“Dear BRK, I just finished reading your wow insider column about auction house stuff and just want to say thank you. I had two pieces of green crap that I was able to replace with the blues you wrote about.

Wasn’t that the purpose of the article? To allow people who missed quests or couldn’t get stuff to drop in instances to know that they could buy gear at the auction house so they wouldn’t have greens equipped when they started kara? Why did people comment that the article sucked because it didn’t discuss quests or instance loot? Danielle”

Yes, you got it. The purpose of the article was so that you could hop over to the Auction House and replace a piece or two that you haven’t been able to upgrade to due bad luck or timing or whatever and still show up to the Kara gates and not be ashamed. Pretty simple concept and doomed to piss some people off. Why? Because they like to be pissed off.

Your neighbor is throwing a party and invites all the folks on the block. He serves steaks and chicken and brats and hotdogs, lots of salads, four different beers, soda, he hires a DJ to play gentle music for a few hours, he brings in an inflatable castle for the kids to jump in and a petting zoo guy who brings chickens and ferrets and a pony to occupy the children for an hour so the adults can relax.

How long will it be before you hear the complaints?

There’s no watermelon.

The pool is cold.

That pony smells.

The steaks are undercooked.

All the beer is domestic. I like Becks.

That music is terrible.

Paper plates? Paper cups? Why can’t I have a regular glass?

The brats are too spicy.

I have a pole the size of the Sears Tower up my @ss and you can never please me even if you washed me in the milk of 1000 virgin cows and covered my body with gold leaf and stood me in a fountain spouting warm Ovaltine with cherries dangling from my earlobes and Velvetta slices strapped to my thighs.

Or whatever pleases you, you get the idea.

So BRK does a quite a bit of research on the subject of BoE hunter-blues, makes an understated joke about the greatest Feral Druid trinket in the game being “Hunter Loot”, presents it all in a pretty package with WoWHead links and what does he get?

You should’ve talked about quest rewards.

You should’ve talked about instance drops.

This article should’ve been 100% perfectly accurate and none of BRK’s articles are 100% perfectly accurate and because we, the reading audience, have to supply a tiny bit of effort and supply a modicum of input, this writer should be fired.

This article is terrible because it didn’t give me exactly what I wanted before I knew what I wanted, even though I already know the answers to the article I want written.

Are we crazy to continue to do this?

Danielle, you may not have noticed but a lot of people jump to BRK’s defense on those WoW Insider columns and in this blog. But this is a bit of a misnomer. People aren’t jumping to “BRK’s defense” really, they are defending the concept of Fun Without Idiots.

The official WoW Forums are the epicenter of meanness for this game. One cannot ask a simple question without being attacked with l33t-speak and trash-talk. BRK the Blog has been since its inception a place for reasoned and gentle discussion of all topics, from level 1 to 70, and the people who visit have defended this civility.

We are not worthy of “defending” but the idea of peaceful and stress-free commenting is. Nobody wins in a shout-down but some of the simple and eloquent demands for respect are heartwarming and very effective. It is because of these Defenders of Civility that our WoW Insider column and this blog continues. This place, this good Earth, is a stronghold in the battle for Fun Without Idiots.

(Please note that this is not the epicenter of Fun Without Idiocy. We’d have to leave right pronto were this going to be implemented. We do idiotic things on an hourly-basis and would find it hard to give up this passion of ours. You want to fight Fun Without Idiocy, you gotta find a new URL.)

When someone creates a WoW-Blog and credits us for their inspiration, we believe it’s not because of our writing, design, content, or attitude. We weren’t the first WoW-blog, we certainly weren’t the best, but somehow a real Sense of Community has been made here. People enjoy it, they want to be a part of it, and some of you want to Contribute to it, either through comments or your own little Fortress of Fun website. You want to experience for yourselves what it’s like to get a pat on the back instead of a slap to the face.

To all those who defend Fun Without Idiots, both on BRK the Blog, the WoW Insider columns, the Official Forums, your own WoW-blog, both old and new, your guild or wherever, we say Thank you. This is your Internet, we just write here.