LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

I inserted this image solely so i would not be mocked for participation in marching band...I am honest at least.

Ever had a really embarrassing moment?  A moment that was so mortifying that even when you think about it years later you still turn red?  (I seem to have more than my fair share of these)  My worst embarrassing moment (…to date, I am sure there will be competition down the road) was in high school marching band.  I was queued up to be the first musician to march onto the field for the first act of a huge band tournament.  There were about 10,000 eager onlookers in the stands that day.  I was pumped.  Our band came marching out of the tunnel leading onto the field with a full head of steam.  We were going to win the tournament – best band in the show – and I was leading the way.  Then I fell.  I fell flat on my face, right after exiting the tunnel.  The first thing the judges saw was me face down in the mud.  It wasn’t a graceful fall either, it was a full on faceplant.  Oops.  I don’t think it really matters how much time passes, I will never forget that day.

In WoW we have the advantage of being able to hide behind our avatars, but things can still get pretty embarrassing.  Unfortunately for us, combat logs, screen shots, and guild members with surprisingly good memories keep alive our “oops moments” much better than forgotten fellow saxophonists from high school.  There are lots of chances at “oops moments” in WoW too.  Take a game that most people play in some form of sleep deprived state, add cooperative team based gameplay, and then a pinch of “you can wipe everyone if you screw this up”, and you have the recipe for some pretty great “oops” moments.  Whether it was an errant tab-target, a mistell go horribly awry, or an accidental DI of the tank mid-fight we have all had some pretty embarrassing moments while playing.  Read on for a few (select few) of my most embarrassing “oops…” moments.

Going for a swim:

Come on in...the water is nice.

This one is pretty good.  I bind my auto-run key to my back mouse button for convenience.  No one likes having to hold down the run key right?  It turns out that this is fine, as long as you don’t frequently fall asleep while raiding – especially while raiding Molten Core.  If you are unfamiliar with MC, let me tell you, the most dangerous aspect of the instance is not the bosses, it’s not the trash mobs, it is the lava.  There are frequently no walls in MC and while normally you would use common sense and your eyes to avoid running into lava head on, both those resources are absent when you are asleep and auto-running forward.  As it turns out, lava will kill a level 60 priest pretty quickly when you swim directly out into it.  It also is pretty difficult for a guildie to rez you when your corpse is 50 yards offshore in an ocean of lava…  This actually happened to me so often I became adept at “lava-jumping” to avoid ticks of fire damage.  A skill I still have today.

A case of mistaken identity:

He got no heals...

I have gone on the record as saying that I hate judging a player’s ability to complete an instance successfully by gearscore alone.  I especially loathe it when other players tell me that there is no possible way “you can possibly heal this instance at sub-whatever gearscore”.  Frustratingly you generally get kicked rather than getting a shot at proving that you can in fact heal instance whatever with whatever gearscore.  I was really pleased a few days ago when I managed to convince a 5K gearscore tank to give my much maligned 3.5K gearscore resto druid a chance to prove him wrong and show him that I could in fact heal a heroic Pit of Saron.  I was pumped, finally some vindication, a chance to prove that gearscore isn’t everything, that no amount of gear can make up for skill, a chance for me to strike a blow for the little healers, the pre-10 man geared healers.  I made sure my focus was set to the tank and told him I was ready.  I was determined to not let a single player go down this instance, not one.  Then the tank died – on the first trash pull – and we wiped.  As it turned out, I hadn’t actually targeted the tank.  I had misclicked.  The whole pull I was accidentally healing a dpser.  Oops.  I didn’t get a second chance to prove the tank wrong.

“Excuse me, could you please point me to Naxxramas?”:

This one was probably the most embarrassing moment I’ve experienced in WoW.  Shortly after dinging 80 on my warlock after WOTLK came out I managed to worm my way into another guilds’ run for a 25-man Naxx.  Excited about being able to go, I immediately flew to the instance and hovered below the famous floating ziggurat waiting for the rest of the raid to arrive.  Strangely people started responding that they had reached Naxx in raid chat but I hadn’t seen anyone fly into the ziggurat.  I was still hanging out all by myself underneath the instance!  I was waiting patiently alt-tabbing back and forth to check to make sure I remembered all the encounters when I saw in all caps in raid chat

“RAIM GET IN THE INSTANCE WE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO SUMMON YOU”.

Oops.

Annoyed that I had been hanging out there and waiting for the guild the whole time I responded that I was there, hovering right below the ziggurat.  Then they informed again in all caps that I was in Zul’Drak, and hovering below Voltarus not Naxxramas, and that I was at the wrong ziggurat, and had been sitting in the wrong place for about 10 minutes.  Oops.  I didn’t make that raid, and to this day I still don’t know how I possibly could have done that.  I knew where Naxx was and I certainly don’t think I am going to forget anytime soon.

It doesn’t seem to matter how long you play or how good you are at the game.  There will always be bad tab-targeting, accidental pulls, and that stupid mud puddle right at the end of the tunnel waiting for their chance to add another tale to your embarrassment repertoire. There are three of my top embarrassing stories.  Have some of your own you would like to share?