The Glade 4.0

Was thinking about this after the couple of Ventrilo-enabled guilds I have been in in my MMO days. You can hear a good cross-section of gamers in the channel.

For example:

So Quiet, You Have To Turn Them Up To Max Volume -- Sometimes, 800 volume setting just isn't enough.

So Loud, You Have To Turn Them Down To Near Zero -- Mute's just one tick mark away.

Ear-Blisteringly Loud One Day, Whisper-Quiet The Next -- I've even had them randomly fluctuate volumes within the same raid zone.

Guy Who Plays Obnoxious Music So Loud In The Background, That It Shifts The Rotation Of The Earth Every Time He Speaks -- Ears . . . bleeding . . .

Mr. Mumbles -- Volume's fine, no interference . . . still can't make out a damn word he's sayin'.

Talking Just To Hear Himself Talk -- Hey guys, I got an opinion about everything, and I'm gonna say it in Vent whether you like it or not (even if it's during an important boss fight).

The Cougar -- Hey boys, I'm 45, single, and looking for some young stud to tame me. I'm on Myspace and Facebook. Or you can reach me on AIM as "CowGRL69."

The Casanova -- Mob INC in 10, which is how many inches I got for ya, ladies -- oooooh yeeeaah!

The Insubordinate -- Why are we doing this? **** you, I'm not pullin' that! This is dumb, I'm outta here!

Side Seat Raid Leader -- Hey guys I'm not an officer or leader of this guild, but we really should be doing this this and this, because I think it's best.

Dripping With Sarcasm -- No matter how innocent or unassuming the question, he/she's got a smart-ass answer for it.

It's Always That Time Of The Month -- Forget trying to be friends, you'll always get a bitter, mean response from this person (applies to men and women)

The Game Show Host -- Always sickeningly positive, happy, and charismatic. You'd snap their necks if it weren't for the fact that you (sadly) tend to fall for their charm.

The Joker -- Hey guys, did you hear the one where Arthas and Ykesha walk into a bar, and Absolute Virtue ducks? *random novelty sound effect*

It's Miller Time -- Every time this person speaks, you hear an aluminum drink can being popped open in the background.

Who Let The Dogs Out? or The Cat House -- Every other word is punctuated by the loud barking of a dog, or a 500-year old cat meowing.

I'll Never Get My Mic Fixed -- Two years in the guild, attends every raid -- still refuses to replace that mic that sounds like speaking through a diseased fast food intercom.

Mommy Dearest -- Kids always whining, crying, fighting, laughing, or playing loudly in the background. Often excuses herself to go beat her children.

Half-Baked -- Whoa duuuuuude, I'm soooo ****' wasted right now. Where are we raiding? What guild am I in? Why's there a pink rhino in speedos on my bed?

The Invisible Man/Woman -- Two years in the guild, attends every raid -- never speaks. You're not even sure if they are actually a member of your guild, or just hacked their way in to your Vent.

AFK -- Pull one encounter -- Hey guys need to go quick AFK, sorry, brb. Pull next encounter -- Sorry guys, gotta go AFK again, one minute, I promise!

The Valley Girl -- Like OMG! This one mob SO reminds me of this guy I saw at the mall when I was going shoe shopping. TOTALLY a loser.

The Sweetheart Girl Next Door -- Don't even try to hit on her -- she's just there to play.

The General Patton -- Alright, we need to form ranks, and flank this mob from the North, in a three-meter spread, with healers bringing up the rear. We need this mob dead by 21:00 hours, people!

Mr. Incredible -- Attends every raid on time, always performs to the best of their ability. You're pretty sure that somewhere out there is an MMO magazine with their picture on the cover, and a kid playing with an action figure made in their likeness. FemaleCounterpart = Wonder Girl.



Am I missing any?

Does this player look like this?

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

The Todd would so be The Casanova in Vent.

Forgot one:

Mr. TMI -- Hey guys, I just need a quick AFK to take a huge dump. Tomorrow I got to go see a doctor about my crabs.

Love the "General Patton" one. That guy always cracks me up.

Mr. I Don't Need a Mic - My mic doesn't work or I never bothered to get one. But you guys can read the extreme warnings I have to announce in mid-fight. You don't need to hear me, because I am 100% positive each of you are paying strict attention to the chat window and not the fights at hand.

Mr. I Don't Need Vent - Not really a person IN vent, but annoying none the same. "I don't actually need to hear your instructions or talk back. One of you can type to me, mid-battle or pre-battle, just as quickly and easily as you could if you spoke it aloud. I am living proof you don't need ventrilo! Now.... what is going on again? Someone type to me!"

