limpid

Carlsberg is the cheapest beer if you are buying in pub quantities. There's a reason it's called cooking lager. I don't really care what it is as long as I can get some.

Any idea why I got 3 dkp for Friday's raid when I was in the pub?

But I don't get into BWL, so there's no point showing up.

The only way to really get around this is to have fixed requirements for each raid. ie. You need certain gear levels for certain raids. That way just dinged 60s don't beat Sam out of BWL. Minimum FR (or other resist) should be a minimum, not a guideline. I upped my FR from ~50 to ~170 in 8 days - it's not that hard. Class leaders should dictate what consumables must be carried for a raid. DKP penalties must be applied for being late/unprepared. DKP bonuses for people on time/prepared even if you don't get into the raid. DKP penalties must be used on slackers. If you aren't commited to the raid, don't join. You can walk your dogs afterwards. None of this is hardcore stuff, it's largely just good manners. If I screw up, I'll admit it and if there's a penalty, so be it. As long as the same rules apply to everyone. Of course, I'd rather restart the VT Villans ready for the TBC launch. We have enough mates that we can fill the new smaller instances with people who like each other and have a grasp of the game. (What about 'Dashed' as a guild name...) Enlightened self interest ftw - whoever is most in need gets the drop, with a bank to save up unwanted stuff for sale. I'm guessing that with the focus on smaller group instances in TBC that BWL, MC and AQ40 will be nerfed down to max 20 man anyway, if they are even available to TBC players.

Do they have petrol in the colonies now? :wink: I'll always remember the day when a friend visiting from the states commented "Oh, you have BP gas stations here too".

"everyone agreed"? Well that would be a first.

Well, that will be my last raid with the dashers for the foreseeable future. Only 4/5 alts, so not down to that directly, but no focus and apparently no interest. Some muppet took the Tuesday night raid into ZG, even though there was a scheduled run in there last night (?). They downed three bosses. We managed to do a whole two bosses more. Absolute shite. I'm definitely with Risso about a certain 'tank' - more like a Reliant Robin last night. Sakri (playing his mage) spent the evening repairing another PC while he played. He was dead good at marking his targets. Well, he was dead anyway. Due to the fact that I can't be bothered to show up for alpha raids any more, I'll be playing my alt until TBC. If you guys need me for 5mans, etc, just ask - I do want to play the mage, just not in raids.

You have 2 months (ish) to level another class then...

by avfcinwales For so long Villa fans, most, anyway, longed for the day when there would be a new owner, allied to a new and half decent manager. Well you may have noticed it came to pass but amongst the fog of euphoria, many have advocated a wait and be patient philosophy, the Prozac dream. It goes like this: "We can't expect things to change overnight, we need to be patient, sit back, support the club without question, be glad its all gone through, be glad its happened in your life time, all is wonderful. It will take time, but we have the best manager in the Premiership, the best owner, full of promises to make us great, we just have to be patient". As a result articles such as this get stopped, criticisms of the manager makes you a pariah, criticism of the new owners something worse. Now I know no matter how many times I or those like me say it, we won't be believed, but we are all overjoyed that O'Neill took the club on, of all those available he was the best. He's not by far, the best in the Premiership though and far from a name in European terms. Same with the new owner. Its brilliant Lerner got the club when you consider some of those in the bidding, and compared to the previous owner he's a golden goose. As his board have already shown their PR is on a different level to what we have come to expect. Already the signs look promising, the training ground go ahead alone, worth the entrance fee, but there's a long way to go but I don't see why we have to wait for major things to happen, if the intentions are as they say. For all their combined problems O'leary and Ellis left behind a club in a better state than many in the Premiership. Despite their end of season position, as my mate Lerwill was always reminding me our Premiership finishes hadn't been that bad compared to most, apart from the big lads. As Lerwill and Ellis' PR kept reminding us the club wasn't in debt, well not in comparison to Everton, Man City and so on. By Premiership terms we weren't that poorly off in reality. Now our owner is a billionaire, has loads of dosh, not as much as an Abramovich sure or possibly not as keen to spend as him, but hey he and his mates are all proven World Class businessmen, you mean to tell me they can't finance a major spend if the return is there. Of course they can, its bullshit to suggest they can't, they aren't corner shop owners these guys, behind the PR, behind the dream they weave, are some seriously heavy financial movers, and they own and run Aston Villa. So why should there be this settling in period, why do we have to wait and see, take our time. Neville lost the race, Lerner won it. We didn't get Southgate as manager we got the dream ticket I'm told, the main man, so we have it all, so why should we have to wait, why should there be this need to lower expectation, to accept one or two seasons of mediocrity, until all the long term bad is slowly eroded away and replaced with the new dream. Is Sutton, Agathe even Petrov, your idea of a club looking to take on Europe and bring success to the club asap. Is buying a 40 year old who rarely gets into a side propping up the Premiership, your dream purchase? If it is, it shouldn't be, not with the dream team we have now in charge. If Neville had made it maybe, but you got your dream team, so why settle for the Prozac option, why sucker yourself into accepting second best. We've done that when we didn't have a, it seems, management able to do it differently, now we do. Look at the state of our club, financially and even player wise, we aren't that bad off, in comparison to some who are likely to gain European qualification, we are in superb condition. We have a wealthy and highly competent owner and board with stacks of money, excluding Chelsea and Manchester United who else has, Portsmouth, maybe? No one else has even Spurs, Arsenal, certainly not Everton, Bolton, West Ham, and co. Who else has such a good youth setup as ours, seems to be already. OK other clubs are far better at getting the best potential kids but hopefully the new dream ticket will even help that hugely. Who else has the potential support base we have. Everyone forgotten we are the only Midlands club in the Premiership. For miles around no Premiership football lads yet we can't pack them in even with such a surprisingly good start. Which belatedly leads me on to the manager and the existing squad. Its the same squad many on here tipped for Europe two seasons back, plus Petrov minus DLC, Phillips, and Milner. As early results have shown it hasn't done too bad, surprising many including O'Neill be he believed. So whilst I appreciate we are in the transfer window, and its always hard to get the right people in January because of contract restraints, I thought we were no longer the 'Olivers' of the Premiership. No longer does the manager have to justify his expenditure with the sale of his best players, no longer does he have to spread 11 million over two seasons, no longer are we the poor buys of the Big boys. At least I'd thought not. I expect my team to succeed. I expect the new management to keep their promises, not over a long term of several years but now. Now is when they own the club, now is when I want results. I want the manager to be looking to bring in the best, players with long term potential, better still with proven ability. I want him to bring in players in January to compliment the undoubted talent we have and ensure we qualify for Europe next season. Then in the summer I want them to bring in even better players to ensure we not only do well in Europe but we maintain the growth of the club in the Premiership. I don't want ex drunks, over the top stop gaps 40 year old past geniuses with little to offer, unknown unproven cheapo from lower divisions, that's the Ellis way. That's the way past managers worked, its not the way the dream ticket should work, not for me anyway. You know what I'd bet my bank balance that the management know it too, I just wonder how much under all the excellent PR, they mean to achieve.

