Setting Up Dual Ventrilos, What’s Your Client?

I say this every year on January 1st and this year is no exception.

I will never drink again.

But anyway, yesterday afternoon I was in Karazhan again with several friends (and that one random hunter pickup) and my Guild leader popped down into my Ventrilo channel to ask me if I was talking to myself. I guess from his perspective it looked like I was, but in actual fact I had two separate clients set up: 1 for my guild and 1 for a different guild. It’s not a trick that’s well known, but here’s how it can be done.

1: Right click on the shortcut to your Ventrilo
2: Click Properties
3: In the Target field, add -m to the end of the line

Now you can be connected to multiple vent servers simultaneously. If you’re going to do this, I strongly advise setting up different user profiles. Do that, then you can separate different keybinds for each user. Otherwise, what will end up happening is that pressing your transmit key will see you talking on all servers your connected on.

Then people will get strange ideas such as you talking to yourself.

I also know that teamspeak is a fairly popular voice client that some Guilds use. But I’ve never ran into anyone on Ner’Zuhl asking for people to use it. It’s always been vent. I’m interested to know if you use any 3rd party voice communication at all and if so which ones and why?

What third party voice client do you use?

  • Ventrilo (76%, 82 Votes)
  • Teamspeak (18%, 19 Votes)
  • Skype (6%, 6 Votes)
  • I don't use any (1%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 108

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No One Else’s Fault But My Own

Masters Leiandra and and Trollin’ have asked the one question that sits in the back of our minds ever since we started playing this game.

Why are you playing this game? What made you get into this game? Who did it?

For me the answer is very easy but lengthy to answer. My first real game was Gizmos and Gadgets. Then I graduated to RTS’s with Warcraft 2. I loved the fantasy universe and I knew I would continue to play Warcraft games for a long time. Fast forward a few years and I met up with some people online in IRC (who happened to be local in my area). They asked me to play and compete with them in Counter-strike (1.5 was the norm back in the day). From that day onwards, we formed our own gaming clique. Whatever the current ‘fad’ in video games was, all of us would participate.

It started with CS
Then we moved to DoD
Warcraft 3 debuted and most of us played that
Back to CS: Source
DoTA
Lineage II Open Beta
Guild Wars
Then World of Warcraft hit

At first I resisted for several long months. I had a good excuse. I was just a poor high school student with no source of income. That summer I got a job and made a decent pile for a student. I decided to give WoW a try and I was hooked immediately. Several months later, most of us split due to some stupid issues. It was all my fault because I failed to heal one of my friends in STV and abandoned the field of battle because I didn’t want to participate in PvP anymore. I killed my subscription for a while and stopped playing. I stopped coming around on vent because I felt I didn’t deserve the flak I took for saving myself in a hopeless cause. It’s a little difficult to engage in combat as Holy and while I would perform well in PvE environments, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do in PvP. I didn’t really know anyone else to play with and it just wasn’t enjoyable without friends. I started nodding off when I did some quests or other things by myself. I got bored of the game, essentially.

Anyways, I started playing the game again because the same guys wanted to form a reroll raiding Guild. I figured why not? I’ve never truly seen the end of the game and I wanted to see what it was like. I picked a Priest to symbolize my dedication and goals: I picked, at the time, the class that was most in demand and underplayed (Dwarf Priests). You know what was stupid? Completely randoming his look. Sheesh, now I’m stuck with a scowl and a glare for the rest of my WoW career.

What I want to say is the only reason I’m playing this game isn’t for the raiding. I’m not here to get all the best loot as possible. I don’t care about progression and epics and the like. I’m not interested in showing my dominance and prowess in PvP. Some people take pride in pressing buttons faster and more accurate than the next guy. I lost that drive after Guild Wars.

Digression: We worked our asses off in Guild Wars to take the Hall of Heroes and get our damn sigil. Then we stopped playing after that.

Anyway, without caring about loot or PvP abilities, what does that leave?

Why then do I continue playing this game?

Because all of my friends are playing it. Truth be told, if my friends all stopped playing WoW, I would stop playing altogether. A lot of people have this idea that all WoW players are addicted to the game.

They’re not.

It’s their choice to play it. If I wanted to quit WoW, I could easily pull it off. I just don’t want to.

They’re not addicted to the game. They’re addicted to the friends and the people they’ve met playing this game. The reason I play WoW is because of the people I play with.

Told you the reason was simple.

Teen Lit on Fire By Self Acclaimed Fire Mage

After losing a fight in school, a 17 year old boy in Beijing covered his classmate with gasoline and lit him on fire. According to Beijing News the teen claimed that he “had lost himself in World of Warcraft” and “transformed into a Fire Mage.”

Source

I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.

WordPress Slowly Becoming the WoW Blogging Platform of Choice

Renowned WoW Blogger BigRedKitty has migrated from his home on Blogspot to his own domain. A quick examination of his footer reveals that he too has switched over to the WordPress platform.

Earlier in the week, Gwaendar (of Altitis) switched from Blogger to WordPress. Not far behind him Before that, Ess also moved to WordPress.

