Ah, the traditional end of Summer is upon us and hopefully after today's American triumvirate of sleeping in, beer, and red meat on the grill, the last beach parties will be wrapped up and the fucking tourists finally go home, the summertime GoP will end as people had back to school, trading GPA for DPK.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the tourists come and drop boat loads of money into our local economy or whatever bullshit I'm supposed to say here, but hot damn, we get these French Canadians down here and there appears to be a *woeful* lack of modesty at work, not only because of the ever so trite but true jokes regarding old men in g-string Speedo bathing suits - funny until you're standing in line behind one at the Dairy Queen on 24th and notice the fucker has hair all over his back AND his ass and his belly, which hangs over the front of his bathing suit like some grotesque meat apron - no, far worse than that, worse even than sitting down on a toilet seat warm from another's ass...

WHY is it SO hard for them to make sure your nuts are tucked into your Speedo? Hot damn, I sit wrong and bind my sack up in my boxers just the least bit and I'm squirming to adjust things, but they seem to wear a little bit of pinched sack like a badge of wrinkled honor. You can't help but notice it, I swear I think some of them try to split the twins, one to each side like taunt fuzzy fleshed Mickey Mouse ears gone all wrong.

I mean, I've been in the gym before doing step or on the Stairmaster and things ride up and my sack starts chafing, that gets my attention real damn fast - but these dudes seem almost oblivious to scrubbing their nuts on whatever passes by. Add the hazy, hot and humid weather and everyone's scrotum pools out into a limp 3 foot puddle, so imagine the effect all those benches and chairs further heated in the sun have on sack already tugged and forcible distended from the polite confines of clothing - it looks like pancakes draped over the edges and occasionally hoisted up and spread out in their laps like a well worn and open catcher's mitt - this is fucking male camel toe. And then they run - I swear to God I've heard flapping before as inertia and loose skin work in horrible tandem.

In a move jolting revulsion to my core, I saw this one old dude slide into a booth AND DRAG HIS NUTS on the edge of the table. MOTHERFUCKER - and I *liked* that table, but come this fall when *I* want to go out to eat in *my* city to watch *your* tax dollars pay for beach sand restoration I sure as shit can't sit there, and it doesn't matter how much antibac or industrial cleaner they throw on it, that table's been defiled by sweaty Canadian sack and lost to me forever.

So anyhow, as I morn the loss of innocence and a celebrate a day off, we bounced around VT and killed shit in its proper place - how boring.

While we were there, the GM staff, as on apparently all servers, purged the corpses, I guess in lieu of disabling CoH (at least until the patch). I have mixed feelings on this: Surely if they do intend to remove CoH, they *must* revamp the zone, which is a good thing - this just forces their hand as doing VT from start to finish is just not something anyone is willing to do, no matter how good the loot is or even could be post patch - you'll forgive me for restating the obvious, but most EQ players have by now realized that stats, resists and hp/mana beyond the basics are meaningless, after a certain point it really doesn't matter - in the end, these twilight moments of EQ are going to be spent having fun with your guildmates, and picking up items that expand our repertoire of abilities with fun procs, right clicks, monster DDs, illusions, horses, &c becomes far more desirable vice chasing some softcap. I hope VI will bear this in mind for future loot and encounters - getting 125 hp/mana gear in every slot is a reality now, but it's lost its luster in the face of a game showing its age. That's not a slam or a jab, it's the truth.

At any rate, I'm not comfortable with them removing CoH yet - remember how many incarnations a basic encounter in Ssra took to get (sorta) right? AL is just one example, because I can also point to Vulak for a textbook HOWTO gannfest on the large scale. So I'm split, if you remove CoH, then we all have to wait even longer at the zone for a *full* raid force to log in, vice clearing and CoH'ing the late comers - the spell's original intent is just as valid today as it was when conceived and as long as we can still ghetto CoH, all you've done is inconvenience us when it comes to moving around - for a high end raid guild, it's just... oh yah: time consuming.

Guess who pulled?

NOT GAY

We also picked up another member of the famous Nameless Dorfs - welcome Blowjob!

