Bruce Almighty 2

 

*15 years in the future*

Matticus lounged on the sofa catching the latest highlights on Sportsnet. Those damned Canucks have come close every year but have yet to drink from Lord Stanley’s Cup. He took a sip from his Alexander Keith’s and heard the sound of foot steps descending. A little girl clutching her teddy bear stood there rubbing her eyes.

"Hanna, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you asleep yet?" Asked a concerned Matticus, "It’s late and you have to go to school tomorrow!"

"I can’t sleep!" She squeaked.

"Well come over here to your uncle Matticus and we can watch some hockey together."

Hannah waddled over and climbed onto the sofa. She snuggled next to her favourite uncle for a few minutes.

"Uncle Matt, can you tell me a story?" The little girl asked.

"I’d love to, angel. What would you like to hear about?"

"Tell me about the time you killed that big fish!"

"It was a such a long time ago, Hannah, but if you insist."

*scene fades to Shattrath City*

Act 1

cant-sheep

I was on my first tour of duty with Carnage. I happened to have the night off and I decided to relax by visiting the Shattrath City bazaar. The night life tends to be exotic. There’s all manners of sights and smells to take in and this night was no different. At the time, Carnage was running a joint operation with a couple of other Guilds in the Caverns of Serpentshrine.

Gnomish engineers and researchers of the violet eye developed a device that allowed members of Carnage to communicate to each other telepathically. Unfortunately, like most Gnomish devices, these often had a few quirks and features left out such as the lack of an off button. It was called the Gnomish Communications Handsfree Audio Transmitter (also known as GCHAT). This allowed Carnage to keep each other updated on the various activities they were doing.

Because of this, he knew that the operation was sustaining heavy casualties. The creature known as the Lurker below was giving them a hard time.

"Matt, we just lost one of our medics. We need you in here right now." I heard over my headset amidst the sounds of screaming and battle.

It was Keruen. He was the one running the op.

I sighed to myself. So much for a peaceful night, I thought.

"Understood. Can I expect a summon?" I transmitted back.

"Negative! L Z is hot! There’s too many hostiles and there is no way our locks can get a lock on yo-". The transmission cut off abruptly. He must’ve been shot.

I ran to the Scryer armory and grabbed a mace and a shield off the weapons rack. The Scryers and I had an understanding. The Shard of the Virtuous sat holstered and the Tryptech shield was placed firmly on my back. I placed two fingers in my mouth and blew causing a distinct shrill. Nothing happened at first but she was coming, I knew. Sure enough, the majestic gryphon gently landed in front of me and lowered her neck. I climbed onboard and grabbed her reins.

"To Serpentshrine. They need us, my friend." I whispered into her ear.

Her powerful wings flapped once and they shot up towards the sky towards the Zangar marshes away from the forests in Terrokar. He looked back down at the sight of the city growing smaller before turning his face forward to where his friends needed him most.

"There’s no time to waste. The Nagas below can’t reach us at this altitude, but there’s too many of them. I’ll have to do a HALO jump." 

The gryphon chirped her acknowledgement and continued her ascent. It felt like an eternity. GCHAT was quiet. Quick inquiries generated no responses.

A squawk caused me to look up. We were approaching the drop zone. I patted the gryphon and stood up while she slowed her speed. The superstructure of the drain below was enormous. One wrong move and I could end have impaled myself. Open my chute too early and the nagas can shoot me out of the sky. Open it too late and at this speed the water could very well behave like land and kill me on impact.

My mount squawked again. It sounded like she was impatient for me to get off her back. I smiled inwardly and somersaulted backwards into the large lake that was 30000 feet below. The ground was getting a lot closer and a lot bigger. Dots turned into large snakes. I didn’t have a choice and I yanked my cord. I felt the lurch of the chute seemingly carry me upwards and slowing my fall. The naga patrols weren’t looking up thankfully.

Act 2

 

I landed into the water and unhooked my chute. The great thing about it was that the chute dissolved in water so there would be no signs of an intruder. I swam into the main sewer line before emerging out into another cavern. There were no guards in sight anywhere. Our forces must have steamrolled them early.

