Category Archives: Blogging

Busy times and meta ramblings

In the midst of Cataclysm tribulations, 25man progress and recruitment, our raidguild Adrenaline has finally launched their new shiny website portal, mark 3.0. Stumps and myself have been struggling to get this live for a while and after long discussions and browsing for a new portal software that delivers the whole guild package, we’ve moved away from EQdkp Plus and on to Guildomatic.

The site is still undergoing some technical overhauls but I absolutely love the much slimmer layout and simple funtionality. I’m happy that the original Adrenaline logo I created for the guild some years ago, has made it into the new era – I spent a couple of hours shaping this up and moving away from frosty WotLK. In the meantime, Stumps got us our very own domain name and the entire guild is currently partaking in the ongoing recruitment process. Things are looking up there a little with a few promising candidates having applied just recently (we’re still looking for a couple more though! /hinthint)

This Blog here

Raging Monkeys is due its regular header overhaul real soon. I’m getting tired of Santadorf now (no offense, Grumps!), I am thinking Easter is going to be the upcoming theme. And I realize most of you, my dear readers, actually access this blog by feedreader and never get to see what I’m doing there. But I’m having fun with it myself, so it’s all good. I’d like Raging Monkeys to be a living thing that changes along with the seasons.

While a dedicated domain for the blog too is maybe worth thinking about in the future, I’ve gone and made sure Raging Monkeys is friendly towards mobile reading. I only just recently got (had to get) a smartphone myself and after realizing how tedious blogreading gets on small screen, I rushed to fix this.
Like Windsoar says, making your blog mobile friendly shouldn’t only be a standard but it’s actually really simple. WordPress has some fancier options, but Blogger offers the same basic function – so techfreak or not, you have no excuse not to do it!

For my fellow co-Blogger-bloggers, how to make your mobile audience happy in 2 easy steps:

1) Log into the Blogger draft version of your blog.
2) Go to “Settings” – “Email & Mobile”, press YES for “Show mobile template” and save settings.

Done! All it does is basically add ?m=1 by default to your blog’s URL for mobile readers. That’s right, in essense and for any blogger blog, adding ?m=1 enables mobile mode and the blog owner isn’t even required to turn it on for you to see. You can obviously help your mobile readers though by enabling it for them.

We’re off exploring!

The posting pace on Raging Monkeys is going to slow down a little for the coming 2 weeks. That’s not because we’re tired of blogging, we aren’t going anywhere – but it’s lovely snow season down here in the alps and since our last holidays together have been over 2 years ago, it was high time Stumps came down for some bobsledding action (I hear them Brits never get to see a proper sledge run!).
Meeting in World of Warcraft is a peculiar thing; you might be friends with someone in the game over the course of many years and never meet, or you might figure out that life is too short and friendship too precious in this life not to try and see whether it can transcend the boundaries of ingame.

We all need a break from work and guilding sometime – we’ll be back fresh and hopefully in one piece to take on the world of WoW once more in mid-February! In the meantime, Grumpy Dorf is going to keep vigil here, warm our seats and feed the squirrel.

Frosty greetings to all of you and enjoy your weekend everybody! We’re off exploring!

25man blues, Holy goodness, oh noes I look like Aladdin, Critternation, I still don’t PuG and community highlights

I’ve been wanting to produce one of those ‘incredibly long topic list’-titles like Spinks does so well for a long time now and today I finally got the chance. That’s another goal for 2011 out of the way, go me!

25man blues

Times are being so-so in WoW at the moment; it appears that 25man raid guilds have pretty much disppeared from the face of the earth which makes recruitment for Adrenaline a bit of a MAJOR PITA right now. We assumed it was gonna be harder in Cataclysm, but by now I’m amazed how Blizzard has managed to kill off the 25man mode so completely and it’s not just happening on our server. It makes me sad and wonder if people really do only raid for loot…What happened to more epic scale battles? Or is the hassle of trying to coordinate a stable 25man team just too much work for people nowadays? That second reason I can understand at least. All that said, I miss you 40man WoW! We will see what happens, I guess.

