BEARWALL that has nothing to do with gaming.

Has anyone ever told you this before?

“Oh, it was no big deal. It was just a blown fuse. I replaced it, we’re good to go”

Just so you know, that saying is a test.

A lot of things in life are tests, and it can be hard to recognize it when one comes around.

This post is in the way of a public service message for those of you that aren’t all too sure what “a blown fuse” means, and don’t want to look stupid or ignorant when someone tells you this in the future.

From now on, instead of nodding your head and walking away feeling vaguely worried, I’m going to arm you with science so you know what they’re saying… and what pointed questions to ask.

A Firm Grounding

Here’s the deal. If you’re reading this, you’re plenty smart enough and educated enough to understand what a fuse is, and what it means. You might just need a frame of reference.

Don’t panic. This won’t get technical.

You know your electronics runs on a power source we call electricity.

There are lots of technical terms used when discussing electricity, how it’s measured, how to calculate volts and amps, etc.

You don’t need to know any of that to live your life.

What you need to know is, how does it make that iPod spin out music, and can my iPod electrocute me if I drop it in water?

Quick answer: No.

We can functionally describe electricity as being similar to water. Water that is unaffected by gravity… but that loves finding a path to the deep, dark underworld.

What do I mean?

Let’s look at how water functions.

Water, when flowing, pushes things in front of it. The force of water pushing on things in it’s path can be used to get work done. The stronger the flow (or current), the more it can push, the more it can do.

Electricity works much the same way.

Picture a flowing stream or babbling brook. If there is a building on the riverbank, and that building has a waterwheel dipping into the river’s current, the force of the flowing water pushes on the paddles that are at the bottom, moving them forward, turning the wheel so that the next paddle dips into the current, and the rotation of the wheel continues, forever and ever, amen, ’til the river rises and the cows come home.

That waterwheel rotates on a shaft, and the shaft goes into the building, and what you get is a turning shaft inside a big building, powered by the flow of water. You can then attach stuff like gears and things, linkages and doodads, and get working machinery… powered purely by water. Triphammers, mill wheels, saws and drills and all sorts of stuff can be powered in this way.

Well, electricity is the same exact thing.

Except… instead of electricity flowing as water does, pulled down by gravity following the lowest surface it can find, electricity is special water that flows wherever it can find a conductive surface to carry it into the ground.

Electricity always heads for the easiest, simplest, fastest connection to the deep earth it can find. It follows the path of least resistance.

What is a conductive surface? Well, it depends on how strong the current of the electricity is, really.

Things like metal and water can be great conductors. Electricity touching metal will go straight to wherever the metal is touching the ground at the best point.

Rubber and the air can both be very good insulators, blocking the flow of electricity dead in it’s tracks. Plastic is pretty good at that, too.

But the more power, the more force, the more oomph in the electricity, the more resistance (or insulation) the electricity can overcome.

At high enough levels, the electricity can even jump through the air, conducting through the air itself to get to the ground. We call that an arc, and that’s some serious high power fry your ass mojo.

Why, if there is enough current in the electricity, YOU can be a conductor! You are a lot more conductive than the air, by the way. A LOT more conductive than the air.

Safety First

Let’s have a brief experiment to illustrate this point.

Say you take a metal knife, and you stick it in a wall outlet… the electricity will instantly see that if it flows through the metal knife, and then through your body, it can reach the ground through your knees where you’re touching it, and off it goes.

At this point, you will either get blasted away from the outlet because the electricity flowing through your body from your hand to your knees caused your muscles to spasm, OR you will get locked rigidly to that knife, taking the juice constantly, because your muscles all just convulsed and locked up.

This can be a fun experiment, because if your friend or loved one sees you there unmoving or unresponsive, they might run over to grab you and pull you away… and IF they are suddenly a better conductor (say they are in bare feet while you’re wearing jeans) than you are, now the electricity sees a BETTER conductive path of least resistance through them, and BOOM, they get zapped too.

Quick fun fact: In the Marines, when you’re going to work with electricity, we used to make safety devices. What these were, were long wooden sticks covered in rubber, with a metal hook screwed into one end and also covered with rubber. They were for when a Marine grabbed a live wire, convulsed, and you had to get them free without electricuting yourself. You could grab the 8′ long rubber-coated hook off the wall, and either hook them and drag them away or just whack them good with the rubber stick.

Oh no? Oh, hell yes.

Are you paying attention now?

Just to ease your worried mind, you should know that there are two kinds of electricity… direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC). The kind of electricity in your wall outlets and in your home is all AC, or alternating current. Think of it as special electricity that pulses instead of just staying strong and steady. It pulses so fast you wouldn’t notice it without special gear, but your muscles will know the difference, because if you get zapped by AC, the first pulse may lock your muscles up and cause them to contract but the next pulse will convulse you and blast you free.

Direct Current, now… that shit will lock you up, holmes.