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

What about the 9-14 year-old pre-pubescent uber dude?

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Ah yes, I forgot about him. We shall call him:

006-Learners to Shave -- He doesn't quite have pubic hair yet. He doesn't have a license to drive. He doesn't even have a license to shave. But dammit, that won't stop him from thinking he's James Bond . . . and he won't let you forgot that for a second. Note: These are often Mr. Casanovas in training. Because the only thing creepier than getting hit on by a naked guy in their mom's basement, is getting hit on by an 11-year old on their mom's computer.

That was me, well vent wasn't quite so big when I was still playing MMO's, but I never wanted to use vent for the simple fact that I made it a point to not tell people if I was a woman IRL or not because the number of obnoxious guys (usually 006-Learners to Shave) hitting on you jumps much higher when they actually know you're a woman vs if they don't know for certain.

Back in the old days, we didn't even have voicechat.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Back in the old days we used to take 8+ hours to do a single raid too...

You say that as if WoW raids with full voicechat support have never taken that long.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

That's fine to a point. But I've had people like that become liabilities in raids, and that's when it becomes a problem. For some people, they never become liabilities. That's great if you can do that, and if people don't mind typing everything out.

I would recommend just saying that you don't have a mic. Then you can at least hear the important information. There was a male tauren in one of the "uberguilds" I was in and we had set up a warsong gulch (it was either that or scheduled alterac valley, for 5 hours a game) BG. This male tauren had been raiding with us for months. All of a sudden we hear this dainty female voice begin speaking over vent. All of us at once immediately said "Who the hell is that?!" It was the male tauren. Turns out she was a 16 year old girl. We never knew or suspected up to that point. We had a good laugh over it. Never treated her any differently afterward.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Lol! Well since I don't play MMo's anymore and even the last few years I did play them it was basically just people who already knew I was girl it's pretty moot at this point, but yes at one point when I was playing in a guild that required voice chat I simply logged on to hear but didn't actually own a microphone.

Actually it was quite a amusing at times back in the EQ days because people would start arguing with each other over guild chat about if I was a girl or not, basically anyone who knew me well thought I was but a lot of the other people in the guild thought otherwise cause most of what they knew of me was me being a hardass to them during raids cause they were screwing around and I was an officer in the guild.

My daughter plays a male human warrior. I can't wait for the first time she uses Vent.

As a practical matter, if someone is hitting on you in an MMO, the answer is "stop it". If that doesn't work, complain to your guild officers. If that doesn't work, complain to the management.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Back in my day we used to run Coirnav without even so much as a thought to the possibility of voice chat!

Whippersnappers these days can't even run Vault of Archavon without vent.. I'll tell ya...

All this notalgia about the good old days made me think of another one:

Grumpy Old Man -- They just love telling everyone stories of how gaming back "in their days" was so much better. In my days, we did have this Ventrilo -- we walked out barefoot in the snow and tapped messages directly on the telephone line . . . and we LIKED it!

Is totally me. With a bit of Dripping with Sarcasm sprinkled in.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I oft lament the old days where good players learned to control their aggro by feel, but these WoW players nowadays have an addon that TELLS THEM they're about to steal aggro and still go ahead and do it.

I may or may not have stolen aggro before with omen up and running

EQ2 doesn't even need an addon; the default UI will tell you that and people still do it.

I've found, though, that the biggest reason for that is a tank that hasn't upgraded his taunts.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

WoW doesn't need an addon either. All Omen is at this point is a front end for the built in the aggro management system.

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I still like having Omen around, though. It makes it a lot easier to just -see- the current threat state.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

I like having omen because of the sound warning. Lets me know that I am doing my job when it goes off in regular intervals.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

There's a feature of ACT (Advanced Combat Tracker) for EQ2 that allows for sound and speech warnings of such things as beneficial spells being cast, AoEs incoming, detrimental effects being cast upon you, etc. All routed through your Vent.

At this point, I could not imagine raiding in EQ2 without it.

Can't think of an appropriate name for it, but the only person that really annoys me on vent are the people who only ever queue up just to laugh. You have no idea what their voice sounds like, but you'd know them anywhere by their laugh, they queue just to laugh into their microphone everytime someone makes a lame joke.

Did It For The Lulz -- LOL LOL LOL LOL! That's all that can be used to describe this person, because that's all you ever hear them say. In fact, you are not sure if they are even human, or just some text-to-speech program designed to queue up and laugh at anything its algorithms interpret as a joke (regardless of what it registers on the Baumgartner-Hirschmann Lameness Chart).