[1.Local]: To meme, or not to meme?
by Lisa Poisso 
Mar 28th 2010 at 2:00PM
Sometimes puppies just aren't enough. Sometimes, it takes an industrial-strength WoW meme to bring a smile to your face -- or in the case of one lovelorn writer to the Drama Mamas, to soften the blow of dealing with a sticky situation.
icepyro: "Despite seriousness of the issue, this had me laughing and loving every moment of it. Many internets are to be had by the mommas. TT, I would give my own internet to you, but I feel that is akin to giving the proverbial drowning man a glass of water.
"To those that criticize the writing, I must say the fact that both the letter and responses took the time to find game terms that work to describe the problem showed how serious it was actually taken. While amusing to read, metaphors really drive home the underlying tone that the English language itself lacks. This is not some meme-filled, short letter that just tosses wow terms in for good measure. It's only purple prose if it felt like an attempt to market the product via excessive jargon rather than the jargon used to describe how he really feels. While the goal may have been to interpret it this way so that it would stand out (mission accomplished), I really didn't feel like he was holding himself back or hiding behind the jargon.
"I do not want to recommend this style all the time lest we fall to overuse and making it a meme itself (see also: puppies). Still, it was supremely refreshing and quite the treat.
"There were some rough spots for interpretation, but the mommas seemed to be able to interpret and their resulting advice made things much clearer. Still, anyone who compares a woman to iLevel 277 will have more problems (if you don't already) when Cataclysm comes out and better gear is to be had. Thinking about it, heirloom items may work. They level with you and while it may not always be BiS or shiny purple, there is no level limit to equip nor will you ever outlevel them. They even boost your own ability to level. ... Yeah, I overthink things."
More observations (no overthinking necessary) from the past week, after the break.
Give this commenter a cookie! "This comment just popped up on my Totem Talk article about shaman's Fire Elemental," writes shammie blogger Rich Maloy. "The first point made me LOL, as in an actual out loud laugh in real life."
Firestyle: I'm going to vote no on glyph of fire elemental totem. Mostly, I do this on reliability and control of the elemental.
- I'd say he has a one in 10 chance of going to the corner and baking cookies during any given encounter.
- Thereafter, I'd say he's got a three in 10 chance of trying to kill something you don't want him to -- for example, the adds on Anub P3 hard mode. I've seen an elemental go nuts on Saurfang adds, and then when they die, sit there and stare at Saurfang from 10 yards for 15 seconds before attacking. Overall, consider the fact that a well placed Magma Totem may provide more DPS on the intended target simply because you can control it. This makes the elemental too situational.
Do you feel your fire elemental is too much of a rogue element(al) to pull out with any regularity?
Even with an introductory explanation of what "filking" is, the term apparently caught a number of readers off guard.
Feldring: First we have dagnab warlocks and their "poodling," and NOW there's talk of "filking." Durn kids and their hippity-hop language! Why, in my day ...
(By the way, if WoW lingo is tying you up in knots, check out WoW Rookie's lingo guide and our PvP terminology guide.)
It's easy to fall in love with that evocative troll culture -- but boy, they sure have a lot of "Zuls" to keep track of. How will we keep any new troll cities in Cataclysm sorted out?
Carbon: The new troll capital will be called Zul'Again. Zul'City, Zul'Town, and Zul'Ville were already incorporated.
Hit the article linked above for more distant early warnings on content coming up in Cataclysm. (Spoiler alert!)
Things that change your healing priorities
Here's a nice little conversation among [1.Local]'s healers on what events and factors nudge them into altering their healing priorities.
Karthos: Very nice points, Matt. I'd have to add something to the "If a Reincarnation or a Soulstone of some kind is being used on a dead player, they'll be alive within seconds" idea. If this happens to you or you are the intended target of a rebirth, please, please let your healers know when you are taking the rez. That way, the healers will be prepared to heal you up, instead of freaking out when they see some guy with a tiny sliver left of life suddenly appear!
Camaris: A couple of random thoughts:
- In very hectic cases, performing the WoW equivalent of triage can be very helpful: If you have to decide who to heal in a pinch, heal the person who the raid needs most. Obviously tanks are important, but so are other healers, top DPSers, people with encounter-specific buffs/debuffs.
- Don't forget yourself. This can be tricky, since you're trying SO HARD to heal everyone that you forgot your own health bar. It's embarrassing, but it can happen.
- To know what person needs heals (or shields, etc.), you need to have the correct information available and easy to see. That not only means you can see who has aggro or debuffs in your unit frames, but it also means you have to know what is going on around you (and other people). Thankfully, with things like Grid and Healbot, it isn't that hard nowadays to have nice compact UIs.
