Sideshow & Syrana

Sometimes those pesky macros go into the wrong channel…which requires me to be a smartass.

The other night, one of our guildmates logged on.  After a round of “Oi’s” (our way of sayin’ hello), that guidie says it’s not them, that they hacked the account.  Since a few guildies have been hacked in the past, one of the officers quickly demoted them in order to restrict guild bank access – just in case.

As it turned out, they weren’t really hacked but I came up with a new guild event idea when the officer that acted quickly on the demotion wanted to know if it was ok to restore their rank.

Where's my scalpel?

The moral of this story? Don’t joke about your account getting hacked, or you might lose a couple bags as well as your bank access.

Hopefully today will not be a Murloc Monday.  I’ve had more than my fair share of ‘em, if I do say so myself.  I’ve also noticed I’ve been more irritated lately… lacking motiviation… lacking patience… too many little things building up.

I need another vacation.

Things are still nutty in my “other life.”  Today the new boss gets patched in though, so we’ll see how that goes.  Things have become a bit of a disorganized mess before her arrival due to “technical difficulties” that occurred (and took damn near 2 weeks to get fixed, thanks to psuedo-IT assistance. Blarg, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant).

I thought the few 3 day weekends I had recently would suffice, but seriously, being overworked makes those days off needed much more frequently than usual.  At least BlizzCon is coming up in less than a month.  It’ll be nice to get away.  And out of state no less! (continue reading…)

As some of you may know, our guild is not a raiding guild.  However, that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to play or don’t want to see content.  I posted previously about our first attempt at 10man Naxxramas.  Since that post, we have gone into Naxx 2 more times.

We have not been able to finish off the Arachnid Quarter though due to that evil spidey, Maexxna.  However, the last time we went in, we took down Anub’Rehkan and Faerlina quite quickly.  After getting stuck on Maexxna, we decided to head into the Plague Quarter.  There, we were able to easily down Noth the Plaguebringer.  We attempted the Heigan dance a couple times before calling it as we hit our time limit.

One of the things I did find interesting about the Naxx progress was the fact that only about 4-5 of us were signed up for all those runs.  So, to look at the progress we’ve made since that first attempt, it’s interesting to note that we had different group compositions each time and people new to the fights. (continue reading…)

Ahhh, the joys of “mt” or mistells.  (Sometimes I say mistype, but you get the picture.)  Anyone that has gone through Utgarde Pinnacle are probably familiar with “poon collecting.”  But, we had a lot of fun with it getting typed into guild chat rather than party chat.  Enjoy!

~Ohoh poon man, come together with your hands~ Save me, from the terror of the skies~ Pooooon maaaan~

As many of you have noticed around here, there aren’t many posts that talk about boss downage.  Our guild is small and focuses on community first and are not what you’d consider a ‘raiding’ guild.  We do have a lot of really great and skillful members, so the fact that we consider ourselves a ‘casual’ guild does not = bad players.  If I wasn’t so biased, I’d say we have one of the greatest mixes of new players and veterans alike.  Until more recently though, we’ve never really had the fortune of having enough guildies geared to attempt some raids.

So, you may see a few more of these types of posts from time to time.  We’re talking about scheduling a weekly raid night, which I’m really hoping for.  (continue reading…)

This is part Public Service Announcement (PSA) and part Operation: Cheer Up/Comfort.

*sidetrack* I used to have a goofy little informal timeslot on my college radio station and I remember we were required to do a certain number of PSA’s per show.  Some were pre-recorded and some I had to read.  However, the ones I read usually had an interesting twist of commentary attached.

Ok, back to the message.  Security.  Safety.  The things we hold dear in the World of Warcraft include many things: our toons, our gear, out loot, our gold, our guildies, our friendships.  We cherish these things and thus want to take care of our accounts.  But sometimes, something bad happens.  And bad people do Bad Things.

Yesterday we found out that one of our officers had his account hacked and that person cleaned house on him during the day, and grabbed a bunch of stuff from the guild bank as well.  A couple guildies took notice of the unusual emptyness of the guild bank (even after I reorganized it on Saturday!) and looked at the logs.  The logs were full of “unknown withdrew <insert goodies here>.”  Of course, Bad People aren’t always smart.  A fellow guildie noticed that many of the items taken were recently listed on the auction house and all by the same toon.  Screenshots were taken and the information shared on our forums.  Another guildie initiated contact with Blizzard in-game.

