Zuluhed, Warpforged, Flamewrought, Reservoir

Key to the city, Workshop, Jump-a-tron 4000, Northwind

Scarlet, Ethereum prison, Shadowlab, Deathforge

Prison cell, Master’s, Auchenai, Arcatraz

Skeleton, Key of time, Searing gorge, Shattered halls

Coilskar chest, two stacks

The RoDB Winner Interview

The big winner was Slokoshka, a 14 year old from New Zealand. His father helped with the interview, translating our questions to native Zealandish.

BRK: What path did you take to victory?

Slokoshka: I went up through the Barrens, caught the zep to UC, then ran down through Tirasfal Glades, through Silverpine forest, through Hillsbrad, and then through Arathi Highlands. I just followed the crowd. Every time somebody branched from the main group I knew they’d just get slaughtered.

BRK: What was your overall strategy?

S: I tried to stay in the middle of the group whenever I could, I only tried to cut corners when I knew there were no mobs around.

BRK: Did you make the first Zeppelin?

S: Yes, but I nearly went to the one going to Grom’gol by accident.

S’sDad: If only he’d listened to me and got on the other Zeppelin, I would so totally have won.

BRK: How many family and friends came with you?

S: One, my dad came with me, but everyone was watching over my shoulder

SDad: What he completely omits to mention is that his SuperDad (playing BigBlueCow) saved his hairy b*tt. In that last run into Hammerfall, BigBlueCow took the hit that won the race! Oh yes, he (well, she) did. In fact, there’s little question that BigBlueCow deserves a medal for self-sacrifice and heroism. If not for BigBlueCow, Slokoshka would have been a raptor’s dinner. With cold scraps for lunch the next day, judging by the size of his hairy butt. But SuperDad was there. SuperDad took the hit. SuperDad saved the day. Which makes it divine justice that it’s SuperDad who also saves the money with the prize! Ha! Karma is real after all.

BRK: What is your primary toon/class/spec?

S: My main is a 70 Tauren Resto druid on Shadow council (in the guild Oceanic Guardians), but I also have a level 70 BM hunter as an alt.

SDad: I am convinced that BM, in this context, stands for Bowel Motion. Almost every hunter I have ever known has been a BM hunter, in fact. Quite a few BM rogues about, too.

BRK: Shout out time’ anything you want to say to the BRK Masses?

S: Nothing.

SDad: Yeah, I have a question. Possibly more than one. Although there’s little doubt (none at all) that the rat shagger writes the most entertaining WoW blog in the world, what’s with this guild thing? Is it some global takeover, in which anybody who writes a halfway decent blog (and there aren’t all that many) gets co-opted into the same guild? Is this voluntary? Is money involved? What happens if a good blogger doesn’t actually want to kill baddies in the company of BRK? Is force involved? Blackmail? I wouldn’t have thought blackmail was possible with the rat shagger, actually.

What happens when the rat shagger pinches Ego … and gets slapped upside the head? Will there be a guild divorce? Does the pre-nuptial contract involve restrictions on blogging in the event of guild disaster? Are we going to get a full-blown guild blogging war, Ratshagger against the Ego, [BRK] against the Priest, drama up the wazoo, with full colour pictures?

And, of course, a running commentary from the infamous TJ, whoever she is, to bring her particularly peculiar point of view to bear on a particularly peculiar guild.

BRK: We do not collect bloggers, we do not force guildies to do anything, we don’t blackmail. We fear for anybody who messes with Ego, we won’t tolerate blogging wars, Cay on skittles would scare us straight, and TJ doesn’t blog about warcraft. /whew

Key you identify all our keys? Six rows, four columns, twenty-two keys. We’ll put up the solution on Tuesday.

Odds n Ends from This Weekend:

No, the feather-gatherer has not returned.

Yes, a Tier 5-geared group can wipe in Karazhan, even on the trash. Especially when one mage decides to pop his Voodoo Gnomes and watch them attack and pull an 8-pack of elites. Yes, he got a guild-kick.

Oh stop worrying; we re-inivited him 10 seconds later.

The first round between Fio and Ego has occurred. We scored it 10-9, Fio. His recitation of “The Brave Sir Robin” song from memory clinched it.

We think TJ has decided to quit living in The Black Morass all by herself, but we could be wrong.

BRK: “You live in a swamp, thus you have swamp@ss, and you are Shrek.”

TJ: “Girls cannot get swamp@ss. Only boys can because only boys have butt-hair.”

BRK: “Girls have butt-hair, Shrek, it’s just blond and fine and not scraggly.”

TJ: “QUIT TALKING ABOUT MY BUTT HAIR AND DON’T CALL ME SHREK!!”

