A quick BRK on WoW Insider post tonight! Woohoo!

Of course, one really shouldn’t say that three days and a total of six hours is “quick”. This is the entire reason we can’t do this stuff every week anymore.

HEY! It’s 73 degrees in Florida and we’re freezing. What do you Canadians do with this weather, anyway. Holy cr@p it’s cold.

This week’s column, which I may or may not be able to get done today due to my work schedule, is going to be my last.

Daniel
aka
BigRedKitty

Edit: Just to clarify, this blog isn’t going anywhere. As you may have noticed, the number of multiple-posts per day are dwindling. But the existance of this happy hunter haven isn’t in danger.

How about we not.

How about we write a huge post on our personal blog instead.

How about you provide some basis for your math.

How about you not hide behind, “Elitist Jerks blah blah blah I’m too lazy to do my own research,” cr@p.

How about we’ve been saying 8.6% for a long time, only to be “corrected” with the people from Elitist Jerks coming to this blog to state, and prove with statistical analysis, that the Hit Cap is really 9%.

That’s weak sh!t you brought to the table, #16. We’re not saying you’re wrong, just WEAK.

Where did we get our research?

WoW Forums, Blue Stickied, Hit Rating Theorycrafting

WoWWiki Calculating Miss Rate for Physical Damage Attacks

Could our research be bad? Could there be a mistake? Sure could. But we stand behind our work because, dude, we work at it. Disprove it or shut the h3ll up about us “getting our math right.”

You want to comment and say you don’t like our writing style? That’s cool. You want to say our research is flawed? Fine. You want to show our math errors? Bring it; the math being right is more important than our ego.

You want to pretend to know what you’re talking about and tell us what to do?

Not.

So we wrote a really good Top Ten List for the patch that comes out tomorrow. So good, in fact, we’re sending it to WoW Insider for publishing.

Ka-ching, says Mrs BRK.

But we have no picture. And we also got a massive blast-email telling all the bloggers and columns the Do This and Don’t Do Thats of picture thievery. We’re not going to go and screw that up just twenty minutes after being told how to do it Right.

We’ll do that tomorrow.

OR!

We can beg and cajole our editor to doing into doing it for us.

She reads this blog; it’s how we got picked to be a WoW Insider columnist. But we’ve also sent her an email describing our plight. If she reads about our need for help here before she gets the email…

We think we’ll have blackmail material. And we bank that stuff, you’d better believe it.

Edit: Our editor came through big-time. Thank you thank you thank you. We grovel at her majestic yet dangling feet.

Tomorrow is Mrs BRK’s 40th birthday. If you want to say, “Happy Birthday Mrs. BRK!” in the comments, you are more than welcome. She has often said she should start a Warcraft Widow blog, but then we tell that such a product already exists and she moves on to the next subject.

Our conversation this morning:

BRK: “I’ve been thinking about doing AdSense on my blog.”

Mrs. BRK: “Do it. Tell ‘em Mrs BRK needs the Bam-Bam.”

“You’ve got enough bam-bam, and quit quoting Ricky Bobby.”

“I want Botox.”

“You don’t need Botox.”

“I want Botox around my eyes, then.”

“You don’t need Botox.”

“Then I want a diamond necklace to accentuate my cleavage.”

“I bought you an iPhone!”

“Then I want some eye cream.”

“We will go to Walgreen’s and purchase some eye cream.”

“I want to go to Nordstrom’s and buy eye cream.”

“Let me guess. $50 for half an ounce.”

“No, you’re wrong. It’s $110.”

We found out that our Combat Log was hosed because we screwed up the modification of our config file. Apparently we tried to modify it while WoW was running. Not Good. We have corrected the situation and now have a spiffy, clean, and properly modified config file ready for Friday’s run to Prince.

We saw a 20-stack of Clefthoof hides on the Auction House for 40g. On Drenden, that’s a 33% discount and there was no way we were going to undercut it. So we bought it and put both stacks on the AH for 59g99s. Sold them both overnight. As Mrs BRK says, Ka-ching!

If the Bridgeford Beef Jerky people don’t start making an easier-to-close bag, we may just write them a letter.

If we bought bunches of Honor Hold bullets and Cenarian Expedition arrows, sat outside the Karazhan gates between 6 and 8pm every night, and spammed:

/y Bullets and Arrows for Sale! HH and CE ammo!

and charged a palatable markup, do you think we’d make any money? They’re not soulbound, are they?