I pressed onwards into the largest cave and entered the lift. I mentally conjured up the image of a lightning bolt in my head and had my palm out facing forward in the event I ran into unfriendly stragglers. As I stepped off the lift and crept onto the raised platforms, I noticed there were many corpses everywhere. Nagas were torn in half or had huge holes in them. Bog lords were partially incinerated or dismembered. I figured that following the trail of corpses would lead me to the expedition.

As I approached the last known position of the team, I felt a cold ring upon my neck and heard the locking of a rifle.

"You have five seconds to identify yourself before I separate your head from your body." Spoke a voice from behind.

I knew that voice anywhere.

"It’s Matt. Authentication Charlie Zulu Alpha."

It was Blori. He took his finger off the trigger and pulled his gun off my neck.

"Welcome to the Suck. We’re in the middle of regrouping. Let’s go." Blori said before moving ahead of me.

I could tell by his tone that he was extremely pissed. I stayed close behind him and let him take the lead. His rifle was out and he was constantly scanning. I never liked this place very much. It smelled too much like fish.

He raised his hand and I almost bumped into him. Instantly I crouched and rolled to my left behind a pillar while he took position on the right with his rifle leveled. I looked over at him and he mouthed the word "patrol". I peeked over and sure enough, two nagas wielding there tridents were slithering through the platform. Blori held up two fingers and brushed them across his lower lip. I raised my eyebrow in a "You sure?" kind of manner. He nodded. I closed my eyes and began to course electrical energy throughout my body.

I stepped into the open and unleashed a bolt of lightning that hit the right naga. The force of the bolt caused him to fly back and almost fuse into the wall before he slid down and slumped unconscious. Meanwhile, Blori stood up and dropped the other naga effortlessly with a few well aimed shots. Blori leapt up and kicked the tridents away from the oversized snakes while I kept myself charged up.

"Clear hallway. Let’s move up. They’re dead." He announced.

A few minutes later, we approached the rest of our unit who had been revived and were making preparations to have a go at Lurker again. The Mages, Hunters, and Warlocks stood on the outer platforms ready to unleash pain. Rogues and Warriors knelt prone surrounding the water while the combat medics (Priests, Druids, and me) stood on the outer edge

Act 3

"Start fishin’. Let’s get this guy down so we can go home." Keruen sighed exasperatedly.

Lines were cast and a few sagefish were caught. Suddenly the cavern trembled and a large sea monster erupted from the water and locked onto it’s closest target: Blori.

We were seconds into the fight before the entire area lit up in brilliant flashes of light as spells of all variants were cast. Another Shaman had activated her Earth Shield on Blori. I activated my own Earth Shield on myself.

Sure enough, I felt Arcane Missiles whiz by my right ear. One of them even hit my own shields!

I turned around. It was Vanessa.

Ugh. Friendly fire never was friendly.

I knelt and lowered my profile some more while yellow beams coursed from person to person renewing their stamina and vigor.

Unfortunately, others weren’t as lucky. Raeve, one of the rogues, took an arcing smash and crumpled. I sensed that he was still alive but there was no way he would be able to contribute anything to the fight anymore.

"Hunters, trap. Warlocks, fear. Mages, muttonize!" Keruen ordered. A quick glance around showed nagas slowly being polymorphed into their soft, cottony cousins. Lurker was focused on Blori and ignoring everyone else which was a good thing.

"Bruce! What are you doing?!" I heard a yell and looked over to where he was.

The elemental shaman was unloading lightning bolts like no tomorrow.

Except he was on the wrong target. He was bolting the sheeps.

"Why are you killing the sheeps? You’re supposed to be on Lurker!" Screamed Raeve.

"I-I, erm, well, n-no one told me that. A-a-and I th-thought that the m-mage was going to l-l-lose control of his sh-sheep." Stammered Bruce.

The distraction proved fatal. We had sustained more casualties and the raid was going to buckle. I reached into my pocket, grasped my Ankh, and uttered a few words. Blori was thrown clear off the platform and Lurker continued to thrash about and kill off the rest of the strike force in a matter of seconds. I absorbed a hit and collapsed to the ground without moving.

After a few minutes, my ankh glowed and my body was encased in a warm light. I opened my eyes and looked around slowly before pushing myself off the ground. I drank a large jug of milk before resurrecting the rest of my company.