Next time our guild takes out the first five bosses in SSC, we’re bringing a certain shadow-priest, foshizzle.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mrs BRK! We cleaned the fridge! All the pork blood we spilled, gone. /score

And the pepperoni we found behind that drawer that we threated to eat? We tossed it. Guys, want to know when you’re an adult? It’s when you throw out an unopened bag of spicy meat slices that look perfect but have an expiration date in 2007. If we were back in college, it’d totally be scarfed, right?

WoW.

Now where the h3ll is the New York Times?

We claim it, we said it first, it’s ours. You may register your complaint with the BRK Is Totally Right office.

And where’s our Audi R8? Hello?

We would claim Gwyneth as well, but… um, we might get in trouble.

In other news.

The next BRK Event is in pre-planning! You want a hint?

Well, you can’t have one.

See? Iron Man. /tough

“C’mon BRK!! Pleeeease?”

Well… if you promise to keep it quiet.

The next event is…

A secret. /Ironman

As we were saying, in other news.

Tonight, AC goes after Lady Vashj. We punched through the Phase 2 Barrier two weeks ago, took a break last week as Fiopalooza took the GM on a quick tour of the eastern seaboard, and are now prepared to get some Tier 5 head-armor goodness. Wish us luck.

Mania has basically been making the Hunter Pet Developers her personal beyotch.

Blizz Dev: “Hunter pets’ Growl does not scale with their AP on the PTR.”

Mania: “Um, yes it does.”

BD: “Go check the PTR, it doesn’t.”

Mania: “I’m on the PTR, it does. The math checks out.”

BD: “Um, I’m not the programmer, but they tell me it doesn’t.”

Mania: “I’m not a Blizz programmer, but I AM a programmer, and yes, it does.”

BD: “…”

Mania: “It. Does.”

BD: “Why don’t you go play a Warlock?”

Mania: “Loser. Paint my house.”

This is like a direct quote from her, no lie. This and other such technical discussions are available on her blog.

We’re going to play a small, practical joke on OutOfMana. You are going to help. /shhh

“You don’t even have another event in mind, do you!”

Sure we do.

“Tell us!”

You want a hint?

“YES!”

OK fine. Be that way.

Hint #1: It shall be Alliance-based.

Hint #2: You will be level one to start, you won’t be at the end.

Hint #3: Any class, any gender, any Alliance race.

Hint #4: It shall not be a race in an A-to-B sense, but there will be a time-limit. We think an hour should suffice.

Hint #5: There will be very few restrictions, other than you must be level 1 to start.

Hint #6: The server will be a secret until very close to race day, but it will be a US server. Twenty-four hours notice of the specific server might be the limit. It might even be a PvP server. This Hint is the one most likely to change, however.

Hint #7: The time will be 7pm EDT, 11pm GMT. This seems to work best, don’t count on this Hint changing.

Hint #8: We think we’re going to try for Saturday, July 5th.

Hint #9: It will not be a leveling competition.

Hint #10: You might want to bring a buddy, or four.

Is your interest piqued yet?

How many Taurens does it to lag a server almost to oblivion? We had at least 373 baby bulls rev’d and frothy, not including those people who weren’t in Guild Moo. Like the people from European servers who couldn’t join a guild, we couldn’t count everybody.

So what do you do with 373 baby bulls when the prescribed Shatt-port fails due to lack of mages? You raid Ironforge of course.

Can 373 level 1-3 Taurens really raid IF? Well of course not, take a look.

Actually, a good majority made it to Eastvale Logging Camp, where they proceeded to reform and take out Hogger, we kid you not!

We’ll be doing our Big Honking Movie as soon as our fingers recover.

And the donations for Sharvan…

/bawl

You people are beyond the best. We are humbled to be among you. Be proud of yourselves, and Sharvan has probably not yet stopped laughing.

If you post pics, movies, or commentary about the run, let us know and we’ll link to you here!

For the Herd!

Aspect of the Capricious

Tigersoul’s Teeth

The Meandering Blog

The Big Bear Butt Blogger

Warlock Therapy

Grumble N’ Autumn

Yellow Mohawk

One big photobucket of bull-pics from Andy C.

Warcraft Family

Single-Handedly Justifying Our Belief In Man’s Goodness, Even If That Goodness Comes With a Screaming Halloween Head

Cuppycake

The Game Dame

Uber Nqqb

Power Word: Totem

Lock and Roll

Cursed With Melvin

Nihilum

My Own Little World

UPDATE 6:45pm EDT

Here’s what 345 level 1 Taurens look like… /flabbergasted

UPDATE 5:50pm EDT

Thanks to the generous folks at WoWMacros.com, we are proud to announce that the Ultimate Winner of the BRK/Team Ratshag Running of Da Bulls for Sharvan will receive a 60-Day Prepaid WoW Card!

