MemeOrable: Epic Sax Meme-sical Interlude

Epic SAX guy!
A musical phenomenon that I can't get enough of. Apparently, like many things our hive minds hook onto, this guys awesome grooves really rocked allot of people and has maintained a consistent power. 

Yes, Yes that IS a ten hour video of the ONE bit of music. Yes, some people on the internet are WEIRD and there are whole communities who have sent screen shots back and forth proving HOW LONG they were able to endure/enjoy the musical stylings. As Nerdcore Luminary YTCracker mentioned on this FANTASTIC REMIX, apparently his raiding companions on WoW would play it over vent while they engaged in end game activities.

While at Anime Expo this last year there was a wandering band of troubadors, one of which had a sexyphone, and the oh-so familiar tones wafted through the convention halls. It was glorious, and I can only imagine what type of rediculousness my own band associates might have gotten up to had we all been in school just a few years later. ah well, I'm old. heh.

But wait, There's MORE

 Yes, that just happened . . . Oh yeah. Does the song sound familiar but you've never seen this video before? Do you enjoy the audio exploits of Loveline? Well Guess what?! You're not crazy, well, at least not hallucinating . . .



AND, just for posterity sake, and becuase I beleive in aknowledging source material, The origional video.

You know, I kinda like the jam session at the end a little better. Enjoy!

Allies, WTF Mate?

A letter to Alliance concerning XR raids:

Why?

This is a question I ask a lot in life, but especially in WoW.

Ever since the early years of vanilla and definitely since I can remember, Crossroads, in northern Barrens is constantly set upon by max level Alliance players.

This makes no sense to me in any conceivable way other than to be a raging dick. And that might be reason enough, but it doesn't make me less upset.

If no one has guessed yet, I LOATHE PvP servers. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy PvP, mostly BG's and worthwhile world objectives (killing faction leaders) I even totally understand Arena (even though I don't play). BUT!! Incorrectly, I was led to believe there was some sort of etiquette that if you / wave to an enemy player, they will probably leave you alone if you are both questing out in the world. Nope, red = dead for you or the other player. I had a warrior on a pvp server for, two years? I BARELY got him to 64 over that time because every 7 levels, I would get ganked, repeatedly, rage quit and not return to that server for 3 months, like an Alzheimer patient. No level difference is too great nor bag not douche enough that another player will attack you in flagged areas. I had toons 3 levels lower than me openly try to gank me on that server. What about that makes sense? "gee that 52 war who is clearing 3 mobs at a time is flagged. I'm running to somewhere across the zone and he's ignoring me, and I'm not even 49 yet . . I ! MUST! ATTACK!"

So, once again, why? Boredom? I have several high end toons. Even if you ONLY do PvP, do you have this stash of unlimited gold that you cant be farming for mats for enchants or gold to buy mounts or whatever? Have you "beat the game" so completely that you must resort to decimating a town that has guards 20+ levels below you? Even back in vanilla the biggest threat was the 60 elite hunter who is there. Now, 4 years later you can probably solo her at 60 with some nice outland greens. How is this any sort of challenge or even noteworthy achievement?Go to northrend and clear out Agmar's Hammer or if you wanna be a real beast, Warsong Hold with two RP bosses. Just Soloing? Try an outland city where no one will bother you. Want people to bother you? Try hanging out outside Ogrimmar gates, someone will humor you. Too many people humoring you? well . . . Fuck off then.
I can maybe understand the enjoyment of being able to clear something out that is established and integral, that sounds fun, but not when it is so easy.

Crossroads is just a central example, and I've seen hordies attempt to do the same to Westfall, as well as the constant war between Southshore & Terran Mill (which actually makes sense on occasion as levels 25 through 45 travel through there, this is okay since the guards are about that level) but when you're character has no reason to be in that area or can solo 5 of any mob in the zone or more, it becomes silly.

Am I the only person who thinks this? Am I a crotchety noob QQing into the wind because I am not l337 enough to understand how fun running into Northshire Abbey as a full PvP geared frost mage and killing every NPC AND mobs for a good half hour until someone informs another 80 in Stormwind and then running off, is?

I may be preaching to the choir, but this has been rattling around in my brain for a while, thank you for humoring me.

Meme-Orable: WoWmemeomatic

Holy Tauren are you gonna get a Legendary size dose of nerd & WoW. Ready? Okay, PULL!

