You broke my Karazhan!

That's me. In a raid group with one other person so I could run into Karazhan for two minutes.

And that's... that's another raid group in the same instance with me.

After a lot of confusion and pondering over whether we actually could 11-man Karazhan, the one final member of the other raid group realized he couldn't get into the instance because the "raid was full". Ah, so that was it. Ten people with the same Raid ID can all get into the same copy of Kara, regardless of groups. That's how it seems, anyway, because I'd earlier been called in to help on Curator with two of these people a couple days ago... so I was, in fact, sharing a Raid ID.

Still, I can tell you right now, after months of playing this game, it is downright surreal to be in an instance all by yourself and suddenly run into a bunch of other players.

Geek is the New Black

Now I'm not one to hide my nerdiness and all-out geek pride.

But on the other hand, it's not something I bring up with a whole lot of people. Largely I think it's just because I assume that not very many people can relate to me if all I ever do is talk about Linux and video games. In order to get to know people, I sort of subconsciously stay on their level of interests, which I'm pretty sure in most cases is not mine.

But I sort of got tired of it today. Tired of beating around the bush. Tired of going "Um, er, ah..." when people ask me what my hobbies are or what I do in my spare time and I wonder what sort of blank stares I'd get if I told the whole truth.

Somebody asked me today what I'm doing tomorrow. I said "Raiding Karazhan with my guildies in World of Warcraft." "Oh... okay," was the semi-stunned response. It was all slightly awkward but I felt good. I'd unabashedly outed myself and it was nice.

In the breakroom at work today somebody came in and sat down across the table from me. We sat there munching on donuts and he asked me what I did last night. I said "I played video games." "Ooh, what games?" "World of Warcraft." "Ah yes," he said. He'd never played it but he knew a lot about it. We talked about XBox 360 games and Starcraft 2 for a while before he finished his donut and made his exit.

Not long after he left, two other people came in. One was a departmental manager and the other guy was someone who started working there not long after I did. They had McDonalds and they came in and sat down at the table and set up their food. Then the manager turned to the other guy and said simply: "I'm telling ya, mining, herbalism, and an epic flying mount, and you'll be set for life."

The other guy replied, "Well, I've just got mining to supplement my engineering. I finally learned how to make the +10 damage scope for myself yesterday!"

The engineer, as it turns out, began playing five months ago or so and is a level 65 hunter.

I told him if he made Goblin Jumper Cables, people would love him if he feigned death in an instance and could then rez the healer. He was pretty impressed with this idea.

He said he was trying to work on gaining rep with a lot of factions so he would have kind of a headstart when he got to level 70. I told him to start working on his Cenarion Expedition rep so he could nab Glyph of Ferocity.

Then my break was over.

I foresee some more fun chats between the two of us in the future.

Apparently I was underestimating the world's geek level. And I'm glad to say so.

On a completely different note, my boyfriend, Mr. Pike (though he prefers to be called "LS"), the infamous warlock who little level six Tawyn trekked across the world to find, started his own blog a little while ago and now feels he has enough content to warrant some visits. So go on, head over to Wearing Black in the Back and read what he has to say about roleplaying (both in and out of WoW), warlockery, and a variety of other goodies.

*pushes you over*

Helping Out

The other day I was logged into my Night Elf Tawyn, headed north up the road in Stranglethorn Vale to see if I could finish up a quest when I saw a level 10 Blood Elf ahead of me, running up the road as well. He waved at me, and I, being the sort to return kindness with kindness, reciprocated the gesture.

Not long after that, the poor guy was mauled to death by one of the tigers in the area.

I paused for a bit and sure enough he was back within a few minutes, doggedly continuing on down the road. Of course, it was only a matter of seconds before he was killed again.

A passing troll priest rezzed the guy, and this time I decided to do something myself as well. Namely, I hopped off my horse and began running along the road with the blood elf, pulling aggro off of him and disposing of the many monsters in this area that were eager to pounce on a level 10.

It was a long run, but up we went through Stranglethorn Vale, into Duskwood and through part of Westfall, with my trusty owl Tux and I successfully protecting him from countless deaths. Eventually, after many /thanks and /welcomes and /cheers all around, we got to Elwynn Forest, where he paused by the road and told me to /wait, and logged out.

A few seconds later I received a whisper from a level 65 human mage. He informed me that he was the blood elf, rode up to me and gave me a cash tip of some sixty-odd silver, and then promptly proceeded to pull out the Murky pet, his BlizzCon Murloc costume, and the picnic grill and hold a dance party in the middle of Goldshire, all the while singing "I am Murloc" at the top of his lungs.

Sometimes I love being the silly carebear player that I am!

(P.S. in case anyone was curious, the sole reason he wanted to go to to Elwynn on his Blood Elf was apparently just to amuse Goldshire. That is to say, he'd log into his alliance character, yell "BLOOD ELF!" and then log into the blood elf and run around as a lowbie and bug people. ...heehee, yeah.)