The birthday girl reports Blackhand progression.

Since I had to raid Thursday night and then catch an early Friday morning flight to LGA, I tried to save time by writing up a blog entry about our Blackhand progression while we were working it. Unfortunately, our performance varied so much over the course of the night, I was having trouble deciding on an angle.

445pm
Today is my birthday, and I couldn't have asked for a better present that my guild's Mythic Blackhand kill.

545pm
It would have been nice if we could have gotten a M Blackhand kill for my birthday, but sadly our progress has been riddled with attendance issues and constant relearning.

630pm
After expecting us to kill Blackhand every raid day for the past two weeks, the boss went down surprisingly easily. I'm now convinced that pep talks are what a guild needs to be successful. Oh wait. Just kidding, because we wiped again.

705pm
Thanks to Blizzard's massive wave of bans in the middle of our M Blackhand progression, we've had to completely reorganize our core team. Oddly enough, we're still failing at the same point we always are in phase 2 even with new people and losing all of our former god comp boomkins and hunters. Is "bring the class, not the player" a myth at a certain level of skill?

830pm
While early kills are all about min/maxing and class comp, relatively later kills like today's is all about not being terrible at this game.

920pm
Omg my flight leaves in a few hours, and we're going over time. I need to pack!!!

955pm
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!! US TOP 100, BABY! CLUTCH STEEZ!

See you soon, NYC!

-Avia.

Consider this an experiment in karma.

 

Mythic Blackhand is upon my guild, and as we're talking strategy and how to down him in a reasonable amount of time, the discussion reaches the issue of class comp and how certain people have to make sacrifices to ensure we don't make the fight any harder than it has to be. Be it certain melee making room for rogues or melee making room for any ranged class at all, the core roster is working itself to conform to proven effective compositions, and we're pulling all the undergeared alts from the bench. In this final push for a decent rank, a select few players who care about the good of the raid over personal attachment to their classes or characters they've played for years are putting on a stoic face and honorably stepping up to a new challenge...

BUT NOT ME HAHAHA!

I GET TO CHAOS WAVE BALCONY ADDS!

WARLOCK FOREVER!

HALAAAA!!!

-Avia.

We didn't kill it yet. Soon™ though.

Damn F&B WeakAura ruining my screenshot.

I was really hoping that I could round out January's posts with an Imperator kill and all the associated fanfare, but unfortunately, everyone in our raid team seems to be taking turns popping runes each pull so we spend all night doing to same three phases over and over. No matter, because the experience of raiding is the fun of raiding. Though killing bosses might be rewarding, it is only a small part of what can only be described as an entirely unique environment, because in progression raiding, one can be a part of a combination friendly get-together/disciplined and structured team. Of course, these two aspects are constantly affecting each other in the dynamic of the group, which leads to our venerable GM having to pull lines like...

"Do I have to beg you guys to not be retarded every time? I have to beg my kids to not be retarded. I have to beg you guys too?"

And conversations between the leadership and raid members like...

"We said don't burst AoE! I see what you hunters are doing."
"That was NOT hunters. Jesus fucking Christ. I don't know how many times we have to explain this to you."

Then there is always the end-of-the-night, super-hyped pep talk.

"Just one more pull, guys. Just one more pull, and then we have all weekend... either to celebrate or to think about what we did wrong."

The poor guy. I feel like I should send him a fruit basket with a very apologetic note and a coupon for a happy ending in Chinatown.

-Avia.

The Week in Highmaul

 

After the frenzied rush of leveling for two days followed by an unnerving raid-less calm for two weeks, I am once again entrenched in the middle of almost nightly group content. Currently, I am hanging out alone at the Darkmoon Faire, finally taking the time to relax with a mug of what is probably disgusting tasting alcohol and reflect on my week running two alt/main split raids in Highmaul. With 6/7H bosses down and Imperator still to go tomorrow, my guild has been performing... as expected. No need to hype it up, people. It's only "heroic" after all. Come Tuesday, we're going to start getting our asses handed to us by OP class stacking, bench drama, and oh yea Mythic mechanics. But for now, it's just a lot of hours and the feeling of accomplishment when we finish encounters for the first time. After all, regardless of how satisfying the actual fight was, in the end, a nerdgasm is a nerdgasm.

