable” in your guild?
Can you delegate authority?

I’m not saying I’m perfect or great with all of the above things. There are times I definitely fail on some or all of those things. The above are just things I noticed can be root causes of failures in the management of guilds I’ve seen in this and other games.

So let’s assume you’ve thought it through and you decided you want to start your guild. You might be thinking “Let’s go get people! I’ve got a tabard and a bank slot!”….whoa whoa whoa. Before you go get people, you need to define what kind of guild you want to be, and there are a lot of questions to answer. You’re going to want to define your guild first so in the long run you recruit the people that will best fit your vision of what you want to accomplish with your guild.

Questions you need to answer if you are going to raid:

Are you going to be a hard core raiding guild? Casual guild? Somewhere in the middle? Where in the middle?
If you are a hard core guild, will you kick people out (or sit them out of raids) based on their performance?
Are there set times you already have in mind? (That is one of the first questions people will ask when you look for recruits.)
What do you expect out of your raiders and raids? (Properly gemmed/enchanted gear, flasks and other consumables for raids, etc)
What system will you use to determine loot? (This will also be a question everyone asks.)
Do you aspire to raid only 10 man content, or do you want to run 25 man stuff? MORE than one 25 man eventually? (Very large guilds can get quite impersonal, from my experience.)

You need to decide if you want your guild to be adults only, a younger guild, or open to everyone. Even if you are an “adult only” guild, will explicit language be ok in guild chat? Will you take mains only or allow people to join on an alt while their main is elsewhere? (You can’t stop people from lying to you, but you can do your best to only recruit mains.)

You also need to decide what kind of behavior is acceptable in your guild. The guild tag above members heads is a reflection of all of you, and any actions members of your guild take reflect on you and the rest of the guild. Is it ok for your members to run their mouths in public chat channels (like trade chat), or battle grounds, or dungeons? Are you ok taking people with suspensions or bans of their account for “bad behavior”? If you haven’t asked yourself this question, or you think it won’t matter, be prepared to deal with angry whispers from other guild leaders when someone from your guild acts like an ass. (Trust me, you WILL have to deal with this if you run a guild long enough, even if you are careful with screening recruits.)

In closing of this section, to give an example, this is how I’d define my guild. At this point I would say we are a Medium-core guild, that fields one 25 man and multiple 10 man raids per week. On 25s we expect people to take raiding somewhat seriously (though we laugh constantly), show up prepared, and we all try to constantly improve our play. We don’t raid 5 nights a week even on new content so we work at it when we DO raid. On 10s we have a group that runs some harder-core stuff. We are a guild of only adults 21 and up, and our guild chat is explicit and is not a place for kids. We have some set raid times during the week but we don’t force strict attendance. We have our own specific loot system in place. We do not allow members with “mains” in other guilds. We expect rowdy (fun) behavior in guild but expect people wearing our tag to act appropriately when grouped with people outside of the guild, or we will not hesitate to remove them.

I would tell a potential recruit an awful lot more than that, but I hope that gives you a guideline for where to start before you recruit.

Part two of this article will dive in to recruiting and actually starting a guild.

Podcast 3: The Arcy

Fen — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:40:16 +0000

This week the boys are joined by Arcy, secret priestess queen of all things healing. We talk about our experiences in the Dungeon Finder, our raids this week, pets and mounts, and a million other things. Sauce starts off the podcast by eating a muffin. Nice and classy Sauce.

OUR WEEK IN WOW:

Tales from the Dungeon Finder – 497 DPS

Our fun with Lady Deathwhisper

Gunship Battle – Esta’s on a boat! (The wrong boat)

Saurfang is sour

Arcy dings a druid, Fen becomes an (off spec) tree!

Rogues – Spec Mut + spam two buttons = profit

Icecrown Loot – Bows and healing leather only…thanks

Stupid Winter Veil – Fen is a Grinch

PVPing with a gnome illusion (destroy them and drink their tears)

Arcy’s stuff collecting! Pets and Mounts ahoy!

Favorite pets and mounts

Corehound pet and authenticators

Blizzard Store Pets

Things that make noise passively destroy Fen’s mind

RAID:

Phasing bugs in Icecrown – have fun summoning with people who can’t see you

Ashen Verdict rep reward rings – You get 4 choices…Because Blizz CAN’T give you 5

Proc happy loot in Icecrown

Loot table discussion

PVP:

PVP gearing system in Cataclysm

Arena style loot without the arena?

