…why, she could think of no better costume than to dress up as Big Red Kitty himself!

…I don’t think Hobbes approves of the change, however….

(check the sidebar image, if you’re reading this through a feed viewer and are utterly lost)

Update
Ha! Looks like Liquid Silver did the BRK costume idea one better, and even has a near-perfect impression of BRK himself! If you haven’t seen it, you’ve got to click the link.

This is me, stealing another of EgoTank’s forum posts and using it for my own nefarious purposes. No, I totally didn’t forget that it was Ego day. Not me. I would never do such a thing, and then attempt to distract you with tanking-related information.

That would be morally wrong.

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This is a continuation of Part 1 : Shout Out to the Newbies.

To put us all back in the frame of mind for this, You (the newbie) just got accepted into the guild of your dreams. But everyone around you doesn’t seem all that impressed, and nothing you do seems to crack that icy facade. You’re in the guild, but you’re definitely not treated as a member yet. You’re not one of the team, you’re just…the New Guy.

So now you have to go even further, you have to Prove Yourself.

Let’s take a step back first, shall we?

Why should you have to prove yourself?
Why indeed?

Come on. Even those of you who know why that’s a silly question have felt that way. You’ve gone through the process to get in the guild/group. Why should you have to go above and beyond to prove yourself?

The first thing to realize is that you’re not alone. The stuff the guild is doing will be the subject of Part 3 of this novelization. But even if you can’t see it, you aren’t the only one who is working to make this relationship work.

Because it IS a relationship. It is. It’s not like you’re getting married or anything like that, but you are entering into a relationship with a group of actual, breathing, living, feeling people. To stretch the metaphor a little further, getting into the guild was like your first date. You’ve winked and giggled at your target for a week or so, and finally gathered the courage to ask them out for a date.

…that doesn’t mean you’re done. Now you have to woo your crush, see if that develops into a full-fledged love. You have to bring flowers, take her out to eat at a nice restaurant, build a rapport, develop in-jokes and make sure her friends like you.

That may sound somewhat absurd, but it’s really not far off the mark. Why do you have to prove yourself? Because you ALWAYS have to prove yourself. You aren’t exempt from it in real life, and you’re not exempt from it in gaming life. Getting in the guild means that superficially, you have been found attractive. Now comes the part where you actually get to know each other. This is the important stage, and it’s too easy to get discouraged by what seems to be a lack of response and give up early.

Unless you find yourself in a situation where you are obviously unsuited (your brand of humor draws thunderous disapproval, you are consistently uncomfortable by the subjects brought up in group chat, that sort of thing) - I recommend giving at least two weeks before you decide whether or not you like the guild. Don’t give up just because you don’t seem to be making friends, or because you aren’t getting the response you expect. Relationships need time to grow, and the beginning is always awkward and rocky.

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Sooner than I expected, here’s the guest post from Shatter.

There’s a possibility I may murder him in the near future, so this may be his last post. <3

As always, look below the cut for more!
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The stressful stuff happening at work continues.

I promise I’m not going to foist my entries off on someone else all the time, but I just don’t have the energy for an Ego post.

So I tapped Shatter to see if he’d write me something to post. So you should have something to read later today.

Sorry about continuing to do this to ya’ll. The Egomania shall resume once life stops trying to crush me beneath its uncaring, massive foot.

In the meantime, I owe a lot of people a lot of cookies for these guest posts.

I added a new link to my sidebar there - the Priestly Resources. An amazing post on the Elitist Jerk forums that pretty much negates the need for my blog altogether. *winks*

If you’re a healing priest who is interested in raiding, go take a look. I learn something new every time I look at it. Great resource.

Another great post from Apathy - they’ve already gotten one of the coveted slots in my blogroll, so I guess they’re going to make this a regular thing. *winks*

Blizzard Hates You - an excellent, well balanced, and pointed rant. You can rave and flail all that you like, QQ’ing that the game is horribly unbalanced, and they’ve totally ruined everything, and it could be fixed so easily if only they’d listen to YOU…

…but that doesn’t make it true, and it doesn’t make it easy.

Kudos to Apathy, Inc for a rant which simultaneously argues both sides of the coin without contradicting itself, and which forces the reader to look beyond the tiny box of selfish thinking that encompasses most waking life.

As a programmer myself (though not for Blizzard, best nip that rumor in the bud), I doubly appreciate it.

Apathy, you’ve gotta stop all these awesome posts in a row, my blog’s turning into a mirror of yours! I’m losing readers! Stop being more interesting than me!!

*winks* Seriously folks, great blog, and great post there.

I’ve been getting a lot of comments lately about my bias towards MP5 with regards to mana regeneration for a healy priest.

Firstly, I KNOW that they’re buffing spirit in 2.3. I plan on revamping my list of enchants and consumables to compensate for this AFTER THE PATCH IS LIVE.

