Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

ElderDruid doesn't think we'll be working too hard for our gold and our emblems in 3.3.

ElderDruid:
Look at them yo-yo's, that's the way you do it
You PUG for money on the 3.3
That ain't workin', that's the way you do it
PUGgin for money and emblems for free

Now that's just profit, that's the way you do it
Let me tell you, them guys ain't dumb
Gonna keep subscribers with the epic carrot
Keep 'em till the launch of Cataclysm.

I want my ... I want my ... I want my emblems free ...

The disappearance of the bear Are WoW players who choose druids big softies? Snowleopard233: That birthday bear broke my heart. :'( Poor bear. Gennifurfur: Me too. I can't believe it would be possible to feel so bad for a drawing, but I do! Man ... Serrota: Oh, I know. Such a simple picture, but so much emotion. Poor bear! /sends birthday cake to the bear & a new feral staff Beyond the warm fuzzies, this same post generated a lot of discussion over the balance of tanking armor drops. Rhabella: Tanks fight over tank drops. A bear has to fight over DPS gear with rogues and cats. Prior to the zerk stance change, they were also fighting for gear with warriors and, on some levels, enhancement shammies, paladins and death knights. Being forced to fight over gear with all that DPS while you are trying to gear for the next encounter or tier can be a nightmare. In a 10-man with two tanks or a 25-man with three to five, plate tanks aren't nearly as punished as a bear. Karilyn: Elaborating on what Rhabella said ... While tanks are hardly the superstars that we were in Vanilla, the "gear up the tank first" rule still exists. But it's not a big deal for plate tanks. Tier gear is mostly garbage for tanking, and tanking plate drops at a rate that you can comfortably gear up three plate tanks at the same time without any real difficulty. At worst, a guild might favor a plate tank for two to three tier tokens AT THE MOST (and a weapon for a death knight). On the other hand, druids get none of that. They compete in every single slot with the DPSers. Which quickly builds resentment among DPSers if the guild has a "gear the tank first" rule in place. But especially for a druid tank, if such a rule is not in place, you'll wind up with a very undergeared tank. BitterCupofJoe: I've played as a paladin, DK, and most recently, druid tank. Here's how it breaks down: On the paladin tank, I share weapons and shields with two specs (warrior and paladin tanks), armor with three specs (paladin, DK, warrior tanks), and rings, cloaks, and trinkets with four specs (all tanks). At most, there will be three other people (the other tanks) in the raid with primary interest in an item I'm interested in. On my druid tank, I share weapons with up to nine specs (bear, cat, two DPS DK specs, tank DK, three hunter specs, arms warrior), rings, cloaks, and trinkets with either four specs (other tanks) and armor with 13(!) specs (bear, cat, 3 DPS DK specs, DPS paladin, three rogue specs, three hunter specs, two DPS warrior specs (albeit not as much with fury anymore)). In addition, there are almost certainly going to be more interested parties for the weapon and armor drops than there are the plate tank drops, simply because of the ratio of tanks to DPS. If you have four or more of the above listed DPS specs in your 25-man, you are already seeing more competition than the plate tanks will for any of their available primary spec gear.

Diabolical changes (and some mage-bashing for good measure) The comments on this thread, as warlock columnist Dominic Hobbs pointed out with a suspicious amount of what sounds like satisfaction, "started out as an idea for demo locks being semi-melee that was ok-ish but turned into some nice mage-bashing." Ooh, mage-bashing? ratskinmahoney: @Angus I don't really see that as being a problem. There's clearly equivalency between caster and melee stats. Okay, so SP will be much lower than AP for similarly level-geared characters, but the ratio of one to the other is fairly standard. In fact, if Blizz were to consider using meta to effectively turn the lock (if only temporarily) into a melee class, they could easily place additional contingent stats on caster gear, in much the same way that FAP used to work for drood staves. Hit can stay; there's no reason to change the Hit cap just cuz we switch to melee for a little while. Crit also need not change as we metamorphose. Armor's not a big deal as meta already has an armor buff built into it, and to be honest, you can neglect expertise or set a fixed value to it for the whole class. I personally love the idea. I loves my lock, but a bit more option for tactical and role diversity across the trees wouldn't go amiss. Almost all other classes can fulfill disparate roles depending on spec; why not a bit of that for us? I appreciate that your average mage is too stupid to handle much more than stand, spam and Ice Block, but us locks are a much more sophisticated bunch. I think the idea of a "pure" class is overrated, especially given the ever-increasing level cap. I don't PvP much, but I reckon sticking a big fat CD or putting a cast time of even a second or so on meta would be quite enough to prevent it resulting in much OP -- if it does at all, and it's not as though locks are already teetering on the edge of PvP dominance, so ...