Comp dependency in arenas

Wintergrasp built in bonuses for losing factions?

PVE:

Battered hilt drop rate increased – for everyone except us

The new dungeons – They ain’t no Magisters’ Terrace

MISCELLANEOUS:

Tom Chilton interview from Champions’ Carnival in Taiwan and WorldofWar.de

-Wardrobe feature to bank

-Heirloom items for every slot

-In-game voice chat (sucks)

-”Instance spectator” mode for arenas and raids

-No plans for in game housing

-Arenas a mistake because of balancing issues?

-No Old Ironforge in the expansion but…changed Stormwind?

-Patch 3.4 before the expansion???

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Is Blizzard removing the immersion of the game by making getting around too easy?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Cataclysm stat removal: Taking the math out of being a good player, or dumbing down WoW?

MUSIC FROM THIS SHOW:

Waiting So Long: METISSE, Jeunesse

The Dreamer’s Overture: JT Bruce, The Dreamer’s Paradox

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Small Victories

Fen — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:18:49 +0000

There are times when it’s a drag doing some of the not-so-fun stuff of trying to run a guild. I can’t really say “run”, because the officers do a HUGE amount of the heavy lifting and the members are all in all very good people and helpful in their own regard. For the most part officers all have their things they do, either assigned stuff or just helpful stuff, and I know I couldn’t do all of those things myself.

Still though there are those times when “it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it” and often times those are the things I have to do. Perhaps I have to turn someone down for something, or yell at (politely chat with *cough*) someone who isn’t following the rules, or deal with mundane tasks that end up in my lap. These things can kind of wear on you, even in the best of circumstances. I also freely admit I’m often times not the most pleasant person to deal with, and I can absolutely slack on stuff which in the end makes even more work for myself. I think it’s also safe to say sometimes I need to deal with someone who in that moment isn’t at their best either. In those cases I have to at least *try* to deal with the situation in a reasonable manner without completely flipping out. Sometimes I do ok, sometimes I don’t. Often those are my roughest moments.

Then there are times like last night…but first a little back-story.

We raid 25s only two nights a week, 3-4 hours a stretch, so we try and get a lot done in a short amount of time. Our first raid night of this past week we ran through Vault, the new weekly raid quest, and finally started Icecrown Citadel. We got through Lord Marrowgar in two tries, and then cleared the trash to Lady Deathwhisper. We got (I think) 4 total tries on her before we had to call it a night. The first 3 were sort of tune-ups trying to learn her abilities, but also to try and figure out who needed to be placed where. The last try of the first night we did a bit better, but still only phase 1 of the fight and still not a chance of beating her enrage timer. At the end of the night we were tired, and we didn’t even get her into her second phase. We weren’t dejected, but I think we all were hoping for more.

Last night (our second raid night) we went at her again. I’m not sure how may attempts we put in on her, but enough to the point that we had trash re-spawn and had to clear it yet again (but we saw our first epic drop off of trash from them, so yay!). We worked to fine tune our strategy, and kept plugging away at it.

FINALLY, after working on her for literally hours, we had a really great attempt. Everyone playing as best as they were capable of playing, everyone doing their best to do what they were supposed to do, everyone coordinating their efforts. Healers were hitting their assignments and also covering for each other. DPS were on the ball killing adds and responsive to be on the correct targets. Tanks were picking stuff up quickly and holding onto their multiple targets. Everyone was using their long cooldowns and battle-rezes at good times to try and maximize the attempt. Everyone was trying to minimize their damage taken. Everyone working in concert like a well oiled machine.

We got her to go into phase two. All of us were calling out things to watch for in vent, making sure the entire raid knew exactly where things were that we needed to move away from. Everyone was focused, burning the boss because we knew we were running out of time before the enrage.

I could tell it was going to be close, and as we got her under 10% health I think we were all sure she was going to enrage before we would be able to kill her. Multiple people started yelling “DON’T STOP” and “GIVE HER EVERYTHING YOU HAVE!” No one was giving up, no quitters here. I’m not sure exactly how close it got (I think she enraged at 4%?) because I was concentrating on my own damage and trying my best to get a good long rotation on her so if I died I’d have multiple DoTs ticking.

