Calzowned.org

Somewhere In The Barrens.

(1.General) Illidan: Is this thing on?
(1.General) HairyPotter: Four Weddings and a Murloc…
(1.General) Illidan: LFG - Black Temple - Need Paladin, Mage, Priest, Rogue.
(1.General) Deathzor: Dude, b@#ch’n name!
(1.General) Narutwo: Thanks!
(1.General) Sanitee: Reported for illegal name, enjoy your ban Illidude.
(1.General) Deathzor: Not you nubwipe, him, the Illidan guy.
(1.General) Sanitee: Blizz doesn’t let peeps use char names from the game.
(1.General) Illidan: What? No! this IS my name.
(from Droodad): <—Kil’Jaedan, we should do lunch some time.
(1.General) Palingschwing: BT is a raid instance, not a 5 man u dumb noob
(1.General) Illidan: Fools, I don’t need a raid group, I find myself without my Council of Illidari, as they were destroyed last night.
Droodad moans suggestively at Illidan.
(1.General) HairyPotter: Pulp Murloc…
(from bittlelopeep): Can you run me through WC?
(to bittlelopeep): What? What’s a WC?
(1.General) Pickles: Why are u here, everyone’s like, level 2 or something.
(1.General) Illidan: I asked in trade channel, someone named Stertly suggested I take it to barrens chat
(1.General) Underpantsman: PWNED!
(from bittlelopeep): Ur mean, I like u. Can I have 5g to training?
(1.General) Illidan: What’s the matter with you people, I can make you GODS!
(1.General) HairyPotter: Murlocs of a Lesser God…
(1.General) Pickles: What happened to your last “gods”
(1.General) Illidan: They had, shall we say, a misunderstanding with Calzowned.
(1.General) Fourplay: What’s a Calzowned?
(1.General) Chubblin: It’s an Italian pasta dish, idiot. Lrn2Eat.
(1.General) Illidan: They are a casual raiding guild
(1.General) Pickles: No it’s not, that’s a calzone
(1.General) HairyPotter: Chronicles of Murloc…
(1.General) Chubblin: Casualawl = they SuCk! Lrn2raidnubs.
(1.General) Illidan: They destroyed my Illidari Council, hence the need to recruit a new one.
(1.General) Sanitee: And u came to the barrens to find them?
(1.General) Illidan: …
(1.General) Illidan: You people aren’t level 73 elites!
(1.General) Pickles: ding! winnah!
(1.General) Illidan: STERRRTTLLYYY!!!
(1.General) Illidan: YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!!!
Droodad moans suggestively at Illidan.
(1.General) Sanitee: Capslock is cruise control for cool
(1.General) Underpantsman: Srsly.

DP
Demonic Press
Updated 1 hour, 14 minutes ago.

Black Temple - Shadowmoon Valley

Tragedy struck deep in the heart of Outlands Sunday night when a peaceful evening vigil within Black Temple was shattered by the screams of the dieing.

Witnesses say around two dozen armed militants entered the temple at around 8:50pm Central time, stopping briefly for what could only be described as a picnic, replete with buffet table. 10 minutes later, the group rose and climbed the stairs to the Den of Mortal Delights.

What followed was the stuff of nightmares; said one of the Chamber Courtesans, “It was terrible, these people walked up the stairs, and of course, the Chamberlain rushes to meet them like he’s supposed to. I’ll never forget his surprise when he looks down to discover the shiny one at the front has stabbed him with his sword!”.

Upon seeing their Chamberlain fall, many of the courtesans in the room ran to his aid, and what followed was described by onlookers as “the systematic butchery” of everyone in view.
“I’m not sure what was worse, the casual way they killed my sisters, or the relish they seemed to take in looting the bodies afterwards… it all seemed like some sort of game to them.”

The militants appeared to have some goal in mind, a goal which became all too clear as they hacked a path deep into the Den, towards Mother Sharaz. One of the assistant Chamberlains, when asked for comment, could only weep “Blood, everywhere blood”.

No survivors lived to tell the tale of what happened in that chamber with Mother, but Forensics showed a surprising variety of traumas to the body, including not only cuts and bruises, burns, frostbite, and radiation damage, but what appeared to be bite marks to the ankle area. Latecomers to the scene were aghast to find the group “sitting in front of Mother’s corpse, taking pictures like a Japanese bus tour at Disneyland”.

Asked for comment, Illidan was clearly agitated, “Am I upset? Well, sure… I mean, she was my mum. Well, not REALLY my mum, but you know, in that way she was really everyone’s mum, and then this… it’s all so, you know, senseless really”.

As emergency crews worked through the night to contain the situation, the question had to be asked of the remaining Courtesans, how they would find the strength to go on without Mother’s calming presence.

Said one, “Well, it’ll be a long day and a half, but oh man, I don’t want to be around on Tuesday when she respawns… she’s gonna be pissed”

Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the Blizzard Entertainment Command Bunker…

Blizzard Employee #37: Sir, we have a problem.

Blizzard Raid Development Engineer, middle grade (class II): <Sighs> What is it now, 37?