Check out our kill videos below for what we've cleared so far, and stay tuned to see if we have as much trouble with Imperator as other guilds did!


-Avia.

RP Your Life! was live on the floor of Blizzcon 2014 and reported nothing.

In previous years, I have covered Blizzcon and reported its breaking WoW news with the same fervent zeal associated with KPop fansites and quasi-celebrities of Twitter. Unfortunately, this year's Blizzcon was all about Overwatch, and the news for WoW was sparse, bordering on nonexistent. However, that doesn't mean I didn't learn anything, for the two convention days and the week of guild "bonding activities" surrounding them were quite eye-opening. Let me chronicle here the important life lessons I gleaned from my vacation, from which I spent the past two days recovering.

Traveling as a group in matching T-shirts is both awesome and embarrassing. I admit I couldn't help but feel like a total badass rolling into Blizzcon in a crew of thirty proud nerds representing our guild. It made me feel like I finally understood the meaning of camaraderie. There was a sense that we all belonged to something that transcended a mere collection of individual relationships. We were a team, and I loved being a part of it. That is... until we started yelling things like "FIREBALL!" and "BE QUIET, PIZZA!" in the middle of the convention center, and I realized there was no way to pretend I didn't know them when I was wearing the exact same shirt.

If you give people an option to "collect them all," then they will stand on line for two hours to do exactly that. Even I ended up getting suckered into waiting in that line full of people with way too much expendable income just so I could buy a limited edition pin for a friend who I haven't seen in years. Apparently a gold-colored Blizzcon exclusive Murky pin is serious enough business to call in a favor from a random Facebook acquaintance. Write that down for the next edition of Emily Post's Etiquette.

The following things and alcohol do not mix: cinnamon flavor, hot tubs, hunters who try to eat throw pillows when they're drunk, tiny Asian girls named Avia who suck at both of the tasks involved in Flip Cup, and cinnamon flavor. Yes, I wrote that last one twice on purpose because I want to know who decided that shit was a good idea. It tasted like a Christmas tree on fire.

If you put an LED candle into a drunkenly passed out man's hand, he'll eventually wake up and try to take a sip from it.

See you guys on the other side of the expansion.

-Avia.

This post kind of makes me seem like an asshole, but I'm really just awkward.

Compared to IRL, my rules for socializing within my guild are quite different, especially when it comes to fellow raiders and especially in a 25-man guild. When I'm out at a club or a party or even just standing outside of a building having a cigarette, I'll interact. I'll talk to people and find out what they're about. If someone turns out to be a douchebag, I can give the polite smile and incrementally edge away. But if we have similar interests and a good rapport, we can totally be facebook friends.

OMG FRIENDS WITH AVIA?!

However, when it comes to guildies, I've always kept a policy that I like to call the "office cleaning lady." That is, I'm my usual amount of friendly to anyone who wants to speak with me, and for anyone who does not, I'm just a person they see every day and that's it. It's not to be an anti-social jerk or because I particularly hate people. Rather, it's a strategy I utilize to minimize the situations in which I end up realizing that I spend almost twenty hours a week with someone I probably couldn't stand in real life. Sure, that happens outside of gaming too, and working anywhere inevitably involves being courteous to people one wouldn't necessarily invite to a birthday party. But in WoW, it's highly more likely that I could run into someone who thinks "God hates gays" or asks stupid questions like "If plants had feelings, would you still be vegetarian?" than I ever would in the protective bubble that I've created by living in NYC for years and then never leaving my apartment after moving away. Somehow, the raid environment feels more volatile than the real-life workplace, and every personal relationship or spat of drama has the potential to create toxic tension that makes raiding unbearably uncomfortable or to even dismantle the entire team.

That's not to say I don't develop and value friendships in game, because I definitely do. However, after years of semi-success as an office cleaning lady who manages to befriend one or two of the pencil pushers and trades a "good morning" and a "good night" with several others, I've somehow found myself willingly attending a convention at which almost thirty of my guildies from all over the continent are gathering and sharing the same house...

It's time to pull out my rusty social skills and polish them with some alcohol. I'll be back with some Blizzcon swag, embarrassing photos, and of course all the big convention news because RP Your Life! is heading to California this weekend.