So I wanted to offer this little poem to my fellow officer:

They can take away your gear, and they can take away your gold

But your friends will help you rebuild and regain all that sevenfold.

Please don’t despair, even though the hack was quite unfair.

Blizzard is working to patch  you up as good as new

And you know I’ll have a hug waiting for you!

Oh right. PSA. (If they are ever in stock…) Keep an eye out for one of these badboys.  I know I would like one.  Even if you are careful with changing passwords and all that (which everyone should do anyway), these are a great way to keep your toons safe when they are at home alone.

Image courtesy of RobertFrancis.

A few days ago when I logged into WoW, I was informed there was a new club started.

The “I Love Syrana Club.”

This fantastic club was created by Kelinarra, Jae, and Rissy, who apparently had all agreed that they loved me.  Sideshow and Les (our guild’s GM) are battling for the rights to be called the #1 Fan.

So, since I had some extra time on my hands today, I thought it’d be amusing to create a fan club shirt.

Get 'em while they're hawt!

Yep.  Had a bit too much spare time today.  Thought you’d enough this.  Now, on the off chance someone would want to proudly sport this baby, (or wants to see a better, up close ‘n personal view of it) you can meander over to here. [Update 5/20/09: Link removed, no longer works]  Yup, see the time and work I had to put into this humorous gem for ya on a Friday afternoon?

Last Friday, I hosted another social guild event.  This event was set up (quickly and belatedly) to celebrate the creation of our guild’s chapter of OI on Eitrigg, which was created on 2/10/06.  You would think this would have been combined with the previous week’s Valentine’s Party, but no.  No.  I needed to set up a social event to advertise to all guild members and press upon the importance of our guild leader’s attendance for a higher purpose.

To present a special gift.

Brainstorm

During the planning our the Valentine event, Neph brought up the idea of presenting our guild leader, Les, with a special gift.  A way to show our appreciation of him.  Her and I were tossing around some ideas such as getting a crafted epic for him.  A few days later, Daank suggested a sweet new ride: the hog.

We knew our very own Goz could craft one (Gozaar Davidson ftw!) and we began planning.  We made announcements to guild members while Les was not on to let people know of this plan and to ask for donations.  We were unable to reach our initial goal of having it ready by the Valentine beach party, but that was fine.  Although, it was ready to leave the shop soon afterwards.  I had to think of a good way to get everyone together again without making Les suspicious and without having to do all sorts of secret communication.

This is when I remembered that our guild chapter was created in February.  A quick /ginfo confirmed that we were a bit belated, but it would suffice.  It would be a wonderful opportunity to get together, have some fun, and present a special gift to a special leader.

Cha-ching

Amusing thing though, if you check out the sidebar for Syrana’s recent achievements… see it? See the one for the hog?  After Goz created it, he mailed it to me.  I left it in my mailbox until the day of the event because I was ridiculously paranoid of equipping it to myself.  So, about an hour before the event is to begin, I go to take it out of the mailbox in order to wrap it up nice and pretty.

Yeah, as soon as it went into my bag, I got the achievement.  Thank goodness, Les was not on yet.  Although, a few members were not aware of my devious sneaky ways and were genuinely thanking me.  I suppose the achievement technically says “obtain” and not equip, but jeepers!  So, I falsely hold that achievement.

Pictures after the cut!

(continue reading…)

I (or we) were tagged for the screenshot post twice, so we decided to each do one. Here is mine. First one is my sixth screenshot down.

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That one just looks like my mage, Zideshow, and Syrana’s Paladin alt, Alaelara in Silvermoon. I am probably pimping my enchants on her. I think I was trying to get the ghostly guy in the shot. The next image was was sixth times sixth (so my 36th) due to the fact that I only have on folder.

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This one looks like some of our lower level Alliance alts that we moonlight with sometimes. This one was funny since the perspective was all out of whack, so it looked like I was huge compared to her character. Magic! The last image was the sixth row over and sixth image down (when in “List” view in Explorer.)

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This one is a few other officers and the GM from our guild in Darkshore. I assume we’re making our way to Exodar to put out the fire since the screenshot is from July 4th. Neph! Les! Look. you’re famous! I’m sleeping, as usual.

Thanks to our taggers, Epic Dwarven Blogger and Casual WoW!