Another patch, another instance, another update. With Samba safely quarantined in a swine-flu-infected Virginia campus, business can go on as usual - so I give you Anub'arak:

The fact that we're downing bosses cleanly and quickly is at least somewhat encouraging, considering only a few weeks ago our raids resembled the recent Vault of Bearchavon, and not the good kind. See there's something about the end of summer that makes people go "FUCK raiding, I'd rather _________" where the blank can be filled with almost anything, usually something between "school", "work", and "trannies".

And when that happens, there's only one thing that can be done: promote new officers, and send them to the twilight pools where the squid come to feed with a net and a checklist of questions. And before long a new FLOCK appears. Of course, it takes some time to turn a milling mass of trials into a well-oiled raiding operation. But over the course of two weeks, we go from this:

To this:

It's an exciting time, and doing new content with new people makes an otherwise easy instance highly enjoyable. Some people may disagree, but I think that taking a truckload of sloths in boxes and making out of them a tightly-coordinated killing-machine team of ballerinas with rifles is a lot of fun.

You also have to remember that I've been doing this for some time. Here's an artist's rendition of my early elementary school years:

Of course I'm the kid with the bat and garbage-can-lid shield. We had the concept of "main tank" even back then.

You have to understand, unlike others I have a lot of faith in humanity, I believe that everyone who plays this game is a fundamentally intelligent person capable of learning, they just make mistakes sometimes.

See when I was in 3rd grade I wanted to be a crocodile. The kid sitting next to me in class liked the idea, so he bit my arm, for practice. After that I decided that crocodiles are kinda dicks. Wanting to be a crocodile was a mistake. I then very carefully elbowed him for biting me, but missed his arm and ended up hitting him in the stomach. That was another mistake. He then leaned over and threw up his carrots and orange juice onto the retarded girl with the one fucked up leg and eyes that look in different directions and she started to eat it.

Ok, I'm a bit off track here, but I think the story is more interesting than whatever point I was going to make, so I might as well finish it.

So AFTER the teacher saw the retarded girl eating my friend's vomit she FLIPPED the fuck out and dragged me out of the room by my collar and all the way down to the principal's office. Once there I nervously sat in a big chair waiting for him to arrive, and then inexplicably got up, peed behind his desk, and sat back down. You see, I was too scared to get in trouble for leaving the office to go to the bathroom, so somehow I got the idea that peeing right then and there in a corner of the room would somehow be more acceptable. That too was a mistake.

To my great relief there was another episode later in the day where several teachers had to wrestle a raged fat kid into that same office and he ended up urinating all over them, so my "trail" was covered. There's a good chance by the way that the fat kid was Elaithe, but he will never admit it and I will never remember so the world will likely never know. Not remembering the situation more clearly was probably the greatest mistake of all.

Ok back on topic, for real this time. If I can get an already unstable person with a lazy eye to eat thrown-up carrots, then pee behind the desk of the most powerful man in a school of hundreds, then go on and become a successful and well-adjusted member of society then ANYONE can figure out how to move out of fire or dodge spikes that move slower than Brock clicks ready checks. It's simple really: other than a few occasional bad decisions made in the heat of combat against giant beetles or codpiece-wearing fire men, every person is a fundamentally intelligent and well-adjusted individual with the best interests of the greater community in mind.

And then of course Bear invites me to Vault of Archavon Round 6 and shatters any illusions I may have had. Granted, I shouldn't be too surprised, since on a daily basis I have to deal with this:

Until next time.