-Avia.

Wildstar made it easier to be a "Pie Vendor."

A guildie informed me of an amazing feature in Wildstar with which I'm going to have as much fun as possible in case the devs decide that it's abuse and remove it. After all, video games aren't about fun. They're about spending hours trying to figure out arbitary Gold objectives in buggy adventures. They're about learning to craft an item and then relying on RNG every single time to craft it again. They're about trying to click on the Commodities Exchange vendor when peoples' hoverbikes are camped on top of it. WTB collision detection.

Anyway, inspired by the fact that the first person to shell out the five gold to start our Wildstar guild went ahead and named it "CRISPY DONKEYTACOS," I found out that I can switch my nameplate affiliation with the name of one of my "Circles." They cost nothing to make, and I can have it say almost anything I want. Let the antics begin!

Ayaliss

<Queen of Ratchet>

I never stop being queen of the goblins.

Professor Ayaliss

<Dept of Sentient Botany>

It seems pretty important to study talking vegetables.

 Ayaliss

<and the Snowmen>

Performing at my home lot every Saturday night.

 Ayaliss, PhD

<Free Pelvic Exams>

Gloves optional.

-Avia.

Meet me at Blizzcon 2014!

Guess who got her Blizzcon tickets?!

Anaheim better get ready, because the preparations have officially begun for my guild's 2014 invasion. Fill the bang bus with lube, dental dams, and that annoying glitter that you can't get off of your clothes without burning them, because it's going to be a PARTAY!!!

Not exactly the three-way I expected.

Still pending is an important decision: to cosplay or not to cosplay? I've been to plenty of anime conventions, and it's never fun personally unless I'm dressed up with everyone else. However, as a new member of a reasonably competitive guild, perhaps guild decorum is more important than running around the convention roleplaying as a slutty version of my favorite Old God. After all, we're serious raiders socializing with our peers at a national community event. One must behave in a professional manner.

I'll think about it.

-Avia.

Get the costumes ready for Blizzcon 2014.

Much to my dismay, Blizzard announced Blizzcon 2014, which I'm sure will be fun and games for all involved, but it also means that this expansion is probably not coming out until around Christmas. T_T I'm going to have to pace my QQ a bit better since there are many more months of class changes and reworking of those changes about which I must throw up my arms in incredulity every time someone datamines a grammar edit on a tooltip.

However, as my new guild schedules a major get-together every year that coincides with Blizzcon, I am actually planning on going this year. Stay tuned to see if I manage to get tickets with the new "Walmart on Black Friday" sale system and get to hang out with the crew that proudly brings you priceless content like this:

-Avia.

Initiate Blues

Things To Do While Waiting on the Bench

Read a book.

Read forums.

Cheerlead.

Research your class.

Alt-tab another game.

Play with yourself.

Dance like no one is watching.

Cry for eternity.

-Avia.

Making friends in the military starts with your sub-unit.

What it felt like:

 

There were plenty of people in our battalion but only a few of us in our platoon. Three warlocks against the forces of Orgrimmar defending their corrupt warchief. If that's all the lieutenant thought we needed to succeed in our mission, then so be it.

A little away from us, the healers huddled around a pile of complicated charts and graphs, their officer briefing the new priest recruit on his assignments. The tanks seemed to have their strategy set and were sitting quietly, keeping an eye on the enemy that marched in the distance. Meanwhile, one of the death knights had fallen asleep, and the other melee were taking turns teabagging him. How ironic.

"You alright?" asked a fellow warlock, sitting next to me.

"Yea," I replied, a little too quickly. My fortified rations sat unmoving in my stomach.

He patted me on the back with a heavy hand. I felt some of the anxiety dissipate under the pressure. "Just do your job," he said, staring off in the same direction as the tanks. "It's important to get the mines down before they reach the ranged troops. Just kill the mines, and if you're still alive at the end... Well, that'll really impress the officers."

"Ok," I said. "Got it." Just stay alive. Stay alive.

"Ready check!" yelled the lieutenant.

We all leapt to our feet, the death knight swatting away someone's crotch as he did so. I adjusted my staff and my shoulders with shaking hands.