#37: We’ve received a call from an angry player sir, a mage.

BRDE:mg (II): An angry mage eh, there’s a shocker. Transfer ‘m down to the mage class mental torment R & D division, they’ll take care of it.

#37: Actually sir, he’s calling to complain about his Guild, and the sorry state of our raid encounters… he called us “pansies” sir <cringes away from BRDE:mg(II)>

angry silence falls over the bunker.

BRDE:mg (II): <glares at 37> Pansies?

#37: Uh, yeah. He said his guild keeps beating our encounters… we’re not making them tough enough.

BRDE:mg (II): That’s absurd! He’s absurd! Tell him he’s absurd! His guild is probably a bunch of mountain-dew chugging, hunch-backed toe sweaters who’ve sacrificed everything to the angry raid gods to feed their item ilevel addiction, that doesn’t count!

#37: He, umm…, says they’re a “casual” guild sir. They keep beating our BT bosses the first night they try them .

BRDE:mg (II): Akama doesn’t count, you know what we did with the hopeless incompetent that designed that sorry excuse for a raid boss.

#37: No sir, he said last week it was Bloodboil, and this week it was Reliquary. Just to rub it in, he said they’ll probably go ahead and finish Mother this Sunday because they haven’t really got anything better to do.

BRDE:mg (II): By Archimonde’s pee-stained tighty whities! What the hell is his problem anyway?!?

#37 : He can’t play Wednesdays, sir.

BRDE:mg (II): Can’t. Play. Wednesdays?

#37: No sir. He says that on Tuesdays, they farm all the earlier bosses they’ve done before, then on Wednesdays his guild kills the next new boss. He’s angry because he doesn’t get to participate.

BRDE:mg (II): Doesn’t participate?

#37: He plays twice per week.

BRDE:mg (II): <deflates> Twice per week… what does he think WE can do about this.

#37: Well, for starters, he’s hoping we can turn the difficulty up on Wednesday nights… I believe he said ‘crank her to 11 midweek’, whatever that means; either that, or nerf warlocks, hunters, warriors, and rogues.

BRDE:mg (II): <knowing smile spreads across his face> AHA! Beneath it all, I taste the sweet tang of mage qq tears! 37, patch through to the mage class mental torment R & D division, tell them we’ve got a live one for them.

BRDE:mg (II): Oh, and #37, let’s see if we can’t slow these guys down some… <sinister chuckle>. Call double agent Chutoi and make sure he’s available on Wednesday nights, that should take care of “progression” for a while…

Brought to you via Stertly…

The floating head is no more. Tonight Calzowned vanquished the three face horror known as the Reliquary of Souls. On our first night of attempts we got our feet wet learning the fight through all three phases. We might have taken 6 warlocks, but the timely addition of two shadow priests and taming the wild stallion Sajun were pivotal.

Phase one was learned quickly, and we determined our rogues can be very squishy but with a few tricks up their sleeves they pulled some magic out and learned to live. The feral druid experiment… well, it didn’t last so long. Sorry bud.

Phase two was the breaking point for the raid. If only somehow we could manage to defeat this race against the shrinking mana pool. The raid was tweaked and altered to death. From having six paladins to have two. People graciously switched and sat out to benefit the guilds needs. For this, we thank you. You got us to phase three.

Phase three only took two attempts. We did what we do best. Burn faster and brighter then go out with a bang! Well, Menoch went out with a bang. Either way, we have now killed six bosses in Black Temple.

Time to go pay Mother a visit and deliver justice for all the times she took our “darned vidya games” away.

No, not talking about a rolling stop.

It took exactly three tries to lance the boil on Gurtogg’s hairy…

Well, let’s not go there.

This guild, casual though it may be, has a tendency to blow through the more mundane bosses the moment you blink, and they did it to me again last week. The callous disregard they show for our more temporally overallocated members by first timing bosses hurtses us, yes it does precious.

As such, those of us who can only play two nights per week, may have to start putting out contracts on the Wednesday Nighters in an effort to slow them down, so we get a chance to come out to play too.

So if you happen to know any alliance of questionable ethic and moral fiber, who roam in packs and wouldn’t mind jumping lone Calzowned members on wednesday nights when they have them seriously outnumbered, please send them…

HA! See what I did there! That describes all of you, you alliance pansies! (apologies to Jeskia, who is only a part-time pansy). I’m not going to pay for what I can get for free!

(On the other hand, feel free to gank any and all calzowned members you come across on Wednesdays. Those of us with less free time on our hands may just thank you for it.)

Oh yeah, and congrats on Bloodboil.

I guess.

(jerks).

Archimonde down.

This one felt good. Really, really good.

It took our fair share of nights to get Archimonde to finally drop for us. Lots of simmering frustration and lip biting… concerns about whether we’d manage it or not. This one was different from Gorefiend though, in that there didn’t seem to be a way for everyone to “learn” the fight sufficiently to beat it… it just seemed like no matter what we did, fire would slash through the melee group like the sword of Zorro… I swear it would come from every direction at once, and we’d suddenly have half a dozen people with doomfire.

But everyone kept their cool.