Raiding goodness

On the bright side, Adrenaline first raidweek has been very successful, 4 bosses went down for us in BoT and BWD and also: holy is officially awesome! While we really didn’t look so great in the new heroics, holy priests still rock the raidhealing boat and there’s lots of holy love to be shared in these new encounters. I’m not surprised to see PoH get a minor nerf soon; it’s already very powerful and my mastery rating isn’t even very high yet. All in all we got some really sweet patches incoming (Chakra, SoL, CoH) and the slight nerfs to PoH and our regen will matter little in the long run, even if we might feel them right now.

I got my first epic loot drop too and…oh noes, I look like Aladdin! The matching carpet was the obvious consequence. Matching dress and shoes – so last season!

“A whole new woooorld…”
(and I’d still rather be sitting, srsly!)

Critternation

In other news, I have successfully coerced enough of our guildies to join me on a 50k CDSC (critter death squad campaign) this last Sunday – finally my subtle convincing attempts paid off. It took us approximately 8 clears of Terrorweb Tunnel in Eastern Plaguelands which is swarming with bugs and spiders aplenty. We had jolly good fun on ventrilo, even if most of us realized later on that we can’t buy the armadillo pup yet, lol!
If anyone of you is looking to get this achievement done with his guild soon, I can really recommend that spot. Respawn time is every 3-4ish minutes and easily adds another 5k+ to that body count in a raid of 15 people. The more you are, obviously the faster you’ll be. And no bunnies or squirrels involved, promise!

Community highlights and another guest post

The WoW healing community has been spilling over with the whole “healing heroics, yay or nay”-topic these past few weeks and I’ve been following many articles with great interest, especially one by Ophelie where she tells us how healers can make a difference in PuGs. I’m always amazed to read how fellow healers still put up with the LFG madness in Cataclysm….I can’t say I do (I know, it must come as a shock to you) and so naturally, I had to share how much of a difference I’m not making:

Watch me NOT healing any PuGs over @ World of Matticus where Matt has been so kind to publish another one of my articles (and not just that, I’ve officially gotten my own mugshot on the page, how cool is that?). I had great fun writing it and I’ve tried to include all the related and inspiring articles I came across myself before (though I clearly failed to mention them all), so you might find yourself link-loved!
Judging by some of the reactions and also a look around the blogosphere this morning, the topic will definitely keep WoW healers and bloggers occupied for a while to come.

Another highlight of the week were definitely also Larísa’s PPI Awards for 2010, so in case you missed her great summary of what’s been hot and steaming around WoW and the blogging community in 2010, there’s your chance to catch up! A very detailed and informative read with many great nominations and well-deserved winners, and this silly blogger here even got mentioned too. I can’t say more than thanks to everyone who might have mentioned my articles or this blog, thank you so very much indeed whoever you might be, the bloggers linking us and all our regular readers (you’re sure this is the blog you’re meaning to read, right? just checking!). It’s a great joy to have been included.

Now let the weekend come, it’s already been the perfect week. Congratulations again to all winners and enjoy your weekend everybody! ^^

Rent-a-Troll© services coming to you!

We’re living in beautiful times. There is a service for almost every of our needs, a gigantic industry revolving around providing and catering to our comforts. If you don’t manage to cook or clean up anymore because of your excessive time spent on World of Warcraft, just call up a number and get that pizza delivered straight home while the laundry service takes care of the washing and dry-cleaning. Too lazy to go shopping? PC homeshopping! Can’t be arsed to answer the phone? Here’s a catalog to the latest generation of answering machines! Can’t reach the light switch? Clap your hands twice!

We’ve seen a lot of trolling in the WoW blogosphere lately. These are busy times, Larísa and Tobold can both tell you about it and so can numerous other bloggers. Dealing with trolls is interesting at best, but unfortunately it doesn’t end there. Yet some bloggers think that getting a troll is like an “award” of sorts, some bizarre recognition of your blog’s publicity or the relevance of your opinions – rather than someone really bored, being really stupid and boring on your everyday blog.

So after reading this post over at Pugnacious Priest, I was thinking that surely there can be something done about that! It is definitely not right that some bloggers should be excluded from trolling, I believe in equal opportunities for everybody! And as I have just recently (accidentally! /blush) managed to “export” a troll from Raging Monkeys over to Tam and Chas at Righteous Orbs, I figured I have a knack for this kinda thing – I can help the Pugnacious Priest and all other bloggers out that would love a troll of their own!

Are you tired to be left out on the trolling? Yearning for the genuine experience? Welcome to the exclusive Raging Monkeys troll market! See our selection of troll rentals exclusively designed to your personal comfort below!