Where do you mostly find DC (Direct Current)? Why you find it INSIDE a lot of pwoerful electronics like TVs, stereos, microwave ovens, motors, air conditioners, all that kind of stuff. AFTER where the AC power cord comes into the gizmo, goes through a transformer and some other stuffs, and gets distributed throughout the thingie as nice, smooth DC voltage.

THIS IS WHY YOU AREN’T SUPPOSED TO SCREW AROUND INSIDE ELECTRONICS WITHOUT TRAINING. 

So.

Electricity is like water, it pushes stuff in front of it. It is supposed to start at, say, a wall outlet or breaker box. Then it flows through a conductive material, like metal wire, that is covered in a insulating material like rubber to keep it IN the wire, goes into a gizmo, pushes stuff around inside the gizmo to make it move and get work done… and then, believe it or not, goes right back out a second insulated metal wire and back into the wall outlet, return to sender.

It makes a complete circuit.

This is why, if you look at an AC power cord, it is two wires, each wrapped in rubber to isolate them from each other. One is the supply of juice TO teh gizxmo, the other is the return pipe FROM teh gizmo. They are commonly called the ‘Hot” and the “Neutral”, respectively. The hot is usually coated with black rubber, and the neutral is coated with white, when found in American wiring diagrams or inside a junction box.

You often also find a third wire. It is colored green inside gizmos, and it is called the ground wire.

Why? Because the ground wire does NOT carry any juice at all. None. It is dead as a doornail… and it is there to save your life.

The ground wire is attached to the deepest, darkest pit of black underground wetness there is anywhere near your house. It is THE favorite path for current to flow.

The ground wire is plugged into your gear, fixed to metal parts like the case… and is supposed to be a safety. If the hot or the neutral gets cut or shorted, instead of you getting killed by touching the metal case of your stereo, the power goes through the case, to the ground wire, and down to that inky it of blackness where all electricity finds it’s home instead.

It also provides a wonderful way of making sure you don’t get outside sources of electricity, like static electricity, interfering within your delicate electronics like your Xbox 360. If you zap the case, the ground wire bleeds the electricity off to ground so it never zaps the guts of the machine.

But what about fuses, you idiot!

It is normal to put a fuse in the wire at different points.

Breakers in your electrical panel in your house are, essentially, fuses too.

What a fuse is, is a wire designed to melt at a certain temperature, enclosed in a VERY insulative holder. It’s just the same as wire, but if it gets too hot, it melts. 

Fuses melt when they get too hot, and when that happens, no more path for the current to flow. Electricity stops flowing, because the wire just got cut. The gizmo stops working… because the electricity HAS to flow for it to push or otherwise make the gizmo do stuff.

So, if a fuse is designed to melt when it gets too hot, what causes it to heat up?

Electricity does.

More specifically, the amperage in the electricity.

What is amperage? 

You don’t need to know exactly what it is, but it can help to think of it like this.

Now, this is completely and totally wrong, and yet it may help. Professionals, if you think I’ve taken liberties before this, hold onto your hats. It’s all in a good cause.

When you see a sign saying # of volts, # of amps, think of it like this.

The amount of volts is the size of pipe the electricity is traveling in. The more volts, the bigger the flow of electricity can be, the more work it COULD do.

The amount of amps is the actual POWER, the push, the big honking wave that is flowing through the pipe, doing the actual work.

To complete this horrible analogy, the stuff that the electricity is pushing in whatever gizmo you’ve got? That is the resistance. The more it resists the amps trying to push it, the more amps you need to provide to get it to go.

Here is why you should care.

You could have 480 volts on the line, a huge pipe. But if there are only .2 milliamps in the circuit, an itty bitty amount of current, you can grab the bare wire in your hand and only feel a tickle.

If you lick a 9 volt battery, getting your tongue on both prongs at once and feel the electricity flow across your taste buds from one pole to another, it won’t blow your ass up because the amps are very low.

But if you grabbed that same 480 volt wire, and there were 20 or more amps on there… if those 20 amps of force decided to flow through YOU as the fastest way to get to the ground, if YOU became the “path of current flow”, then you can die, cooked from the inside out, with your feet blown off and still steaming in your boots.

I’m not kidding around here.

What makes a fuse melt?

Amps of force performing work, pushing through things that offer resistance, generate heat.

If there is too little wire to handle all the amps flowing through it, that wire will, literally, melt.

The reason you have circuit breakers in your house is to prevent you plugging in too many things on one circuit or loop of wire, drawing a SHOTLOAD of amps through the wires in the walls of your house to power all that crap, melting the wires buried in your walls and setting your house on fire.

The circuit breaker is a fuse, designed to trip out or ‘break’ when it gets too hot… and capable of being reset. It trips when there are more amps flowing through it than the wires attached to it are capable of handling.

