Monday mailbag

You know how this works.  Here we go…

 

Hail, Warchief!

I took a bit of a break from Orgrimmar–I was out on my own for a few years and kind of managed to miss the whole “war in Northrend” thing and was honestly a little surprised to see you in charge when I got back. Yeah, I was really out in the boonies and didn’t hear word of anything going on.

Anyway, when I got back and checked out my bank I found a lot of useless junk along with a surprise–two severed night elf heads. I was feeling a little “frisky” in my youth and during one particularly long battle in Alterac Valley, I bagged a few trophies. I made a little pile of most of them and now they’re who knows where, but I still have these two night elf noggins.

My questions to you are:

1) If you had two severed night elf heads, what would you do with them?

2) Why are these things still in pristine condition even though they are at least three years old?

Thanks for your insight,

–Grixar, the grumpy old orc shaman

Hey, Grixar, and welcome back.  Hopefully your time away gave you a chance to clear your head and come back ready to curbstomp some humans again.  Still…missing the whole war in Northrend?  And the fact that I took over as Warchief for Thrall?  Really?  Where the hell did you GO, man?  Did they not have newspapers there?  Heralds?  Seers?  How deep was this cave you went and hid in?

I mean, okay, I guess you wanted some time to get away from it all.  Who am I to judge?  Oh wait, hang on a second, I’m the FUCKING WARCHIEF, that’s who.

You DID hear that we won up there in Northrend, right?  And the Lich King is dead?  And Bolvar Fordragon died with him?  Oh, and also Deathwing turned up again, which kind of made mess of the place for a while, you may or may not have noticed.  Don’t you worry, though, because – in case you missed it – Thrall or Go’el or whatever the fuck he’s calling himself this week, that dude went off with the Earthen Ring and the Dragon Aspects and the Bilgewater goblins at one point (don’t ask) to feed his messianic ego some more – just what he needed, right? – and went all “OMG IM TOTALLY SAVIN ALL TEH WORLDZ HERE GAIZ” but still managed to squeeze in time to get his groove on for once.  Did you hear?

Dude, seriously, you’re reading a blog.  Pop on a Google news feed every once in a while.

As for your questions…

Question #1:  This one is easy.  I would swing by Hyjal and give them to our old buddy Antlers McBeardyface.  Why?  Because what with him being married to Tyrande Whatshername, that would probably be the first night elf head he’s gotten in about 10,000 years.  OH YES I SAID IT.

Question #2:  This one is a little trickier to wrap your head around, but it’s sort of straightforward when you come right down to it.  Basically, Grixar, it goes back to the whole “immortality” thing that the night elves used to have going for them.  Short version: the fuckers just don’t decay.  Or if they do, it happens really, REALLY slowly.  Go ahead, kill a night elf (please!) and stick him in the ground.  Then come back ten years later.  (Don’t worry, I’ll wait.)  (No I won’t.  Come back here, you idiot, and stop being so damn literal.)  Dig him up again and see if there’s been any change at all to the body.  Spoilers: THERE HASN’T.

Fucked up, huh?  So much for those night elves being such high-and-mighty tree-hugging nature-lovers, right?  Everybody else dies and gets buried and their bodies nourish the land and feed the plants which feed the animals which feed ME, especially if they’re pigs because bacon.  But the night elves?  They die and go “FUCK YOU, CIRCLE OF LIFE!” – which is not only dickish but also creepy as hell what with them being dead when they say it.

Anyway, yeah, that’s the deal with your collection of night elf heads.  By all means, now that you’re back, start adding to it again.  And can I recommend some humans?  Oh, and gnomes.  Don’t forget to kill lots of gnomes.  They’re little – you can kill a bunch of them in the middle of the afternoon and you’ll still have plenty of room to kill some more humans at dinnertime.

 

Warchief,

Gamon’s a quiet guy and all, but a bit touchy. Go tap him on the shoulder in the inn and you’ll see what I mean. Since the Shattered Hand cut him out of their training program and he started fighting back instead of just playing dead for a couple minutes, some folks have been taking advantage of his hair trigger and sending noobs over to “get to know him”, just to watch the inevitable horrible cleavage happen.

What he’s more likely thinking about, though, is when the occasional group of alliance adventurers find their way inside Orgrimmar to start some trouble. It’s like he tunes out in that bar, so sometimes we gotta get him chasing us outside before he notices the alliance and gets to work. Always worth it to for the look on their faces – I mean, the lad swings a mean axe but doesn’t really look all that dangerous.

