Cracks starting to show?

[Lantyssa]

See, I just automatically assume that all male blood elves are women in real life. 

I do, too.

While not exclusive, RPers seem to be composed of large numbers of females, gays, and furries.

[Amaron]

How exactly?  Even the smallest US English servers had 30+ guilds with T11 kills when 4.2 came out so I don't see how allowing players to invite RealID friends to raids brings in a large number players who can't find a guild to raid with on their server as-is.

*shrug* Cross server anything always ends up a HUGE deal that makes everything easier and thus entices more people to do whatever just became cross server.   It's something so inevitable that I've never even seen people really try to discuss why.   Increasing your population pool is just better for anything but "community".

[Fordel]

I guess the part I find funny, is I don't think the server as a whole knows how many ladies are there in reality.


Like whenever Sjofn lets on that she is a woman, its immediately followed by:

"omg me too"
"I thought I was the only one!"
"lol I didn't know you guys were girls!"

etc

[Sjofn]

The dudes of the server definitely have no idea. When a fellow lady discovers I am a woman, some are surprised *I* am a lady, some say that explains some things, some claim to have known all along, etc. But none are shocked at a woman playing a dude character. The DUDES, on the other hand, are blown away, almost every time. Apparently most of them think women who play announce themselves every three minutes (and to be fair, some of them do!), so the fact I do not do this throws them off.

[Sheepherder]

Apparently most of them think women who play announce themselves every three minutes (and to be fair, some of them do!), so the fact I do not do this throws them off.

These ones, they are trouble.

For example, my sister plays a human female rogue, and pretty much everyone knows she is a she.  By day she is doing her practicum so that she can teach kindergarteners to count and shit, by night she hangs out with the most notorious dickhead of an undead rogue on the server ganking the shit out of people in Tol Barad.

[ezrast]

The dudes of the server definitely have no idea. When a fellow lady discovers I am a woman, some are surprised *I* am a lady, some say that explains some things, some claim to have known all along, etc. But none are shocked at a woman playing a dude character. The DUDES, on the other hand, are blown away, almost every time. Apparently most of them think women who play announce themselves every three minutes (and to be fair, some of them do!), so the fact I do not do this throws them off.

I think it's just that the possibility of a player being female does not even occur to most guys. Aside from the fact that we still think women comprise <1% of the internet, guys in general think that girls only want to play pretty characters. And, of course, that only female characters can be pretty.

How do a human and an undead gank people together?

[Azuredream]

I've usually had the opposite experience, where there might be mild surprise but no one is particularly stunned by the revelation. WoW in particular has a lot of female players I'd think. I gravitate toward more casual guilds though, and there's almost always at least one couple.

[Selby]

WoW in particular has a lot of female players I'd think.

Yes it does.  I was in a guild once that had over 75% female members in it (out of like 20 active people).  The boys were intimidated like you wouldn't believe.

[WindupAtheist]

Any decent guild needs a decent number of females. If there's none then it's just a sausagefest with dudes farting into Ventrilo and shit. If there's one, then desperate nerds will fawn all over her until she either gets disgusted and quits or decides she likes it and goes mad with power. If there are only a few, the cattier ones will vie for social dominance while their respective followers champion the fair maidens and make life hell for everyone else.

You need enough women that no single one can gather a large enough powerbase of desperate nerds to crown herself Guild Princess. Once you've got one of those, you're just fucked.

[Tannhauser]

Yeah, look at the Rebel guild when Mon Mothma showed up.  Leia reduced to 5-mans with Han and Luke.

[Sheepherder]

How do a human and an undead gank people together?

They hang out in TB and spot people of their faction they don't know or don't like for each other while chatting on Vent.  Not direct help, just sitting and watching for the lulz.

You need enough women that no single one can gather a large enough powerbase of desperate nerds to crown herself Guild Princess. Once you've got one of those, you're just fucked.

There's also the Guild Mom, the older woman who manages by her mere presence to get everyone to cut that shit out.  Because spamming ASCII boobs in guild chat is just awkward when a woman is around who talks about her grandkids in Ventrilo.

[Sjofn]

I've usually had the opposite experience, where there might be mild surprise but no one is particularly stunned by the revelation. WoW in particular has a lot of female players I'd think. I gravitate toward more casual guilds though, and there's almost always at least one couple.

They're less surprised I am a lady and more surprised I'm playing a dude, not sure if I made that clear enough. Apparently ladies only ever want to play lady characters. Sometimes a dude will speculate I'm doing it because I am in HIDING from CREEPY DUDES and I'm like, "No, seriously. Just felt like making a dude. A dude with a cute butt and fabulous hair."

I was the Guild Mom in DAoC (believe it or not!), but I'm pretty sure I've avoided it in WoW. I was more the Bad Cop in the Ingmar/Sjofn raid leading team. I had to be both cops if I was MT and this other guy was our offtank though, that was nice and schizo. 

[Lantyssa]

The WoW guild doesn't really need a guild mom most of the time.  Probably half the crew was older than you, and most of the rest still being close in age.

[Sjofn]

Age aside, most of the people in the guild are just ... not really in need of supervision. If someone is a douchenozzle, more of the guild is like "hey, shithead, quit it." 

[Fordel]

Half the WoW guild are actual Mom's or Dad's 

[Miasma]

The forums were both funny and depressing today.  Some guy I (and most) people had never heard of called Swifty who is a "WoW based youtube personality" got banned for crashing not one, not two, but three servers and then his more hardcore fans went apeshit.  At some points in the day at least half of the threads in general were some variation of "y u ban?" "me angry at ban".  The number of people who referred to this guy as their "hero" is just depressing.  I have never seen so many badly written "I quit" posts.