Thank you, Forgotmycow, for your generous contribution!

UPDATE 5:36 pm EDT

If you’ve seen anything stranger than 85 purple-wearin’ baby Taurens, you’ve been around a lot longer than we have.

UPDATE 1:44pm EDT

The Finish Line is Zinzi. From Ratshag’s own orcish mouth, “She’s gonna be manning the finish line. First person ta opens a trade window with her be the winner.”

So you get to Hammerfall, find Zinzi, be the first to open a trade with her, you win!

And hilarity is in full moo-mode out at the kiddie pool.

UPDATE 12:56pm EDT

The Guild Moo has broken the 100-member barrier already, and the first Ratshag sighting has been reported.

The donations for Sharvan have broached $325. We feel like Jerry Lewis! Pour it on, folks. One dollar at a time, we want to send $500 to Sharvan’s family tonight. To those who have already contributed, thank you, thank you, thank you. /big hugs

FYI, we are “Bigredkitty”, level 1 Tauren, and “Brk” level 28 Blood Elf with Links the cat.

UPDATE 11:11am EDT

Guild “Moo” is accepting all applications!

UPDATE 10:15am EDT

That’s more like it, we’ve got some maniacs playing with their cows already.

If you want to join the race chat channel, type: /join RODB

Starting Post 9:00am EDT

Ten hours before the Running of Da Bulls for Sharvan and we’re the only level 1 Tauren out here?

Gentle reader, we dub thee Slacker. If you can’t spend twelve hours standing around as a level 1 Tauren on a Saturday, we think your priorities aren’t straight.

But we’ll see you there, yes? Yes! We expect a few guilds, some purple shirts, and other goodies to be handed out. Remember - stay in the kiddie pool and don’t get any XP. No questing, no purchasing stuff from vendors.

Cheating at a Running of Da Bulls contest is bad karma. Totally.

There have been a couple generous $5 and $10 donation, even a $20 or two. But somebody, and you know who you are, donated $100 for Sharvan. May Elune bless and keep you. Be sure to play lotto somewhere, Capt. Generosity, for karma like that will be returned in force, we know it.

We’re up to $250. You guys are making us proud, but there’s till time for 50 more people to donate $1 and get us to an even three hundred bucks. Will you help?

7pm EDT, 11PM GMT! Don’t forget, and we’ll see you there!

Holy Crud, the Running of Da Bulls for Sharvan is tomorrow!! We expect you there, ya know. /glare

You have donated $127 for Sharvan, much gracias. If you haven’t contributed a dollar, please consider doing so. We get 6000 readers per day; we’d love to hit $500 by race time.

The BRK Non-WoW Thought of the Day: If you want us to order lunch from your restaurant, keep your best selling items in stock. Telling us every week that you’re out of tostones makes us order from the Chinese restaurant next door, and they give us free eggrolls. Free, foshizzle!

“Dear BRK, so WTF, where’s _________? Angry readers everywhere want to know. Your friends, the Angry Readers.”

OK, so you see… there was this thing we had to do, it was kinda important. Sort of. But the result was that we didn’t finish our movie, our macro post, or the shot-rotation thingy at Dr. Boom. Saturday we have to do some yard work, so that’s going to pie our type as well.

If someone volunteers to prune our Washingtonians, we could do some warcraft-theorycrafting like we all know you want us to do. Just admit it; you won’t trim our trees because you’re selfish. Pathetic.

Ratshag the Spriest is level 70. We can’t wait to Misdirect something in Karazhan onto him.

Speaking of abusing Misdirect, it’s time for a “BRK Honks It Up Again!” story!

One of our jobs in the Al’ar fight is to drag the adds off of the platforms and over to the bear-tank. We have the bear-tank as our Focus and we use our Misdirection Macro to help us. This isn’t a hard thing to set up, not at all. Click on the bear-tank, click our Set Focus Macro, and off we go.

We wipe on our first try, not quite sure what happened. While the raid recovers and rebuffs, our enhancement shaman types in raid-chat,

“Please please PLEASE don’t Misdirect on me anymore.”

Who the h3ll is MD’ing on an enhancement shaman? That’s just stupid, our hunters know better than that… and we look at our Focus. Bingo. We set the shaman as our Focus, not the bear-tank, resulting in us dragging an exploding fire-bird onto a melee shaman.