WE KNOW  DRAMA

Unfortunately, he made it - everyone else, however...

And in closing, a lot people asked what we did the Day After - would we lay down and whimper, would we lick our wounds, would this be the nail in the LoS coffin? Fuck no - on rumor a certain mofaka spawned on us in Ssra, we rallied and went from 16 at 8PM ET to 61 at a little past 10, fully buffed at the portal, fired up, mean, angry and raring to kick some fucking ass and stick it to The Man - one problem: I hadn't bothered to hit track to see if Emp was up to confirm what I'd been told~ Oops!!

Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards

Quotes of the Day

After appeals and discussions, tonight the Legacy of Steel officers had their suspensions lifted after approximatly 2 days of time served. The circumstances surrounding the situation have been resolved, at least to some degree.

I want to thank everyone for the wild support we received, it is a large part of why this issue came to a head - Woody and many, many others have asked what exactly happened - to which I've had to respond with some degree of vagueness. To be clear, this isn't due to any sort of cover up from our perspective and yes, I am aware of appearances, however I'm not going to disclose an exact chain of events while members of the guild are in discussions with VI - after this is completely resolved, yes, but I am not willing to impinge upon any current appeals and/or dialog just to sate a Usenet troll (or even cool guys like Woody, who are willing and able to see things from both sides).

Suffice it to say none of the alleged means the GM stated were used - in point of fact, player gflux is disabled in that zone and if you must know, the pull did not and does not involve a monk whatsoever. Moving on, the Warders were down when we did the pull as the previous day we'd bounced CoH around VT to kill their parent mobs, thereby despawning each appropriate Warder. The random key nonsense is just that - the keys are no rent but it is merely an exercise in annoyance to nurse them via corpse or decess/CoH to get the needed one every 55 mins in the case of any Key Drama™... we've done it both ways~

Pulling mini-Aten to goo room in Vex Thal is exactly analogous to what has been the de facto standard for pulling the Dain from his spawn point to the pit in Thurg B for 18+ months: aggro transfer leads to the mob warping vice explicit pathing to the character, that is the mob will appear suddenly on top of and/or immediately adjacent to the aggro character vice running towards the character.

With regards to what happened prior to the GM appearing, the guild CoH'd to the goo room and staged in one of the small annexes. A player acquired mini-Aten on target and proceeded to aggro her - and not by any of the means the GM alleges. We actually wiped out the first attempt as multiple mobs warped down in addition to mini-Aten and we were unprepared - things are not 100% certain in VT and there is real risk and certain death on each pull, regardless of means. On the second attempt, mini-Aten was solo and we executed a near flawless kill, the only problem being some odd lag which allowed the main tank to die once. At any rate, the GM /killed (despawned) the mob with less than 1% health remaining, and after which you can read the web page and log for what transpired. Had the GM actually witnessed the pull, it would not be possible for him to even voice such as the events were plainly visible to even the most casual observer, again, however I'm not prepared to disclose the exact method as our officers are still in dialog with VI.

That being said, I was extremely angry and frustrated over what I saw as sheer ignorance writ large and the people left to suffer the consequences were my guildmates and friends. As I posted before in our private section: I'm from The South, we could make a sailor blush saying good morning so it's no surprise I fired off a myriad of fuck you's, however, in retrospect, the personal insults/2 inch cock thing were excessive, even then - but I stand by the crux of my post: we got hosed and customer service at VI is in dire need of an attitude adjustment.

To the good guys at VI CS, and there are some, I apologize for casting my scathing net too far - I certainly don't mean to imply everyone there, especially the guides who work under extremely demanding circumstances, volunteering their time to make this a better environment to game, is worthy of scorn, and to Blixtev, I offer an apology - I was out of line with some of my comments on the personal level - that was uncalled for by any standard.

It is my hope we can put stuff like this behind us all and move forward with the lines of communication now, in some part, open among players, VI and the CS department. Our common goal is to play this game and have fun.

Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards

Regular update tomorrow - I still love my crew of stalkers in a non-gay way.