The first thing about WoW that really confused me was the language, or "lingo" if you will. There were a lot of acronyms to learn, for one thing, and everyone tossed them around as if it was the most natural thing in the world to say "LFW max 450 LW skill BYOM PST".
If I had to describe the corruption of modern-day English in the WoW universe, I would break it down into three main categories: acronyms and/or condensed words/phrases, intentional misspellings and/or misnomers, and absolute nonsense.
When I was nearing 80 and finally started to play with other players, it was really embarrassing that I didn't know many of the common acronyms everyon used in the dungeons - even the ones that were for rogues. For instance the tank would ask me "rogue CC the caster" and I would stare blankly. After embarrassing situations I finally learned (through google) that CC stood for "crowd control", ie, he wanted me to sap/stun the mob. I love sharing random WoW acronyms with my friends - just the other day they cracked up when I referred to them as my IRL buddies (In Real Life).
Then of course there are the condensed words. Many of them are intuitive, such as pally (paladin) or warr (warrior). Some of the ones that threw me for a loop were:
belf (blood elf) - for the longest time I thought people were misspelling the word elf by adding a B in front of it somehow. Then one day it hit me - aha! B-elf, as in blood elf!
pots (potions) - where the hell are these pots that everyone is talking about? Can you cook in these pots? Then while reading something on wowwiki, I finally got it.
trix (tricks of the trade) - to be fair, rogues don't learn this skill until much later in the game so I had no way of knowing what the hell tricks of the trade was...or why people kept asking me for it.
disc priest (discipline priest) - this one was tricky, since the "disc" in discpline is pronounced differently from the way the actual word "disc" is pronounced. Also, I don't play a priest.
chanter (enchanter) - duh, this one should've been kind of obvious.
My favorite category are the words that are intentionally misspelled words and made-up names. When I first heard people saying "Can I haz buffs plox?" I thought it was pretty childish (I mean, how does plox even sound anything like the word "please"?). But once I learned to sort of accept it as part of the wow experience, I kind of liked it. It's almost like you actually ARE in some fantasy universe where everyone talks kind of like an idiot! So I joined in and now you will routinely hear me say "lulz can we haz moar buffs plox?"
The made-up names are sometimes very clever. The word loot is used a lot to refer to easy bosses in ICC - "lootship" (gunship) and "lady lootwhisper" (lady deathwhisper). The two abominations in the plague wing of ICC are referred to as "the potatoes", because well, they look like potatoes. Some other ones I like:
DDR - referring to Heigan the Unclean, because you have to do a giant square dance for the fight.
Patchwerk v.3.3 - Festergut, which is basically a DPS race frenzy/gear check, similar to Patch back in Naxx
Crazy Cat Lady - Auriaya in Ulduar, who summons cats during the fight.
Twins - the Val'Kyrs in ToC, because there are two of them :P
And then finally...the absolute gibberish/nonsense that people say. The classic example being "pwn" - we all know what it means, even though the word itself is completely ridiculous. Then people start adding other words to it to make up words like roflpwn, uberpwn, pwanage, facepwn, etc etc to grow a whole nother dictionary full of ridiculous words related to pwn.
All in all, the average outsider would really scratch their heads and wonder what is wrong with all these people. But I mean, JRR Tolkien invented Elvish (which some people study and learn seriously) for his Middle-Earth, so is it so outlandish that the made-up universe of WoW has its own quirky language? I think that's what I love about the game after all, the fact that the programmers try hard to remind people that it is just a game, and encourage all sorts of silliness from the players themselves. And you know, at first you might be confused, but once you understand why people talk the way they do and why some words are the way they are, it's pretty funny. It goes to show that not all gamers are fat, weird nerds - in fact most of them have a sense of humor.
I, for one, can't stop cracking up whenever I see the guild name: Sup Gurl I'm Full Purpz (translated: Hello female player, all of my equipped items are of epic (purple) quality or better, I hope this knowledge will impress you and induce you to engage in sexual relations with me).
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Insane in the Membrane
That's the latest little WoW project I have going on. "Little" being a very loose term here...
For the past 6 months I've been drifting from guild to guild, constantly in search of better players, better progression, better consistency, etc etc. I've outgrown several guilds that weren't progressing as fast as I would've liked, and my current guild is pretty good, except they've decided to take a break. Which basically leaves me with my thumb in an unpleasant place.
Side note: I really miss my old guild. We raided 6 nights a week, I was part of the "core" group, the GM loved me...sigh.
Anyways, I usually like to level up alts instead of gathering achievement points, but this one really intrigued me. I'd been wanting to try it out but obviously it's a very daunting challenge. I mean, why else is there only like 4 people on the server with the title?
Having spent a few weeks on getting this title, I can tell you a couple of things.
1.) Having money helps. If you had endless money things would go a lot quicker. But I kind of enjoy the slow, seemingly endless grind in a bizarre self-destructive way. Having a good gold reserve is nice for filling in the gaps between all the things you're willing to farm/grind for. For example, I'm finding that librams are not that hard to come by. Pristine black diamonds (aka PBD, the bane of my existence) are definitely NOT easy to farm. I'm finding that dropping 2-300g on one of those is a good investment since it's such a rare drop. Time = money, right? Besides, I've been making a pretty penny selling all the enchanting mats I get from sharding the greens/blues I've been picking up. Not to mention all that runecloth. SO MUCH RUNECLOTH! I'm swimming in bolts of them.