First mob includes a treat from those crazy cats over at College Humor. As we know I am devotee of hip hop in its geekier forms so I often belt out to this.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Next "trash" includes numerous nerdgasmic samples combining three awesome things. Machinima, WoW, & Nerdy Music ( JoCo, Paul & Storm, rap covers). HERE ARE LINKS to appropriate YouTube Channels. BUT, below are a few of my favorites.

Now for THE BOSS, Illegal Danish! Myndflame (after a few years) has completed the Azzerothean Opus. You can watch all of it here, also, avail yourself of his other works, they are tasty. And below, I give you MC Raiders, the end credits to Super Snacks.

W007! EPIC L3WtZ!

Red, Black and Blue

Hello again Azzerothians, Termenus here, Lord of the Frost, Penguin King, Disciple of Vargoth, Incredible Tanking Mage, Of Stonard, and now . . . . Raid Leader!

You heard right, I too am a coordinator of increased repair bills as of last night night. I led half a dozen Lords and a few great Pick Ups into the Ruby Sanctum 10man Regular and we were almost victorious.

Yes, almost. And I am very proud of that. It is new content, It was my first real raid lead and it is equiv difficulty as 1st/2nd wing of ICC, clearing everything except the last boss is nothing to sneeze at.
True, had it been a raid full of Lords who are currently well into the final wing of 25 man ICC we would almost definitely have finished the whole thing in much quicker time, but . . . those guildies were IN 25 man ICC with our cousin guild. I had to find 2 PUG tanks and 2 PUG dps.
Then we had to tweak and refine our coordination together as a raid. Like I said, Pride.

On top of all this, I LOVE the new content. Its small, short and smart, like I like my women! All of the encounters have unique mechanics and skill checks are even more necessary than gear.

The first mini-boss gave us some serious issues as our initial OT was under geared, as well as I have heard from other players that it is a difficult fight on its own. After about 6 wipes (I know, I know) the OT aggreed to hop over to his raid healer, we found another OT and one of our dps PUGs who was of weak constitution dropped and was replaced by another Lord. The last pull, our OT dropped AGAIN, BUT our MT grabbed both "bosses" and we downed him.

"Second" mini-boss, has a fun aerial phase and a debuff dynamic that keeps things interesting, one shot her.

Even the trash kept us on our toes in RS10reg, as there are two large 5-mob pulls between the first two and 3rd mini-bosses. They have a "captain" 2 melee bruisers, and two caster mobs, we ended up having to separate them than single target dps switching from each tank's group. very clean, old school pull style. Great fun.

TANGENT!!
I have been noticing allot of other players commenting on my old school style of play. When I tank on my warrior I use alot of LOS (Line of Sight) pulls and I really want to use CC even though allot of dps nowadays just AoE and attacks whatever they want. I would mark mobs, but in Heroics and such, so many people know the fights so well and expect the tank to be flawless that it doesn't give one time to do these things. When I'm on Term I find myself wondering if we should CC on pulls that give us problems, but once more, everyone expects the tanks to be able to AOE tank and hold it while everyone else goes apeshit. For more on my thoughts about the ROLE of DPS, go HERE!

Back to the Raid:
3rd mini-boss is a bit of a trick and we got a little sloppy, but managed to one shot it. The communication was very good and everyone was on their toes on heals & damage focus.

Halion, the actual boss. After 5 minutes of attempting to explain the fight, which is a bit intricate, there are 3 phases but the third one combines the first two at the same time and you ALSO have to coordinate dps. We wiped twice, we had been at it for about 3 hours with no gear, only 3 badges. After the second wipe, I asked fro a ready check to see who wanted to call it a night and a fewe people voted out so we stopped there.

Here it is, Ruby Sanctum, all cleared except last boss.

If you end up in a lame group, this Raid could REALLY suck, I'm sure, but I know I will want to be running this instance every chance I get.

See you around the Worlds of Warcraft.
-Termenus

Memeorables - MemeWoW 1

World of Warcraft: I am seriously addicted. If you didn't already know.

So, while I am STILL Working on S.G.I.S.Con IV postings, Here are just a few of the Video's that have influenced my Wow, Gaming, geek state of existence.

LEEEEEERROOYYY!!!!! JENKINS!

The battle cry heard over teamspeak for almost half a decade now. There is debate over how staged this was and "Leeroy" has become a pseudo-star-nerd but we've all been in this group, sometimes we're even Leeroy himself, and any time you inspire a CCG card and an achievement in the game itself, I'm sure you've cemented your place in WoW History.

