Friday, November 27, 2015

The Return of the Mavri (os)?




INTRO

With the impending new Stars Wars movie, which I am reluctant to get excited about after the “first” three were so sub-par that I can still taste the poo in my mouth when I think about them.  Jar-jar and the awful skywalker casting killed them both for me.  So, perhaps the title of this blog post is a bit of a stretch, but I was motivated by a few things:

1)      The new SW movie (obviously, although the title of my blog DOES refer back to a film that featured Muppets as characters…) 
2)      News from Blizzcon 15
3)      Taki’s wiener sexts to me
4)      Seeing a picture of Ish on FB and furiously masturbated to it
5)      Elements of the new xpac Legion are intriguing
6)      Elements of the new xpac Legion are NOT intriguing
7)      I listened to my raid leading on H Impregnator in whatever raid that was and got a woody
8)      I miss you guys, well, some of you guys

JUST THE 2 OF US

Accidents will and can happen.  Before I dive too deep into a WOW tirade, I had an accident recently that I wanted to share with my loyal readers.  This particular accident happened while I was vacationing in San Diego with who I will refer to as Mistress Mavros.  

DISCLAIMER:  If you are faint of heart please skip to the next section of this blog post.  (Seriously though, you know it has happened to you too, so be real to yourself and everyone around you and read this)

For those unaware, I tore my ACL in early August playing beach volleyball.  I had reconstructive knee surgery in early September and by the time myself and Mistress Mavros went to SD, I was at the point of needing to do some of my own strengthening exercises.  

So, the first morning after having awesome Mexican food for dinner the night before, I decided to goto the little makeshift gym at the resort we were staying at to ride the stationary bike.  Mistress Mav was going to read a book on the balcony while I exercised.  I planned on a 45 minute ride, but at the 20 minute mark, the stool must have worked itself closer to the sphincter than I thought with all the rotating movement.  I guess I loosened it up a little bit.  Being accident free for about 63 days (yes, I got a coin for it too), I was sure this was not an emergency to get my bloomers in a bunch for.  Anyway, a little gas and a little tummy gurgling later and I figured I could finish the ride and be safe.  Well, within the next 5 minutes, the pressure built up and was just too great.   I quickly sat up in astonishment and started fast walking to the room praying I would make it in time.  Whatever the case was, perhaps the sweat that lubed up my sphincter or just the sheer amount of food that needed to evacuate, “it” started to come out, there was no holding it back.  I still had 200 yards or so to go and some of it was in my underwear.  I began sweating even more than I already was and could feel the slushing and smearing happening in my underpants.  (Boxer briefs to be exact)  I see her on the balcony still, phew, and bolt into the bathroom and lock the door.  I sit on the bowl quickly to evacuate the rest of the stool and look down and see nothing short of a crime scene in my underpants.  Even my balls got infected by the splatter.  I do my business and when I get up, I just see poo all over the seat, and some even traversed onto my leg.  It was a truly a mess!  I grab a hand towel and soap it up and quickly clean the toilet seat to ensure no staining occurs.  I soap it up good and clean it off and even do a sniff test to make sure it does not smell.  I then undress and toss away my underpants and shorts in the waste basket which had a bag in it.  I close that bag up and quickly dive in the shower and clean off my rear end.  Yet another gross scene as some “stuff” was still in there and rinsed down the drain as it plopped down from my backside.  I then spayed cologne in the bathroom to cover the horrific smell of digested Mexican food.  I grabbed the evidence bag and shuffled outside to look for an outdoor garbage.  I spot a cart that one of the cleaning people use and there was a garbage receptacle on that. I had no choice and went for it.  The cleaning person must have been in a room cleaning so I stealthed my way to it and dropped the bag in it and dashed out of there.  I then went back to the gym and finished my 20 minutes on the bike.  Mistress Mavros did not discover the true nature of this event, but merely thought I was just using the bathroom.  No more accidents on vacation occurred as I was more careful to go as soon as the sensation was felt rather than risk it all over again.  Morale of the story?  Never play Russian Roulette with your an#s.

Hello, are you still here?

GREAT! 

Now about LEGION!!!!

LEGION

WAHOO!!  Another old boss resurrected to bring back the wow gamers?  I don’t even know and most know I don’t care about lore, but is it so hard to create new stories?  Do we really need to go back in time and re-fight the villains from the past?  I digress, I was SUPER fing excited for Warlords.  I think elements of it I liked and other things I disliked immensely.  Hmm, let’s go through them since we have some time.

