[1.Local]: Where WoW players get their meat

Leveling a warlock 10-40
As staffers grind through the task of updating WoW.com's leveling guides, one observant reader was able to boil down the essence of the warlock's affliction tree for new players.

Artificial: Affliction is like some massive accounting trick. You just keep moving numbers from column to column. Your mana to your spells. Your life to your mana. Their life to your life using said spells and mana. It's just shuffling resources around, but you wind up at the end with a full life bar and a full mana bar and a dead enemy. Warlock accounting FTW!

Who do you suppose is in charge of auditing those guys, anyway?

More on our good friend Fandral
There's something about those of us who hang out around here in WoW.com's [1.Local] ... We seem to have developed a thing about Fandouche Toolhelm Fandral Staghelm.

xoxotl: Aaaah, good ol' Fandral. The only known Druid with an eighth shapeshifting form: Douchebag.

Wait a minute – it can't be just druids, because wasn't the pally from last night's PuG running that spec, too? We jest, we jest ...

Abuse of the report player AFK feature
Should the Battlegrounds AFK reporting system be used for anything besides reporting players who are actually, verifiably AFK?

Nick S: Report people AFK when they're AFK, and at no other time. I've been booted out of two AVs while at the keyboard and actively playing recently because I respawned in the Horde cave, was promptly marked AFK and couldn't reach an enemy in time to avoid being kicked out and marked Deserter. This kind of crap is what causes people to AFK and play lazy. If other players on their team are being douches, what motive do they have to help said douches? If someone is maliciously reporting people who are not AFK, by the way, you can ticket Blizzard and complain. According to a GM, it is not considered appropriate behavior to spam AFK reports on active players. However, I have no idea whether they'll take any action on it.

rawr: So I was in an AV (back during TBC). There was one of those five-boxing shamans barking orders left and right and just in general being a douchebag. It was getting really annoying, and finally I just said, "Dude, STFU already." His response: "Enjoy being kicked since you can't listen," and he marked me AFK with all five. It really wasn't a big deal, since I was on D at FW keep and constantly in combat, but he kept reporting me over and over. I made a ticket, and the GM just said he'll look into it and can't tell me any more than that.

Seems like a fair bit of concern over the possible consequences for players that GMs have determined to be abusing the system. Do you think the current system gives players too much power over other players?

Patch 3.3 fishing pool guarantees
Disgruntled fishers? Wha ...? Yes, some segments of this laid-back population have actually set down their poles, taken off their Weather-Beaten Fishing Hats and are voicing concern over upcoming changes to fishing that promise guaranteed catches in fishing pools, regardless of fishing skill.

Qot: You're right; it makes lures useless everywhere except Wintergrasp. Quite honestly, they did this backwards. Fishing in pools should require training, but fishing in open water should get you the non-buff fish without any problem.

Rokkitgrrl: Oh for crying out loud! Fishing is a gathering profession, and a very boring one at that. Just because people are guaranteed to get fish every time they cast their lure doesn't mean that the entire "fishing economy" in the game is going belly up. People who are too lazy to level up their fishing now will still be too lazy to level it up after the changes in 3.3. Because you're just standing there. Clicking. And waiting. And clicking again. If people not defending their caps in AB/AV is any gauge of the kind of players that populate our servers, I think it's safe to assume that this will have very little impact in the long-term scheme of things.

(cutaia): Exactly -- it's a gathering profession. That's exactly why this doesn't make sense. Think of the other gathering professions. Which of them lets you collect anything from the start. Mining? Herbalism? Can you just show up in Northrend and start collecting those nodes? No. you start "gathering" in the low-level zones and keep moving on to better stuff in higher zones as you level. Pulling up trash while you fish was the equivalent of clicking on an herb and seeing, "You do not have the required Herbalism for that item." Except with fishing, you already had a leg up, because pulling up trash in those high level pools would still level your skill. If they want it more accessible, it would make more sense to just lower the amount of casts it takes to level at the higher skills. This is just strange.

Smapty: The only things that make fishing "fun" are the rare catches and, like many things in this game, the gear aspect. These two things are what made Fishing transcend gathering professions, creating a Fishing subculture at sites like El's Extreme Anglin. Seems to me taking away needing cool toys to fish in difficult areas without lures reduces the "fun" aspect pretty drastically and certainly makes the new fishing contest rewards look pretty pointless. Why would I wanna bother now?

Will the new changes lure you to fish more frequently now?

A warrior's bounty
There's something about Matthew Rossi's columns (or is it his picture? maybe his chest hair?) that bring out the warrior in warriors.

rkaliski: Anyone who gets serious about playing a warrior realizes pretty quickly in the leveling process that you don't play one because they are easy, you play one for the challenge. We don't feign death or go invisible, we taunt. Warriors do not just hide behind a shield; we slam it into your face, then slice your armor open so we can hang the opponents' balls from our sword belt as a trophy. Other classes throw up mana shields, cast bubbles, heal themselves. Tanks and DPS warriors run in with our hair on fire and don't care if we do not get heals, so long as we take a big honor guard with us when we die. ...

Warriors spit in your eye, grin at you and invite you to bring it on. Show me what you have, maggot. I need a light workout today.

Hot, fresh maggot, anyone? Maybe with a little chest hair thrown in?

A little help from our friends
Yes, people, WoW IS "real life." Just ask Duckaholica.

Duckaholica: I run Pox on Shadow Council. We're a larger guild for an RP guild, on Horde side, and we're just over three years old. I lost my job at the beginning of June, and due to some issues with how that went about, all of my hard-earned tax dollars that were put into employment insurance were delayed. ...

I looked hard for a job, but the city I live in has one of its main industries on strike and a call centre closed. The unemployment rate is just over 10%. We're also a bilingual city, so many jobs require English- and French-speaking capabilities; I do not speak French. Needless to say, it sucked. My savings got eaten up fast.

One of my officers paid my cable/phone bill. Over $100.

One of my guildies paid Vent for a month: $15.

Another guildy paid Vent the next month, as I was still searching for work. He actually paid it for a year! $180. And then he used the link on the website which allowed people to send me money via Paypal to donate to site fees/Ventrilo fees and sent me $500. And he won't let me pay him back. I never asked. Never did.

I still get tears in my eyes when I remember this kindness. It took me just over three months to get a job, and the one I have is the best job of my life. This is the happiest I've been in my entire adult life. I can't gush enough about how much I love this job. And my job loves me. It's been just under three months and I'm unofficially out of my probation period as I've received my business cards, press pass, camera and jacket. I was even able to replace my aging computer when EI finally got around to giving me my money -- after I had a new job. I would have lost my apartment and everything and been on the street if it wasn't for my guildmates, who all worked hard to keep my spirits up and then paid bills and my rent. I love them so much.

I scavenged my computer and am giving the parts to another guildmate, because he's in the same sort of place that I am -- he's living with his parents and he has no money -- and his PC is older than my old one. He needs DDR memory, and that stuff sucks and is more expensive than DDR2 or DDR3. Also giving him my old video card. It's nowhere near the $700 worth of support I got from my guildies, but it's a start. I also bought a bus pass for a friend of mine who was looking for work, to try to even the karmic scales a bit. :P

What happens in WoW, stays in WoW spills out across the rest of our sprawling, interconnected lives.