I probably win about 2/3 of the time, maybe more. Which is probably not because I’m such a brilliant PVPer, though it might have something to do with my being a healer & just having an extra healer on the team makes it that much more likely to win.
Work has been hell + RealID is leaving me rather unenthusiastic. I’ve stuck parental controls on my own account and turned RealID access firmly off to forestall issues.
So last night I said fuck it and rounded up a DPS DK alt to back me up as I threw myself into Ramps as a pally tank. :eek:
Zoned in, announced that I was a noob tank and to please watch their threat. The group were very good about waiting for me to get aggro on the lot before charging in. Although my DK guildie would throw me curveballs by deathgripping casters or pulling another lot, I still managed fine. But as it turns out my only real problem was getting the dragon’s attention before it barbecued the DPS.
I will say though, I can’t wait until I get Divine Plea. I was drinking after every pull or two.
ETA: Looks like the gigantic howl of outrage finally got through to Blizzard. 
Still wondering what the hell they were thinking, and I’m sure a lot of people are too.
Victory!
nah
Yeah. I wonder what the final subscription cancellation numbers looked like?
And it should really be noted that the buzz has always been that Blizzard in-house management and workers (including the blues) HATED the idea. It was Activision (and Kotick) that was pushing it on them and forbidding them to criticize it publicly.
Kotick is a crazy bastard. He’s like Blizzard’s own personal Satan. Every decision he makes is calculated to wring as much money out of the game as possible now without caring too much about its long-term survival.
Anybody care to copy-paste under a spoiler for those of us who can’t read that from work?
No big shock there.
Sure.[spoiler]Hello everyone,
I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.
It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.
I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.
In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( About - Blizzard Entertainment ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning.
Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment[/spoiler]I can live with the RealID friends list existing, as it’s more compartmentalized and easier to ignore than the forum bullshit.
Well, that’s a good start. While it still frustrates me to not have access to some great *bonus *features because they still insist on refusing to allow me to (a) have an alias and (b) hide my online status, that’s nothing compared to permanently losing existing, basic, *essential *functionality.
ETA:
Honestly, I can’t imagine that a bunch of in-house people didn’t try to warn them about this shitstorm. I really hope some of these moneygrubbing Activision fuckers get taken to task over this.
Bwahahaha.
============================
MEMO
FROM: Blizzard fans and employees
TO: Activision
Keep your hands the hell off our games! Just collect your money and keep your mouth shut about how things involving Blizzard properties should be handled. If you stop making insane amounts of money, we’ll talk again. Until then, zip it.
No love,
50,000+ (many, many plus) of us
Message received loud and clear, methinks. I just hope it sticks.
AFAIK, that’s not correct. We’re moving from ~40-talent trees to ~30-talent trees; that’s a reduction of 1/4, not 1/2. (However, I think we may have something like half as many *points *to spend–certainly not picking them up every level.)
[/QUOTE]
Unique talent == each specific ability
Talent == all total levels of unique talents together.
I have my JC up to 420+ now, and a plethora of lower gems that I can just handover to you…provided I made the right ones for tanks. I’ll check and see.
Sounds like we need to do some 5-man guild runs…
Nice achievement, jayjay 
The Spanish-language version would be Mosca Cojonera (a fly on your balls). Now you guys know another Spanish insult!
Well, my troll hunter (level 56 w00t!) has begun raising himself a Venomhide Ravasaur 
He was tooling around Tanaris and came across that wrecked gnome “race car” just west of Gadgetzan (I’d have liked to have been there to see that thing come flying in from the Shimmering Flats!), and decided to inspect the wreckage, curious as to whether there would be a little gnome corpse in the cockpit. No corpse - it appears the driver walked away, because of … airbags! Seriously, there are deployed airbags in that thing
And that made me wonder … could the pilot have been Linken, that confused, amnesiac gnome over at Marshal’s Refuge in Un’Goro?
That’d explain how his brain got addled! Kudos on spotting airbags, I never noticed that before.
Nah, he got to Un’Goro on a raft, but don’t ask me how he ended up at Marshal’s Refuge since the raft is down by the ravasaurs.
Well sure. He hit his head in the racer crash, wandered all the way to Un’Goro* instead of a couple hundred yards in the opposite direction, where he would have found Gadgetzan, stumbled across water and in his confused stated decided he needed to build a raft. Soon after, he was discovered and rescued by Marshal and his crew, who, if you recall, originally had a camp nearby until the wildlife chased them to their present location (there’s that one quest where you have to go to their old camp to retrieve some equipment that was left behind). And if you kill enough of those ravasaurs, one of them will eventually drop Marshal’s journal, so he had to have been in that area at some point.
I would like to see Blizzard someday explain the raft, along with the threshadon carcasses you find around Un’Goro. As well as where the turtles in Shimmering Flats are getting all those fish.
ETA: *Oo oo oo! He rode on the back of Tooga, that lost turtle you find wandering around a bit south of the entrance to Un’Goro who gives you the quest to escort him back to his wife clear over on the other side of the zone! Tooga was on his way to becoming lost, happened upon the crash, and Linken joined him, riding as far as the Un’Goro entrance!
That quest was the closest I have ever come to crying playing WoW. It was so sweet! I was totally like, I need to get this dude back to his wife like right now.
There was another one where you escorted a spouse to the other spouse, wasn’t there?