- Remember, gnomes, mages and rogues have a tendency to spontaneously combust. No amount of healing wills save an over-aggroing gnome.
cheezygonzalez11: It helps to be aware of players' particular abilities and class/spec strengths. For example, if our rogue and warlock are both going down, I'm healing the rogue first because our affliction 'lock has tons of self-healing. On a recent Festergut kill, she did 43% of the healing on herself from Siphon Life and Fel Armor --and another 9% of the healing she received came from Festergut, from Haunt. Having your healing add-on keep track of class helps with figuring out priority a lot!
A big part of the priority, though, is healing assignments. When the sh** is hitting the fan, I heal MY tank and count on our druid to take care of any raid member who may be close to death. That's the main reason we have healing assignments -- so that we each know "If X is close to death, I ignore everyone else for them," and we can count on each other to cover everyone when everyone is going down.
The return of Choose My Adventure
It's the return of Choose My Adventure, where the readers determine how we play -- and we all play together in <It Came From the Blog> on US Zangarmarsh-H. Some readers get the group effort thing. For others, though, the concept of bending personal play preferences in order to join a larger group seemed a little out of reach.
Everybody: It just occurred to me that Zangarmarsh is a PvE realm. I've never leveled on anything but PvP realms ... I've lost a little bit of interest in this :(
(cutaia): Really? You want them to announce to thousands of people exactly when and where they'll be leveling ... on a PvP server? That's just asking for the next post to be, "I got ganked for three hours by 18 death knights with names that spell out Rick Astley lyrics. Screw this column idea."
Adam Holisky: Never gonna give you up.
Robin Torres: Never gonna let you down.
Magma: Never gonna run around and desert you
Joseph Smith: Rickrolled by Holisky. Is there any greater shame?
More communal shame, humor and ruminations coming up next week. Until then!
Ha, caughtcha looking! Hey, don't scroll away ... Come join the conversation on these and other posts around the WoW.com community. We'll see you around in [1.Local]!Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, [1.Local]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ametrine Mar 28th 2010 2:26PM
Obviously those 18 deathknights were servants of Rick Arthasley.
splodesondeath Mar 28th 2010 2:41PM
There are too many places where a Rickroll fits perfectly in the Lich King's death cinematic.
DG Mar 28th 2010 2:59PM
Juicy goodness is overused, Chandler on Friends put the kabosh on it.
Al Mar 28th 2010 4:39PM
Friends stopped being relevant around 12 years, juicy goodness will rise again. Sayings like that always do.
loop_not_defined Mar 28th 2010 3:37PM
I'm gonna come right out and say it: I have a human Death Knight named "Astley". Red, closely cropped hair and green skin. Nobody has talked to me about it yet...I'm thinking his last name sounds close enough to Anton, Ashcroft, etc., that nobody really thinks about it.
Tirrimas Mar 28th 2010 4:23PM
Mebbe you shoulda been a Belf instead. :3
Artificial Mar 28th 2010 6:06PM
To X or not to X... one of the oldest memes in the book. ;)
Angus Mar 28th 2010 7:21PM
Firestyle greatly overestimates the effectiveness of the fire elemental.
In one totc run flameo did the following:
Found something interesting in the corner of a circular room while 2 worms were beating us up. How he found a corner is anyone's guess, but he managed it. I dropped the totem within 5 yards of the stationary one. His total DPS: 50
He attempted to kill Infernals whenever they showed up on Jarraxas, and ran off to smack them when they were no where near the boss. His totem was at Jarraxas' feet.
On the faction champions he sat out as he has a habit of breaking CC with almost no damage anyway and well, while it is humorous for his to wail on the warlock while in hellfire, it isn't enough.
On the twins he was dropped next to white. I saw him fighting black after she did her AE. He switched to white after she did hers, and then seemed to be confused as to what was more important and kept switching after about 15 seconds on that particular twin.
On anub he did his best. 1 target, it caused damage right away making him go after it and he never lost focus.
So on phases with no adds and AE damage he does what he is supposed to.
Too bad they can't put 2 pet bars in. Be worth it for those elementals to have a pet bar.
Nattfod Mar 28th 2010 8:02PM
memes win, simple as that.
I heard you like mudkips.
Royberto Mar 29th 2010 2:29PM
This morning the power of lightning failed to activate my Gnomish Awakening Device and I slumbered much too long. I grabbed my morning honeymint tea and emplored my kodo to make haste to the labor den, only to be confronted by the overseer on arrival. She stunned me with an icy stare that completely bypassed my frost resistance totem; and attempted to wrench my very soul from my body with a scroll of tardiness improvement plan, a curse so powerful that it denies removal by cleansing of the spirit. Then I was tasked with an endless stack of labor parchments to process, only to find that my attempts to call my totems go unanswered and my bloodlust is on extended cooldown. I simply cannot process this many parchments without a buff to my haste! On noble ancestors, why do you foresake me??!!
That was the very mundane story of someone having a bad start to their day, shaman POV. It may not be a masterwork but I am not a talented writer, I just wanted to demonstrate that, no, it doesn't take any talent to take a RL situation and describe it using WOW terminology.