Circuit breakers are designed to be reset, on the assumption you know enough to unplug stuff from the appropriate outlet when one pops. Old school power panels had actual fuses that you had to replace… and many skilled and brilliant electricians would replace them, all right. With copper pennies. Sigh.

So, pop quiz because you know the answer now. What does a blown fuse mean?

It means that something got so hot it melted a piece of wire. It melted a piece of wire that was designed to melt for a reason; to protect something else from getting damaged from too much force/amps/electricity/power.

So now we come to the main event.

If a fuse blew, it didn’t do it out of spite, or vindictiveness.

That fuse blew because something somewhere else went wrong, and the fuse melted to protect your valuable shit, or even your life.

Why your life?

Because the most common place to stick a fuse is right where the wire comes into your gizmo from the power cord plugged into the wall. If that fuse melted, something somewhere in your gizmo suddenly decided to suck so much juice out of the wall it melted a wire… melted that wire before it melted something else. Or tripped a breaker in your power panel.

Or shorted right through you, blowing off your feet.

So if someone says to you, ”Oh, it was no big deal. It was just a blown fuse. I replaced it, we’re good to go”, the very next question you need to ask is, “What caused the fuse to blow?”

That is the test.

To know that a blown fuse is not the problem, a blown fuse PROTECTED you from the problem.

What caused the fuse to blow? Because if all you did was replace the fuse, what the hell is stopping whatever it was from causing it to blow again?

What if the reason the fuse blew, was that there is water somewhere inside the gizmo. Electricity likes to find the easiest path to ground, right? And water makes for a good conductor. the electricity doesn’t want to do work, it doesn’t want to flow through any resistance, it’s always looking for the easiest way out.

So there is water, and sometimes the gizmo moves, the water flows, touches somewhere that has electricity, and the electricity says “Ah HAH! I can bypass almost all this other shit, flow right through the water, take a shortcut, and go through this here control knob, through that person’s hand, down their arm, and ground myself on the metal arm of the chair. YAHOO! FREEDOM AT LAST!”

Kaboom.

Or maybe, and god this is common, maybe you’ve got a motor that is powered by electricity in your gizmo. Like your car. Or your air conditioner. The motor is physically moving, spinning round, from the force of electricity pushing it.

It takes a lot of amps to physically move a motor. Lots more than your iPod needs. Rule of thumb, if the electricity has to get a motor physically moving, it’s got a LOT of juice running through it. Moving parts take power.

The motor has all this power running through it, some insulation starts wearing away, or the bearing that lets the shaft turn nice and smooth starts binding up making the motor use a LOT more power to get that shaft to turn, and the heat from the increased amp draw builds up.

The fuse blows. It gets hot and melts, protecting your motor from turning into slag.

If this is caught right away, the motor can usually be fixed. Maybe by something as simple and easy as putting a bit of grease or oil on the bearing that the shaft turns on, reducing how hard the motor has to work.

But what do I see all the damn time?

“Fuse blew, I replaced it and got the device back in service.”

“What caused it to blow?”

“I dunno, probably just a power spike.”

“Nothing else went down, and the lights didn’t flicker. Go check it out, find out why it blew.”

“Okay.” *very grumpy*

A week passes.

The motor ‘burns out’, from too much heat because instead of greasing the motor bearings, the jackass replaced the fuses and didn’t ‘waste his time ‘troubleshooting the core problem.

I look inside at the fuses, wondering why the $20 fuses did not pop, protecting the $3000 motor from melting by blowing first, like they were designed to.

I see that the fuses, which are supposed to blow if the electrical current flow exceeds 20 amps, have been replaced by 30 amp fuses.

It takes a lot more heat to blow a 30 amp rated fuse than a 20 amp rated fuse. If the amps never rise above 30 amps, the wire inside will never heat up enough to melt.

But that motor sure did love the extra amps that drove it far harder than it was ever designed to, at a temperature it’s wires weren’t designed to handle. Wires melted, or maybe even the motor windings.

Meltdown. $3000 motor burnt to shit. Repairs and rewinding will probably cost about $1200.

Oh wow, but at least those $20 fuses are still in great shape, and the tech that decided to swap 20 amp fuses for 30 amp fuses so he wouldn’t have to keep replacing them when they blew over and over?

Well, at least he had some piece and quiet for that week.

Wrapping this up

Now you know what a blown fuse really means. It means more juice, more power, more amps, more OOMPH just went through the thing than it was designed to safely handle, and the fuse blew before something SERIOUS happened. Read: expensive or dangerous.

If you simply replace the fuse, you are giving whatever it was a chance to do it again, shocking the system and risking damage from the fuse melting too SLOWLY to stop the big jolt of power from going through and doing it’s damage to the sensitive guts of your gear first.

If you replace the fuse with a BIGGER fuse, what you’re doing is saying, “I don’t like to live safely, or to save money. Fuck it, let the motor burn, just as long as it stops bugging me by popping all the time.”

