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Bloodsport Boost Betting
This has been quite a busy week for the UFC. Three days of fight cards, back to back. Thursday night was UFC Fight Night 80. Friday was the finale of The Ultimate Fighter 22. Saturday, one of the most anticipated PPV events of the year, UFC 194. This pay per view has not one, but two title fights – Middleweight Champion Chris Weidman facing Luke Rockhold, and Featherweight Champion Jose Aldo meeting Interim Featherweight Champion Conor McGregor!
Many of you have glazed over at this point. One paragraph in and I’ve already lost you.
Sure, there may be a few people who know what I’m talking about. However, I suspect that the most real-life combat exposure a majority of readers have is wrestling open a bag of Cheetos. This is fine, acceptable, and not something to be judged over.
I, however, have a few passions and violence is one of them. Fasten your seatbelts because there’s about to be an ugly collision of worlds.
A short time ago I posted a poll on Twitter regarding my upcoming Level 100 Legion Boost. I wanted to know what class I should be using my boost for. I proposed four classes – Rogue, Mage, Monk, and Death Knight. The result of the polls came up with a tie between Monk and Death Knight.
My first thought on the results was that I should let the winners fight it out but that wasn’t about to happen. Because how, obviously. That’s when the UFC’s three days of blood gave me quite the idea.
I was going to let others fight my battles for me.
Fight Night 80 had two profile fights that I would use as my decision makers. I was leaning toward boosting an Alliance character, since the majority of my fourteen characters were Horde. So I bet the faction on the fight between odds-on favorite Sage Northcutt and glorified punching bag Cody Pfister. If Sage won, I’d go Alliance. If Cody got the nod, I’d use my boost for a Horde character. Sage was the majority favorite, and besides, the kid looks as Alliance as they get.
The result? Alliance roar!
Second fight was going to be for the sex of the character. I was actually indifferent to this so I put it to the main event – Rose Namajunas vs. Paige VanZant. Paige, the pretty girl, would be the avatar of my female avatar while Rose was for the male.
Paige is too pretty to stand in the front.
Much like the narrator in the movie Fight Club, Rose wanted to destroy something beautiful. She wrecked poor Paige, and by the end of Day One of Blood I knew that I was boosting an Alliance Male.
Day Two was going to start deciding classes. I was going to stick with the profile fight, which was the main event – Frankie Edgar vs Chad Mendes. Oddsmakers and fight fans had this as a coin flip favorite, so that’s what I did. I flipped a coin to see who would rep the Mage class, and Frankie boy won. So if Edgar won the fight, my Mage would advance into the Bloodsport Boost finals. If Mendes won, then the Rogue would go on.
The result of the fight? Frankie the Mage Arcane Blasted the holy Hell out of “Roguish” Chad Mendes.
Edgar also made Chad’s nose disappear.
Tonight’s Day Three will tell the final tale. There are two fights I’m focusing on, and both are title bouts. My two preferred classes in the initial poll, the Monk and the Death Knight, will be decided at the same time the UFC Middleweight Champion is. My preferred class is the Death Knight, and oddsmakers give champion Chris Weidman a slight advantage over Luke Rockhold. So Weidman will be my Death Knight representative, and Rockhold will be my Monk.
The winner will take that class into the UFC 194 Main Event – Conor McGregor vs Jose Aldo for the UFC Featherweight Championship.
Oddsmakers have Conor with the slightest of advantages. Unlike the other fights, I’m bucking the odds. I do not see Conor beating a guy with the talent and skillset that Aldo has. Could he win? Yes. Will he? Not unless he pulls off some magic. And that’s why Conor McGregor will rep the Mage class, while Jose Aldo will represent the winner of the Middleweight class battle.
World of Warcraft. Mixed Martial Arts. Two very separate worlds, brought together by a single Nerdlord. Boggles the mind, the shit I come up with sometimes. Coincidentally that’s also one of the fun things about being me. I have no idea what I’ll come up with next.
Four Mistakes New Raiders Make
Assuming the position.
I’ve leveled fourteen characters to 100. I’ve done Heroic dungeons, PVP, and even pet battles. I’ve farmed for mounts, pets, transmogs, and gold. I’m almost at the point where I’ve got the Brawler’s Guild on lock. So it’s s safe to say that I’ve dabbled in pretty much everything WoW has to offer. But Blizzard is all about the raiding. Dungeons? A means to gear up for raiding. Storylines? The plots get wrapped up in raids. Legendary items? Raid or GTFO (which is actually quite helpful, that’s a future reference to something I haven’t discussed yet stay with me here people).
I’m actually no stranger to raiding. Back in my Everquest days, my guild often raided numerous World Bosses and Planes of Existence. In those days though, raid zones weren’t instanced. Every guild had a rogue alt parked where the various bosses spawned. When you got the word that a boss was up, your entire guild had to race other guilds to be the first to clear to – and pull – the boss when it was up.
That, boys and girls, is hardcore raiding. The ability to mobilize a raid with whoever you had, rather than the optimal raid configuration that guilds like to push for encounters today. You had to make due with whoever your guild had online, knowing you might only get one shot at the boss. Making that pull while another raid parked itself just around the corner, waiting to move in if and when you wiped. The PLP (Play Nice Policy) extended just far enough that guilds wouldn’t try to get you wiped (unless you were on a PVP server, which I assume is a special kind of Hell that plenty of people still manage to get off on).
But that was then, and this was now. Raid comps had become more stringent on their requirements, even in LFR. For a tourist mode style of raiding, there were still groups that expected a certain level of performance out of raid members. Some of it was reasonable, some of it was not. Mythic aspirations out of weekend warrior raiders.
I’d heard the horror stories, and it kept me away for the longest time. But one day I finally took the plunge (out of desperation and boredom), not caring what mistakes I happened to make. I had to give this raiding thing a try. If LFR was as easy as everybody claimed, it would be a learning experience. And if I didn’t measure up and got kicked, screw it.
So I did some researched, queued up, and drew Archimonde as my first raid. I may not have performed as great as I could have, but after we wiped and the raid leader went through the roster to cut dead weight he didn’t cut me. I’d tried to prep myself as best I could. And you know what? Things pretty much turned out ok. Well, for me at least. But other people… damn folks. Come on now.
Now that I have run a few LFR’s, I am something of an expert as far as raiding goes. Because of course.
Experience bragging aside, there are a few things I’ve noticed in the raids I’ve been in. Some faux pas, so to speak, some that I was guilty of myself. It’s not necessarily a WoW raiding thing, because I’d seen the same kind of issues when I raided in Everquest. These issues also seemed to be some of the reasons that many people try to avoid raiding altogether. I was one of those people, so again, experience talking here.
As I said, some common mistakes kept rearing their ugly head, and the sad part is that they’re easy enough to fix. So what kinds of mistakes do us rookie raiders make?
Rokk Talk 