A moment later we FINALLY killed her, and there was an eruption of cheers on vent like I haven’t heard in a long time. Everyone was yelling and screaming and we all lined up to take a picture together.

Those are the moments for me that make any of the other not-so-fun stuff worthwhile.

We are straight up BETTER raiders as a group then we were at the start of this expansion. People in the guild that started off not knowing anything about their class have done research and learned about what they need to be doing for us to succeed. People that didn’t know much or anything about raiding have learned how to react fast and use their abilities to best help the group achieve a common goal. Do we all have room to improve? Absolutely, but we’re BETTER then we were.

I saw all of that come to fruition last night. There isn’t a doubt in my mind our guild has progressed together, and that feels awesome. Are we shooting for server first or world first kills? No. Are we the top progression guild on the server? Not even close. But that’s not the point, nor is it what we strive to be. Are we a better team now then ever before? Yes. And that is what makes guild leaders happy.

Dungeon Finder: 497 DPS = Frost Badges

Fen — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:49:42 +0000

Let’s have a little chat about the new dungeon finder tool, shall we? I love it and I hate it, like a lot of people. I wanted to share an experience I had with it last night.

I apologize in advance if I come off sounding like an elitist asshole here…

Two guildmates and I decided to hit the random daily heroic last night. We had a tank, a healer, and myself as DPS and we decided to PUG the last two spots. We IMMEDIATELY got into Halls of Stone, and once we ported in we saw that trash had been cleared already. The two pugs told us that they wiped on the first boss and their other 3 party members had left. I didn’t think anything of it, sometimes shit happens.

Little did I know that it was the three people that decided to leave that were in the right.

The two pugged folks were a hunter and a mage. The mage was doing roughly 2000 DPS, and was in almost all epic PVP gear. I don’t have any complaints about that other than I think the mage could probably do better with what he/she was wearing, but it’s nothing I’d bitch about openly. However, the mage managed to pull aggro on anything and everything that was in a quarter mile radius, and I think just about drove our poor healer insane. (I confess I also was pulling some aggro, but out of the three of us from my guild I was the only one in there on their main and I can go a little overboard.)

The mage was nothing though compared to the hunter. This hunter was (and I checked after about 10 minutes into this debacle of a heroic) in almost all “blue” quality gear, plus 4 or so epics, including a trinket. I think he might have had a couple pieces of green gear, but overall not poorly geared for heroics in the slightest (I didn’t look at WHAT that gear was until later, but I digress).

This Beast Mastery hunter managed a whopping 497 DPS over the course of the heroic. FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY SEVEN. On top of that he managed to pull/aggro stuff the tank wasn’t currently attacking and die. How you even manage to aggro and die to anything whilst doing 497 DPS is a complete mystery to me. For reference, that’s less DPS then people were doing at level 70 last expansion. I don’t play a hunter much, but I’m willing to bet the hunters in my guild have PETS that do more than that.

I’m not really sure how many times the mage and hunter died in that heroic, but the three of us on vent all agreed after their first couple of deaths that it was just going to be easier to let them die, since we were essentially 3-manning the dungeon already. Our priest was running low on mana on TRASH pulls trying to heal them, and though it’s her alt she’s plenty geared for it, and quite a good healer.

We ended up just sort of not saying much to them and just trying to plow through the heroic as quickly as possible, and after we finished I couldn’t help myself and I posted the DPS numbers into party chat. I know it’s probably a futile effort to try and help someone on another server who will probably call me a jerk for even trying, so I just said something along the lines of “How is it even possible to do 497 DPS?” and then left the group/dungeon.