–Infaris, Orgrimmar

Wait, you wanna see “horrible cleavage”?  Swing by Deepholme sometime and go say hi to Therazane.  Eeeeeeeeeesh.

Seriously, though, I’m not surprised that Gamon’s got some serious cleaving going for him.  He and Saurfang are old drinking buddies, did you know?  Well, maybe not OLD old, but going back before I got here, so that still counts as before relevant history, right?  Anyhow, doesn’t surprise me that Gamon may have picked up a trick or two.

But also, this business where someone needs to get Gamon’s attention when there are Alliance in Orgrimmar brings up another good point.  Seems to me that we need a better invader alert system here.  On more than one occasion, an Alliance strike force has hit Orgrimmar, and gotten all the way in to my command room in Grommash Hold without anyone other than my Kor’kron guards knowing they were there.  I mean, half the time I’ll be slugging it out with them, and even then nobody’s aware of what’s going on, since I figure it they did, half the damn city would be rushing in to help me fight them off.  But nope, not a soul.  I’ve got to figure we’re just lacking a system to let the Orgrimmar public at large know “Hey, in case you weren’t aware, there’s like forty Allies in Garrosh’s room.”  Not that I need any help with them, really – if anything, it’s kind of funny to watch dozens of Alliance come rushing on in just to get their asses handed to them – but it just seems like the kind of them we should really be on top of more than we seem to be.

 

I was curious about what your helm size is.  My greatmother is an amazing knitter and wants to knit you a helm liner for those chilly trips up to Northrend.  She seems to think that because I am in the military that I am close friends with you and is pestering me to ask you this, I am sorry if this offends or annoys you in any way shape or form.

Deepest regards,

–Toka

See, that’s kind of a tough one.  I used to be a 9 1/4 back in the day, but then there was that incident in Icecrown Citadel when Tirion wouldn’t SHUT. THE FUCK. UP.  So I tried to cover my ears so tight that I wound up squeezing my own head down a few sizes.  Best guess I could give you would be…around 7 1/2, maybe?  7 3/4?  Not really sure.  Also since I didn’t squeeze my head down evenly, I’m working with sort of an irregular helm size, which makes me that much trickier to shop for.

Actually, tell you what.  Let me see if Grixar from a couple letters ago can loan me one of those night elf heads.  If it’s a decent match, size-wise, I’ll just send it to you and you can pass it on to your greatmother.  And hell, if it’s not a decent match, I’ll see what I can do about crunching it down some until it IS.  Then your greatmother can have it right there when she’s knitting, which will be extremely handy and NOT THE SLIGHTEST BIT CREEPY AT ALL.

See?  Your Warchief is nothing if not an outside-the-box problem-solver.

 

Hi Warchief,

I am an aspiring soldier of the Horde in Eversong Woods.  When I first began adventuring, I started training as a Rogue.  I was a little nervous about combat, so I thought it would be helpful to be able to sneak around invisible.

Recently, however, the academy in Silvermoon added a Warrior program to its curriculum.  I think this would be a good field to go into.  I know I do well at melee combat, and I enjoy dual wielding swords.  As a Warrior I could still do these things, plus I could use much better armor and be less squishy.  Also I hear that they usually get the Elite Tauren Chieftains to perform at their Spring Fling concert.

I am writing to ask if you would consider writing me a letter of recommendation for my transfer to the Silvermoon Academy.  I think a recommendation from a celebrated Warrior like yourself would help my application a great deal.  I have enclosed copies of my transcripts and extracurricular records.  Please let me know what you think.

Thank you,

–Hannahlee Mihano, Fairbreeze Village

Glad to hear you’ve come to your senses, Hannahlee, and decided to stop sneaking around like a little girl and start cleaving your foes into pieces like a man.  Except for how I guess you actually are a girl.  But whatever.  Point is, warrior is definitely the way to go, and as a matter of fact, let me tell you the one thing I do know about rogues, which you’ll learn for yourself once you get the hang of warrioring: they are delicious.

