VAFFANCULO

Quartett! is fucking beautiful.
I know I might say this every time, but there's this terrible urge for me to replay a BLOODY visual novel again.
And again.
And again.
The fact that a lot of it is about string instruments helps a lot, and the fact that the music is really really good too.
But geez, like Shuhua's story had me VERY VERY VERY worried and distraught until the final day.
I think I'm going to wimp out on replaying her story more than once...
I could probably replay Charlotte's story forever though...I like her character a lot.
And who knows, if my Japanese one day evolves far enough, I can grow to forgive Rossi too...cept in Charlotte's path of course, he's the absolute worst.
(I think the bastard's Phil's father too! Least from what the epilogue tells me...but the fact he "let?" Ruka kill that fucking bastard old man and helped him leave the country, plus the fact that he's at Phil's mother's grave in the epilogue, well he definitely has some good points at least...)

Anyway moving on to WoW business...
Two incidents which come to my attention, one is Glans/Jolson, who Dex hates, then again Dex hates everybody, vs the entire Obscured Reasoning guild.
Now I'm pretty neutral toward Obscured reasoning, and I'm really unsure about this Glans guy, nevermind the fact that his former name has a violation of TOS definition, but the argument pretty much went Glans and common sense - 1, all of Obscured reasoning - 0.
Best caster dagger in game...let's ignore the 40+ dps shall we.
What's the point of even trying to hide behind a shroud of neutrality when loot assigning, just come out and say you're going to be fucking biased before you bring people outside of guild to raid with you and be done with it so everyone knows.
Glans pretty much accomplished what he set out to do, which was paint Obscured Reasoning as idiots.

The other issue has to do with some crazy former Everquest guild and their highly "unusual" raid tactics.
I'm sort of undecided on this one, both sides make hilariously bitter filled comments that really put a new spin on spite, but in the end I'm inclined to lean toward the Conquest guild's side even though they are technically wrong.
They really are fucking hardcore though, their videos and strategies are really really well thought out.

What these crazies did was the first time in an instance, they did a hunter line of sight exploit pull, which basically pulls single mobs out of linked ones using feign death and frost traps.
In fact, I think it's sort of ingenius, it's been kicked around on the hunter boards for months, but Blizzard gave them a warning for it.
24 hours later, they tried another sort of pulling technique on the boss mob and his adds, this time involving a warlock summoning a rogue back to the main group.
In fact, every mob in the path also aggroed, however, boss ran faster than the others, and so they were able to section him off (I believe the rogue used vanish or died so the rest of the "trash" would reset and the guild hit the boss before he turned into the magical unhittable retreat state) and took the boss mob down to 5% (that's HALF AN HOUR, these boss mobs aren't your fucking blackrock spire losers) before getting owned by a GM, and getting several suspensions.
The suspension was basically as a result of..."Repeating an offense."

Now, to parse words, they in effect did not repeat the hunter line of sight bug at all. In fact the methods involved were really different. So the suspensions for a repeat of previous offense would not stack up UNLESS the listed offense was..."skipping content."
This euphemism seems to be engrained in MMORPG culture, which I was never a part of when I feebly attempted to play EQ, it basically means ignoring the crap and trash you have to fight through before the good stuff.
Evidentally, after waging a war with their players for a good few years, it's basically a standard tactic accepted by Sony on Everquest.
It's what I was doing when I stealthed through solo and assassinated Archmage Doan 20-30 or so times.
I completely ignored the "content" (trash mobs, etc.) of the rest of the instance and instead went straight for Doan, slicing the crap out of him and getting money from his drops.
They nerfed the selling prices on his drops pretty fast once they figured out what the rogues and druids were doing.
It's what I did when I called for a party of rogues to help me assassinate the hydromancer in Zul'Farrak to finish some quests.
It's also what our two druid three rogue party did in Maraudon, that is we skipped every single non named mob and went straight for the nameds, using a massive amount of stealth and distract to avoid about...3 hours worth of encounters.

Are we being asshats and "expoiters"?
I wouldn't like to think so, as we HAVE godamn stealth for a reason, and I'm sure hell the first thought of any semi intelligent rogue or druid would be...hey...we could frikkin stealth this entire damn instance.

Now the problems come up when you're talking about molten core, which is a raid instance.
Honestly, farming poor old corrupted Cerebras, farming until we all get photoskin spaulders and Vyletongue's lashes and crocodile skin boots is honestly NOT going to be a big deal.
These pieces of equipment are pretty good, and hell the spaulders and boots might last you to level 60...I know I sure haven't found anything better (I don't even HAVE the godamn spaulders or boots...because the damn other rogue won them.)
But when you're talking about say...molten core, with a named that takes a good HALF an hour alone to kill...how much time have you saved by pulling him through the trash.
We're talking shit that takes 40 people to kill and can sometimes win.
Yeah, you're saving a whole shitload.
And these are epic drops.

Now, to me, what these guys did was ingenius.
It's basically an extreme version of killing the named and his adds only, cept in a FORTY PERSON RAID INSTANCE.
Is it an exploit?
I don't know...but I have to say the burden sort of goes on Blizzard to FIX their high-end content and state if they specifically want to prohibit valid Everquest tactics in their game, considering they have some former EQ staff and players employed and are in the same genre.