"Bruce, do you realize what you were doing?" Blori asked firmly.

"Well, yes. But I-"

"Good. Don’t do it again. Just focus and stay on the boss."

"I only wanted to help the mage because he had an unshee-"

"No arguments. Just do as I say." Blori said gritting his teeth together.

"I mean I don’t think I did anything wro-"

"I’m going to ask you one more time, Bruce." Blori was on the verge of losing it.

"That’s insubordination! Listen to your commanding officer for once and just do as he says." I roared. I never really did like Bruce.

"Look, I’m only trying to expla-".

"Get out of here. Get out of my raid. As far as I’m concerned, you’re done. You will not be raiding with me ever again. You’ve been relieved."

"Now just wait a minu-!"

Bruce disappeared as he was being summoned back to Shattrath. GCHAT notified me that he was no longer a member of this organization. The reason? Being disruptive and a failure to accept responsibility.

The rest of the night was uneventful. We killed Lurker right after that with no further problems. A few nights later, the Carnage strike team ascended Mount Hyjal and killed Archimonde in a Bruce-less raid.

His last words to the Guild?

"I predicted this 2 weeks before you did it… you guys are scrubs… remember I am in elitist jerks on my main. Good luck, scrub."

Elitist Jerks would never accept a player like that. His raiding career has effectively been ruined as all reputable organizations have been notified.

After I returned to Shattrath, I received the following communiqués.

unleashed

But he’s gone now, and that’s what matters the most. Bruce was so paranoid. He felt that the leaders were out to get him. It wasn’t just one person who felt that way. Most of the players did. He even thought that this pickup raid into SSC was orchestrated with the intention to oust him from the Guild. I highly doubt anyone would go through such an elaborate setup. Bruce had dug his own grave from the start. His poor play and inability to remain accountable for his equally poor decision making contributed to his ejection from Carnage.

I looked over beside me. The little girl had fallen asleep.

To Each Our Own

This is a guest post from Softi.

I guess you could say Matt and I are pretty much opposites when it comes to, well, everything! He’s a guy, I’m a girl. He’s Canadian, I’m Scottish. He’s raiding high-end instances, I have about a million alts and I’m unable to put the time in for much raiding at all. But I can’t help but really enjoy chatting to the guy, even if he does insist on calling me ‘Mom’ all the bloody time!

So I thought I’d see if I can help him out with a guest post while he’s busy with his studies. There’s another difference – Matt’s at university with a great sense of self discipline, I’m a stay at home mum who can’t stick to any sort of structure or routine to save myself, and oh I have tried!

Matt told us a couple of months ago why he plays WoW, so I thought I’d tell you how I came to find the game, although you might want to go get a cup of coffee first, or hot chocolate… diet coke maybe?

The hubby, who will be herein known as J, started playing the game not long after the EU release, around March 05. We’d just got married, I was heaving around a bun in the oven, and as you can imagine,didn’t have much money to do, well…. anything, and evenings were oh so long and oh so boring. I was a MMORPG widow you see. Before he got WoW J would spend hours playing Star Wars Galaxies (I still shudder when he talks about it), and I would sit watching TV being bored out of my head.

Anyhoo, one night he was working late and I figured after I’d watched some TV (again) that I’d have a try of that stupid game of his and see what it was all about. He’d told me that druids changed into animals. Great! I thought, I love animals, that will be so cool. So I rolled a Night Elf Druid, and after about 5 painstaking minutes of trying to come up with a name, I figured hey, why not try my own, so Marylin (now known as Softthistle) was born.

Almost 5 hours later when J came home, I was still playing. He asked where his dinner was and I think I probably grunted at him that he could do it himself cause I was busy (oh the shame!).

A few weeks later my character had overtaken his in levels and I was playing more than ever. J was not amused at me playing on his account all the time and stopped playing. Typical of course – I was better at levelling so he gave up *sigh*. So I took over his account completely, he had deleted his character and claimed he’d not be playing again, the tables had turned. He was now the WoW Widower, and I was the gamer.