Each guild has it’s own strategy for beating him… for us, it was bringing 11 healers. We’d gotten really good at using the tears, and nobody was cratering… our healers were kicking butt on the main tank heals, and Throt makes stance dancing the fears look effortless, and yet, we just couldn’t seem to get past the fires.

So for us, the solution was more healing. Not sure we’re quite ready to proclaim him as being on farm status, but this was probably the most gratifying kill yet for everyone, if the cheers in Vent were to be measured from boss to boss. Knowing what we know now should make future attempts more feasible for us.

Sadly, Bizz was missing for Father’s day, while the rest of us less adequate parental types skipped out to raid Hyjal.
Maybe next time Bizz.

Awesome job, guys!

Teron Gorefiend down, Archimonde teetering.

It’s funny how sometimes the best strategy is just to walk away. After a brief break from progression raids, we came back and dropped Gorefiend on our second serious attempt, which left plenty of time to go back and visit Archimonde.

Even with several new people, we had our best night on the Hyjal boss, with 3 of 11 tries seeing Archi in the low 30’s. In fact, across the board, Sunday night’s attempts were solid, with only a few being early jumps into the fire for a quick rebuff and go (including 1 in which the MT got hit by no less than 3 seperate doomfire trails at the same time… go go random number generator).

Fortunately for us, at no point did anyone with a curse die while standing beside a mage with a perfectly functional decursing set up on his raid bars.

Ever.

That’s my story… I’m sticking with it.

(Stertly stepped into doomfire or something).

Azgalor Down. Archimonde on deck.

What is it with Blizz, and standing in fire? I suppose it’s one way to tell if people are asleep at the wheel or not. Tonight we got our first real shots at Azgalor and it really felt like the night was on cruise control; we were finishing all the waves early, and dropped him on the second attempt. We would’ve probably one shotted him except for a certain someone who didn’t get to Thrall quite as quickly as they expected Blink would get them there… well… ahem… yes, let’s move on (nothing to see here).

Archimonde is a whole other matter.

It’s pretty clear this guy is going to be the biggest test of guild patience and perseverance we’ve faced. I don’t remember another fight where you can so clearly point the finger of absolute undeniable blame at an individual for causing a wipe… it’s really a rather cruel joke on Blizz’s part. We’ve read that this is really a test of individual skill, but more than anything it feels like it’s more of a test of guild unity. You’re going to wipe, and it’s going to be someone’s fault.

Regardless, I blame Bizzam, seeing as how he was off living the life of a high roller in Vegas while the rest of us learned how to play “guess how much lag you have before you splat into the ground”, or at least those of us who don’t have “Blink” (suckers!).

(oh, wait… raid wipe, right. Please press the Shiny Red Button at the right time, everyone).

We’ll be back to roll them bones a few more times Archi. You wait and see.

Last time I wrote one of these, I did it from the perspective of Auctioneer Yarley (highly recommended, I wouldn’t use anyone else… the rest of them are crooks).

This week though, I actually got to attend the weekly slashfest through Black Temple and had the satisfaction of abusing Supremus and Shade.

What made the experience all the more fun, was how quickly the Shade of Akama encounter is over, and the stunned silence where all the noobs (yah, me) nervously glance around, waiting for the other shoe to drop, while uniformly wondering, “that was a boss fight?”. I suppose I’m making light of everyone else’s coordination, but in the time it took to figure out what it was I was supposed to be sheeping, we were looking down at the loot-infested-still-smoking corpse, and wondering when phase 2 was going to start.

On the other hand, it’s nice to get a break from encounters that are drawn out, and right on the ragged edge. Tonight we one-shotted Naj’entus, Supremus, and Akama, but didn’t get to try any further because we spent the first half of the raid night doing progression on Azgalor, which isn’t nearly as much fun, since a wipe means drudging through the 8 waves of aoe again. Hopefully we’ll get a shot at Archimonde later this week… yeah, nice and easy… that’ll be fun.

It was the easiest night of raiding ever.

I didn’t use a single mana pot, healthstone, mana gem… (I did hit iceblock by accident once), the night flew by in a haze of mindless sweet oblivion.

Of course, I was at the auction house… the screams of the damned and dying over Vent and Guildchat said otherwise as the rest of the guild threw themselves at Naj’entus, Supremus, and Akama.

Or at least that’s what I wanted to hear… that I was somehow desperately needed to rush in there and save the day. Sadly, it turns out the buggers went and two-shotted everything, so apparently we have some pretty good players in the guild. (Not all of them mind you).

(HA! See what I did there? Now you’re wondering, “Am I one of the good ones, or the not so good ones?” I jest… You’re all good. (Maybe)   …(not Hopkins)).

With Supremus and Akama falling last night, that makes 6 new bosses down in 4 nights of raiding, which I’d like to think is pretty good for a casual guild that tries to raid only 2 nights per week (working on that third night now, much to the dismay of significant others everywhere).

Of course, we’re running out of punks to fight, and will have to start getting serious… with a little luck maybe tonight we can get a sneak peak at Archimonde and the russian roulette that is the Archimonde dance.