I won't be there to help.

That's coz someone posted an enormous picture...

That's why I'll stick to levelling my alt :-)

I remember the opposite of that.

Did we wipe? We wiped before we got through the entrance hall. Later we wiped because someone took the shortcut to Ossi instean of running via Moam and aggroed a group of bugs which then killed everyone in the instance. We spent half of Buru waiting for people to run in again when they died jumping of the cliff. I died on Buru once when kiting - I mean what else is there for healers to do in phase one of that encounter? Unbelievable. 11g+ repairs for AQ20 and we killed two Anubishan (or whatever) guards. Not even a sniff of Ossi. Sakri nuking early on his mage because he "knows what he can do". Half the time he was on the wrong target ffs. But he wasn't the worst, just the one I noticed most.

by avfcinwales A recent comment on the Villa list from a fan who had just proudly bought his first season ticket and then the open training session held at Villa Park today, took my ageing brain back to days long ago when I too paid for my first season ticket. Don't remember why I did, but a group of us had nothing much to do on Saturday afternoons, we played soccer in the mornings, and the ground wasn't that full every week, we were a degenerating club at that time. It cost nothing like it does today either, but then I was only earning 18 pound a week as I awaited my A level results, but it was just as big an achievement and I was just as proud. I only had it for that season, University called and it was never difficult even at the 13th hour to get into the Holte end in those days, and the Witton end was always empty just more dangerous thanks to the odd away fan. Since then of course, I held a season ticket for several long seasons, through to when we won in Rotterdam, watching the club home and away for 7 or so years, in times when walking to and from the ground, especially away from home was always an interesting experience, shall we say. My ever suffering wife of 37 years usually came with me, even when pregnant, and I often wonder why we and all those others who did likewise did. Having claret and blue blood and a father and grandfather and associated family mad keen Villa fans helped, as did watching the 1957 FA Cup win and the subsequent interest it generated. Winning always does, its always a big influence. But then, when the club was in dire pooh and eventually the Doc came in and his enthusiasm, his new innovations, his media presence was a huge influence on us all, even though he failed as a manager, he and those who brought him in and started the change should never be forgotten. OK I then saw them down into the third division, but then I watched every match under each different manager until that day in Rotterdam, everything else nearly always took a second priority, work, family, even where I lived which towards the end wasn't shall we say within 10 minutes of Villa Park. A reason was, that initial belief Docherty gave us, the belief that encouraged so many to turn up and paint the dilapidated stand, to buy merchandise, to buy season tickets, the change from a no hope, joke team going no where, to a team with hope. It took years of course to get to Rotterdam, including many highs and lows and I personally thought much of the delays were down to the involvement of one man whose machinations did nothing but break up the solidarity within the club. Bendall of course got it together, eventually, and the rest is modern history, culminating in the world having turned fully with the Lerner takeover and the same enthusiasm and new ideas now upon us. Now though, its down to another generation of fan to take up the banner, although I can't see them having to travel to Huddersfield or Port Vale on a freezing rain soaked day during the fall downwards, this time its all upwards, and those who have just bought their new first season ticket remain the future of Aston Villa. Not that I won't be doing my bit, I've enjoyed several games this season already and have enrolled a new Villa fan for my troubles, one who lives in Birmingham too, which is a huge advantage when considering board and lodgings, especially the lodgings. Today's open day and the subsequent media attention is a great sign, a sure indication the new broom is sweeping cleanly through the club, long may it continue. It brings back old, but good memories. Here's to being there at the next European Cup win, and for people of my age that's something I hope doesn't take as long this time as it did back when Docherty wielded that broom, somehow I don't think it will. If its anything like the old days, the trips to Wembley, the victories against the big clubs and especially those big nights with a near capacity ground when the ground moved with the desire and belief only Villa fans have. O'Neill has yet to touch much of that but it will surely come when it does I hope its one of the matches I'm at