Yes, a spike of power from the source can cause a fuse to blow or breaker to pop. A lightning strike on the main supply coming into your house, etc.

But if it did… you should have seen lights flicker, or had some other indication than just one thing popping a fuse.

At the very least, I hope that now you will feel confident whenever you are talking to someone about your car, or stereo, or air conditioner, or circuit breaker, to call them on the carpet if they feed you that old “It was just a fuse” line.

Today, it was just a fuse. Tomorrow, it’s the water pump, or the fan motor, or the overhead crane drive, or whatever it may be.

Or something compound in your car. I don’t care what it is, if it’s compound, it’s money.

This may not have helped you, but by God I’m glad to get that off my chest. Freaking idiot techs, I swear I’m going to start using the Big Safety Stick™ to give them a current test they won’t soon forget..

We’re level 85 and we’ve killed Deathwing. For our efforts, we saved the world and got a title.

A TITLE.

I’d like to whisper in the ears of some of my friends at Blizzard who may someday sit around a table discussing the possibility of Sargeras becoming a final expansion boss.

I know, the Dark Titan Sargeras. Right? Not even remotely possible as a boss, right?

If World of Warcraft were a Marvel comic book, then Deathwing would have to be the Galactus to us little people of Azeroth, and by using the Dragon Soul we totally pulled a Reed Richards with the Ultimate Nullifier on his ass. Except we actually pulled the trigger. Try to eat a planet on MY watch and see what happens to you, ya tentacled prick, ya.

Anyway, so Sargeras.

Deathwing is a world shattering terror, and even so, he wouldn’t be much more than a mid-day snack to the all-encompassing might that is the Dark Titan, Sargeras.

But it’s not beyond the realm of imagination that someday we could see Sargeras on the other end of our UI as a targeted boss with a skull level and hit points.

It could happen.

I can even spin an almost plausible web in under 30 seconds.

When Broxigar the Red fell, wounding Sargeras himself, his axe survived and was handed over to our modern-day Thrall by the time-traveling dragon-mage Krasus, who was disguised as an orc shaman at the time.

When Broxigar fell in the past, Malorne was but recently dead at the hands of Archimonde and Cenarius himself was, shall we say, mildly distracted by sorrow.

The magical axe that Cenarius had caused to be created, the same axe Broxigar used to wound Sargeras, was taken almost unnoticed from the world of the past and brought forward.

No big deal, right?

Ah, but now, in our time, Malorne has been reborn! The spirit of nature has been reborn upon the slopes of Mount Hyjal.

What miracles might be possible next?

Could the mighty Ragnaros suffer the final death at last, destroyed within his own realm of fire?

Could evn the mighty Deathwing face destruction?

And if these could fall… might it even be possible to entertain the thought of destroying the one being that represents the ultimate in darkness, sorrow and evil to our world?

The ultimate lord and master of the demons that have plagued us from the beginning, who has sent his pawns against us, who has corrputed others merely to use them as cannon-fodder to throw against us and weaken our resolve?.

Who can say what Malorne might feel, having died and been reborn with the spring.

Who can say but that perhaps the earth has learnt to desire, if not revenge, then retribution.

And lo, here and now, at this time and in this place, during an age of wonders and miracles, comes a weapon forged in the heart of life, given form by Cenarius, sanctified by the utterly selfless and heroic will of Broxigar the Red and baptised in the blood of the Dark Titan itself?

Is it so strange to think that perhaps the developers of Blizzard could make se of that axe as a tool in a mad plan of Cenarius’ to take the fight to Sargeras himself… perhaps by striking at him through a way he might not expect… through the Emerald Dream?

You can never really say that it would be impossible for Sargeras to become a raid boss.

Who can tell what the imagineers behind WoW will come up with in the future? Who could say that we might not someday see an Emerald Dream expansion… with Sargeras as the final boss.

If I were to flesh out the idea, the truth is I would start with Sargeras seeking to attack Azeroth by flanking through the Emerald Dream on his own initiative, and of our entering it to face his forces and fight against his growing influence. As bad as things have been within the Emerald Dream, if Sargeras added his influence to it, it really could poison everything from within.

From that point, building up to using Broxigars Axe as the MacGuffin the final hopes of Azeroth reovlve around becomes simple… but that’s why I dislike it. It’s been done too many times. I’d much prefer a proactive, ‘take it to the boss and get him before he comes after us yet again’ kind of thing.

If it was done really well, we might not even get the usual sappy result you often see in fantasy literature, where the heroes try to take action on their own initiative instead of sitting passively waiting to be gobsmacked, and end up being punished for it to make some kind of point that action or movement is inherently evil and sitting placidly is good. But that is a discussion for another day.

Why not tie in an expansion about the Emerald Dream into having Sargeras as the final raid boss?

Let’s just say they do find a way.

We face Sargeras. And we win.