GAMER… me? I have turned into a gamer. Over 3 years ago I started this game having never dabbled in more than playing The Sims every now and then. Now I even blog about WoW, well… I attempt to anyway. J eventually gave in and came back to WoW, of course I had to buy him a new account as by this time we wanted to play the game together. He’s still playing now, not *quite* as enthusiastically as I do, but we will play together once in a while, and at least when he’s talking about the game I now actually know what he’s on about!

I guess when it comes down to it, maybe Matt and I aren’t so different after all. We both play WoW, we both love writing, and we both blog about Warcraft. Who’d have thought that a game could offer the chance of meeting so many new people? Not me, or not until now anyway!

Great news, Good news, Bad news

Quick hits here, guys. Had an extremely eventful Sunday.

Great news: I’ve acquired my Stanley Cup Rings (RE: Band of Karabor) x 2. They’re both fully enchanted.

Good news: My Guild apparently killed Archimonde.

Bad news: I wasn’t there when they did it.

Really bad news: Apparently the Apostle of Argus dropped.

Just when you think it can’t get any worse: It got disenchanted.

EDIT: My Guild’s a bunch of practical jokers. *whew*. What’s worse is that now I’ll have to endure the gloating from that OTHER healer. Yeah, you know, the furry one. To which I’ll retaliate with songs from West Side Story.

 

 

 

Excuse me while I go cry myself to sleep.

Quick Hiatus

I can’t keep it up anymore. As a result of school and other obligations, I’m taking a quick few days off. There’s a mammoth assignment due on monday which consists of me creating, designing, and writing (surprise!) a blog on cognitive science, cognition, and psychology.

If you’re curious as to how a blog gets started from the ground up, you can check out the Cogs Blog. We’ll see how much crap I can get done on it within 2 days.

This is followed by a political science exam on thursday.

I’ll be back in three days.

A Response to Tobold: Another Guild Recruitment Perspective

late
Image courtesy of Avolore

I read a great piece by renowned WoW blogger Tobold about guild recruitment and how they don’t look to hire players, they hire avatars. He writes that high end guilds don’t care much about the character of the person who is behind the avatar and that jumping guilds is almost expected in order to progress.

First, I’d like you to read what he has to say before you come back and read my responses and explanations behind how my Guild operates.

Done?

Excellent!

The Professional Style

Another follow up post courtesy of Two and a Half Orcs nailed it perfectly when it was written that we take two extremely different approaches to Guild progression and to raiding.

Now, a Guild is an organized group of people. I think we can all agree on that definition. What separates Guilds from other Guilds is the reason why the Guild is formed in the first place. Loyalty is an integral part of any kind of organization be it sports teams, businesses, or what not.

Refer back to Tobold’s blog for a moment and you’ll see an example of a typical Guild ad. In fact, if you browse the Guild recruitment forums right now, you’ll find any number of ads that have the same elements like:

  1. Scheduled raiding days and times
  2. Progression information
  3. Contact information
  4. Class openings

Tobold writes that these ads "do not mention people" and that these upper tier Guilds, such as the one I’m in, "don’t hire players, they hire avatars".

And he’s absolutely right.

Because those are the spots that we have available for raiding.

As a recruiting officer, I have no reason to mention that Carnage is looking for "friendly, intelligent, respectable players". Attributes like that are a given. As a student, when I browse job boards for part time openings, I never see companies advertise looking for "friendly, nice candidate with people skills" because it’s expected.

job-1

In this case, being available from Wednesday to Friday nights 8 PM – 12 PM server time is more important.

Why?

Because you can be the nicest and generous guy in the world. But if you can’t raid on our raiding days, then there’s is absolutely no point at all for us to bring you to our raids.

Am I being an ass with this kind of thinking? No, I’m being realistic. I’m saving time for both my Guild and for you, the player.

The Recruiting Process

In any case, the truth is, the recruiting process is much more refined and filtered than that. I obviously can’t speak for other Guild officers but I personally check out applicant’s as much as possible especially if they’re from another server. Cross server applicants are scrutinized as much as possible. Just like the actual job hunting process, if we find a player that we’re interested in that can handle the basic criteria of availability, class, and gear, then we have a brief interview with that player. I’ve been a carnie for about 3 years, so let’s just assume that I can tell what kind of a personality a player has 9 times out of 10. I like to conduct interviews over vent because their voice can tell me a lot of information that in game chat just can’t do.