About last night. That was the worst raid I have ever been in. By several miles. I think I'm ready to stop raiding for the forseeable future. I'm going to play my alt.

The main enjoyment of this game is the social side. It'll be much quicker to catch up if you play with us. You can play with the grownups on the horde, or the children as alliance.

Yes. But buy your own - he'll be on it too much for you to do anything :-D

Sam played on my machine for a bit yesterday. I guess he's on ebuyer.com looking for a new screen today.

1600x1200 isn't widescreen...

by blandy There’s a (allegedly Chinese) curse that says “may you live in interesting times”. It seems to me that the Chinese must be alright, if their insults lead to what we’ve seen at Villa park these past few months. It’s worth casting the mind back to the summer just to realise how interesting times have been since then. There we were in June and July, reading the thoughts of the Villa faithful. These thoughts ran (not quite exactly) along the lines of “I can’t take any more of this dull ambitionless Ellis and O’Leary inspired mediocrity, I’m off to saw my own legs off for a bit of light relief” - and that was just the players! A quick look at the archives shows just how angry, depressed, frustrated and disillusioned we all were, almost without exception. The main Villa part of this site had almost turned into an off-shoot of the previously no more than pleasant and diverting “Off-Topic” forum which had become full of people taking refuge from the storm of depressing mediocrity that had infested Villa park and taken deep root. So things weren’t good. They really weren’t. Since then we’ve had, so far, a steady and rapid journey back upwards. I’ve almost got the bends from the speed of the rise. It’s been so dizzying that I can hardly believe that what went before ever really happened (even if it largely “not happening” lasted for 24 years). To date the rise has largely been an emotional one rather than a tangible one. Spirits have soared; the same small squad of players have looked more determined, more motivated, more organised and more competent than they ever did over a 10 game spell last season, or the season before. Martin O’Neill has been universally welcomed by the supporters, players and other people at the club. The media have started talking more positively about the Villa and gates which were threatening to be pitiful, following lamentable season ticket sales pre- the change have more than recovered. Off the pitch the speed with which Mr Lerner and his team have acted to address problems has been breathtaking at times:- Long overdue Training ground development lying stalled because the “ring-fenced” money set aside by Ellis was a fantasy? – Holy RSJs! The builders are only back in on the job the next day. Derelict Holte Hotel decaying sadly behind the ground and shaming the club? – brew-up-lads-tastic! The workmen are in and refurbishment started, and with a sensible plan for what to use the place for. But the biggest change is the rediscovery of the soul of the club. It’s the refreshing attitude of the new board and new manager. We used to have a Chairman who said a lot and did little, now we have a Chairman who says little but does a lot. We used to have a manager who made excuses and said the players were honest, but not good enough, now we’ve got a manager who has the players believing they can beat anyone, and if they don’t beat ‘em, they’re sure as heck not going to lose to ‘em. We had a Chairman who treated supporters with contempt and who seemed to see us as a wretched bunch whose sole purpose was to put funds into his coffers and tell him how munificent he was. Now we have the General and Randy listening and talking and being interested in us as people, as part of the club, and now it’s the Owner, like the fans, investing in the club. I don’t know what’s going to happen next - will the ground be developed, will players be signed steadily, or in a big rush next summer, or not at all. In a strange way I don’t care because I trust the people in charge to get it right, on and off the pitch. It's a long time since I've trusted the club, or since the club trusted us. Like a Chinese meal, the “interesting times” curse leaves me wanting more - Bring it on.

That's if you can get into end-game stuff with your guild. If really quite sick of the guild at the moment - enough that it's putting me off playing at all. I've been royally screwed over now with "regulars" suddenly wanting to play now that we are moving BWL to farm status. I'm not prepared to keep investing time and gold to prepare for raids only to be completely ignored when the raid rides out. If I had been logged in over the weekend, I suspect I'd have /gquit.

When I met Danny, he seemed like a nice bloke. He's hardly the worst actor out there though - have you seen the dross on TV lately?

... and here's some DKP as a token. Thanks for turning up.

Viskahn and Redemptus. But I'm glad you're alright Jack.