"Get into positions! We engage in twelve seconds!"

Falling in line next to the other warlock, I looked over at him. He caught my gaze and smiled before turning towards the boss, a potion at the ready in his hand. I clutched mine too and faced forward.

It was time to prove myself.

What really happened:

 

[warlockchannel] Fellow warlock: Just stay alive.
[warlockchannel] Me: Kk.

-Avia.

Exciting Times in a New Guild

Guess what? After all those Braveheart theatrics last week, the priest and I found a new guild anyway and transferred off.

Yea yea, go ahead and try to say that we abandoned them, but believe me that almost all of them are simply relieved to not have to endure Blackfuse anymore. Now they can finally go off and farm D3 and chase tail all they want without dragging themselves begrudgingly to raid and alt-tabbing Hearthstone the whole time.

Why do I say "almost all of them" are relieved? Because there is always that one angry guy who feels betrayed, but it's not because we left the guild during progression. Actually, he thought that the three of us were going to find a new guild together. Now, for some reason, he feels entitled to be all emo mad like a hypocrite when we saw him applying for guilds by himself a week ago. Caught.

Anyway, the new guild is 25 man, and it is a huge adjustment after raiding with a close-knit 10 man group of RL friends and people who have played together for years. It's daunting to now have to get to know people in a 25 man setting. I'm finding it difficult to approach anyone, and I can't even look at that list of names in Mumble and think of opening my mouth and putting the spotlight on myself. Unfortunately, I also feel a pressure to get noticed and stand out as more than just a number on a DPS meter since right now that number isn't so great. You try being thrown into H Garrosh and killing him without ever practicing phase 4. I was so nervous, my stomach figured I was being chased by a lion on the Serengeti and stopped working.

It's still early, so hopefully OG Priest and I will settle in with time. That OG stands for "Old Guild" by the way, not "Original Gangster."

Maybe it's both.

-Avia.

The end of a year... and an expansion.

My guild hasn't been doing anywhere near as well in Dragon Soul as we did in Firelands. After we reached the
DPShealidiot check that is Ultraxion and learned that a third of our team can't click a button that saves their lives, we lost a bunch of core members to a mass server transfer and had to fill spots with our
benchnew recruitsincompetent casuals for a week. We only just downed Deathwing on Thursday and it was... anticlimactic. I'd already seen the grand finale cut scene thanks to easy-mode LFR in which I "won the game" with thirty minutes of minimal effort. Even the comforting and encouraging words from Thrall didn't uplift my warrior spirit since I knew I didn't deserve them. Usually, it takes at least a couple weeks of dedicated teamwork to get some cool RP that makes the player feel like her efforts contributed to the safety of Azeroth. Yet, I got to celebrate the end of the Cataclysm with... random fucks from Whisperwind server. I couldn't even jump up and down and hug anyone without feeling like a creeper.

In real life news, I'm on winter break, so I have four weeks to
apply to internshipslearn a foreign languagecamp rare spawns in Outlands. I've also been trying to gear up my druid alt, but I've had little success due to the following well-known rules of RNG:

1. Your main will never roll higher than a 35 on important loot.
2. Your alt will roll better than your main...
3. But your second alt will get all rare pets and mounts and win gear upgrades that boost ilvl by 10 points at a time.

My fourth 85, a god-awful ret pally that forgets to use its cooldowns, is now better geared than my precious druid healer that I actually leveled to play rather than be my disenchanting slave. Every time my druid loses a roll, I sigh in knowing resignation, and every time I win a roll on my pally, I want to quit WoW and start buying winning lottery tickets for people I don't care about.

Anyway, in a few days, it's going to be my favorite holiday! I'll be doing my usual New Year's Eve thang of going out to
danceget fucked up and danceget REALLY fucked up and dance. Then the next day, I'm going to to bow to my elders and get cash.

Being Korean is awesome.

-Avia.

P.S. Aggra is pregnant. Thrall better watch his back.

Guild motto: Awesome on accident.

Yesterday, my raid group and I got the Not an Ambi-Turner achievement. ON PURPOSE!