We, the players, with I am sure a teensy bit of help from The Usual NPCs, face down and destroy Sargeras.

After all of that….

We better not just get a title, is what I’m saying.

If we kill Sargeras, do you think it would be too much to ask to be awarded with a Tabard imbued with a spell that makes those around you genuflect when you activate it?

That’s right… I’m suggesting the killers of Sargeras be awarded a Tabard so that others beholding your incredible awesome leetness know to literally kneel before you in admiration.

They can do it. They have the technology. Both the Piccolo of the Flaming Fire and the Tabard of the Protector are in the game.

Or maybe you think that would be a little over the top?

PS… I was also thinking how fun it would be to have a Priest spell called Genuflect, that was a long cooldown AoE heal that, as a side-effect, made those players affected by the healing momentarily kneel. But then I snapped out of my momentary madness. Seriously, wtf was I thinking, even for a moment? What a horrendously terrible idea. /shudder

 

I know that, at times, I get ranty and some folks think that I’m just an all-around crabby kind of guy.

Then other times I’m gushing about how much fun I’m having playing World of Warcraft, and some folks think I drank some serious mind-mojo kool aid.

I can understand it probably seems weird if you don’t see where I’m coming from.

“This guy is a freak! He plays the game, but he nerdrages about what some punk did in a raid. If he hates it so much, why not just quit?”

This is an actual sentiment I’ve seen before, and since I have clearly caused some confusion, hey, I’ll do what I can to clear it up.

Why Asshats in Raids Can’t Make Me Quit

I continue to like playing World of Warcraft because it is an activity I enjoy regardless of the presence or input of other people.

Yes, World of Warcraft is an MMO filled with people, and the ability to interact with and continue a story with others persistently can be awesome. But World of Warcraft is not the only game in town, nor is it even the first or only MMO I’ve ever played. It is instead the best role-playing video game with the widest range of potential activities that I’ve ever played, and that is why I’m still here.

The majority of what I like to do can be done solo. Creating new alts, trying fresh specs, whipping up new personalities and playing dress-up with them, devising new in-game goals, crafting, exploring, hunting for gear, taming rare pets… I can do these things whenever I like, as and how I have the time.

The key point I want to make here is that my enjoyment of the game does not depend on the actions of any other people. I do not rely on the moods, attitudes or continued play of anyone else in order to get what I want from the game, or to feel fulfilled by my game play experience.

If I have a raid with people that falls apart, if other people act like asshats in a random group, if whatever concerning someone else happens… it doesn’t affect my core gameplay experience. It doesn’t reduce the fun I find in the actual game.

It’s important to me to make that distinction. I can be in a raid with some total asshats, and I can rant about them for a page and a half here, but it doesn’t affect how I feel about World of Warcraft. The game is not the other people I am around. The other people can be fun multipliers or fun reducers… but the game is the baseline.

If I find myself surrounded by asshats, and I’m not happy… I don’t leave the game, I leave the people. The game, to me, is fine.

Plus, truth be told, I’ve never understood why my ranting on the blog is taken as actual rage. Do people still think it’s healthy to cram down your feelings, hold them inside tight and tense,  and never explore them or release them or work through them? If you don’t like reading my rants here, then don’t read, sheesh. This is my writing space, if you’re offended, then don’t read. Expecting me not to blow off steam on my own website created for that purpose shows a lack of understanding about what a blog is. Ranting doesn’t mean I’m close to grabbing a gun, silly people, it means I’m working through my feelings, exploring what it is that made me angry, and maybe it’s not apparent from the outside, but I have a lot of fun doing it. It is a release, not a winding up.

If I didn’t like the game, but I was surrounded by great people, then I’m sure I would stay in the game much longer than otherwise… but I would be bored unless some of those other people were online. If I logged in and found nobody on, I’d probably feel the slippage of time being wasted without the fun.

If the main source of fun I found in game was playing with other people in group activities, then I might even start to resent other people for not being more active, resent the guild for not raiding more, or resent the other people for not providing me with what I wanted – the only fun I got in game.

It can be hard to remember that it is not the job of anyone else, not friends, guild or game, to entertain you or keep you amused. Once you log in, you must go seek out your own fun in your own way.

Raiding with other People, Old and New

I enjoy a lot of solo play, but I also like seeing the content, experiencing the lore, taking part in the group adventures, and I do like raiding with fun people.

I also enjoy older content where you can blow through it with friends, joking and swearing and generally abusing an hour in Black Temple.

I rage about players I see from time to time, but the other big point I wanted to make was that I’m never raging about poor performance.

I am angry, raging, ranty when someone shows no interest in trying, doing their best, or making an effort.

This is the heart and soul of my position as a player and as a writer about the game, and how I have always approached any guide I wrote or advice I gave.

I do not get angry at poor performance. I get angry at people who don’t give a shit.

If you are stepping into an instance for the first time, excited and scared at the same time, and speak up, I am not the one groaning in party chat before bailing.