2.) Having many alts help. Consider having at least 2-3 serious alts - by serious I mean not some level 1 toon with 1 bank slot. You should have 1 dedicated banker toon with the bank slots/bag slots maxed out. This will help a lot in keeping track of all the shit you need for the achievement, all the shit you'll want to sell on the AH, and everything in between. The other alt should definitely have inscription, if not maxed out at least at outland level. Darkmoon cards are really freaking expensive, with any purple deck going well over 500g on my server. Making your own cards will save you lots of money. Doesn't have to be an herbalist though, I've been routinely finding stacks of 20 outland herbs for <10g. Oh, and consider making a DK, powerlevelling skinning, and then collecting rugged leather.
3.) Having a friend helps - this is especially true for the bloodsail buccaneer rep. Try ganking booty bay guards by yourself. I guarantee you will die at least a few times when you're eventually mobbed by 12 guards (well, unless you're a paladin maybe). My man has been sending me any cheap PBDs, darkmoon cards, librams that he can find on the AH whenever he's on. He's also turned all my runecloth into bolts for me to sell. Needless to say, not everyone is as lucky to have a charming, ruggedly handsome troll priest helping them out, but seriously. Have a friend or guildie help you out with stuff like checking the AH for you while you're offline, or sharding greens you pick up. You get by with a lil help from your friends!
4.) Most importantly...switch it up a bit. I farm DM a few times, then I switch to an alt to gather herbs, switch to another to gather leather, while checking the AH in between the switches with my banker toon. It does not need to be one long boring grindfest. Take a break from routine and go kill some syndicate mobs. Take a break from herbins to go run strat/scholo for PBDs. Take a break from skinning to visit the darkmoon faire that's in town. Go grind scorpids for blood. Go pickpocket some junkboxes. There's literally so much shit that needs to be done for this achievement, there's no reason not to switch things around and give yourself a break from the same old DM run.
My projected timeline is to have this title by the end of the year. Will it happen or will I pussy out? Only time will tell whether I'm worthy of the title, "insane in the membrane".
For the past 6 months I've been drifting from guild to guild, constantly in search of better players, better progression, better consistency, etc etc. I've outgrown several guilds that weren't progressing as fast as I would've liked, and my current guild is pretty good, except they've decided to take a break. Which basically leaves me with my thumb in an unpleasant place.
Side note: I really miss my old guild. We raided 6 nights a week, I was part of the "core" group, the GM loved me...sigh.
Anyways, I usually like to level up alts instead of gathering achievement points, but this one really intrigued me. I'd been wanting to try it out but obviously it's a very daunting challenge. I mean, why else is there only like 4 people on the server with the title?
Having spent a few weeks on getting this title, I can tell you a couple of things.
1.) Having money helps. If you had endless money things would go a lot quicker. But I kind of enjoy the slow, seemingly endless grind in a bizarre self-destructive way. Having a good gold reserve is nice for filling in the gaps between all the things you're willing to farm/grind for. For example, I'm finding that librams are not that hard to come by. Pristine black diamonds (aka PBD, the bane of my existence) are definitely NOT easy to farm. I'm finding that dropping 2-300g on one of those is a good investment since it's such a rare drop. Time = money, right? Besides, I've been making a pretty penny selling all the enchanting mats I get from sharding the greens/blues I've been picking up. Not to mention all that runecloth. SO MUCH RUNECLOTH! I'm swimming in bolts of them.
2.) Having many alts help. Consider having at least 2-3 serious alts - by serious I mean not some level 1 toon with 1 bank slot. You should have 1 dedicated banker toon with the bank slots/bag slots maxed out. This will help a lot in keeping track of all the shit you need for the achievement, all the shit you'll want to sell on the AH, and everything in between. The other alt should definitely have inscription, if not maxed out at least at outland level. Darkmoon cards are really freaking expensive, with any purple deck going well over 500g on my server. Making your own cards will save you lots of money. Doesn't have to be an herbalist though, I've been routinely finding stacks of 20 outland herbs for <10g. Oh, and consider making a DK, powerlevelling skinning, and then collecting rugged leather.
3.) Having a friend helps - this is especially true for the bloodsail buccaneer rep. Try ganking booty bay guards by yourself. I guarantee you will die at least a few times when you're eventually mobbed by 12 guards (well, unless you're a paladin maybe). My man has been sending me any cheap PBDs, darkmoon cards, librams that he can find on the AH whenever he's on. He's also turned all my runecloth into bolts for me to sell. Needless to say, not everyone is as lucky to have a charming, ruggedly handsome troll priest helping them out, but seriously. Have a friend or guildie help you out with stuff like checking the AH for you while you're offline, or sharding greens you pick up. You get by with a lil help from your friends!
4.) Most importantly...switch it up a bit. I farm DM a few times, then I switch to an alt to gather herbs, switch to another to gather leather, while checking the AH in between the switches with my banker toon. It does not need to be one long boring grindfest. Take a break from routine and go kill some syndicate mobs. Take a break from herbins to go run strat/scholo for PBDs. Take a break from skinning to visit the darkmoon faire that's in town. Go grind scorpids for blood. Go pickpocket some junkboxes. There's literally so much shit that needs to be done for this achievement, there's no reason not to switch things around and give yourself a break from the same old DM run.
My projected timeline is to have this title by the end of the year. Will it happen or will I pussy out? Only time will tell whether I'm worthy of the title, "insane in the membrane".
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