The Classifieds: Old school a go-go
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on news from around the WoW community. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? Email TheClassifieds@wow.com.
Is it just us, or are players revving up the retro vibe to record RPMs? From retro and classic raiding to world PvP events, players are chasing away the pre-expansion blues by rocking and rolling some classic Southshore-Tarren Mill action. Case in point: a massive mix-up on Anachronos (EU-A) being organized for next weekend by <The Stormwind Crusaders>. "The aim of this event is to enjoy this epicness one more time before Cataclysm flushes Southshore away like Atlantis," write event organizers, "and of course for the generation of players who kinda missed the epic fights in the old days. (Yeah, I had to force some guildies to Google 'Southshore vs. Tarren' because they didn't understand that it's 100% wow cult!)" Organizers are hoping players from both factions will transfer or whip up a new death knight to come relive the epic tug-of-war battles of old on June 11 from 21:00-23:00 server time. Check the official realm forums for more details.
As often as we discuss zones and aspects of the game that will be changed in Cataclysm, it hadn't yet occurred to me for some reason that the epic Southshore/Tarren Mill battles of yesteryear will be forever wiped from our slates. If you never had the chance to submerge yourself in the madness back in the day ... Yeah, this is worth a pool of tears to drown your sorrows in. Talk about pure, addictive, adrenaline-fueled fun ... My first character became a Knight-Lieutenant, in fact, off kills made in the fields outside Tarren Mills. My brother-in-law and I would roust each faction from their respective homes every weekday afternoon to kick off the action, tempting them out with the prospect of an easy kill on the two little clothies scuttling along the roads. ("Easy"? Not for a second; we knew every dirty trick in the book.) I heartily endorse more recreations of these tug-of-war epics before Cataclysm alters the killing fields playing field forever.
Let's crack open The Classifieds ...
News: Around the WoW community
We always enjoy a good guild gag around here, and <Reforged> of Runetotem (US-H) has come up with a fun one: a sound collage of Vent chatter designed to be taken along on your cell phone. "After missing a couple of raids due to RL concerns," writes guild member Mstree, "I decided to make a soundboard of my guildies and the goofy crap they spout in Vent while we raid. Now I can have my invisible internet friends with me where ever I go." We're not necessarily advocating you click over and listen to the mix, which works on Android phones -- after all, another guild's in-jokes are meaningless chatter to the rest of us -- but we thought it was a fun idea for tight-knit groups who enjoy one another's company and guild culture.
Play your part in supporting gaming-related research by participating in the latest WoW research study at WoWometry. "I am putting together a personal research study aimed at social dynamics and behavior in game," writes the WoWometry researcher. "Our ultimate goal is to identify the ways player characteristics affect behaviors and success in game. We hope to make this a resource for players to learn about how other players behave in game, what types of guild structures promote success, and provide useful information to players and guild masters that will help them improve their own experience in game." We're not clear which of the surveys listed this one actually is, but the WoWometry setup looks fairly intriguing. Respondents can earn points to enter into a raffle to win game time. The site doesn't ask for account information or other identifying information (including Battlenet email addresses -- you wouldn't give out yours, would you?), and there are no promises of in-game rewards such as gold. Anyone who wins game time will receive a game card code at the email address of their choice, to be applied to any Battlenet account. Sounds worth a shot!
Happy anniversary to <The Forgotten Knights> on Draka (US-A) on their fourth year together. "We were formed after our previous guild merged with a raiding guild by players that just wanted to play at a casual pace," writes their rep. "Since then, we average about 300 characters and have members that enjoy all parts of the game. Our 10-man raid team is currently working on the Blood Queen and we starting to go back and see vanilla/BC content that we missed at the time." (See? More retro events again! See?!) Congrats, TFK, and here's to another year of teamwork and friendship.
Random acts of uberness
Who rocks your PUG world? Send in your shout-outs to theclassifieds (at) wow (dot) com. Keep 'em short and sweet (150 words or less, please), and be sure to list everyone's character names and home realms or battlegroup.