Shit I hated:
1)       Leveling.  Same grind, different xpac.  BLIZ, I don’t give a shit HOW beautiful the new world is, I hate it all, just get me to max level with either $$ or with 5 mans or some other way rather than collecting 10 douches and then going back to kill the douche boss for him to drop his vial of vinegar to return to some peon in town that claims the world will end if we do not.
2)      5 mans.  Make them better or more epic or something.
3)      The People’s legendary.  Stop it.  We don’t ALL need legendaries.  The grind for them sucks and forces us to do LFR which would PROMISED we wouldn’t have to do.  You lied!  Also, we cannot change mains because then we are too far behind OR we can do even MORE LFR and grinding…YEAH! 
4)      Mythic.  Stop it already, make it flexible at ALL levels.  Sorry if the top 1% do not like this, they can go fly a fing kite with my poo on it.  Make all raiding flexible AND cross realm.  There, problem fixed, pay me.
5)      The garrison – seriously, worse than old school dailies.  Fun and col for about for 5 minutes.
6)      SPREAD THE FING RAIDS OUT MORE ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WILL have a last tier for 1+ year! 
7)      4 piece bonuses.  Enough already change these or make them selectable.  I don’t know, they feel like feast or famine.  Shit like, “My toon will suck until I get 4 piece” is not good.
8)      Too many raid tiers.  Get rid of Normal mode.  It is the old flexible mode, but now that Heroic is flexible why bother with N mode?  Make Mythic flexible and this is perfect.  AND Heroic raiders should never want or need to do LFR.  Doing the same boss on LFR, N, then H and maybe Mythic is nothing short of ridiculous.
9)      Healer disparity.  Fix the damn mitigation healers already.
10)   There is more, but I am not a hater.  ;)

Shit I liked:

1)      Flexible raiding, see above though
2)      The quality of life changes with bag space was all good stuff and the other things I am forgetting.
3)      Overall the raid bosses I did on Heroic felt ok to me.  Hellfire Citadel had a few in the beginning which were straight dumb.  The assault and reaver garbage.  Overall though, not too bad. 
4)      The gear sharing between specs is a good change.  Do not need to build completely different gear sets for alternate specs, just a few pieces. 
5)      I am sure there is more, but I forget which is probably not a good thing.

Legion.  Right.  Sorry for the tangent.  

Legion Raiding

So, Mythic will STILL not be flexible and STILL not be cross realm.  (only cross realm mythic UNTIL legion).  Ugh. 

Talents

I hear about these all new talent systems or talents, which sounds exciting, time will tell. 

Artifact Weapons

New artifact weapons.  Great, THE new version of people’s legendaries.  So, again, swapping alts, not really an option once you get into the thick of things.  New class. Demon Hunter, early reports say, best class ever.  Uhh great, why not fix the ones we have now??  Also, why not add a 3rd spec to be ranged if there is insistence on the DH class??   

More than just 2 specs

One good thing I heard/read, multiple specs, not just 2 anymore.  3 or maybe even 4 for druids since they can have 4 specs.  So, you can have all saved and swap between them if necessary.  The bad?  Fights might be SO theroycrafted now that you need to change DPS specs between each boss.  That ruins the “fun” aspect blizz was going for when they removed reforging, etc.

5 Mans

This sounds cool so far.  Can keep ramping up the difficulty ala Diablo to make 5 mans harder and harder and get some ilevel gear as raiding.  Sounds good, but not sure it’s the best approach.  Also, will tier and trink pieces be available?  I am guessing no.  I guess pre-raid gear will be attained in the highest 5 man possible and then you go into raid to get trinks and tier gear.  This is my guess.  I am ok after further thought.  It DOES allow a new main to get geared at same ilevel sans trinks and tier pieces and maybe get into a raid sooner than later if your first main was not fun for you or sucked.

Leveling

Start leveling in any zone and it will scale to your current level.  I guess that is fine, but it is still going to be a QUEST grind to get there.  I guess two different level toons could level in a new area and then whatever math/algorithm can make the xp split.  Again, not even sure this will work or even matters much.  For those that still claim they love to level, I fart in your general direction…  I seriously would rather PVP for 20 hours then level for 20 hours.

Healer Changes

As a healer, I like what I read about the healer changes specifically the disco priest.  We shall see how the synergy with some of the stuff I am reading plays out.

That it? 

I think there is plenty more to discuss about Legion, but it is all I can recall for now.

WOW IPs

Blizzard has greatly expanded its brand and now the multitude of IPs is crazy.  I have played them all to an extent, but none as much as WOW and Diablo. (Unless you include old school Warcraft, I would LOVE a Warcraft 4 RTS!!)  Even still, I feel WOW is and always will be my favorite game within the IP list.  Yeah, I am sure OW will be good, but I hate FPS and most 10 year olds are better than all of us.  Hearthstone, I just can’t get into it, I just do not care enough.  Heroes of the Storm, fun for a match or two, then boring again.  Starcraft I love until the campaign is over, then that is it for me.  Diablo changes were good in S4, but too easy to gear and then the lag/monk OPness made it less fun.  2.4 may get me back a little. I just hate the current best Wizard spec (Vyrs) and I am a Wizard at heart.