I mentioned the hunter’s name (who I won’t mention here) in vent and a guild member looked him/her up on the armory. Two tanking rings, spell power boots, etc. I guess that’s how you do 497 DPS. I’d looked at the COLOR of his gear, but not what it was…

I’ve heard from a few people that the dungeon finder tool takes a look at your gear score, and then tries to match up over-geared people with “inexperienced” (read: under-geared) people. I’ve also heard that people will often throw on their PVP gear to “fool” the dungeon finder into thinking they have better gear than they really use for PVE. I’m contemplating making a set of all greens to wear to fool the damn thing the OTHER way, so it will toss me in with some geared folks. (Ok so I’m kidding there…but only HALF kidding…)

In closing, to be perfectly fair, I’ve had some GREAT groups using the dungeon finder tool as well. I actually had what I’d call an “ok” group for Oculus, which would probably be a good group anywhere else. I’ve also run across some great players in a few of those random dungeons. As much bitching as I’ve done in this post, the tool is a great way to knock out a few dungeons fast, and much better than the old LFG system…but…the next 497 DPS hunter is out there…waiting…

Podcast Number 2: Patches And Sauce

Fen — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:57:04 +0000

This week Fen, Esta and Sauce talk about their experiences in the new raid content, patch day, the new dungeons, and all things patch 3.3 and beyond.

We introduce Sauce, talk about how we came to know him, and Fen reveals that before he knew Sauce well he didn’t think highly of him. Esta’s cats and Fen’s dogs do their best to destroy the show.

Off we go into this week’s topics:

PATCH DAY:

How was your patch day?

Dungeon Finder

New Instances (cannot be launched)

NEW RAIDS:

Our opinions and experiences of all of the new bosses in depth

(Jetpacks burn the dingleberries off of Bear asses)

New reputation rings!

(Bastard Paladins can wear anything)

FIXES AND NOTES:

Raid:

Epic item drop rate decreased

Tanking Bug

28 days later (we get new content)

Attempts increased on Icecrown bosses

Dungeon:

Halls of Reflection ramp fixed

Epic item drop chance reduced

Hilt + Auction House = profit

Dungeon finder & gear score

PVP:

Wintergrasp ranks for vehicles changed

Wintergrasp exploit(?) discussion

MISCELLANEOUS:

Authenticator = Core Hound Pups

Hunter pets level faster

DISCUSSION STUFF:

Joystiq.com’s interview with Frank Pearce

Blue post: Why do dungeon runners get/need tier gear?

Blue post: Has the game gotten too easy?

Gear Score add-on, and “GearScoreBreaker”

Armory changes coming in January (supposedly)

THIS WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

25 man raids versus 10 man raids. Which do you like better, what differences make them easier or harder, should they drop equal level gear?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Is Blizzard removing the immersion of the game by making travel too easy? (Automatically transport to and from dungeons, meeting stones, etc)

MUSIC FROM THIS SHOW:

Gars Trans: Picanté, Demo 2008

Diablo Swing Orchestra: The Butcher’s Ballroom, Balrog Boogie

Diablo Swing Orchestra: The Butcher’s Ballroom, Heroines

All music on the show is Creative Commons Licensed and is freely available. If you enjoy any of the music please support the artists that created it.

Turning Down People You Like

Fen — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:27:17 +0000

I’m in the unfortunate position of attempting to balance out our raiding roster. Overall I try and keep things balanced as best I can. Not too many people signing up, and not too few. This is a difficult thing (at best) to do in a guild that doesn’t have a strict attendance requirement. It’s also not easy to make sure you have enough of the correct classes and specs you need to try and fill raids correctly. Thankfully my guild doesn’t have a lot of turnover these days, but occasionally we still have to recruit, and that means turning people down on occasion.

Turning someone down for the guild who has a terrible application is easy. Turning down someone who has a terrible (and deserved) reputation on the server is also a piece of cake. Hell even kicking someone from the guild who is obviously deserving it isn’t a problem for me.

When we’re full and not recruiting though, it never fails, we ALWAYS get good people applying when we don’t have room in our raiding roster. When we’re recruiting and we’re short people for raids? Terrible players apply, that are obviously not at all what we were looking for, known guild-hoppers, people only after whatever gear the guild can get them, etc. It seems like we never get the people we want when we want them.

Telling good people “No” when they want to join the guild is perhaps my least favorite thing to do in WoW. The term “good” can mean several things. Nice people, great raiders, helpful, friendly…a combination of all of those things to varying degrees. Since the guild I’m in is a raiding guild, but not a complete hardcore one, I don’t strictly look at just gear or achievements, but I try and get an overall feel if someone will fit in with us.

