excuses
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Breakfast Topic: What's the best excuse you've ever heard?
Once upon a time when my guild was raiding Icecrown Citadel back in Wrath, we had a few players who were notorious at making excuses for sudden AFK's or calling off. It wasn't the first time I'd heard of this however -- previous guilds had members that also used any excuse in the book to take a break. One raider in an earlier guild I was in was notorious for screwing up achievements for the guild. After wiping our raid for the umpteenth time in the middle of an extremely difficult achievement, he promptly typed into raid chat that he had to go next door and deliver his neighbor's baby. Now you would think this was ridiculous enough on its own, but he then made a long, detailed, thought-out post on the guild forums about how he was fine and so was the neighbor and she had a little boy and he was just beautiful ... he waxed on and on and on. Someone asked him to post a picture of the child, at which point he promptly made some excuse about scheduling and quietly left the guild. For the next few months, anyone going AFK would blurt "AFK-having-baby" in vent as fast as they could and crack everyone up. Players all have their own reasons for going AFK, or even calling off to a raid. But sometimes the excuses are just that -- excuses. And that's where the Warcraft player base seems to shine in creativity. Assisting with childbirth has to be the one of the toppers on my list, right up there with the guild member that went AFK to answer the door with a gun (I ... never really did find out the details on that one, but I don't think I really wanted to know), and "The pool is on fire." So let's hear it guys -- what are the best excuses you've ever heard for calling off or sudden AFK's?
The Perfect Ten: Excuses for ditching a dungeon run (from least to most insane)
I never knew I suffered from narcolepsy before I started playing MMOs, but it only took a few late-night dungeon-runs before I started to experience extremely rapid transitions between being an active member of my team and snoring somewhere in the vicinity of the WASD keys. I'm not saying that all dungeons are boring or anything, but rather that when you start one, you've kind of committed to seeing it through (unless you're the jerk who always teams up with me through the LFG tool). Unfortunately, that means you're locked into an unknowable span of time during which narcolepsy, hunger, and brilliant flashes of insight about how to cure Chronic Giggling Syndrome (CGS) can strike. What can you do? Usually, nothing other than to suffer through the slow plodding of your four other ball-and-chains and start burning small sacrifices to your deity of choice in hopes that this run will end soon. Or you can pull out an excuse and get out of Dodge. I'm not saying you should use these every night -- you will build up a very negative reputation, quickly, if you do so -- but sometimes you just need an escape hatch so you can go sleep, eat or call the CGS laboratories in Albuquerque. That's what I'm here to help you with today by providing 10 tested excuses to ditching that disastrous dungeon run and getting on with your life.
The Daily Grind: What excuse do you use to get out of dungeon runs?
It happens to the best and most well-intentioned of us. There we are, deep in the thick of instanced battle, and we need to go. We have to go. For whatever reason, this dungeon run isn't working out and it's time to bail. Maybe the group is frustrating you 10 ways from Sunday. Maybe you've wiped so many times that it's a foregone conclusion that a victory is never going to happen. Maybe a teammate is irking you and you've broken two fingers from throttling your monitor in frustration. Maybe you're just exhausted and ready for some shuteye. Whatever the situation, what is your go-to excuse to extricate yourself from a dungeon run or raid? Do you tell the honest truth or go for the easy lie? Do you have a ready-made excuse lined up, such as the infamous "Oops electrical storm crashed my computer!"? It's OK -- we've all been there. Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Breakfast Topic: It was lag, I swear!
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Lag is probably the single most common excuse for mistakes in all internet gaming. From the beginning of the big craze of first person shooters to now, mistakes are chalked up to lag. The expressions change from: "Oh sorry, you didn't get a heal? I lagged real bad!" to "Oh, I had a huge lag spike!" -- even expletive-laced shouts at the lag itself, as if you could personify bad latency. This happens in PUGs, guild runs, and even just friend and family groups. The question is how often are people actually lagging versus how often is it merely an excuse, because no one else can prove you did not lag. The truth is, it is not always lag -- but sometimes it is. I have went on expletive-laced tirades when I disconnect during a boss fight or see that horrible thing when my entire action bar is lit up with queued spells but I am not moving. However, if you actually make a mistake that is your fault, I am a big proponent of taking credit for and owning it. If you blame lag or someone else every time you make an actual mistake instead of taking ownership of your shortcomings, you never learn from them. Admitting you used an ill-timed spell, moved into the fire, or just got caught up in your rotation and had a lapse of attention allows you to learn and grow from your mistakes (and hopefully never make them again). Do you ever use lag as an excuse when it was a personal mistake? Is it a common go-to excuse you use often? Or do you believe in admitting your mistakes and trying to get better from them?
Why there's no photography in Dead Rising Wii
He may have covered wars, but when Frank West makes a return visit to the Willamette Parkview Mall to buy a case of waggle, he'll do so without his trusty camera in tow. Rather than blaming brain freeze (journalists are prone to this, you see) Capcom explains that the shutterbug's best friend was chopped in favor of a camera of a different sort.According to OMG Nintendo, Minoru Nakai, director and producer on Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop, describes the upcoming Wii port as "a very different game" than the Xbox 360 original, with a Resident Evil 4-style camera that "stays fairly tight behind Frank." Apparently this makes snapping pics, erotic or otherwise, of the undead not work so well.We hope Frank doesn't feel too naked without his trusty 35mm, though it looks like the photojournalist has that situation well in hand.[Via N4G]
Breakfast Topic: Best way out of a bad group
It starts out innocently enough. The tank loses aggro, the healer goes down, the rest of the group falls like dominos. It happens. Regroup, head back in, try again. But then it happens another time, then another time. What in Elune's name is going on?Is the tank undergeared? Is the healer running out of mana too soon? Does the mage have to open with his biggest nuke? It could be one thing or a lot of things. But one thing's for sure: this 90 minute run through an instance is starting to look like a 4 hour death fest with a repair bill kicker.So, I ask you this, gentle readers. When faced with a non-functional group, how do you get out? Nicely? Bluntly? Oops, my kid kicked the power cord? What's the classiest exit line you've seen or used? The funniest?
Forum post of the day: Worst ninja excuse
Ninjas -- we know them, we hate them, we laugh at how they'll never get a group on the server again. Most serious ninjas tend to go linkdead immediately after looting, to spare themselves being yelled at and reported. But some try to justify their behavior by whatever thin threads of logic they can dredge up. Thorsgaard of Moonglade-EU has started a forum thread of the best and worst excuses for unneeded need rolls, and there are some doozies:
