skip to main |
skip to sidebar
We kept reassuring her that it was just ol' Sillydan and there was nothing to worry about. She didn't seem too convinced. Eventually, after some discreet bribery (strawberry ice cream and a candy bar), we were able to talk her into posing for this shot:
Where did you take your orphan?Also, if you click to view the larger image, please take notice of that Rogue's name. First time he was with us for an Illidan fight was hilarious: "Alright Shadowdemon, he does this... shadow... demon thing.... you, uh, DPS the... shadow demons... Bwahahahahahaha." "Look, just comitt suicide in phase 4 and we should be okay!!" He was not impressed.
On May 20th, in the late evening (European time), Blizzard took the names and credit cards numbers that they had obtained and compared it to their database of accounts. The names and numbers were those of people who had purchased the well-known Warcraft bot Glider. They were all perma-banned.
We were in Sunwell, progressing on Brutallus. Since we got him down a few weeks back we haven't been able to repeat it. We lost a few of our strong DPSers to burnout and Age of Conan and exams, and while we've filled in the ranks again, they haven't had the gear to provide sufficient DPS until now. Our first attempt went really well, even without flasks we had enough raid DPS to bring him down.
"Did anyone else just get disconnected?", our raid leader says on vent. He was the only one. Then the disbelief when he tried to log back in. The cries of "You're kidding me, you've got to be kidding me." I was whispered shortly after by a friend asking if anyone in Kamuflasjefylla had just been suspended. Three characters in my friends guild had, only minutes before.
We speculated at first if there was something wrong, since none of them had gotten emails stating why. It became obvious soon enough when the forum threads began popping up.
I first met Dave back in my old guild, when Tieryn was around level fifty-something. He and I got dragged along on a fun-run of ZG and all I remember is that he played a Hunter then, and that he'd given his pet cat his own name. After that I'd bump into him from time to time - sometimes he'd merely be mentioned by my guildmates, other times he'd come with us on an instance run or a heroic run. I grew to like him, an alright fellow that laughed a lot and had so much more experience with BC raiding than us. At some point his Hunter was hacked and destroyed and he switched to playing a Priest. I looked up to him, as he was the only one I really knew who played hardcore and had raided all the instances I secretly dreamed of some day seeing myself. As time passed, he would be the one to invite me into Kamuflasjefylla and give me the chance to fulfill that dream.
He's a nice guy. He doesn't seek to hurt anyone and he isn't the kind of person that would break the law or deliberatly try to mess things up for others. He didn't use the bot to farm for gold, he merely wanted to skip the boring leveling on his new baby hunter, wanting it to get to 70 faster so that he could have his lost Locutus back. He'd talk about his plans to get a pet Scorpion called Bob again and go back onto the barricades, promoting the use of Scoprion pets in high-end raids. He didn't mean any harm. Few people who use bots do. He's a nice guy. Most people who use bots are.
I'm not saying what he did was okay or that his banning was unfair, because it isn't and it wasn't. I'm saying that the people who bot are people like you and me. It might not actually be you and me, but it might be your friend or your guildie. I'm saying that in an instant he was disconnected from the servers forever. His Shadow Priest with five or six pieces of tier 6, Skull of Gul'dan and the Spectral Tiger mount was gone. All because he wanted to speed up the boring leveling process a bit. Most people don't see that as a big deal. It is a big deal.
No matter your reason to use a bot, it is against the Terms of Service. It's not a big thing - it's not like stealing from a store or hurting another person - but it is against the rules you agreed to follow, and thus punishable as per the terms.
Realise what you're risking. Realise it can all be taken away from you in a heartbeat. Everything you've worked so hard for. If you're an end-game raider - realise what you're risking for not just yourself but your entire guild.
When he first logged on, after having namechanged from Cascada to Meepmeep.
The Shadow Council won't ever be the same :/
Goodbye Meepmeep, we had some great times ♥
For many months now, Tom and I have organised a Karathon every Friday. I do the signups, make sure we have enough tanks and healers and raid lead. He assists me and handles the occasional loot buyer + distributes voids at the end. At first it was all fun and it felt nice to raid lead Kara again like I used to do in my old guild. These days though, it feels like more hassle than it's worth. The below is the list of Rules I want to post in the next signup thread. I won't though, I think it's better to just take a break from running these things altogether.
#1: If you sign up and then get saved before Friday, have the courtesy to let us know. Preferably before we log on Thursday night and see your character is in Karazhan with some other group. Or if we don't happen to see you do this, let us know before we start sending out raid invites ten to seven on Friday evening.
#2: If you sign up as a tank, get saved with some other group and decide that this is okay cause you'll just come with your other character (who is not a tank), don't just whisper the severly undergeared feral druid that's coming to be geared up and tell her 'You'll be offtanking, I'll come on my lock instead'. Especially do not do this and not tell us anything about it. She's not strong enough to fill that role yet and we'll have to arrange something else. We'd like to know we need to do so before it's one hour until raid time.
#3: Don't sign if you're not going to show up. If you have an excuse that's fine, but 'I forgot' is not an excuse. Neither is 'It's just Kara, chill'.
#4: Do not show up drunk to the point where you keep dying and/or wipe us because you a) overaggro, b) pull extra packs of mobs, c) spend your time whispering your crush and not paying attention to what the group is doing, d) auto-run into packs we skipped, e) fall down and die, f) set off Flame Wreath on Aran, or any other ridiculously stupid thing. It's not cute. You're just pissing everybody off and wasting our time.
#5: You are not a special snowflake. You will be DPSing the flares on Curator and you will be DPSing the chains on Illhoof. You will also corpse run with everybody else when we wipe.
#6: If you're listed as a DPS and you're told to DPS, do not go into bear form and taunt things off the poor off-tank with lesser gear than you. Yes, you are the better tank, but he does buggerall damage with his prot spec and he doesn't have adequate DPS gear. You do. Next time, state that you'll only come if you can tank and we will work around it.
#7: No, that guy isn't in our guild. He is a good friend of mine that asked very nicely if he could come along for badges (and we needed a well-geared DPSer to carry your blue-and-green geared alt). He's 15, a sweetheart and about a million times more polite than you. Stop making fun of him and act your age. You make me ashamed to wear the same guildtag as you when you get all elitist like that. If only you worked as hard to be a nice person as you did on getting your t6!
#8: No, you can't just take that item. You'll pass on it like we always do, and then the interested people will /roll and we sort it out. This is how we've always done it and you've run Kara with us plenty of times before. There are others here too that wear cloth/leather/mail/plate/need healing gear/need tanking gear/can use that weapon (cross out as applicable). Stop being greedy!Yeah, I need a vacation :/
I haven't seen any announcments anywhere, but apparantly it's Children's Week again. I ran into some Horde players yesterday with orphans in tow so I headed over to the Stormwind Orphanage this morning to pick up my own. Some 15 minutes later I had my very own Speedy the turtle, a pet I've wanted ever since I first started playing :DGo grab one for yourself!