Recently all of this became somewhat of an issue. Pre-patch 3.3 we were definitely running short on raid sign-ups. We canceled a couple of 25 man raids, but for the most part we hung in there and ran them (on normal) while missing people. One week we even did Vault + ToC with 17-21 people, only going over 20 on A’Nub…and for most of that going with 4 healers, one off-spec to boot.

As short as we were running, I knew if I started recruiting as soon as the patch dropped we’d be overfilling and there would be issues. No one that’s been in a stable guild for a long period of time wants to see themselves sitting out of raids because new people joined and “took their spot” (We don’t have assigned spots, but I know how it’s perceived).

Anyway, right before the patch we had a couple of friends of a long time member apply, and they are very nice people. I dreaded explaining the situation to them but when I did I tried my best to explain to them WHY I could take them into the guild but couldn’t have them sign up for raids. Not only was there the problem of us overfilling after the patch, but they just so happened to be the exact classes/specs that we have a metric ton of already. (If they were applicants from out of the blue I could have said no easily, but as friends of a member I want to try and be accommodating if I can.)

Whenever I try and do something like this, I just try and be honest and upfront about it, but I still end up feeling like an asshole. I know I’m just “doing my job”, but I hate the thought of coming off sounding like an elitist prick who could care less about anything except how his guild’s raids run. I’ve been on the other side of conversations like the ones I have with people, and it’s no fun.

At least if I’m up front about what we can offer, though I might sound like a jerk I am not making promises that I can’t keep. Besides that, if I were to say “yes” and just allow raid sign-ups to overfill, I’m creating an ever larger problem for the rest of the guild, who may then decide to come find me with torches and pitchforks and string me up or burn me at the stake.

Blizzard should make a non-combat pet that is guild leader only, and title it “The Lesser of Two Evils”. You don’t get to choose when to summon it, it just randomly rears it’s ugly head.

Patch Day Report

Fen — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:34:33 +0000

Patch day is the very definition of the term “mixed blessing”.

The week AFTER the patch? Fantastic. The day of the patch not so much. It’s like waiting to open Christmas presents, FINALLY getting to Christmas, and then getting beaten with a stick whenever you get near the presents. Perhaps I exaggerate.

Personally it was quite an odd patch day. I was able to log in shortly after I got home (west coast time), and after checking my “load out of date add-ons” box I logged right into Dalaran. The only thing that didn’t seem to work was Bartender, and that was only because the menu section was missing. I assumed it was due to the Dungeon Finder change, and a new button there or some such. That was something I could work around with keyboard bindings, so I decided to wait to update it (I’m sure every add-on provider was getting slammed last night).

I decided to try the new “Looking For Dungeon” dealy right away, so my buddy Deluxa and I teamed up and got in the queue as two DPS. I was curious how long it would take for us to find a tank and a healer, I figured not long with all of the people on last night. Sure enough, we got a full team rolling in short order. Getting into the dungeon though…a different story.

Pre-patch when our server was having problems with “additional instances cannot be launched”, messages, at least you could bang your head into the instance portal and see your screen. In this new level of hell that was the dungeon finder you would stay at the loading screen, with no progress bar filling mind you, for what seemed like an eternity before getting kicked back out. Only then would you see that minutes ago one or more of your groupmates decided they were going to go jump off a building or hang themselves rather than wait to get in an instance. The best part of all of this is, as soon as the first attempt was made to enter the instance, it would trigger your 15 minute cooldown, your lockout for joining another group such as this one.

Eventually Deluxa and I were able to get into an instance, and I was pleased to see the other members of my party (minus the healer) were pretty well geared. We were tossed into Utguarde Keep, and with this group I knew we were going to demolish the place. We rolled through the trash to the first boss and made short work of him. Unfortunately at that point, the instance made short work of our party and not only kicked us all out, but disbanded our party for us as well. All of a sudden I’m back in Dalaran, out of the group, trying to decide if Deluxa convinced the rest of the party to use the new “kick” option to punt me out (Deluxa is quite the character, but in this case it wasn’t him).

At that point, Deluxa and I decided to try our hand at the three new dungeons, so we loaded up a guild group and set off. Aside from the inability to get into the dungeons right away we actually had very little problems. I heard from other guildmates that said they were lagging out in the new instances unable to do anything, and then their characters would remain trapped online and in said instance for up to 30 minutes, during which time they would hop to alts and send themselves angry whispers expressing their displeasure.