WHAT!!??! TEH ! FAAHHHKK!!!???!?!?!?

Another video that gave me my first glimpse of high end content, Onyxia Raid Wipe on Vent. I have since been in many raidsand killed Ony a few times, and although I've never had a raid leader on vent melt down like this one, I think all WoWers can understand the frustration and rage. We may laugh, but a little part of our souls feel pain and anguish for this accented raider. Lets listen in, shall we?

WOOOO!!!! YEAAAHHH!!! IMMA WAND YOUUUU!!!

Lastly, a more recent video, I have since adapted this as my go to any time I have questions about rotation, technique or proper obscenities to use in vent.

3rd 4 t3h nrrd, Jan. '10

Tired of goofy, white, geek rappers? How bout a J-rap nerdcore Asian girl from Washington State? This kid is cute, smart, slick and has a sweet voice.

Rai Kamishiro!The first blip on my radar that pinged this little lady was when I snagged Rhyme Torrents 1 through 5. She is on 1 & 2 with Big Lie & Sunny Day.
I heard the kooky techno come through my speakers, and then the Japanese started and I kinda went "huh . ." but, of course, on a Nerdcore compilation album this shouldn't throw me off. It didn't stop though, and it was downright catchy. I wanted more, so I began to seek out this mysterious artist.
AN HOUR LATER!!! all I could find was an inaccurate fm.com listing and THIS lj that I wasn't entirely sure was her.
I kind of let it drift after that. I had not heard hind nor hair of her and being the ethereal vapor that is the intarwebs I could not know if there would ever be more. THAN I found this, on a whim to try once more and was disappointed by the 2 songs that had been posted, still nice, but nothing that told me "this artist is staying strong."
BUT!!! my hero The Front . . alot, came through for me!!!


I then jumped back to the webs to find more on this j-ghost of the intertubes. Lo and behold!!! I find on her LJ she's working on a full length album with Ultraklystron and a link to her DA. Girl is a cosplay fiend and she's been hard at work on Electric Sheep.



Apparently, she's up in Fanime consistently, and anyone who knows ME, (all 3 of you who read this) know I attend Fanime EVERY year. I wish I'd known this lil' future j-star was up in "my other con" she's gonna get her some stalker action this next year, need to get her Hancock next to Front's on my copy of Final Boss.Open invite to Rai (if she's old enough, she looks kinda young) and Front, or any other Nerdcore artist I've covered, if your down in SJ for the Fanime, shoot me an electronic mail, we'll drag you down to our favorite Pub, buy you a drink. Or mebbe just some pocky.

Musically, Rai is solid. She RAPS in Japanese. If anyone DARES to say she's not technically nerdcore, you are mad. What is geekier, than a anime obsessed girl in the U.S. who raps in Japanese, cosplays constantly, has a Nerdcore producer and has done a featuring spot for the Godfather of the genre. Anyway, she has an excellent range, a sure "young" voice and she can stay consistent and confidant in live performances. As you can see.

Big kudos and shout out to Ultamaima/ultimaaa for being a video fan of Rai, catchin the indisputable truth that Rai exist and can perform. For one last whistle wetter . . her ya go.

Light for Frosties?

Hello, My name is Termenus, and I am frost mage(yes, I know, one is arcane spec, but let me explain). Since just before the reopening of the Dark Portal (less than a few months before Burning Crusade) I reawakened as a Forsaken and have been Frost ever since.

As far as putting the Hurt on some Alliance, us Fridgeomancers are more than adequate. I'm horrible at PVP so, I don't really care, so long as I have fun.

My issue for some time, has been damage output in PvInstances. (Raids, dungeons.)
Going back a few steps, until very recently, both my pvp and my pve spec, were TOTALLY frost. I just loved it. Faster casting, survivability and control of combat like none other. Honestly, If I had three more talent points I would love to just fill up the tree. I originally speced it for leveling and fell in love. It was FUN no matter what I was doing. Grinding, farming, 5-mans, raids, questing, world pvp, bg's, helping lowbies. I had "tanked" some old instances at lower levels and even managed to pull & survive fel reavers at lvl 56 while NPC's dropped it.

