So long, Ghostcrawler, and thanks for all the fish.

We are gathered here today to bid farewell to our beloved Ghostcrawler, who will always be remembered for bringing customer interaction at Blizzard to a new level. Yesterday, at 8:51 pacific daylight time he passed away into the land of the silent.
Alright, obviously Ghostcrawler didn't die or I wouldn't make such a cheesy opening. He did post this, however:

"I always said that when my posting was doing more harm than good that maybe it was time to stop. I think I'll at least chill it out a little. I will continue to read the forums though. If you want to make sure the WoW developer see your feedback, this is still a good place to post."

- Ghostcrawler

The Wolpertinger Must Stay Free!

Those of you who live in the US and have a mind for seasonal events will likely have had encounters with pink elephants - excuse me, elekks - and maybe even the elusive wolpertinger. Some lucky Europeans had that opportunity too - for a few hours after the weekly maintenance. After that, these Brewfest quests were disabled again as it is apparently intended.

Comment Issues

Just a heads up - my comment provider (damn third parties :/) seems to have server problems. So if you don't see comments or an option to comment with - check back later.
When I have some spare time I will move this thing to my own server and be done with such stuff. Until then, please keep looking for comments- there are actually some good ones under my latest post ;)

There Goes my Head Start

So I preordered Aion, collector's edition even, and yesterday was the head start for preorders. According to past experience I should have spent the night without sleep and should be level 20 by now or something. Well, I haven't even touched it yet and I likely won't for a while.

Motivating Raiders: Part 3 - Respect

This is the third (and for now final) part of my series on Fear, Love, and Respect. Check out parts one and two as well as the original article if you like.
Today we will talk about what I consider the most important tool of a raid leader, respect, and how to achieve it.

Motivating Raiders: Part 2 - Love

Welcome to the second follow-up to my Fear, Love, Respect post. Since the first instalment was about fear, it should be quite obvious that today I'm going to to talk about love. There are many definitions of love, but I will only refer to a very specific subset here. But don't worry, the post is still longer than anyone would like it to be.

Motivating Raiders: Part 1 - Fear

I got feedback from a few people that they enjoyed my Fear, Love, Respect post but missed a part about practical application. The following sequels will attempt to remedy that by detailing ways in which you can achieve each of the three and what consequences that may have. I originally meant for it to be only one sequel but well, it got somewhat big, so we are only dealing with fear today. Love and respect will follow.
If you haven't read the post I linked above, please do that or wait for the other parts of this series before you imply that I suggest ruling by fear alone - I don't.

Fear, Love, Respect

Some of you may be familiar with the works of Italian philosopher Machiavelli and others will at least have heard of him. I'm not going to argue for or against machiavellianism here, but his below quote will get us started on the discussion of how a raid (or guild) leader will get her raiders to do as she says. This is a similar topic to the one I tackled in 7 Different Shades of Stupid but this time I'm approaching it more from a philosophical point of view than a hands-on one.

Locke and Demosthenes

I promised you a real post, this is not it. In my defense though, this is far too true (and good) not to post. Randall over at xkcd has really hit the nail on the head about blogging. It's sad really, but so funny. (Hint: Click for full-size)



If you don't get it, go read Ender's Game already, you slacker.

Next post will be for real, I promise!

Back in the Rain

Just a quick update: I'm now back in good old rain country after a fabulous two weeks in southern Italy. Man I will miss the food and the wine. Especially the wine.
Looking forward to seeing sane people on roads again though, Italy's roads are nuts.

Expect new posts soon, after I've found out what actually happened in the gaming world since I went away. I doubt anyone is actually interested in posts about my holidays, or are you?