We slowly worked our way through the three dungeons, only encountering problems heading from one to the next, until…

We finished the last fight of the last of the three dungeons. Slight spoiler:

The loot chest for the last fight is on an airship, which is “parked” on the edge of a cliff, with stairs leading up to the main deck of the ship. Any time any of us would set foot on the steps we would get disconnected. We were struggling to find a way to reach the chest when someone else mentioned that levitate was working for other people trying to get up the stairs, so we tried it, and voila! We didn’t alll make it, but eventually we got one person up there to pop the chest and then we were at least able to roll on loot. HOORAY! Some leather dropped for me that was at least interesting enough to look closer at later, and being the only leather wearer in the party I rolled on it and won it.

We then messed around a little bit trying to race up the steps on mounts with passengers, but to no avail. A few of us died falling through the stairs when we lagged out, so we decided to claim victory just in getting to open the chest and roll and decided to call it there. Only later did I notice: Though I won the boots, I never received them. I opened a GM ticket, which I expect to hear back from sometime around the release of the next expansion.

At the end of my night a full group of guild members decided to give the random dungeon finder one more try, so we hopped in a 5 man group and queued up. We wouldn’t get anything for having a pug person in the party, but we didn’t care. We got Stratholme, and we attempted to use the “Port to dungeon” option but to no avail. One thing we did discover however: By actually physically running to the instance opening and slamming heads into it a few times, we were able to get in almost immediately.

We started our adventure into Stratholme, only to discover the NPC you need to talk to to trigger the starting events was….not there. No way to complete the instance. We hopped back out, waited for our debuff to drop (again) and tried again, this time getting Gundrak. This we were able to get into by again physically running someone over to the instance, and this time we got in and were able to plow through it in short order. Two more Badges of Frost later and I was off to bed.

All in all patch day could have been worse. Not perfect, but still fun.

How was your patch day?

Podcast Number 1: Throw The First 10 Out

Fen — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:31:44 +0000

This week Fen is joined by Bacon and Esta, and they chat about specific 3.3 notes that they find interesting, among other things.

First we introduce everyone, and talk about our WoW background, our guild’s background, and what we’re looking for the show to be. (We learn Bacon has a cell phone that sounds like an alien whistling, and Bacon is also a pro PS3 mechanic.)

We jump into the 3.3 notes of interest, here’s a few highlights of what we talk about:

RAIDING:

Taunt diminishing returns changing

Sapphiron/KT easily accessible

“Looking For Raid”

Weekly Raid Quests

PVP:

Minimum gear requirement for pick-up groups?

Vote Kick feature

Can your group leader decide you’re done?

Deserter debuff for dungeons

Dungeon Finder rewards

Perky The Pug Pet…throw yourself to the wolves

Any party member may mark targets (yikes…)

SHAME SQUARE!

DUNGEONS:

Battleground daily quests will reward 25 arena points…will this change PVP?

All player pets now get 100% of their master’s resilience

Unit nameplates visual range

Unit nameplates line-of-sight limitations in battlegrounds

New extra stats on Arena Set Bonuses

MISCELLANEOUS:

Quest Tracking Feature (Hooray for broken UIs on patch day!)

Random Crash fix?

Reputation grinds sped up!

Top level shoulder and head enchants (from rep) are bind on account

Hodir rep gains increased

New fishing derby

THIS WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Is getting gear too easy, and does Blizzard make their own content irrelevant?

NEXT WEEK’S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

25 man raids versus 10 man raids. Which do you like better, what differences make them easier or harder, should they drop equal level gear?

Music from this show:

Gars Trans: Picanté, Demo 2008

DJ Kryptide: All_I_Need(Onza Remix)

Usta: Pierwszy pocałunek, Bańka mydlana

trustno1: Spacerun, Spacerun Part 1

What are YOU stockpiling for 3.3?

Fen — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:59:48 +0000

Every major content patch brings out the folks that leap at the opportunity to stockpile things that they know will be money-makers.

