The Cranky Old Gnome

[Update: In case anyone finds this post, please keep it in mind that this was written in 2009. I haven’t bothered to go back through to see if any of this is still accurate because, well, I just don’t play WoW all that much, so it’s not that important to me. Anyway, the point is, do a little more research before deleting files willy-nilly.]

I noticed my computer has been running  a little sluggish lately, so I’ve been running a couple clean up programs to fix it up a bit.  During my adventures I noticed that I was running low on hard disk space so I made a query to find out what program/file was usurping my data.  Well most of my stuff was tied up in multimedia (music/pictures/movies/etc), or documents and misc. stuff to keep my computer actually running.  But the single most prominent thief of space was our old friend World of Warcraft.  20 gigs.  20 freaking gigs. Ho-lee-crap.

Well, that seemed excessive, so I decided to investigate.  I discovered that there are a couple of files that can be safely deleted.  And since I imagine I’m not the only one who didn’t know you could get rid of this stuff I thought I’d share what I learned.

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Most of my experience with other tanks has been on my healer, and I’ve seen quite the variety.  And I’d imagine that in my own time as a tank I’ve qualified as one or two of these types myself.  Just note that this is by no means a comprehensive list. Also, more than likely the tank you are with is an amalgamation of many of these types.

Here are some of the different types of tanks I’ve run with:

I suffer from a debilitating disease known as altitis.  This causes me to create alt after alt, obsessively trying to get them at least to 65 so I can max their professions.  Let me tell you a little about my alts.  Settle in.  This is a long post.

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Dear sir or madame;

My my, I love seeing you fellows around!  Boy it just tickles me pink watching folks squirm around you trying to get their mouse icons to switch from targeting you to targeting whatever you stand on.  I’m ever so impressed when I see one of you positioned so well that it really has become impossible to click on whatever you are standing on.  Oh, and when there are two of you? Brilliant!  I mean, you must have an unfathomably large mental capacity to be able to come up with that clever of a scheme.  You’ve spent time and effort getting that fancy new mammoth.  The world of Azeroth deserves to see you, up there all proud and prim.  This scheme is admirably brilliant.  Far beyond anything your average 12 year old could come up with.

But what do you do when the masses start yelling at you, whispering and such?  Why, go AFK of course!  It’s the perfect plan!  After all, you can stand there for a good 15-20 minutes before people realize that you haven’t just gone AFK to go to the bathroom or get a drink.  But you have to make sure to flag yourself AFK rather that actually go AFK.  No sense in letting the game automatically log you off right?  What fun would that be?

Those of you standing on mailboxes and the like, what are you thinking?  I mean, honestly what a waste.  Especially with all the additional mailboxes they have added.  How are people going to admire you and your new mount if they just jaunt off to a new mailbox?  The same goes for vendors and the like.  If there’s somewhere for them to move on to, you can bet they will.  I know, I know…they just don’t appreciate the leetness you have attained.  That’s why it’s up to you get them looking in your direction.  I recommend quest givers (especially neutral ones) and flightmasters (especially in neutral cities).  You’ll get the most bang for your buck!  But why am I telling you this, a clever fellow like you doesn’t need my help, I’d imagine you’ve already thought of this a long long time ago.

I’m curious, how do you deal with your one weakness?  I’m talking of course about baby spice.  What is that nonsense anyway?  I mean, here you spent all that time and effort gathering up rep or shards or gold to buy yourself a fancy new mammoth, and all you want to do is show it off right?  And what better place to do it than a heavily trafficked point, especially in a neutral city where Horde and Alliance alike can bask in your obvious leetness.  If you stand on the flightmaster in Dalaran, everyone will have to see you!  I mean, how can they click it without seeing you first?  So here you are, standing there relishing in the spotlight, and someone tosses babyspice at you.  And suddenly you are so tiny that you are no longer blocking access!  It’s insta-death for your audience.  Oh sure, eventually the buff will wear off, and you’ll gather a new group of admirers, but if the baby spicers can just bypass you that quickly, they won’t have the privilege of admiring you for an extended period of time!  They’ll be totally missing out.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you to keep up the good work.  People everywhere are very excited to see you there.  No one gets sick of it or irritated in anyway.  It’s not an inconvenience of any kind.  No no!  It’s not like they have better things to do that spending a couple minutes trying to click on whatever you are standing on only to finally give up and try something else.  You aren’t a total and complete waste of time and space.  You are very valuable to everyone’s World of Warcraft experience and I genuinely hope that you don’t suffer any diminished brain capacity due to the vast amounts of effort you have committed to this endeavor.

Cordially signed,

Thistlefizz T. Cogsproket.

Many of you may find this hard to believe, but once upon a time areas like Silithus, the Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring and Burning Steppes were considered “end-game content.” Before the Dark Portal opened again and before the boats/zeppelins started taking us all up to Northrend, we busied ourselves grinding Argent Dawn, Cenarion Circle, Thorium Brotherhood, Timbermaw Hold, and Zandalar Tribe rep, and worked to get those rare Frost Saber mounts. Now all of that content is pretty much ignored – people skim blithely through the “early” levels (which now, amazingly, includes everything in Outland) in their mad quest to get “phat 1ewtz” at the latest raid. This means a lot of people are left largely confused by what they find when they reach the latest “end-game content” – I still remember people in 2007 insisting that Ilidan could easily beat Arthas, or claiming that Ilidan was actually IN CHARGE of the Burning Legion.

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