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Well, I’ve been sufficiently jet lagged for a little bit, but I am happy to say that I’ve fully recovered. BlizzCon 2010 was an amazing time, and I am quite happy I got to meet many of you at the various meetups. For those of you who bought me beer, thank you! For those of you who bought Matt beer, thank you for the free entertainment!

Seriously though it was a great time, and I hope that next year I’ll get to meet even more of you. I got to hang out with Matt’s guild a little bit, and those guys know how to have fun. Never let it be said that Conquest doesn’t know how to party, I will fight you to the death on that one! I got to meet other bloggers as well, and really just had a good time chewing the fat with everyone.

My guildies were also in attendance, and we had something like 22 show up. That in and of itself may have been the most fun. You see, this year, one of our officers announced that he will be leaving us come Cataclysm. Well, at least as far as raiding is concerned. For those of you who have followed me over the years, you may recognize the name. Zabos, our hunter class lead, one of our DKP officers, and guild scapegoat has intentions of leaving us. He’s been around since this game started, and was a founding member of Unpossible. He was the reason for our very first lady Vashj low percentage wipe.  This announcement, of course, made us all very, very sad. So with all the guildies heading to BlizzCon, we decided that we simply had to show Zabos how much we loved him. And a plot was formed. Let me share with you a message sent to all guildies attending BlizzCon 2010 from the guild leader himself.

If you look carefully through the list of people I’ve sent this message to, you may notice the absence of one name in particular. This is no coincidence, and this brings us to the contest itself. This year, I’m going to be holding a competition among those Unpossible members who will be in Anaheim, all of them but Zabos. IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE KEEPING A SECRET, DO NOT READ FURTHER!

Objective: To successfully concoct and carry out a unique and hilarious practical joke on Zabos, in person, in Anaheim.

Group Size: This is a team competition. Group sizes can be anywhere from 2 to 4 people. Prior to the 21st, you must let me know who will be in your team.

Restrictions:
In the interest of keeping everything legal, and prevent any kind of nastiness after the fact, here are the restrictions and general guidelines of the competition:

• The jokes can not result in bodily harm
• The jokes can not result in permanent damage to property
• The jokes can not be malicious in natures: example – no racial slurs, no emergencies in the family, etc.
• The general tone of the jokes needs to be mischievous. At the end of the day, we don’t want to piss him off too much.
• Sabotaging another team’s efforts is NOT allowed. The more successful jokes, the better.

Any breaking of the above rules will cause your team to be disqualified.

How Jokes Will Be Judged: In order to receive credit for the entries, jokes must be documented. Judges will need to have visual or audio proof of the jokes themselves. Acceptable forms of documentation are:

• Audio – recorded conversation from the joke itself
• Video – live-action video of the joke
• Photograph – self explanatory. If the joke is staged, a before and after picture for example

This was met with great cheers from the guildies, and the game was on. Teams were chosen and shenanigans were afoot. At least, we started as teams. Shortly after arriving in Anaheim, it turned into a guild wide effort. It eventually ended with a marriage license, a lot of gunk on his car in various NSFW images, and some very, very interesting pictures. I’ll spare you the details for the sake of tact. Moral of the story though, if you intend to leave us, expect to be shown how much we love you… in force.

In the end we had a great time and it was really good to see my guildies face to face. It’s something I know a lot of people take for granted, but putting a face to that voice on vent can be pretty cool. I had met most of the guildies before hand but there were some new faces, and I finally got to hang out with my entire Forest of Win which made me very happy.

So what about you? Any BlizzCon 2010 stories to share?

I remember this period during Burning Crusade. It was the final month leading up to Wrath. The wait gets harder as the days go by because you just want Deathwing to blow up the world already. Everyone is anxious. I’ve set a date on the cessation of raiding operations (November 22nd). We’re going to use the final weeks to wrap up any outstanding drakes and then take it easy for a bit. It’ll take every ounce (joule?) of energy I have to stay focused. Cataclysm debuts on the 7th. My exams are on the 8th and the 11th. I was the first player in my guild to reach 80 and it pains me to know that I cannot defend my title as guild first max level player.

It seems silly, but it’s one of the few things I take pride in. Some players prefer to take their time and enjoy the scenery. Why not explore the world and visit the areas that have changed, right? But I already did that in beta. I just find the 80-85 grind exhilarating and even more so when under a clock. Some of the members in my guild are ambitious. They’re anticipating reaching 85 on the Friday morning. I wonder how many work hours will be lost due to people exercising their sick day options.

Not only that, it’s NaNoWriMo. Every year I tell myself I want to participate and try it. Every year, I discover that the amount of time I have continues to dwindle. One of these years, I will place my blog in stasis and actually do it. I love writing guides, opinion and advice. The two styles of writing I never really got into: Poetry and fiction. I don’t expect to write a sonnet any time soon. But a dwarven special operations team? Possibilities.

The guild atmosphere is restless yet restrained. The search continues for the ever elusive holy pally. I want another one. I also want an elemental shaman, a rogue, and a warlock.

Things I’m working on:

Videos on how to get to the new instances – With commentary. Completely improv. Maybe I’ll RP it. If these bode well, I’m tempted to create additional videos of other aspects of WoW.
Craftable loot list – More for the guild. Identifying which items we can craft at max level. The more items we can create, the less reliance we’ll have on the RNGness of dungeons for the appropriate drops.
A getting started guide on what zones to hit – I won’t tell you how to do which quests, but I can point you in the right direction
Facebook fan page – Why not? No link yet, but I’m sure if you’re determined you’ll be able to find it easily. I need some time to add extra screenshots and videos to it. It needs some kind of substance.
Healing in a Z-Axis environment – An underwater zone. A raid boss who is the wind itself. Healing in all 3 dimensions isn’t the easiest thing to do but there are some things to keep in mind.

Happy tuesday! Good luck hunting down those stray elementals. I have yet to see one.

Is it here yet?