[1.Local]: Patch week patter

Patch madness
Patch 3.1 went in; stable servers went out. Were you one of the players who shrugged and pushed back from the keyboard to enjoy some spring weather, or did connectivity issues leave you steaming?

Some readers ranted that $15 a month should provide smooth, uninterrupted service. Others felt that at something like 50 cents a day, they were getting a reasonable value.

"Interesting comments on the worth of WoW," observed Jalindrine. "The 50-cents-a-day logic, though, is obviously flawed. The question isn't 'Can I afford to spend 50 cents a day on a product?', but 'How many products/services can I afford to buy at 50 cents (more or less) a day?' Every so often, WoW's the one not worth it, which is much harder to realize when you're literally addicted."

Sounds like time for a sweep underneath the couch cushions ...

Who gets Val'anyr?
Ahh, the legendary Val'anyr – and all the legendary loot drama that comes along with it. How is your guild planning to decide who is most deserving? Some groups have already cut to the chase.

"In my guild's case, we as the officers came up with a short list of potential candidates based on attendance, healing ability, WWS and time in the guild," reported Dave. "We also picked an alternate with the same criteria, if for some reason our primary pick had to miss a raid. No initiates were considered. No officers were on that list, by design."

"My officers and I are currently wrestling with this problem and trying to figure it out," admitted Russell. "Our guild is right on the line between casual and serious raiders, and we're just serious enough that we might actually get one mace completed. So whomever we decide gets it 'first' is likely to be the only person who ever really has a chance at getting it.

"I raised the question of how to pick that person in our officer-only forums, and my officers are almost universally saying it should be me, since I'm the GM and raid leader for our core raids. I love them for it, and from an objective standpoint their logic makes a lot of sense. I'm at almost every single raid, my healing is always either at the very top of the chart or very close behind it, and I make a lot of sacrifices both in and out of game to keep the raids and the guild going.

"As a GM, though, I want what's best for my guild -- and one factor to consider is how the guild will feel about it if that's the decision we make. Our guild is really fantastic, and the people are wonderful -- and 90% of them or more would hands down agree that it's the right call. But I sit here and think, 'What if we just picked a rank-and-file guildie and gave it to them?' Morale would go through the roof, as we proved beyond all doubt that we are what we've always tried and claimed to be: a guild that puts our guildies first, not our officers and GM.

"Unfortunately, almost all of my good healers are officers. Almost all of my healers are also really good. I'm left without a very good objective reason to pick one healer over another for this mace, and I really hate the idea of deciding something this monumental with a /roll. We don't use DKP anyway, so that's not really a solution, either.

"In the end, it will probably end up being me because it's the only choice I can make that has clear logic behind it and won't piss off somebody. But as crazy as it sounds, I wish I could find a way to pick somebody else."

Not in the face! Not in the face!

WoW zones in real life
We guess it was the cynicism of patch week that kept readers from truly revelling in the beauty of these WoW-vs.-RL place photos.

Tatsuwashi caught the fever, anyway: "The Un'Goro Crater is a direct reference to the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. It is filled with almost all of the most famous safari animals: lions, cheetahs, elephants, etc. I was really thrilled to find it in the game after I went there in Africa in RL."

We sure wouldn't complain if the griffon showed up to whisk us away to one of these locales.

PETA event gets clubbed
When players staged a PETA event in game to protest the Canadian baby seal hunt, everyone knew that chaos would ensue – including its player-organizers, without a doubt. Just how ironic do you think PETA's outlandish tactics are intended to be?

"Well, there's trying to be funny, and there's doing things with a sense of flippancy or irony," argued Hoggersbud. "Sometimes you're not meant to laugh, but that doesn't mean it's not meant in an absurd and outrageous way that isn't exactly serious in the way you might think. It's a subtle difference, and I'm sure I'm not expressing it very clearly, but everything I see from PETA has obviously been meant in a less than serious sense, and a lot of the critics I see about them seem to be missing it.

"... I'm convinced that they're being outrageous and aren't as dumb as you're trying to make them out to be. I don't know how I could convince you of it, but that's the way it seems to me. It's a clown-job, and they know it. Too bad you don't know they know it. Then you might be less upset."

Isn't it ironic ... don't you think?

Curse, WoW Interface block WoWMatrix
Reader frustration over the changes with updater WoWMatrix was bursting at the seams in this post.

"Instead of frustrating their user bases by banding together and blocking WowMatrix (the only updater that actually functions well), why don't they bring the developers of WowMatrix on board, all working together on one awesome product?" asked Charlie. "Why are we left with this two-party system of which there are no clear, good options, merely choosing between two evils? WORK TOGETHER, DAMN IT, so that we can spend less time searching for our perfect add-ons and frantically trying to update all of them on patch day, and spend more time enjoying the new content. FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE."

Do you suppose Charlie's server saw a little more post-patch uptime than others? We hear that a good many players had plenty of free time to search for and update their add-ons ...

Advertising for casinos banned
Casinos: a dastardly plot by WoW Insider to throw the realms into chaos. "There wasn't a problem with casinos on my realm until after the recent WI article on casinos," noted Daegon. "I hadn't heard about them until reading that article. Since then, they're spamming all over the place."

"lol, mighty interesting coincidence, isn't it?" agreed Irshalthra. "On Kael'thes, I noticed the same. I read the article on WI with a bit of shock and wonder as to what this was, then a couple days later, in-game started seeing them pop up in Orgrimmar."

Mighty interesting, indeed.