MY RETURN?

Do you even care?  Do people reading this even know me?  The guy that always touted being around since Vanilla and would probably always be around, but has not played in 8+ months?  I stopped playing for a number of reasons one being I was dating and work, but now I have a mistress. (Although work is still a bit messy, long story…) I told her about my gaming, but I also told her I quit.  It has not come up in a while though, but there were a few times when she called me and I was playing SC and she knew I was not paying attention to her.  No, she doesn’t play WOW or any game and she would probably suck at it.  She is pretty good at scissoring though.  

Maybe some of you miss my stories of poo, sex, dating, beer, wine, liquor, the feel of Blood’s taint on my cheek, etc.  Maybe some hated those stories and antics.  Whatever it was, I am just not sure.  I am not seeing enough changes to MAKE me want to plunge back in, but Legion may not be out until July/August.  I am guessing a few weeks after the movie comes out.  Oh, yeah, speaking of that, the movie trailer is NOT epic.  It is sort of weird with a lot of catch phrases like, “we must kill the ORCS, ARGH!”, then a fight scene then, an orc saying, “We must decimate the HUMANS, ARGH!”  Will I see it?  Of course, but do not tell me it was epic or whatever the new hipster word for epic is.  Remember when the word for epic was “word”?  Or “dope”.  We are a moronic society, aren’t we? 
I would say you will have a Mavros sighting in Legion, but in raid?  Still TBD.  Anyway, I miss you all.

/touchballs

-Mav




Monday, January 5, 2015

The Bromance

Intro

A long overdue post and I am dreadfully overdue on a blog entry in general.  So, WOW hit its 10 year anniversary and I have been in the thick of things for that entire time.  Some of the current guildies in Broken were single digits in age when WOW came out!  It is quite scary and a true mind F to us older folks that are past or approaching….<gulp>.…40 .  Let me digress…. 

My subject today is one of romance, friendship, and love.  Over the course of my WOW career, I documented much of my WOW life here in The History Lesson, but there is one man, one constant, one partner who deserves mention as he is not just a wow buddy/guildie, but a true friend...

Say My Name

His name is none other than Rakrah!  Without his overwhelming tanking skills and amazing leadership I would not be the man I am today.  Ok,ok,ok.  Enough!  We all know my love affair with Rakrah.  The real guy I am talking about is none other than the chain smoking, beer drinking, dirty minded, unconventional Greek fool named Taki aka Photia/Porkofdoom/Bloodrooted. 

History

As a quick recap to some of the history, he used to be a mage as his main toon in the TBC days.  Even then he had tanking tendencies as he did mage tank the first boss in Gruul’s cave.  Over time and as the guild needed consistent and not flakey tanks and healers, the group of us officers all decided to take on the roles of tanks/healers as they formed the glue of most raids and guilds.  The always fierce Photia the mage was retired for Porkofdoom the warm and fuzzy bear tank for whom I healed through many a boss fights as I stared at his large furry arse.  I went from a TOP dpsing lock (yes, TOP DPS!) to a holy priest healer (and ultimately disco) and pally healer.  Chris (wornight to you all now, went to wordin a ret pally/prot pally), Frayae was our pally healer, and Stranglehorn was our kitty dps with a bear tank offspec.  This way our 2 tanks and 2 main healers were all officers and less of flight risk.  Fray did end up bailing on us over time, but we survived until the time near the end of cata and The Experiment came to be when we left guild management until Broken’s rebirth.

Taki the Man

Over time and all the years as we became co-GL of the reborn Broken, Taki and I have grown closer in many ways (fill in your own blanks you pervs).    WOW discussions, guild decisions, personnel talks, raid debriefs all were the backdrop to our communication with each other, but it evolved into much more.  Conversations about each other’s kids and family was a natural progression when we communicated for so long and so often.  He knew about my marital problems before anyone else and shielded me when I needed some privacy.  We rant and ravved about ex-girlfriend’s, wives, and ex-guildies.  We talked about our favorite positions and what we drank and what we cooked and what we ate.  I think Taki lives on Chinese food and if I ate as much as of that as he did I’d be permanently on the toilet peeing out of my butt, yet somehow he is immune to its powers against me.  We also waxed poetic over our all guildies, good and bad, old and new.  Skabz, Uz, Vapes, Horn, Wordin (though he is back), Rakrah (always), Waldo (not much more comedic value than waldo), Brawnie, Thoradil, Sunny (AFK grandma), Fray, current raiders and guildies, Team Moist, Kimmie, Yanni, Lani, G, James, the list goes on and on.  (if you were not mentioned, suck it up and submit a ticket to blizz and if you are current then you already know we are talking about you, so take solace in that)

Ying and Yang

Contrary to popular belief (I might have made this up), we do not always see eye to eye.  Sometimes it is more like brown eye to finger.  ATM anyone?  (if some of this entry is not filthy it would not do Taki justice).  Even still, we always compromise and hear each other’s opinion and side and try and make the right decisions for the guild and stay away from being too short sighted. 