Personally, I’ve never been great at making gold. I just don’t have the gift to remember prices of things on the auction house, nor the desire to write everything down. My gold comes from the few daily quests I have to FORCE myself to do, but mostly from picking herbs. When I say “picking herbs”, I mean the herbs I pick when I can get my ass out of Dalaran. If I’m doing nothing in-game, I’m usually running around the stairs near one of the banks in Dalaran. (SOMETIMES…I am actually conversing with someone in /whisper, or /officer, or what-have-you…but usually I’m just gabbing in vent and running around in circles like a moron.)

The herbs I pick go either to my alchemist to make flasks for myself or for the guild bank, or to the auction house. The past few nights I’ve picked a small amount of herbs, and I plan to pick more to stockpile. The real winner of course will be Frost Lotus, if not the various flasks the Lotus make, that are a virtual requirement for raiding. Many elixirs are great as well, and I know some of my guildmates prefer elixirs depending on the situation.

Enchanting mats are always a good one, new raids and new heroics mean new gear. The same can be said for gems and popular gem cuts, and even leatherworking leg armor or spellthread.

The obvious stuff that will DROP in price will be things like Crusader Orbs- anything that is used to produce current i-level gear will drop in value from where it is now, making it more accessible to folks not running current content.

The real question is…what is YOUR “thing” you’ll be trying to horde (cough) to reap profits on when the patch hits?

First podcast coming soon!

Fen — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:47:33 +0000

All I can say is I’m working on it, heh.

I’ll mention in advance I’m terribly new at this and my sound quality will probably be terrible. I’ll probably stumble all over everything and stutter and stammer. I’ll probably get the levels wrong and some stuff will be TOO LOUD and other stuff will be too quiet.

Other than that it will be great!

I’ll come back and edit this post as I know more about when the first show is expected…

Waiting for 3.3 is destroying my life

Fen — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:25:16 +0000

Perhaps that is going a bit overboard. I will say though, it’s been a long haul waiting for 3.3, and it at least FEELS like I’ve been waiting for the next patch since about two weeks after A’Nub was opened up.

My guild is NOT hardcore in 25 man content, we didn’t clear everything immediately, and we still only run the 25 man version on normal mode. In 10-man content we’ve clobbered everything on heroic, including A Tribute to Insanity and A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity. The latter of those is one that I really like, because it doesn’t allow you to simply over-gear the content and come back for the achievement…you HAVE to wear a specific item level or lower to complete it…but I digress.

Calling the Coliseum raid a “filler raid” is an understatement. It was a novel idea, to create a raid that is basically a 10 or 25 man version of The Ring of Blood quest line in the last expansion, or The Amphitheater of Anguish quest line in the current content. When I first heard about ToC, I was pretty excited (“Finally no trash pulls!”). I was slightly disappointed when the content wasn’t all released at once, but hey, it was new content, and though we still had things to do in Ulduar we were ready for new content.

Week after week of killing the same bosses in the same room DID eventually get kind of old though. I didn’t realize how much I actually missed running around Ulduar, and how much I actually enjoyed the change of scenery from boss to boss. Even though there were some interesting fights, there really wasn’t much interaction with the environment other than A’Nub, which I tend to like.

The good news is the folks over at MMO-Champion have a good hunch that the patch will drop December 8th/9th. That’s good news for everyone, especially guild leaders and raid leaders.

The REAL challenge of 3.2 has been just running day-to-day guild management things, and hoping beyond hope that raids fill to the extent that we can run 25 man content on scheduled raid nights. I am excruciatingly aware of raids running short, and the attendance problems any guild like ours faces. I am also well aware of the “I’ve got my drops, why should I raid” attitude, which thankfully are few and far between in my guild, but still exist to degrees.

The big difficulty seeing raids run short is the question of recruiting. I can’t in good conscience recruit for ANY position until I see 3.3 drop, and see what kind of numbers we have then. Raids that have been running with 18-22 sign-ups may very well hit 27-30 after the patch when people return to see new content. Actively recruiting before 3.3 is just asking for trouble, and in the meantime we’ve been making the best of it running raids short.

Thankfully we’ve actually been able to run our normal night of Toc 25, Onyxia and Vault with well under 25 people, one night we even ran it with 18-21, and 4 healers at that. I think overall we only had to cancel 1-2 raids during that time, minus not scheduling one the day after Thanksgiving.