gosh

Everybody was super-nice to us over at the Pink Pigtail Inn… *fluster* I genuinely don’t know what to say. I’m so very very touched. Thank you to everyone for saying such amazingly kind things – and to Larisa for coming up with the whole thing – here’s to another fantastic year of blogging. Gosh. I’m still incredibly flustered.

AHEM.

I have about six half-finished link-love posts sitting in my drafts folder and I lost my weekly routine a bit over the holiday break so here’s a New Year Bumper Edition of Awesome Things to Read.

First all, fond farewells to Shadow Word: Blog. Alas! You’ll be very much missed.

Happy Blogiversary to Sideshow and Syrana. It’s genuinely amazing to me that they’ve only been blogging a year – I couldn’t imagine a morning without Syrana.

Two posts that made me laugh so hard: The Best Paladin on the Server, over at Altadin and this incredible failpug over at Altaholics Anonymous.

Der Hexenmeister on the arrant stupidity of people asking you to link an achi before they’ll let you join a group. I didn’t really have much to say in response to this except “yes, yes, I agree, you’re entirely right” but it really is an infuriating habit, and it’s nice to see it articulated.

Jess with an insight into casual pugging that is both hilarious and very very apt . It’s so perfect, I’m actually just a little bit annoyed I didn’t think of that analogy myself!

Two brilliant stories of Lolknights in action, at Pewpewlazerz, and Tree of Life
(I kind of secretly want to make a guild now called For the Migets)

Oc(c)ulus also seems to be the topic under scrutiny at the moment. I guess we can’t help but scrutiniseit since Blizzard seems pantingly desperate for us to run it, and not only to run it, but to love it. It’s like some needy borderline-alcoholic ex-friend staggering after you going “but you do respect me, don’t you? What if I gave you a protodrake?” Two fantastic posts from Miss Medcina on the subject, here and here which – given how much I loathe Oc(c)ulus, I naturally cheer and applaud. For the more pragmatic folks, there’s Adgamorix’s guide to the surviving the bloody place. And then, of course, there’s Larisa’s encounter with the Real Occulus , and by “encounter with”, you understand, I mean “most bloody slaughter of.” Don’t let those pigtails fool you…

There’s a brilliant, thoughtful post over at Reflections from the Pond, looking at why tanks might drop groups. I really loved this post because changes in perception are always worthwhile – irate at finding myself stranded in the hallway of OK, I’ve never really stopped to question that assumption that a tank abandoning ship was basically being a dick.

I also liked this post from Shintar about why she doesn’t like the weekly raid quest. I have mixed feelings about it myself – so far, despite being only server-wide, it’s been basically a ruthless rape and pillage exercise, that involves shredding an instance to pieces as quickly as possible and then buggering off. Not exactly what you’d call fun.

And here’s Beru making her opinion on gearscore very clear indeed. Go Beru!

And finally something completely moment: the first part of Erc’s tribute to ‘old WoW’ before Cataclysm hits. It’s unabashedly nostalgia-inducing and very lovely. Go and watch, and take a tissue.