Somebody posted a comment on our WoW Insider column that another commenter should start a blog called Big Fat @sshat. Now that’s +5 BRK Cool Point-worthy.

Why does Mrs BRK send us Victoria’s Secret coupons? Do we send her Hanes coupons? You know how bizarre it is to have your boss in your office and have a “$10 Off Any Bra Purchase!” email pop open on the screen?

Oh, we lost our wedding ring. We’ll find it, but wow it’s really missing.

Brigin has a Sonic Spear. He’s a protection warrior in case you didn’t know. He didn’t shard the spear, he just keeps it in his bank. We’re nice to Brig because he’s a great tank and wonderful person, not out of some fear that he’ll link it in guild-chat just to shut us down. Just about every other person in our guild would do that, but not Brig. Yet.

In October, our new computer will either be the new 24″ iMac with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO (256MB) or a custom Mac Pro with the ATI Radeon X1900 XT (512MB). We’re still debating which way to go.

TJ couldn’t throw a rock high enough to hit a car’s windshield. Next suggestion.

If you kill stuff in the Netherwing mine, or Nagrand, or anywhere, just loot the d@mn corpse. Please.

If you’re doing the Race the Dragonmaw Rider quests and you get us shot down twice, we are allowed to give you the digital finger. So sayeth BRK, so let it be done.

Don’t write to BRK and ask us to review your armory profile and not have a scope on your ranged weapon. We’ll pull your hunter license, guaranteed. We did it once today, we’re not afraid to do it again.

The addon is Rating Buster!

We’ll make Rugged Knothide Leather for you, sure. You don’t even have to tip us. Don’t accuse us of stealing because you skipped pre-K and never learned to count.

The [Auchenai Boots] come from a quest to kill Murmur. We finished that quest this week. We are the worst quest-trackers ever.

On Drenden, why is Halaa always controlled by the Alliance? On Khaz Modan, why was Silithus always controlled by the Horde? Why is the EPL controlled by the Alliance? Why is the only real battle in Terrokar Forest? Those PvP spirit towers flip-flop like astable multivibrators.

“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.

As you may or may not know, BRK was the first “class specific” column on WoW Insider. When we began our career there, a large number of the comments directed at our column were written in this manner:

“OMG this truly is the worst writing I’ve ever seen. It’s trash. It’s filth. I print the pages out and let my bird use them as a toilet. I feel violently ill after reading BRK. Gross, stupid, ignorant and so are the editors who allow this filth to be published.

“And just when is the mage/paladin/warrior column coming out?”

Good times for all.

Now as BRK’s popularity spiked their traffic to heights never seen for several weeks running, the WI bean-counters thought it would be a fine idea to have all classes have a weekly column they could publish. Everything was gravy until the Warlock Column commenced.

The person writing this column was not a Professional Warlock exactly but, we think, merely a casual ‘lock who had a lot of experience writing for WoW Insider and wanted to complete the ranks of the class-bloggers.

She was utterly destroyed in the comments. The abuse this person suffered was beyond inappropriate. The foul language and cruelty written by the arrogant and uncaring readers was beyond the pale. We were embarrassed and ashamed to be affiliated with the situation at all.

In a move we anticipated and highly encouraged, the nice author gave the virtual middle-finger to the whole concept of the warlock column and went back to writing about the stuff she liked. But today someone decided to write to WoW Insider and ask, and we paraphrase, “Hey! You haven’t written anything about warlocks for a month! What gives?”

To which we at BRK Worldwide Amalgamated say, “What gives is that you’re getting exactly what you deserve: Squat.”

Paid or not, blogging isn’t easy. Blogging on a schedule is harder. Blogging to the mindless rabble that spew hate and vileness, to unappreciative, degenerate and spoiled children, to people with an intellect so keen the can’t spell “rogue” properly most of the time yet demand seven-decimal place precision when discussing the damage potential of a warlock’s spell against a specific mob in a specific instance during a specific period of the day when a buff is available because of a PvP objective being taken but then lost before your Darkmoon Fair trinket procs but you don’t notice but WoW Stats does and how that all relates to the gibbous moon over Tanaris… it’s a punishment Michael Vick should be required to endure.

What’s our point? Let us re-read this and see if we can remember…

Oh yeah. We had no point. But we can make one.

Our Point: When you beat the messenger often enough, she may just pick up her message and go home. Warlocks, we think you’re outta luck for a while.