If you are there to step up and try your very best, i will be happy to be patient with you and help the best I can. If you are willing to accept some suggestions, I will be there to help guide you.

Most especially, if you have tried to prepare your gear as best you can, with common sense attitudes towards enchants and gems considering how expensive some of it can be, if you have reforged, ESPECIALLY if you have PvP gear but have reforged it to try and be as prepared as you can…

Awesome. Come on in, let’s rock.

A positive attitude. A refusal to quit. A desire to do the best you can, to learn from mistakes, to recover without raging, to persevere… to pay attention and focus on the task at hand.

These things will win you my admiration and gratitude for making a run a great place to be.

If your attitude is poor, if you whine and complain, if you rant about this or complain about that, if you live or die by who did what on the damage meters, if you couldn’t care less about whether everyone is in the instance, if you want to pull to grief the group intentionally…

Intent. That is the magic word.

If your intent is to be a douchebag, then fuck you. I don’t care how geared you are, you are a pathetic loser in my eyes, and you always will be until you attain some maturity and some consideration for others.

I have always approached writing about the game from the point of view of wanting to encourage people interested in improving their game by learning more about the mechanics behind how things work, what the stats do and which are important, how to use abilities to their fullest extent, how to expand your fundamental understanding of the game.

I wrote gear guides because, well, gear does matter, and I love setting goals.

But gear does not matter to me nearly as much as skill, and skill doesn’t matter as much to me as a positive “can do” attitude.

Some of my favorite bloggers recently have been talking about being invited to run in raids, and are apologetic IN ADVANCE because they are sure they are going to perform badly.

Oh, they will try, and do their best, but they are sure they’re going to fail miserably.

I say, “Get your ass in the raid, have fun, and let your fears go. As long as you try, and remain positive and energetic, you will rock that damn joint!”

Get your ass in ICC. You know who you are. Oh, and /hugs.

Consideration for others, attitude, intent.

The longer I play, the more I realize that for me, Looking For Raid is a good tool for seeing content, getting familiar with the basic structure of the fights, and improving gear so that I can better support my actual friends… the people who I know, and who have that consideration, who maintain the positive attitude, who intend to kick ass.

And if all I had to play in the game for raiding was LFR, I’d be fine with my solo play, is all I’m saying.

True to his word, Hugh Hancock at MMO Melting Pot has put together a great conglomeration of those bloggers who took part in the writing challenge.

Thank you Hugh for spending so much time and effort putting that list together, along with the excerpts and introductions. That goes a long way towards turning a chaotic idea into something resembling a warm community… that reminds me, did someone remember to feed Gevlon? They mostly come out at night… mostly.

While Hugh did a great job of putting the spotlight on most of the writers that have their own websites, there were a few that as of yet hadn’t been linked to. Make sure you don’t miss;

Nymphy and Orvillius’ article on D/E The Tank!
Serenity Saz’ article on World of Saz
Targeters article on Imperial Intelligence!

Now, as I promised, I’d like to highlight some of the excellent writing that was posted directly in the comments of the writing challenge.

Without further ado;

From long suffering LONG LONG time reader Suxxy;

Vincent wasn’t a vain man, even though his nickname in the industry was “The Torch”.
He liked that name much better than “SoL” (Statue of Liberty).
You see, Vincent’s hidden talant was that he could stand at attention and hold his enormous, slender shaft aloft.
Vincent was the star of many juicy porn films… perhaps a not-so-hidden talent? ;)

From Cowsareus;

Riften. Temple of Mara.

Taking a bite off a juicy apple, the Dovakiin was lost in his thoughts… “Many choices, little time…”
Nord? Breton? Or Argonian? Where will I find a spouse? How will I choose?

Imperial, she must be an Imperial. Very smart, versed in the arcane, one that has been to Winterhold College. Pretty face, dark eyes, and a slender body. Vain? Perhaps.

What the heck, I’m the Dragonborn, I can do anything.

Unknown to the Dovakiin, 2 years later a poisoned Daedric arrow with a shaft as black as the armor of a merciless Nightingale would pierce his knee and forever end his life as an adventurer.

For life is short, unpredictable, and fragile above all. Will the stars guide you, or fall down upon you? Will the fire from the torch light your path, or burn down your house?

Mysterious and always hidden are the treads of fate.

From Sheen;

Gracefully the shimmering dollop of dew made its way down the slender shaft of wheat grass. Kuamala reached out her finger, let the juicy drop settle onto her skin and smiled at the simple beauty of nature. Hidden amongst the reeds, Kuamala was supposed to be watching the road for the Twilight Messenger. She’d diligently scanned the roadway for hours on end – still the messenger had not come. Silently making a wish on the Aegon Star, she began to despair that tonight’s watch, like so many others, would be in vain. A glimmer of light began to emerge above the crest of a nearby hill and instantly her hackles raised and her blood began to surge. Crouched low, she inched closer to the hill and the figure that was rimmed in the harsh glow of torch light. Her fingers reflexively gripped the handles of her twin daggers and she paused for one brief, soul-shattering moment. This was not the messenger she had been expecting. Steeling her resolve, Kuamala moved forward, closer to her destiny. Tonight revenge would be hers.

