WoW Update: I need a new name!

I'm transferring servers on WoW, and my current name (Sporks) is taken, so I need to pick a new one (Spork is also taken).

Suggestions from Random Internet People and other friends:
- Conundrum
- Kushi
- Gankersore
- Sproks
- Foon
- Tomsawyer (as in Rush, not Mark Twain)
- Kingsleyzissou
- Blackcop
- Tongs
- Bitchincamaro
- Arrozconmuerte
- Dioconqueso

Update time--
Glasses: the trapezoidification issue got a little better, but not much. I was being lazy about scheduling an appointment to get them fixed, but then yesterday morning my dogs decided to help me out by chewing my glassses up and breaking one of the lenses.

Cold: holy crap, I was sick with this BS for two weeks. Felt like death by the end, but I've been better this week, though I'm still sniffly from time to time. It's always a little stressful when I get sick every winter, because my immune system is not really up to par.

WoW: we've started poking our heads into Karazhan, which is fun. We're still hashing out guild/class numbers (hey look! we're recruiting!), but I'm looking forward to doing more stuff once we get this more settled down. And I'd just like to take this time to add my voice to the giant "WTF, Blizzard" being echoed by raiders everywhere.

This is the part where you non-WoWers can start to not care:

1) Lrn2math: before the expansion, WoW raids were 40- or 20-man affairs. After the expansion, new raids are 25-man. There is also one 10-man instance (Karazhan). You do the math. This is a nightmare for guild management. Also, Karazhan is where most guilds will spend the bulk of their time, because...

2) there is no "introductory" 25-man content. The two raids that were supposed to be entry-level content, are so unappealing and difficult that even the hardcore guilds (and I mean here, "average" hardcore, as opposed to guilds going for world-firsts, etc.) are either having trouble with them or have little incentive to even try them, because...

3) the risk vs. reward ratio is out of whack. You need massive consumables to beat fights that may have a large luck component, and the drops you get from these fights don't help you get away from the massive consumable use the next time you come back to fight the same guy.

Here's hoping that some of this gets fixed by the time we get there.

I feel like garbage. I'll try to keep the health stuff to a minimum, though. I may be starting a new RA treatment soon, since the Humira failed to do, well, anything. I'm also having a lot of trouble remembering to take my meds, which is unusual for me.

So, since I'm trying to make myself, you know, write stuff, and don't want to talk about feeling like garbage, WoW update time. I hit 70 last week; people are still sending me "grats" messages, and it always surprises me because it feels like it happened a long time ago. I've been working on getting various attunements/keys, because I'm going a little loopy from lack of raiding. I'm not having much luck getting into 5-man groups, though, which is discouraging. I'm a good rogue, but rogues have certain PvE issues which don't make them really desirable for 5-mans.

For starters: we take a lot of damage. We can't do damage from range, so we get smacked with all kinds of AoE attacks (both physical and magical), and our armor is only leather. We require a lot of healing. Also, on fights that require kiting a boss, it can be tricky to get enough face time with the mob to contribute significant DPS.

Our crowd control, sap, is currently the most reliable CC in the game--Blizzard removed the heartbeat resists, so it lasts the full duration. However, you can only apply it once, because it can only be applied from stealth and while a mob is not in combat. And for some reason, Blizzard has decided to start including packs of mobs that are already engaged in combat, thus rendering them unsappable. Not just one or two mobs in a pack, but the full pack--I shudder to think what these guys will do, un-CC-d, in heroic mode.

There are other significant issues for rogues in the expansion, but others have already covered them well and in detail, and nothing has come of it.

And last but not least--Blizzard's LFG interface is just bad. You can only look for groups for instances your level (so no going farming on an alt while monitoring LFG); you can only look for 3 groups at a time; you can't look while in a group (so if I decide to go run some lowbie friends through something to pass the time, it drops me); and last, but not least--so few people use it, you may see one or two people looking for an instance at any time. People find groups through a mishmosh of adhoc channels, general in-city chat, friends/guild lists instead.

WoW patch 1.12, or: "SANDLOL VANISHLOL ROUGESLOL"

So, for those of you who don't already know, I play WoW, mostly on Malygos. My main is a rogue, but I have a 60 warlock as well, a bunch of other rogues of various levels scattered through other servers because I'm a glutton for punishment, etc. Anyway, today is patch day. This patch was about two major things: PvP and rogue changes. I mean, there are bug fixes, but these were the two big things. The rogue review was a disappointment for me, but I won't make a long post out of that, since so many other people have made excellent posts on the forums about it and been completely ignored.
These are the highlights of the patch for me:

- One of the world PvP things they added takes place in the desert and consists of people gathering...sand...in the desert. I realize a lot of the aspects of any game are silly when you look at them, but this one just completely breaks down any suspension of disbelief for me and sends me into fits of giggling.
- Rogue review: I get to pay extra money to train up my skills to respec in the exact same spec that I had pre-review
- Vanish: still broken
- Gouge is once again causing poison to proc (gouge is a move that incapacitates your opponent and breaks if the opponent takes any damage; poisons, of course, do damage, so gouge is breaking itself)

But, I do sort of like patch day, because it guarantees a lot of funny stuff. Well, not funny for the people who are trying to play, but funny to me. Here are my favorite bugs in this patch from the Blizzard known issues list:

- Players are unable to eat or drink in an entire zone, Eastern Plaguelands (eating and drinking is used to regain health/mana)
- Players can get stuck in Alterac Valley (PvP zone) if buffed with warcry
- Druids' 6-piece bonus from a certain set causes them to stand up (??)
- Mages using Blink while in lava get teleported to the deepest spot
- Paladins summoning their mount causes them to enter combat (I'm not sure if this means their summoning gets interrupted as well, effectively forcing all paladins into being pedestrians)
- Paladins summoning their mount causes them to aggro guards in neutral towns
- Warrior: whirlwind increases weapon skill when not attacking mobs

Cross-server battleground bugs deserve their own paragraph. This patch, Blizzard made it so you can PvP agains people in other servers in the battleground areas. Anyone with an ounce of sense could see that this might be hard to implement and cause a lot of bugs...and I realize, there is no way to QA everything beforehand, but some of these things are pretty obvious--like everyone is rushing to try the new thing and BGs getting overwhelmed. Though I suppose there's not much that could be done about that specifically short of upgrading hardware just for the initial rush, which is dumb. But anyway--so far, reported bugs include:

- Unable to enter BG with "instance does not exist" message
- Unable to exit BG after winning (might happen under other conditions too...not sure)
- People getting flagged and not actually entering the BG--I supposed this could be a side effect of the "unable to enter" thing
- Entire groups being kicked out of matches due to "not enough players" and everyone getting the deserter debuff (this makes it so you can't queue up again for 15 minutes)--so for example, a game that takes a max of 10 players per side, you'll have both teams at the full 10 players, and people get kicked out with the "not enough players" message

But, not to be completely negative--here are my two favorite bug fixes in this patch:

- Invisible houses (official Blizzard text: "There are areas with invisible houses")
- The sound bug! This is one of the most annoying and long-lasting bugs in the game--it's not game-breaking, but holy crap does it get old. If you Alt-Tab out of WoW in Windows (not sure about other OS), when you come back, the music volume shoots up.

If the sound bug is actually fixed in the patch, I may have to call it good and consider this the Best Patch Ever, in spite of everything else.