There is a reason that I don’t even comment on patch notes until they’re made live, it’s because they aren’t REAL yet. They do not affect ME yet, and so I’m not going to change all of my posts and soforth to reflect a change that could, at any moment, get severely nerfed or removed altogether by the time the patch hits live, whenever that might be.

Secondly, I am not a mathhead. I have never pretended to be, and my inaugural post actually flat out stated that I’m not going to do number crunching.

The decision to go with spirit vs MP5 is a NUMBER CRUNCHING decision.

You have to evaluate how much time you spend inside of the five second rule during your healing in order to determine how useful spirit is as a mana regen stat. It’s situational. It’s not just a little bit situational, it’s EXCEPTIONALLY situational.

Yes, we get the Meditation talent which allows us 15% of our mana regen to continue while casting. And yes, they are reportedly buffing that to 30% with the patch, which will change a lot of the math behind which is more important.

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It took ten hours, but the crisis has been at least temporarily averted.

Thank you everyone for welcoming EgoLock - I totally dumped the post request on him at the last minute, and I’m very grateful for his assistance.

And I promise to give him more notice next time, though I think he did a great job. =]

Incidentally, it’s been a great blog-week for the rest of the Warcraft blogging world.

Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick has not one but TWO awesome posts. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to put her on my blogroll, but I’ve no excuse and I’m remedying the problem immediately. She has the best stories (Death by Wolpertinger! Revenge of the Talbuk!), and has proven herself on the informational posts as well.

Her Deus ex Machina post is one of the few times I’ve been moved to actually cheer out loud at my machine, overjoyed at the news that someone didn’t get a drop. That’s right. Didn’t get a drop.

Today’s how to survive WoW in a marriage post ought to be required reading for gaming couples. It can be especially difficult not to twink or powerlevel your beloved’s character, but those growing pains are necessary to keep your loved one from being the n00b kid on the block. Love it.

Also, Apathy, Inc had a great post on How to Enjoy the Game

The premise is that you can’t allow yourself to care, but I’m going to modify that slightly. In general, I agree. If you are playing this game because you enjoy pvp, but you let every death reduce you to a seething mass of fury, shouting incoherently at the computer screen…that’s the bad kind of caring.

And if your raiding team is new to Kara and wiping on content, you shouldn’t get furious at the wipes. Those are expected wipes, my dear.

You should care, you just shouldn’t obsess. If your guild is wiping on Kara content that you’ve run a hundred times…then you should care. You should let your raid leader know that this isn’t the way raiding should go.

Yes, this is a game, but much like the levels of Egotism that you display should be carefully monitored to keep you from falling into the festering pits of jackassery, the levels of apathy you display should also be tailored to keep you from dragging down the people around you. Three people who are so apathetic about raiding that they may as well just be turning on autoattack can completely destroy a raid.

The way I read the post, it’s not telling you that nothing matters, it’s telling you not to flip out and reach the point where you don’t enjoy yourselves.

We had a guild kara pug raid this past weekend. Mostly filled with our regular raiders, but with a few bright and shiny newbie guildies who aren’t members of the raiding team as well. I completely wiped the raid on Nightbane. And by “completely”, I mean, I didn’t even cast a heal. I have no excuse, I didn’t even drop the ball, I stood there while someone threw me the ball and let it smack me in the face***.

Instead of getting angry, the entire raiding team laughed. We spent more time laughing over it in vent than we did preparing for the next attempt. Did I screw up? Yes, absolutely. I acknowledged my guilt and apologized, then it turned into good-natured flaming and ribbing.

That’s the kind of apathy that I recommend. If you’ve got someone who is willfully gimping the raid, either through bad gear (and no attempt to fix it), bad playing (and no attempt to fix it), and refusal to follow directions (seriously, don’t move on the flame wreath. Seriously. Not kidding. Don’t move. No sneezing) - that’s something where the raid leader should care, and step in to make a change. That kind of apathy is ruining the fun of everyone around you.

But you can’t care so much that it festers inside of you. That you pull it out every time other people log on and stroke it, feeding the flames and just dragging yourself deeper and deeper. If I played this game flawlessly, I’d probably be bored to tears. It’s overcoming adversity that makes it fun, and sometimes falling flat on your face can be fun too, if you’re in the right mindset.

Too much Egotism is bad, and too much Apathy is bad. But in the right amounts, they can make this game a joy to play.

I really recommend you go read the post, it’s good stuff.

_{*** Check below the cut for illustration.}
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Many thanks to EgoLock for supplying me with a blog post for today!! Look below the cut for the goods.

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Okay, so there’s a definite drawback to not writing blogs ahead of time. The biggest being that if things at work explode to a certain level, I don’t have the time to write a post.

Today is that day.

I am begging EgoLock to write a post for me today, so that you guys stay amused and get your fill of rambly writing.

Trust me, I wouldn’t pass this off unless the work explosion was big. It is.

I promise I’m not leaving you, ignoring you, or forgetting you!