From Charlan (James Fisher) we have;

The Queen rides at Night

In the dark underbrush of the Blarian Forest, Alexin, a boy of ten years, crouches hidden. The night’s stillness is only broken by the occasional gust of wind rustling the tree branches and the scurrying of some critter through a pile of crunching leaves. Alexin struggles in vain to see something, anything, in the gloom caused by the overcast sky.

Long ago, the excitement and nerves of joining the ambush have given way to boredom. Holding the slender shaft of his arrow, he stabs it into the dirt beside him. Die, Bitch Queen, die, he dares to whisper, repeating the swears he had overheard Drunken John yelling the night before, when everyone had thought Alexin had been asleep in his tent. Always in the back, he mutters. Sure, he didn’t understand about taxes and bandits and cessations, but that was no reason he couldn’t be allowed to go along.

Suddenly, in the distance, torches flare to life like angry flame flies. Leaping to his feet, Alexin hears men shouting, the screaming neighing of horses and thunderous clash of steel on steel. Ahead, something is racing through the darkness, breaking through trees, crashing towards him. Fumbling with his bow, panicking, he fires a shot randomly at the dark shape bearing down on him. Hearing a juicy thud, and a high-pitched scream, Alexin dives aside as a riderless horse rushes past him disappearing into the night.

Creeping slowly over to the still form, he hears quiet whimpers and the hollow rasping of breath coming from it. Just as Alexin reaches the body, the clouds part and the blue glow of the moon and stars reveals a young girl, not much older than him, with pale skin and silver-blond hair glinting in the moonlight.

Her eyes dart like a trapped animal, fleeing from his face, to the arrow embedded in her chest, and then back again. With the arrow clutched weakly in one hand, her ragged breaths come faster as a foamy blood froth bubbles from her mouth. No, no, no, he chants to himself, dropping his bow as he kneels beside her, his hands frantically fluttering over the arrow, but not daring to touch it.

Her hand shoots outs and grabs his in an iron grip, forcing him to stare into her face. Her lips move slowly, mouthing something inaudible, her chest rises deeply one last time, then deflates like a broken bellows. Alexin watches as the light fades from her eyes and they glaze over.

Slumping to the ground, he starts weeping and sobbing, coughing as he grabs her and holds her. Die, Bitch Queen, die, he whimpers as he rocks back and forth. Die, Bitch Queen, die, he repeats, like a prayer, hoping that it will make him feel better, but secretly knowing it won’t.

From The Mannyac (Manny Marshall), the best damn role player I’ve ever played with, we had;

The reporter looked the slender women up and down. He noticed her perfectly manicured nails, designer clothes and long mane of blonde hair without a strand out of place.

“I wonder if she got all dolled up just to come see me?” He stopped for a minute considering which of them was, at that moment, the more vain.
“So how can I help you?” I asked.

She inhaled, and in a sultry voice replied, “It’s my bastard husband, he’s been fooling around on me, and I now I want to give him the shaft. He’s been carrying a torch for his secretary, and the bitch had the hots for him too.”

“You know who I am and you know that he’s a big shot politician. You also know he’s up for re-election. This is the kind of thing he has to keep hidden if he wants to win. Well, screw him.” Now she was just plain mad. “Here’s what you need”, she said handing over a large manila envelope.

“You print this, you get it out there, and your career takes off, you’ll be a star reporter.”

She was right, this was the story of a lifetime. I took the package from her and opened it. I looked at the photos, and read the transcripts of phone conversations. Smiling, I rolled up my sleeves and started to type.

From Skip we’ve got this amazing entry;

There is some food hidden underneath the wine rack. It is not as delicous as a juicy steak sandwich, you know the kind, grain bread toasted the meat is cut up already with salad and barbeque sauce that drips out as you take a bite.Salad isn’t my favourite food but I eat it unlike the cat. I tried giving her some beetroot once from a steak sanga and she took it straight to the cream couch , I haven’t been allowed to sit on the couch since then. I hate that cat.

Look at it sunning itself in the shaft of sunlight coming through the kitchen window, pretty soon she will groom her black and white fur. So very vain, even for a cat you have probably heard the saying my dog thinks he is human my cat knows she is god. Not all gods are good. I should really rest, I have just come back from another round of chemotherapy.You see I am dying, and I need to save my energy to kill the cat without my family knowing it was me.

After the purple stain incident I started to watch the cat carefully, she is evil. I am not a card carrying member of the “I hate cats” club.
Our neighbours cats are cute and affectionate, it was their visits that led to aquiring this god, even the hardcore strays in the neighbourhood have less cunning and guile. If it were possible for cats to be declared vicious by the council she makes it purely on her thoughts.