I have no idea who he is but based on his rabid fans' behaviour I'm glad he didn't tell these people to commit mass suicide.  I think.

They erased most of the threads but let one stay open and removed the post limit, it is currently 269 pages long...

I was hoping Paelos was going to do a special edition of "fuck you cata" quoting various nutjobs :( .

Edit: It appears he got unbanned.

[Paelos]

I didn't touch it. It's too stupid to even properly account for under my high standards for FUCK YOU CATA, I'M OUT! 

Also, since it's a ban and he wasn't really banned, it didn't count. Also I get Mondays off from work now. More tomorrow!

[Fordel]

How did he crash the server?

[Miasma]

He was doing some livestreaming event and had his guild and fans all go to the same place at the same time, he gives away prizes from Razer so people also came for that.  He had so many people in one place that the server crashed.  Then they did it on another server.  Then another.  The first time it happens fine, maybe an honest mistake, he didn't know it would crash the server.  Doing it a second time is pretty stupid.  I don't have words for doing it a third time.

[Ingmar]

What apparently actually caused the crashes was some people in the crowd doing industrial-level emote spamming, not the raw number of people.

[Sheepherder]

The forums were both funny and depressing today.  Some guy I (and most) people had never heard of called Swifty who is a "WoW based youtube personality" got banned for crashing not one, not two, but three servers and then his more hardcore fans went apeshit.

Warrior PvP superstar who's showcased a lot of exploits over the years in his videos.  Best known for the charge while in combat exploit macro in 1.x that he showed off but didn't make.

[SurfD]

He was doing some livestreaming event and had his guild and fans all go to the same place at the same time, he gives away prizes from Razer so people also came for that.  He had so many people in one place that the server crashed.  Then they did it on another server.  Then another.  The first time it happens fine, maybe an honest mistake, he didn't know it would crash the server.  Doing it a second time is pretty stupid.  I don't have words for doing it a third time.

The best part was that his ban hit while he was supposedly in the process of attempting to repeat it on a fourth server.

Personally, I think they should have kept his ass banned, but current conspiracy theory is that someone at Razor pulled some strings to get their little sponsor pet a hall pass.

[Paelos]

Today in FUCK YOU CATA, I'M OUT! They stole my fuzzy dice!

[Lakov_Sanite]

Originally Posted by Daxxarri (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hey all,

We are aware of the issue regarding extended queue times affecting Rated Battlegrounds. We’re currently investigating the situation and working to resolve it as soon as possible, but there isn’t an ETA for when this process will be complete. We'll provide further updates as the situation develops and we thank you for your patience in the meantime.

Translated "Hardly anyone likes the rated battlegrounds, we're trying to change that"

[Paelos]

Yeah, I mean what can they do to make RBG queue times lower when people don't want to queue for them? They already added mounts or some shit. I mean besides noncombat pets in bags, I think they are out of ideas.

[sinij]

With the launch of the Starter Edition, all existing trial accounts, including expired ones, have been reactivated. That means if you've tried WoW in the past, your trial-account characters are now accessible once more.

  Now we will never know what are Cata cancellations numbers were.

[ezrast]

The around that is nonsense. An active trial account isn't a subscriber any more than an inactive trial account.

[Paelos]

The around that is nonsense. An active trial account isn't a subscriber any more than an inactive trial account.

It wouldn't matter anyway. I look at their sub revenue and determine my own number from averages, not what they release.

[Amaron]

Yeah, I mean what can they do to make RBG queue times lower when people don't want to queue for them?

They could stop getting wood at the thought of making PeeVeePee into a chess league and let people queue up for random RBG's.   They can figure out some system to roughly measure skill they just don't want to.

[Fordel]

Blame The Evil Kalgan.


Any retarded stubborn "why don't they just fucking change this obvious shit" decision in WoW is his fault. Especially the PvP ones.

[sinij]

The only form of PvP that could be eSport is Arena, and getting it (back) to eSport level requires undoing most of Cata - that is going back to "PvP tree" and "2v2 matters".

[Lakov_Sanite]

Esport and gear do not match, ever.  There's a reason all those official arena server events they do start people with equal gear.

[WindupAtheist]

Translated "Hardly anyone likes the rated battlegrounds, we're trying to change that"

More like "Rated Battlegrounds are an abject failure and we have absolutely no fucking idea what to do about it. We've tried everything from reworking the point system to incentivize them, to open bribery via mounts and stuff, and none of it worked. Nobody over here can even conceive of what to do next."

[Ingmar]

If the queue times are as long as people are saying it has to be a bug with the matchmaking, not low participation. This isn't like random dungeons where it is limited by role, it is likely there is a problem with how wide the allowable range of matchups is or something along those lines. If you check the rated BG ladder there are 2000 teams with 2200 and up ratings, most with 100+ matches played. That doesn't sound like particularly low participation to me.

EDIT:

A resolution has been put into place which should help alleviate Rated Battleground matchmaking delays. This fix corrects an issue that could occur if a team at the front of the queue was particularly difficult to match, resulting in a bottleneck which slowed matchmaking for all players in queue. More information can be found here.

 

[Merusk]

2000 Teams @ 15 players/ team = 30,000 players.  Out of 10million that's only .03%.   Even if it's only 5 million players that's .06%
Battle.net is telling me it's down so I can't check just how many actual teams there are.   I wouldn't call that success, though.