(WHA!!?? NORLY! I did it for a few friends, they were all very impressed. I was l337. You see, you stand near Thrallmar and wait for it to pat towards the caravan. You use frost barrier AND mana shield and tag it at max range w/ any instant spell. Then, you RUN! Turn around and run straight towards the group of mages and the large orc. Blink to get distance. You SHOULD be able to survive one hit as it breaks the bubbles. Then, ice block, let him thump on you till ice block wears down, and blink again immediately. Double bubble as you run straight into the group. hit cold snap if the group doesn't pull the Reaver right away and keep blinking/bubbling/Ice Block into thrallmar till NPC's pull him, and, watch the show. I used this trick to help my 70 S-priest friend get his kara key. Good times.)

I even raided with a couple guilds in BC, Kara, Mag, even a couple jumps into SSC & TK. Full frost, nobody said anything. The only complaints I got in raids were to not sheep the Healers when they got MC'd. I still believe polymorph should be castable on anyone at anytime, it is a passive aggressive heal. Those were happier times, simpler times, when demons were bad and we could kill all of them we wanted. Alli's stayed on there own damn side of Outland and you didn't have to like them, just not kill them inside Shatt.

Then, with the march upon Northrend, new abilities became available and FREE FIREBALLS!?!?! yes please! I hit 80 and started to get serious about some raiding again.
Two patches later, I'm starting to get into some SRZ BZNZ, Ulduar, ToC, Ony. And no shortage of WoW friends and even fellow mages have been asking/wondering/hinting/threatening, when I was going to respec Arcane for raids.

A fact of life right now for every frost mage is that you do crap for dps. Blizzard is VERY aware of this and did nothing for almost a year or more. I started doing serious research on output and optimization of talents. The truth is that frost puts out 30% less dps than all other raid mage specs. For allot of timed fights this doesn't cut it. On top of this I find it annoying that every spec dips into arcane for Torment the Weak, but whatever.

I respecced my pvp tree to what it is today to accommodate the TTW necessity and starting looking at arcane rotations. I wanted to be a HARD hardcore raider! even at the expense of my beloved, cold love.

So, less than two weeks ago, I made the change to Arcane (see? peer pressure kids). As I lamented my betrayal of the chilly path to my friends and guildies two of the champions of my demise decided to deride me by telling me tales of changes to come making Deep Freeze a pyroblast-like damaging spell. I dismissed them and spurned them for mocking me. But, they are reliable sources, and I had hope. So, I sought ought the information, and lo and behold, they were right. Assholes.

In the next patch, the one currently on the test realms, if a target is PERMANENTLY immune to freeze effects(Bosses), Deep freeze deals some set amount of damage. ALSO, there is a Major Mage Glyph that makes your water elemental permanent at the expense of his frost nova. (100% up time in raids, increasing dps. this COULD be a pvp buff, but almost every pvp frostie LIVES for that extra freeze) AS WELL AS, there are rumors of a change to frozen core that when ice lance crits, your frostbolt's casting time is reduced by 1 second. This is not likely to last or be useful. most of us frosties are already stacking haste and have a really short cast time for frostbolt, with a bloodlust and an icy veins, not to mention any other thousand haste enhancers, its probably going to be thumping against the GCD and becoming overkill.

SO! the first two are currently on the test realms and I have rolled to learn if my dps can become viable once more in raids.

Some people might complain that with a frost elemental up all the time, frosties have started to look like a lok. I call shenanigans, loks look like us. Jaina was there first. Frankly, Raid frost has been so gimped so long I'm not sure any of us care anymore. I approve, it changes the use of the elemental and is potentially a buff for raiding frosties. It also has become apparent that ooming out might be a problem for the pets and that has been worked with.

Deep Freeze as a big damage spell. I approve. Initially I had always wondered why it couldn't be a "cold DoT", you know, "so cold it BURNS!" anything that is permanently immune to stops/stuns. some might argue that's Fire's realm, or once again, a Lock's expertise. but, whatever, honestly. The mechanic is different and you have a very different skill set and raid role in your spell set. You CC differently, you drop aggro differently, you dps differently. I see no huge issues. I will be raiding and instancing on the test realms to see if the spell change & the elemental have a large enough impact to make frost viable again.

I'll report back with more after some raiding & 5-mans, maybe some pvp, on the PTR's and lets keep our cold, clammy, fingers crossed.

Termenus, The Incredible Tanking Mage, Frost Imp extraordinaire, Mage of the Grave Chill, Ambassador, Explorer, Crusader, Sergeant, of Sen'Jin(I'm a raptor whore). Shadoweave tailor, Goblin Engineer -Lords of Ancient Sin- Cenarius, U.S.