I got the idea on how to do it from when she broke her leg, we were packing up for a fishing trip. The god was playing this game with the children,
they had this thing that looked like a small torch but it had a red lightbeam shining out of it and as they moved the lightbeam around the room
she chased it until she failed to notice the open tackle box she jumped in, somehow she didn’t get hooked, and to this day I really don’t know how she broke her leg
I just remember this fur ball whizzing round the room. My sounds of amusement and pleasure thankfully drowned out by my family’s panic and concern for her wellbeing.

The vet bill was over three grand and with me being sick there was some discussion on if we could afford it but a decision to save her was made for the kids.
So it wasn’t the money that made me think about killing her, and it wasn’t the canceled camping trip. Even though that trip was for me to boost my spirits.
It was what she did on her fourth night back from the vets. I caught her climbing late one night when she was meant to be bedridden. When I woke up the whole house, she made it back to her bed before everyone could see her for the false god she is.

There were mumbles as everyone else went back to bed about the chemo really having an affect on me. That night I knew she couldn’t outlive me, ok, the precise moment was when it won the staring competetion for the next seven weeks my whole family fussed over her, I mean you all found out I was dying the week before her accident and yet you worry about her slender frame (without comment on the chemo racking my body) and all but give her a gold star for her stupidity, someone always at home for her. Worshipping a false god can change anybody.

The food is wedged under a signed 1990 Collingwood Premiership Port Bottle, the only way to get the food out without breaking the bottle is to lift the bottle out first.
When she breaks that bottle swiping at the pigs ear to get it out our humans will have forgotten that they got me after I was kicked out of training to be an assistance dog, I barked at one cat and I flunked.
These are the kind of humans that will choose sports over a god and euthanasise her on principle. Did I mention I an Essendon fan?

Do I end the wrapup on that note? Yeah, I certainly think so.

Thank you again to everyone that took the time to create such amazing works. I think this should lay to rest the fear people may have that if they were to start writing blogs or journals or any other kind of thing, that it wouldn’t be original.

Look at how differently each person took the same starting idea and ran with it. How much more original will your own efforts inevitably end up being if the original seed for your growing idea came from your own passion and point of view?

Thank you to everyone that took part in the writing challenge!

I had no idea so many folks would participate. I knew that a few would, and I knew they’d be amazing stories. Holy cowsareus, there was even a song! It’s not the quality that has stunned me, I expected that. It’s the quantity!

Cassie saw that I was swamped yesterday and spent a couple hours putting together a compilation post for the wrapup. What she did, though, was follow each link to the original website and copy the entire thing, then put it in the post with a link.

It took a lot of work, but it wasn’t what I’d been intending, because if a reader came here and read someone else’s work in it’s entirety, would they really feel like following the link through to the website and commenting to the author?

I know that there is a certain amount of truth to the idea that not many folks are going to follow every link to read stories on other websites and come back here, but this wasn’t about pagehits for me, and if someone wrote something on their blog, it’s their property and people should go there to read and enjoy it.

I love what MMO Melting Pot does in that regard, they do a theme post, put links to other blogs that are relevant to the theme, add an exerpt of the destination article and their own commentary. It’s bloody perfect. Helps guide people to awesome articles they may have missed, gives a teaser to entice you to go read the whole thing, and adds a little value with their own opinions. Bloody perfect for the community, in my mind.

Now that I think of it, if I do the wrapup, everyone will be coming here and giving me pagehits as they go back and forth to stories.

Hey, Hugh… err, you wouldn’t happen to be interested in doing a wrapup post, would you? Umm, then people would give YOU the pagehits as they go back and forth to all the stories! Yeah, that’s it!

What, a lot of work? Oh, pshaw, it wouldn’t be nuthin’! It’s not like there were, oh, dozens of stories or anything. How bad could it be?

/whistles / runslikehell

Well, while you wait for me to get above water so I can get a compilation together that showcases your awesome writing, you can just go and, oh, I dunno… read about Mists of Pandaria since half the WoW world got into the beta last night. How does that sound?

Sound good?

Ah, and once again the community of WoW writers becomes split by those that CAN have first hand access to whatever they want to investigate in the beta, and those who CANNOT.

This time, we’re going to get the added pain of those bloggers that committed to an Annual Pass thinking that at least this way they were assured of beta access to write their info posts now being pissed because they didn’t actually get in on the first wave like they thought they would.

The beta invites are only coming through “in waves”.

People may be polite, but if you think there isn’t a little angst out there this morning as MMO Champion pours out the coverage, effectively getting info ‘firsts’ while others bang on the door begging to be let in, then you don’t know the blogosphere like I do.

It’s all good. Damn, there are some awesome Druid Minor Glyphs!