/epic fail

The newly acquired Egotistical Priest and her buddies were four-manning regular MrT. Um, Ego, we have thirty-eight 70s on right now, why don’t you say in gchat, “LF1M DPS reg MrT”? She gave us some silly excuse involving a zoo of tea bags and how states that are wider than they are tall should be excommunicated. We wisely ignored all that and threw a Tier 5-geared druid in their run. Ego completed MrT, the druid got a phoenix hatchling, and we’re a hero. /hero

Another hunter in our guild got the ZA hunter helm. You know the one with the big eye? We’re not sure if he should be happy or sad. Frankly, ZA helms are a total abomination, a practical joke played by Blizzard on their paying customers.

BRK Email Etiquette. If you’re asking us a question about your gear or talent points, including an armory link is mandatory. If you’re not asking us about your gear or talent points, you don’t have to include an armory link. Y’all are going silly with the “Just wanted to say Hi, here’s our armory link like you asked for” emails.

Aetherial Circle is no longer recruiting. We got what we needed and a little extra. Thank you for considering us, we really do appreciate the enthusiasm. Next time we have an opening, we may have to make Aetherial Circle Idol and demand application videos…

/blink

Wow, that’s a really good idea, isn’t it. We may have to guild-kick someone just to implement this.

Hi, my name is TJ and sometimes I’m too busy doing my real job to put in appropriate links. I also haven’t been bribed in a while.

Number Uno: WTF is wrong with our Search? We’ve used the default search widget, our custom Google widget, and two addon widgets. All of them go to PayPal when we try to seach. We don’t have a clue how to fix this.

Numer Dos: The Powered by WoWHead code has changed.

This:

<script src=”http://www.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js”></script>

Does not work anymore. Update your html to:

<script src=”http://www.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js?lol”></script>

We don’t know the in-and-outs of why this works, but it does. We couldn’t get our WoWHead links to work until we implemented this change.

BRK’s Non-WoW Thought of the Day: Do you take your glassware into your bathroom at home? Of course you don’t. So why are you taking your coffee cup into the men’s room to clean it at work? There’s a kitchen across the courtyard! A kitchen, by definition, has no male nudity. Isn’t that where you want to wash utensils and ceramics that will eventually be placed in your mouth?

The GM of AC and the Squeekie Priestie are completing Fiopalooza (Fiopallooza?) and on their way home. Soon, the King of All Puns is going to lock horns with the loquacious and eloquent Ego. Drenden may experience latency issues that rival time-travel as the guild-chat explodes in a supernova of catcalls and chat-gagging.

We, for one, cannot wait. /popcorn

ZOMG!! The Running of Da Bulls for Sharvan is this Saturday! Are you ready, are you pumped? The BRK web-bots have been picking up lots of chatter on guild forums across the world about joining in groups. The French and Spanish sites we can sort of read, but the German, Slovak, and Russian ones completely mystify us. Remember, the race starts at 7pm Eastern Daylight Time, not server-time. That’s 11pm Greenwich Mean Time, foshizzle. Don’t screw it up and arrive an hour late, or you’ll get Shovel Detail.

Yes, that was a threat.

We finally captured a Hydross movie we like. We’ll be turning it into a BRK Hunter Guide Movie tonight, stay tuned. The next movie should be either Al’ar or Leo the Blind. The Leo movie will be rated R for all the BRK-screaming and cursing that will take place as Leo puts his Bleed on Hobbes and our pet dies again and again and there’s really nothing we can do about it.

We will be doing a comparison of 3x Tier 5 gear vs. 2x Tier 5 gear + Shoulders of Lightning Reflexes, as computed by Recount during a Dr. Boom session. Time, of course, is our enemy. Do not fret; this is totally on the BRK Honey-Do List.

We played around with a shot-rotation macro last night in SSC. Don’t Panic!

Some immediate observations:

We hate how slowly our shooting started. Every fight felt like an eternity before the first shot was fired.

We loved seeing the Kill Commands automatically being cast. In all honesty, we will never be able to manually cast KCs as efficiently as the macro did.

We missed not being able to throw Arcane Shots in the rotation when we wanted.

We appreciated not having to worry about the other gun-hunter’s sounds interfering with out shot-rotation concentration.

We felt detached from the DPS-experience. It was like driving a Porsche equipped with an automatic transmission.

There can be no arguing that a simple Auto/Steady macro can improve a hunter’s DPS, especially for those hunters for whom shot-rotation theory is a concept they wish not to study in-depth. We would never deride a hunter for not using one, but if their DPS is lacking, we would definitely recommend the one we used.

However we still believe that a shot-rotation macro is not mandatory to provide MQoSRDPS in a raid. We also feel that a properly executed, manual shot-rotation feels like more of an accomplishment than doing warlock-like, keyboard face-smashing.

What was the macro we used? We’ll cover that in a separate post.