From the list of Blogs I follow on Google Reader:

Blogger

WordPress

Blogspot Bloggers: 15 14
Wordpress Bloggers: 15 16

Conclusion: Both platforms perform as intended, but we’ve seen evidence of people switching from Blogger to WordPress. I have yet to encounter a WoW Blogger switching from WordPress to Blogger. Of course, there must be countless of WoW Blogs that have escaped under my radar so those numbers up there could very well be skewed in either direction.

So to all of you young Blogglings out there, I suggest saving yourself a day’s worth of effort and just using WordPress initially instead of signing up for Blogger and then switching to WordPress =).

AFK Excuses

Everyone has to go AFK at some point. It’s nearly impossible for most players to get up and stretch or walk around the house quickly or fix a drink during a five hour raid night. I have the kind of parents where I absolutely MUST eat dinner with them at the table and I have to step out of the raid for three minutes (six if its roast beef). No matter what the excuse is for going AFK, there is an art involved in it. Some people are best remembered for being awesome tanks. Some people are renowned for their Arena ability. The rest just have really darned memorable AFK excuses. I’ve said something that’ve made my Guildies blink twice and say what? Here’s my place to explain the story:

AFK BASEMENT FLOOD

I remember barking this one out a few months ago. My mom was telling me the basement was beginning to flood and my dad wasn’t home but he showed me how to cut the water in the event something like this happened. Thankfully, this was during a trash clear towards VR so my absence wasn’t notable nor significantly slowing down raid progress.

afk making rice

For some reason this one seems to draw a snicker. Doesn’t take that long to scoop out some rice, add water, and press a button *shrug*.

afk moving tv

I used this one last night. It was just after we took down Solarian. My Guildies were going… what? The story behind this one is that on Saturday, my Sony TV had some problems with it. There was power going into it but it seemed liked the cathode inside wasn’t displaying anything. There were no channels and the video 1/video 2 options weren’t appearing either. We thought that the TV suffered an internal combustion or something so we brought in a back up TV to replace the set and moved the Sony off the pedestal. So the next day, WHILE I’M RAIDING, my dad has the genius idea of plugging the Sony back into an outlet and turning it on again. Lo and behold, white noise ensues. Then he promptly asks me for help to switch the old set with the Sony. We’ve had the Sony for almost 15 years and I think it’s going to bite the dust. I just hope it lasts until Boxing Day.

%&#@ afk keyboard’s fried

I spilled beer on my keyboard. The game was going on a fritz. I was shooting off random spells and would constantly be in motion. I had to take a minute to switch out my Logitech with a $10 backup I had lying around. Times like this I’d be “oob” (out of beer). Take that as a lesson for all you aspiring WoW raiders out there. If anything can go wrong, it will. Always keep spare hardware on standby. You never know when you need an extra mouse, keyboard, or monitor.

Here’s some others that I’ve heard throughout my WoW career from other people

afk quick sex

Classic. I see this one happening all the time. Nine times out of ten it’s caused by people hitting the x key instead of the c. The other one time wasn’t a typo, apparently.

afk tornado

He did live in Kansas. In one of my past Guilds, if weather was going to be an issue an officer would have CNN turned or the weather page loaded and keyed it to the zip code of where that member was living.

afk smoke

I may not approve of it, but I understand some people having to light one up to calm their nerves down. But to light up one DURING a trash pull to Attumen, AFTER Attumen, and BEFORE Moroes within the time span of one hour? Give me a break!

afk gotta run to a store

A friend of mine used this almost all the time. It was always during an inopportune moment when we raided and he would be gone for thirty minutes at a time. COSTCO IS YOUR FRIEND!

brb wife aggro

This is another common one that has been floating around for a while. The game appeals widely to different players of all ages. It’s not weird to hear this one coming from various guys at some point during a raid because the wife would get pissed off at the player for playing too much WoW. C’mon guys! Need to farm that rep and get Exalted with the wife!

AFK wildfire

This one I heard happened a few weeks back. Good ol’ Socal.

The WoW Forums can be ever so entertaining. Check out these gems that I’ve found.

I was raiding with my guild, and suddenly 1 of the guys yells “Ill brb, someone threw a grenade inside my house!” seconds later we hear a boom, and then he goes afk. 2 minutes later he comes back “Stupid neighbours.. wont be throwing those again..”. There was silence for 7 minutes untill we got up to Hakkar. Funniest raid ever.

– Zakki, Darksorrow

Excuse.. plausible. But I must say, I would be rendered speechless if I heard that.

Actually, this one time my mate was in kara and I was watching.. He gets pissed and kind of throws his arms up in frustration; his wireless mouse flies across the room and goes through the open balcony door. Now the problem is, the balcony door has a safety “metal bar” door to keep out thiefs etc. since they live on the first floor. And the door is locked. He doesn’t have a key to it. So he spends 10-15 minutes trying to reach the mouse with 2 sticks etc. while I try to explain the situation to the raid. >.<

Mundus, Requiem

This is one of those freak accidents. I’m known for my temper. People in my Guild will testify that (Razer mouses are very resilient). I can’t say I’ve thrown my mouse out a window. By the way, this exact case is an excellent argument for why getting a wired mouse is better than a wireless.

I know there’s got to be some other excuses out there I haven’t heard of. Expect to see some more later on when I run into some from my Guildies or party members.