We liked this thoughtful reader e-mail sent in by Sirath.

Subject: Thoughts about quitting something you love?

Just a few hours ago, I've just announced to my raiding guild that I am going to be stopping raiding. I've of course made sure that the guild is not going to face any issues with losing a tank from its roster ahead of time. The reasons behind me quitting was because I felt that I couldn't keep up with any sort of schedule due to RL interfering. Now in my case its either continue raiding, sleep four hours a night on average while maintaining a good balance of studying and playing games, or choose one over the other. In my case I chose my RL over the game.

Though strangely enough the reasons behind me getting the thoughts to quite in the first place (excluding exhaustion, frustration, and neglecting much needed RL activities and social life) was that a friend of mine who recently stopped playing WoW told me that now with his free time he washes the dishes ... I somehow got jealous of that. Since then it dawned to me how dire my situation is. I wake up early morning head to college, come back by noon make some quick lunch raid in the afternoon 'til evening (I live in USA but play on EU servers ... long story), then quickly pack my bags, head over to a night class which ends rather late in the evening, followed by my working furiously on my homework and assignments 'til way over midnight, then sleep for a few short hours to rinse and repeat. It didn't help that I had to wake up at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning to raid. >.<

Now OFC from the start, this was my choice to join the raiding guild of such caliber/schedule, and trust me, I do not regret it. The year I've spent with my guild has been the highlight of both my WoW and raiding career. If RL wasn't a problem, I'd easily spend more time raiding with them.

But the reason behind this rant and topic I brought up is, have ever any of you thought about quitting or stopping something you enjoy? Whether it was RP, PvP, raiding, alting or the game together. With me, I was dreading the moment I had to go speak to my officer, but the moment I made it official and posted in our forums ... it felt unusually relieving. Suddenly I have an odd enjoyment of planning how I'm going to clean my apartment and do my laundry ... Strange feeling coming back to RL ... but unusually fun ...

Also in the staff mailbag this week was this touching (?) apology to Allison Robert for smacktalk gone wild. This, people, is why we at WoW.com love our [1.Local]istas.

Turtlehead: Totally missed the smack to me in an old Queue post until a friend pointed it out. Laughed pineapple juice onto my monitor and into my keyboard. I'd bill you if I could figure out how to do so.

I'm a big-mouthed jerk. Do appreciate the work all of you put in. Much easier to lob loogies from the peanut gallery and I hope I only occasionally cross the line into a**holeville, though I hear it is nice in autumn. All the buttocks are lovely shades of pink and red. Pity about the obnoxious busloads of baboon sex tourists.

BTW, and be very afraid, if I ever have a daughter, intention was always to name her Allison. Always thought it was a pretty name. Now I may have to name her Robert instead to mess with her head.

[GF reading over my shoulder has just made it VERY clear I've ceded naming rights or I lose any chance of physically being capable of reproduction. "Yes hon!" he says, nodding vigorously, "definitely named after your great grandmother, er, Olga"]

[just got bonked on the head again. She says I need to stop being a jerk. She's nearer the scissors than I am so I'm going to agree and go rub her feet.]

[She's not looking this second so I can safely say I love her to pieces. I'll deny it! don't tell her.]

We won't tell, either.

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