Why the distinction? For my guild, one has to specify whether we meant to do something or we just fucked up so badly that we made a fight hard-mode unwittingly. Last week, we got Ragnar-O's, not because we're super badass and spit in the face of the hardest boss in the game, but because so many DPS had died by the last phase that we ended up with EIGHT meteors at the end of the fight. Even I think that's retarded, and I was there.

When BWD was current, we got Aberrant Behavior without planning on it because the melee didn't bother kicking any of the add casts. It was three minutes of "kick the fucking aberrations! The off-tank is going to diiie!" followed by "oh cool we got an achievement." It makes the ulcers worthwhile, I suppose.

If only more achievements were based on negligence rather than strategy or attentiveness. We've already given up on Do a Barrel Roll! without ever seriously considering it, because there is no serious consideration of that achieve for a group of 25 tunnel-visioning space cases like us. We've even managed to fail Only the Penitent every single week since the release of Firelands despite our pleading that the (virtually) uncoordinated stay behind just STAY BEHIND THE LINE FOR THE LOVE OF CENARIUS!

But alas.

Maybe next week.

-Avia.

PATCH DAY!!!

Yesterday, my guild and I downed our first Firelands boss, and much to my surprise, it was the one I figured we would wipe on for weeks: Lord Rhyolith. As anyone in a raiding guild knows, Rhyolith is probably one of the easiest bosses in the instance, so it really shouldn’t be a problem for any group… except if the raid has trouble adapting to stupid gimmicks that Blizzard thinks will be awesome and unique fight mechanics.

Besides certain people always standing in fire, all the mages pulling aggro, and our raid leader being so “outspoken” that we have to keep replacing people who ragequit, I’d consider gimmicky fights major problems for us as a group. Personally, I hate them, not because they are particularly difficult, but because the Vent talk always sound sooo stupid.

“Hit the gong NOW! HIT THE GONG HIT THE GONG!”

“MOAR PYRITE!”

“I told you guys to hit the LEFT foot!”

“But someone else said to hit the right foot.”

“Only I call out which foot to attack! If you had hit the LEFT foot instead of the RIGHT foot, he wouldn’t have run into the LAVA!”

This is usually the point at which I wonder what I’m doing with my life.

We also made the decision of who would be getting the legendary staff first, and… the guild is still intact and didn’t get ripped apart by drama YAAAY! The monarch and his aristocracy chose our boomkin. I’m just glad it wasn’t one of the mages since I like it when the tanks tank things, and that staff doesn’t do much when the wearer pulls aggro and dies.

Damn mages.

-A lock.

Tits Team #1!

My old guild had "girls".
IRL, I’m one of those girls who has very few female friends, hanging out with and talking to mostly guys. It’s probably because I never had much experience spending time with women despite being one myself. Plus, there’s that one-sided sexual tension I feel when she’s really hot. Goddamn social awkwardness/bisexuality dual spec.

This week, I’ve started reaching out to reinforce my connection with other women in the easiest way I know how: in game. Somehow, my guild has managed to recruit a large percentage of the female gaming population on the server, formerly only rumored to exist. My fellow ladies and I in our raid group created a password-protected channel called TeamTits, a penis-free zone where we can talk freely about... the raid. So far, our conversations have been pretty limited to rolling our virtual eyes when Vent chatter becomes overly testosterone charged about MineCraft. But I’m sure we’ll eventually use the intimate and confidential space to discuss important issues about being women in a predominantly male arena and how to consistently overcome Recount’s glass ceilings to top DPS and healing charts.

Unfortunately, someone confessed to our raid leader that she didn’t want to be included in Team Tits, and she didn’t tell him why. The rest of us can only guess that she either thinks the name is offensive or she is just as uncomfortable with other women as I am. If it’s the latter, then there’s no way I can let her leave the team! After all, I’m sucking it up, seeking camaraderie with my fellow women, and grasping for common topics beyond the fact that we’re in a 25-man raid group full of one-up’ers. You know... when someone tells a story, they have to tell better one. We have twenty of them. All one-up’ing each other. For four hours.

Hopefully, it’s just contention about the word “tits,” which admittedly is a little crass. If that’s the case, I’ll propose that we change the name to OvaryOffensive. Or BoobBrigade. Or BraBattalion.

I’m full of these.

-Avia.