I don’t know what kind of operation they’ve got going on up there in Silvermoon, especially seeing whatever “instructors” they’ve got in the warrior program would only have been warriors themselves for, what, like a year or something.  But whatever.  I looked over your materials and you look like you’d be a decent enough candidate, other than how you obviously mailed it in that one semester (seriously, a C+ in Survey of Thelassian Music?).  So I’ve gone ahead and sent a letter along for you.  Here, have a copy for yourself:

Dear elf school,

Some blood elf named Hannahlee wrote to me and asked me to recommend her for warrior training at your school.  To be totally frank, I’ve never met her or talked to her before in my life, so I know pretty much nothing about her and have no idea if she’s any good as a fighter or anything.  Then again I also know nothing whatsoever about your school and what you do there, so sounds like a match to me.  So in my professional capacity as somebody who knows a thing or two about warriors – and also, by the way, I’m Warchief of the Horde, which kind of makes me your boss on top of it all – I’m recommending her for admission.  Mainly because she wrote to me out of the blue and asked me to.  At least she was nice about it.  Come to think of it, though, she didn’t actually say “please,” so maybe you could teach her some fucking manners while she’s there.

Indifferently yours,

Garrosh Hellscream

There, that should take care of that.  On the off chance this doesn’t work out for you, Hannahlee, I think there’s also a school over in Brill, so I could put in a good word for you with Sylvanas if you want.

 

Hi Garrosh!

A friend of mine just linked me to your blog and I read through all the archives (took a while LOL) and OMG! You play Earth Online?!  Me too!  I looked you up in the Directory and I see we’re on different servers.  😦  I was totally bummed.  Maybe I’ll transfer so I can play with you guys!

I’m so excited because I finally managed to get enough rep with the Humane Society so I could get a cat pet!  I’ve wanted one for so long!  We have a lot of cats here in the Sunspire but they don’t really belong to anyone they just sorta hang out here but they’re so cute and fun to watch while they play and hunt and stuff.  They sure make the day go by a lot faster.  We’re kinda in the middle of nowhere so I’m not the busiest merchant ever LOL.  Anyway now I can have a cat to keep me company in game just like the real cats keep me company in real life.

I’m sending you a picture of him!  Isn’t he the cutest thing ever?  Do you have any in-game pets yet?  I bet you have a cat too because you like wyverns and wyverns are kinda like cats crossed with bats and scorpids or something. LOL

Come visit me next time you’re in Silvermoon!  I’ll give you some Honey Bread on the house.  😉

–Shara Sunwing.

Well, Shara, I…wait a minute.  This thing with the honey bread, is this actual literal honey bread we’re talking about, or is it some kind of euphemism?  Because in that case, hoo boy, here we go again.

Okay, moving on.

Yeah, um, it’s a real tragedy we’re on different servers.  Oh well, that’s the way it goes sometimes.  I do remember the Humane Society grind, though – kind of long and annoying, but not nearly as bad as the Hipster Collective.  Have you done THAT rep grind?  It’s infuriating.  There’s this bizarre diminishing returns system in place where if too many other people are doing the same dailies that you’re on, you get this debuff called “Mainstream” and the quests give you way way less rep.  Every once in a while you can get some extra rep for some totally random obscure thing you do, usually something that nobody in their right mind would think to do, but that doesn’t nearly offset the nuisance of constantly having to find quests that not many other people are working on.  There isn’t even any real benefit to getting rep with the Hipsters, just an achievement that people try to get just for the sake of getting it.  Fucking Hipsters.

Anyway, though, I did work up my rep with the Humane Society and got one of the pets.  In my case, though, I didn’t get a cat.  I decided to pick up one of the quests that open up at exalted to get a dog.  And since we’re sharing screenshots from the game, what the hell, here’s mine:

So there you go.  His name is Sawyer and I think he’s some variety of dog called a “terrier.”  Plenty entertaining, too – if I have him out with me outdoors, he’ll stare down other animals way bigger than him and send them running.  Badass little fucker.  Kind of fitting for my companion pet, right?

Which gets me thinking…I know a lot of my readers also play Earth Online – hell, people are constantly bringing it up in blog comments and on Twitter.  So, how about this – for my next mailbag, why don’t you Earth Online pet collectors write in and share a screenshot of YOUR pets, too.  Might be kinda cool to see what all is out there.  Maybe some of you guys have some cool obscure ones that not everyone even knows about.  Probably got bonus rep from the Hipsters for getting it, too.  Fucking Hipsters.

So anyhow, Shara, one last thing before I forget – since you’ve finished reading the archives of the blog, here, let me give you something else to fill up your online reading time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-on_sentence.  You’re welcome.

 

That does it for this time.  As always, keep those letters and questions coming to garrosh1337@gmail.com, and for next time, if you’re an Earth Online player with a cool companion pet, like I said, write in and let us know, and in the next mailbag I’ll post a big ol’ gallery o’ digital animals.  YOUR WARCHIEF HAS SPOKEN.