Take your pick – we got them all!

(A- Level) The LOL-Troll©

The LOL-Troll is a first level troll: he is generally cheap and doesn’t put a lot of effort into his trolling. His comments rarely make sense and aren’t on topic – this troll is not looking to argue, he is here to mock you and make fun of a single word or argument in your post. Leetspeak will frequently occur.

At some point during the exchange with the LOL-Troll, you will start wondering which of your not-so-friendly ex-guildmates might have stumbled upon your blog.

Specials: Personal attacks, sarcasm, excessive mockery. Status: on stock.

(B- Level) The Extremist©

The Extremist is looking for specific parts in your argument for him to twist or take out of context. He is fond of hyperbole and passive-aggressive by default, convinced that you are out to impose your personal views on the entire world. He will therefore seek to undermine your reasoning by taking all your thoughts to extremes, trying to brand you as the self-righteous hypocrite you really aren’t. You will frequently find this troll making statements like “and where do you draw the line?!” or “stop playing God!”. Living in a world of stark black and white, the subtleties of differentiation or common sense elude the Extremist.

Specials: Hyperbole, presumption, selective hearing. Status: on stock.

The Preacher is a bigot in disguise. Trying to present himself as a considerate and committed commenter, this troll is actually not looking for serious debate. Self-righteous in nature, the Preacher is the ultimate authority and keeper of truths: because he is right, you can only be wrong. He is looking to “win” arguments and will aim to undermine your integrity by condescension, biased attacks and stereotyping.

On his crusade to make everybody see the error of their ways, the Preacher will use a large toolbox of rhetoric twists while cunningly ignoring all counter-arguments pointed at the innumerable holes in his logic. You will find yourself running in circles or whack-a-moling while trying to discuss with this specimen. The Preacher loves the sound of his own voice.

Specials: Circular argument, rhetoric tautology, excessive use of WoT. Status: on stock.

All Rent-a-Trolls© are made of genuine, 24-carat bullshit and come with their own special cardboard box and factory seal.

Unfortunately the troll market has not escaped the ever-growing industry of piracy. We are currently taking legal action against the distribution of unlicensed troll look-a-likes and illegal replica, distributed by an aggressive Asian manufacturer who has started to copy and sell sub-standard specimens under the label “troll”. Please beware of related phishing emails and fake Rent-a-Troll© advertisement! We would also like to point out briefly how to look out for fakes:

This is no troll. This is merely an intense commenter. He sets himself apart from genuine trolls in several essential ways. The intense commenter is very opinionated and passionate, looking to test his strong views against yours. He might even provoke you a little to engage in conversation with him. He will write longer comments than others and can get heated when feeling misunderstood. However, this commenter is genuinely interested in debate and grasps the concept of respecting different viewpoints. He will always criticize or attack arguments, never the person. He lacks any sense of self-entitlement, is capable to switch perspectives and can agree to disagree. This commenter is worth your time, he is for real and comes for free.

Do not mistake this commenter for a troll, he does not meet the required quality standards! Raging Monkeys will not reimburse any costs related to fake troll services!

Additional details and shipping information

Please note that Rent-a-Troll© services are currently exclusive to World of Warcraft blogs. The standard Rent-A-Troll© package consists of a troll of your choice, bringing jolly good trolling to your WoW blog for the duration of 2 weekdays, starting on the following Monday of receiving email confirmation. On expiration of this period, the troll will vanish and head back to the mothership.

Rent-a-Troll© services are currently free of charge (non-refundable). Customers looking to rent a professional troll are kindly requested to place their order to Raging Monkeys through the Mail Monkey system (see our side-panel). Information on the troll specimen of your choice and your blog’s URL are required. As we are expecting a massive demand, you may only order one troll service per blog at this time. Overseas deliveries (USA, Asia, Australia, Africa) might take up to 3-5 days of additional wait time.

Raging Monkeys deny responsibility for any potential harm done to your blog by a Rent-a-Troll©. Any damages action or claims for compensation are refuted. There is no right of appeal.

Happy shopping!

P.S. All troll comments in response to this thread will be deleted, unless submitted with a genuine Raging Monkeys certificate of trollish authenticity. Good luck with that!

(A- Level) The LOL-Troll©

(B- Level) The Extremist©

(C- Level) The Preacher©