We attempt to keep raiding fun and loose and Taki certainly adds his elements of filth to the raid while I try and do other things like DIAF (there I said it for you jerks out there), but I am in The Decay.  I swear I think he raids in a dirty clown costume and sucks on lollipops.  We try and be each other’s ying and yang and bring out everyone’s personality and voice unless they are dbags or weird (insert name of a raider that was also the name of a cheese).  We may even good cop bad cop you in vent or one on one or we may just go DP on you.  ;)  With each new day brings a different approach.  We play off of each other as best we can, but it is natural, it is not pre-determined nor do we discuss it, we just know each other.  We know each other’s mood, vibe, swagger, voice, O face, and cadence.

The Meeting

So, there happened to be one moment in our lives where we could cross paths without much consternation as we were both busy with family and kids, etc.  I was in the Boston area and was set to meet up with Kimmie, Yanni (Taki’s younger brother), Brulador, and Cali out for a few beers.  I text Taki to make a showing, but he wasn’t sure.  Once I got to the bar and met all of the above, I texted Taki and he said he would make an appearance.  I’ll admit, I did pop a little bit of wood.

First, I had time to digest the likes of Kimmie, an entirely different person IRL than in game!  Much quieter in real life.  Yanni, when Paul Bunyan starts eating gyros this is what reminds me of Yanni.  He was exactly as I envisioned him.  Angry, hairy, big, loud, and brash.  I hear he is tamer now with a beautiful newly born daughter (congratulations Yanni and Kimmie), but I will never forget the lumberjack I met that night and I laughed with him plenty.  A solid guy nonetheless who you always want in your corner and hopefully wearing his mp5 set, but he loves to complain and be cranky, no different than in his WOW days. 

The Arrival

Taki lived about 45 mins from the bar so with my anticipation (and weiner) grew for this guy I had spoken to for years and never had met.  I knew Yanni was the giant of the family and I am also 6’4” and I knew Taki was shorter, but size matters little (sometimes ;) )  He approached the table very stealthily (for the record, he never played a filthy rogue) and I think I yelled his name and stood up and we hugged like we were long lost war buddies.  It was then I swear I felt a hand on my arse.  Not sure if it was Kimmie or Yanni or just the ODB himself….Taki.  There was no awkwardness or anything.  We sat down next to each other playing footsies and rubbing each other’s thighs.  We even had to check each other’s sacks to make sure we both still had a set and were ready to lead again together.  To be honest, his were way hairier.  (male tip of the day:  trim that stuff, trust me, girls don’t want a rats nest down there)  Neither of us was very different in personality IRL then on the phone or in game.  We talked and traded stories for hours.  Once he got there our focus was on each other, but we all chatted around the table.  I cannot recall all we talked about and the night flew by and I could not stay out that late as I had to get back to the person’s house I was staying at.  He did even invite his friend and an old guildie named G (Raininblood) to come out too and he did.  So, that was great fun as well.  The hours passed, the beers flowed, the weiners were no longer flaccid, but it was time to call it a night.  I said good night to everyone and gave Taki another big hug, we definitely rubbed balls and grabbed arses and said we should do it again soon. 

Epilogue

It was been the roughest 18 months of my life for those that sort of know all I have been through (and many don’t know the half of it).  I was nearly married to this game and I did step away prior to WOD for 4 months and even now that I am back am admittedly NOT as engaged and as razor sharp as I once was.  I have a lot of loose ends and moving parts in my life right now and the equilibrium is still working itself out.  This isn’t meant for a pity party or as some precursor to me quitting (I am not), but to again show an example of the man Taki is.  He has stepped into a bigger role and is carrying the weight I cannot carry right now for the guild when he also has a full plate IRL.  I was RLing two teams most of MoP and always came razor focused and was always overly prepped.  I have slipped a little, but Taki has caught me most times (sometimes he watches me fall and laughs) so I did not fall flat on my face.  I should give some credit to our current guildies too as some of them have helped me and the guild a lot as well.  Being a single dad, trying to date (The Date), having a new job with more responsibility, the remainder of my loose ends after this 18 month period, and being a co-GL/RL has proven to be a lot to juggle.  Life has become more of a juggling act for me now and I am adjusting to it, but people like Taki have made it easier just by listening and helping where they can and taking some of the burden off my shoulders.  So, I raise a glass to you my co-GL, my guildie, my WOW compatriot, my buddy, my pal, my friend….we shall meet again soon.

/touchballs


-Mav