Birds Just Wanna Have Fun

A tip of the hat to our friend BBB, who interviewed my awesome guild leader Featherwisp for today's Shifting Perspectives column at WoW Insider. The topic was the aforementioned Annarchy-sponsored flightform flashmob on Dark Iron, and if you ever wondered what would happen if Alfred Hitchcock met World of Warcraft a la The Birds, you owe it to yourself to read this piece.

Okay, okay, or you could just ask the undead rogue BBB interviewed about his experience being stared down by several dozen unblinking birds. "MOONFIRE MOONFIRE MOONFIRE x30, I die," does pretty much sum it up.

In other news, for work today I'm summarizing some articles from this month's Harvard Business Review, when I come across this surprisingly accurate picture of the leadership challenges of MMORPG raiding:

True, leading 25 guild members in a six-hour raid on Illidan the Betrayer’s temple fortress is hardly the same as running a complex global organization. For starters, the stakes are just a bit higher in business. But don’t dismiss online games as mere play. The best ones differ from traditional video games as much as universities do from one-room schoolhouses. In fact, these enterprises are actually sprawling online communities in which thousands of players collaborate with and compete against one another in real time within a visually three-dimensional virtual world—one that persists and evolves even while a player is away.

The organizational and strategic challenges facing players who serve as game leaders are familiar ones: recruiting, assessing, motivating, rewarding, and retaining talented and culturally diverse team members; identifying and capitalizing on the organization’s competitive advantage; analyzing multiple streams of constantly changing and often incomplete data in order to make quick decisions that have wide-ranging and sometimes long-lasting effects. But these management challenges are heightened in online games because an organization must be built and sustained with a volunteer workforce in a fluid and digitally mediated environment.

Maybe I should go back for an MBA. Apparently I'm uncannily prepared.

Caw!

Those crazy druids are at it again. Last time, 10-druid Karazhan. This time, it's a flight form flash mob. What will they think of next?

All-Paladin Karazhan

Can I make up for a lack of bloggery by recounting a feat of sheer awesomeness? Not likely, but here's something you should hear about nonetheless.

Last night a bunch of paladins in Dark Iron's Penny Arcade Alliance got together and full cleared Karazhan. (Shoutouts to Hunam, my favorite wannabe rogue healer, and Ruttiger in the center, who has not one, but three level 70 paladins on Dark Iron.) The only real obstacle they ran into was Opera, where I'm told Murphy's Law dictated Romeo and Juliet, so they had to bring in a rogue to kick things in the face.

What's that, you want to know how they killed Aran with no interrupts? Ten bubbles ate that pyroblast, my friends. Ate it with relish.

Screenshot Sunday: I Will Name Him George

I just got a [Phoenix Hatchling] in heroic MrT! He is so cute! I will hug him, and pet him, and squeeze him, and pat him, and pet him, and love him forever.

I'm Betting on the Fruit Vendor

So, is anyone else getting really curious about the all-out warfare that's bound to break out in Lower City in a later patch? I'm going to be really disappointed if a proper ogre army doesn't show up.

Griftah's story seems to have come to a dead end with the opening of ZA and his return to Shattrath, so I really hope Cro Threadstrong vs. Granny Smith lives up to all the buildup.

Abbreviations

My guild really wants Magister's Terrace to be called "Mr. T."

Screenshot Sunday: Elekktrofied

So, I've been making a huge push to get my shaman to level 70 before patch 2.4 hits. This week's screenshot is from Blade's Edge earlier in the week, back when he was 68. I hit 70 yesterday at 10 days, 3.5 hours, which I figure isn't so bad since a) I wasn't trying to keep a pace, b) I have a tendency to stick him in an in and wander off without logging, and c) a fair bit of his Azeroth leveling happened before the leveling changes in patch 2.3.

The best part about leveling my shaman, in addition to the sheer fun of whacking things in the face and having a short-timer interrupt, has been leveling on rested XP from 61-70. That just rocks.

I've also had a great time leveling enhancement, and will probably keep the spec as I finish out most of the early quests -- I have a tons more to do in Netherstorm, and I haven't even touched Shadowmoon Valley. But the other big push this weekend has been to get my Kara key. Sure, they may be unnecessary in just a few short days, but in the meantime, our Monday newbie Karazhan raid needs a second healer, so I volunteered my undergeared self to the task.

Will I survive? More importantly: will my raid survive? I'll let you know.