Carhan (Argent Dawn [US-H]) So, I was healing a Blackfathom Deeps LFG the other day, and about halfway through this loudmouth Lock that expected me to heal him before the tank when he kept spamming Life Tap (god, I hope I'm not the only one that hates Warlocks with a Magey rage for that...) started hassling me for liking Sci-Fi. Carhan, a very well spoken Warrior from Argent Dawn, proceeded to be the only one to both get my Firefly reference in defense of the genre, and combat the Lock's immature homophobia. Oh, and he took over for the tank when he lit all four torches at once, but that's beside the point. I hope to group with Carhan again sometime soon, he was one of the most enjoyable DPS I've had to heal. With hope, Ornatrix, Arthas (US-H)
Ketaari, Junia and Deviladvocat (Doomhammer [US-A]) Immediately upon zoning in for the random daily on my 75 mage, one of the three players from Doomhammer says that they're planning on doing "Share the Love". As I was pointing out that the achievement required the heroic, I realized all three Doomhammer players were geared 80s and likely weren't in the normal queue intentionally. I prepared for the worst, expecting to quickly see the three players drop out and having to start over in the DPS queue. However, Ketaari (the healer) said "fk it, smash face boys". Rather than send the two low levels back into the queue, they destroyed the instance for us. Most of the time, the mobs were dead before my meager frostbolts had a chance to land. In under ten minutes, every mob and boss died a quick and painful death. I definitely appreciate their efforts and willingness to help out a couple of lowbies, even if they were just there accidentally! -- Thrillhouse, Arygos (US-A)
Stärdäncer (The Forgotten Coast [US-A]) I just experienced a random act of uberness in a random sunken temple on my boomkin, Taldorian on Bladefist. After doing the last required boss of Sunken Temple, I mentioned that I had a quest (A Better Ingredient) for the last boss on the floor below that you have to pull the levers in order. Everyone left.... except the healer Stärdäncer ( with the sideways : on the As) from the forgotten coast. We then proceeded to stealth past the majority of the trash and I panzerkined the trash near the actual levers with him healing me. After nearly 10 min of extra effort, we finally get to the boss himself. After both of us nearly dying because of his aggro wipe where he tosses the "tank" (me) into the air for a good 10 seconds, we finally downed this monster. Big thanks once again to you, Stardancer. Minor thanks to the devs who randomly gave boomkin form the same armor multiplier as dire bear form. -- Taldorian, Bladefist (US-A)
Babydoll, (Baelgun [US-A]), Unavaliable (Kalecgos [US-A]) My girlfriend and I recently decided to level a couple of druids, Töfu and Brié, through the dungeon finder as a tank/healer combo. One night, while in our low 40s, we received Maraudon - Purple Crystals as our random classic dungeon. I was surprised to see that Blizzard decided to split the dungeon up and, after a bit of research, realized that we only had to kill Lord Vyletongue to get credit for completing the dungeon. After our group easily handled Vyletongue, I asked if we should proceed to try and kill Princess Theradras and finish the rest of the dungeon even though our part was technically complete and we had all gotten our satchels of helpful goods. The group voted that we proceed and I soon realized why Blizzard split the dungeon up (it had been a couple of years since I had run it). Mobs were hitting very hard and I was having a rough time hitting them, and thus maintaining my threat, due to the fact that some of them were five levels higher than me. Since Babydoll, our Paladin, was dual-specced as Protection and a level higher than myself, she tanked (and did a great job) for a while until I was able to level and resume my role as the tank. We continued on at a much slower pace until, just before fighting Celebras the Cursed, our hunter disconnected. We waited for a few minutes only to find that we could not kick him from the group due to the fact that we had technically "completed" the dungeon and a player may not be removed after a dungeon is complete.
We decided to press our luck and, thanks to some remarkable healing, eventually made it to Theradras after what seemed like well over an hour. Shortly after beginning the fight, I realized that I was again having trouble maintaining my threat since I was level 43 and Theradras was 48. The fight was extremely sloppy and challenging due to her AOE damaging knockback and fear mechanics and the fact that I had trouble keeping her focused on me. Unavaliable, our fantastic DPS warrior, made the ultimate sacrifice by pulling aggro on the Princess to keep our healer alive - this bought us substantially more time to bring Theradras down to about a fourth of her health. Unfortunately, our healer was killed near the end of the fight as Babydoll and myself were feared, yet somehow the two of us were able to stay alive and take Theradras down. We had successfully completed a dungeon that was of a much higher level that we should have been attempting and we did it with only four people! Babydoll and Unavaliable were very friendly, likable people and very skilled players and the whole experience reminded my why I still love this game. It was simply epic and I can only hope our paths will cross again in the dungeon finder. /salute -- Töfu, <Death Muffins>, Moonrunner (US-A)
Employment: Guild recruiting
Pure '70s <Shadowmoon Battalion> (Wyrmrest Accord [US-H]) is a Burning Crusade legacy guild that prides itself on taking a "pure" approach to recreate the Burning Crusade raiding experience as closely as possible. "To this end, we allow only characters that are capped/plan to cap at level 70 and intend to use strictly gear found from Outland," notes their rep. "We are also in the process of implementing a '41-point' talent system and disallow all major glyphs." Raids Fri./Sat. evenings.
Late-night ICC raiding <Absolutionists> (Bloodhoof [US-A]) are seeking both casual and progression raiders for ICC-10 and ICC-25. Weekly VoA/weekly raid/ICC alt runs plus ICC-25 rep runs. Progression raiding ICC-10 Fri./Sat. midnight-4 a.m. ET, PUG ICC-25 Sun. nights.
Relaxed raiding <Brethren> (Gul'dan [US-H]) is a "mixed guild" of ICC raiders (ICC 5/12), pet and mount collectors, some PvPers and achievement fans. "We'll down Arthas pre-Cataclysm," notes their rep. "Since we're in it for fun we run older raids and dungeons, too, we are actively recruiting new members. Most of us are 18+ and have families so we understand that real life comes first." If you're looking for relaxed raiding action, look up Indikut, Kythrine, Rabidsavage, Syer or Whyteknight in game.
Raiding into Cataclysm <Face on Fire> (Bloodscalp [US-H]) has a brand new website is looking to bolster its raiding team to continue forward into Cataclysm. "It is our hope to continue a 25- and 10-man group in Cataclysm so that everybody gets a taste of what they really want," notes their rep.
Casual raiding <The Clique> (Norgannon US-A) needs reliable raiders who'll stick with the group all the way to the Lich King. 25-man raids Tues./Wed. 8:30-11:30 p.m. PST, 10-man Thurs. Watch more on their YouTube page.
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on player and community news, help finding the right guild, who's making waves in the WoW community and more. Email your news and Random Acts of Uberness to TheClassifieds@wow.com.