In case you haven’t heard, WoW Insider needs more bloggers. They really need one specifically for PvP and want another dedicated columnist.

BRK is a “columnist” and generally writes one huge mongo post per week. Our contract - and there is a legal contract - calls for 1000 words but we usually churn out 1500-2000. Our post today - 1:00pm EST, a little early again - is a neat 2001 words. A blogger will be asked for two or three posts per day, in the 400-words range each.

Blogging for WoW Insider FAQs:

Ya get paid. Not enough to cover tuition for a semester but enough for books and an Orangina. Bloggers get $10 per post, so at two posts per day you could bring down $600 per month if you’re really prolific like our editor, Elizabeth.

Ya get slammed. People love to be rude, crude and lewd in the comments and frankly don’t care about hurting feelings. Fortunately, we laugh a great deal at the flamers and derive much pleasure to see them make fools of themselves. But if your ego is fragile and your constitution delicate, you must prepare yourself for the maniacal rantings of the masses.

Ya get shamed. Sometime you make a mistake. When you say that a gorilla’s Thunderstomp stuns mobs and it doesn’t, when you mess up a mathematical formula, when you are positive that something works as Method A but it really works as Method B, your ego takes a battering. Over 3 million people read WoW Insider every month and your mistakes are made public, Big Time.

Ya get praise. The amount of love we’ve received from the readers is enormous. Each “thank you” is worth 100,000 “you sux”. We love getting emails from people who have learned something from our blog and column and are happier for it.

Let us know if you apply. We have been credited with pushing a lot of people into the blogging arena and would be fascinated to see if a new WI blogger was borne from the BRK Ranks.

Our WoW Insider column is done and it’s being proofread. Thank you TJ, our BRK Executive Assistant. She’ll complain about our commas, just you watch.

Simple Attumen, Moroes and Maiden run for some newly-keyed guild members and we were happy to provide massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS for them. All bosses down, no real problems. Well, healing and cleansing on Maiden was troublesome, but they were new and BRK and Brigin were there to keep everything in check.

Maiden’s curse nuked a few people before the main tank was smooshed and Brigin took over. Of course some Boomkim chain-critted at just the wrong time. Maiden smashed her way over to the druid ready to do some Impure-Thought buttkicking, but Brigin sauntered over, casually bellowed, “COME BACK HERE!” while doing something Tanky, grabbed Maiden by the hair and dragged her back to the center of the room where we burned her down. People, there is nothing better in the game than a competent tank. So sayeth BRK, so let it be done.

After Attumen and before Moroes, the raid brought in a shadow priest. We didn’t notice - even with Vampiric Embrace pumping us full of mana - until we were about three pulls away from Maiden. Paying Attention FTW.

We’re not sure if mages die a lot because they wear cloth or if the wear cloth because they die a lot, but d@mn did our mage die a lot. Like on every AoE pull. Splat, sploot, splosh, dead squishy all the frickin’ time.

We have requested a dungeon guide from a new hunter-blogger. He said he knew everything there was to know about Deadmines, so we’re putting him to the test. Seriously. We’re quite excited; the rough draft looks very promising.

Edit: We were right, she loathed our commas. Also, we were bumped up in the rotation. BRK on WoW Insider is available right now!

“Dear BRK, after weeks of Karazhan runs as a MM hunter I grew tired of fighting with all the other MM hunters to avoid being last in the damage list. Watching all those smug warlocks, mages, rogues and DPS warriors reveling in their high damage positions was too much. So, I re-specced to the BRK build and retrained my cat, Tom, to be BRK standard.

“For all the doubters, rules lawyers and math wizards out there: Arguing about which build CAN do better DPS and damage is moot as the only thing that matters is which build DOES do better DPS and damage. Consider me another data point that shows that if you want to max your damage out then you’ll spec 41/20/0 … {Some heavy-duty trash-talking followed that, while we appreciate it, might be offputting to others, so we’re keeping it to ourselves. Imagine Rowdy Roddy Piper on Piper’s Corner and you’ll get the idea.} … Dbloadpants”

So it’s Wednesday and that means BRK on WoW Insider. The column is being scrutinized by the new BRK Executive Assistant and, baring any massive problems, will be published at our traditional 3:00pm EST slot.

STS-118 is being launched today, so it’s busy on the Kennedy Space Center / Cape Canaveral spaceport. Add our dental appointment to our schedule and we’re not going to be posting much more today.