Assuming they pass that stage, it’s not quite over yet.

They undergo a trial by fire where we assess their abilities in game. We’re not talking a couple of heroics or some PvP. In my Guild, our business is raiding. So if we want to evaluate a raider, we check them out in raids. What the hell’s the point of putting a recruit through a 5 man if we want to see how he is in a 25 man, right?

 
Image courtesy of BluStu

Accountability goes up

The release of Burning Crusade didn’t fix a lot of issues that plagued guilds during the vanilla era. Back then, there was a progression problem where it seemed only a select few of players could advance. For example, each boss in Molten Core dropped 2-3 items. Raids consisted of 40 players. Assuming you were able to pull off a full clear and that each player wanted to overhaul their gear with epics, this meant each player needed 8 pieces of loot. 40 players multiplied by 8 items is 320 items. As you can see, that’s a lot of gear that needs to be passed around and this is assuming that each boss drops the gear that players need. While it’s true that Burning Crusade did not fix problems of officers and leaders ricing themselves up and leaving, BC made it much easier to spread the loot around and progress Guild members at a steadier and more consistent rate.

By reducing the players required to raid, it increased the overall accountability of each player raiding. Each player has more responsibility and can be scrutinized even more. It allowed Guilds to be a lot more picky and for players to be more competitive. There’s a lot of hockey teams in the NHL but there’s only so many roster slots available. Raid size reduction made it easier for Guild Leaders to find players who fit the mentality of the Guild.

When I raid, I want players who work hard, are situationally aware, don’t waste time, and willing to spend gold to make themselves the best they can absolutely be. Going from 40 – 25 players means I don’t have to find 15 additional players who fit that criteria.

"Guilds do not recruit nice people and then train them how to raid."
– Tobold

I don’t think that’s true. I would rewrite that statement so that it says "Guilds do not recruit nice people and then train them how to play their class".

Raiding requires certain strategies to pull off because these bosses have their own gimmicks and abilities. It takes an insane amount of effort and coordination to kill these bosses. There is an expectation that you have gotten to 70 on your own and that you have done 5 mans on your own and that you virtually know the ins and outs of your class. New raiders that join Carnage are given an overview of the boss and what their role is.

It’s simple logic. If a player doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s going to wipe the raid. Wiping the raid is not in the best interests of the raid therefore we make every effort to explain the encounter in detail and what their role is whether its to sheep a certain target, or heal a certain player, or move in a certain direction every 30 seconds because the main tank has to move him around.

It’s a gigantic waste of time to pick up a freshman hunter whose still learning the basics of the game like how to trap and misdirect. It holds up 24 other players who want to progress and you’re going to find an impatient player or 5 in any raiding Guild. We pull players out of other raiding Guilds that have disbanded and such because they’ve been proven that they know what to do. While we don’t know that for sure exactly, a quick inspection of loot can tell many things. If a Priest has a Band of Eternity, then we know he was a part of an organization that took down Kael and Vashj which require 25 players to actively take part in. So he knows what the heck he’s doing.

Rejection

Assuming a player isn’t nice, polite and helpful, then he’s out of the Guild. The fact is, Guilds spend anywhere from 9 – 20 hours a week working on bosses. If a player isn’t any 3 of those, why would we want to subject ourselves to 15 hours of playing with that individual? Again, at a job, if an employee is rude, unhelpful, and callous with employees, he’s going to be given the pink slip.

The onus is on the player to prove their asset to the Guild. And what does the raiding Guild do in return? We offer them a chance to raid and tackle the hardest encounters and challenges that this game has to offer.

In closing

winnars

Hopefully the insight I’ve offered will be of value to other players who wonder how and why these Guilds operate. I want to stress that my Guild is not hardcore in the sense of time. We don’t throw ourselves at bosses for 5 hours every week night. We set our standards and expectations abysmally high to weed out the freeloaders.

Building up Guild camaraderie and morale is not a problem here. When you’ve been working on a boss for 3 weeks straight with the same 25 – 28 group of people and he goes down, there’s an immense feeling of pride. Because guess what? You were part of a kickass team of 25 players that were able to coordinate their efforts in beating the hardest boss in the game.

And nothing can beat the euphoria that follows.

Unless you win the Superbowl.