A bizarre message.

Now, the Altoholic can be both a good person and a douchebag. It really all depends on the weather or who I'm dealing with.

I guess one can say that I'm a force of chaos. I do good and bad.

I've been doing good: Running the open invite raids that anyone can attend.

I've been doing bad: Getting on the case of folks who are being bads (as in, attitude).

So we're working on attempting Yogg and I suddenly get a tell between attempts.

I've removed the names to protect both my identity and the identity of the person sending me tells. I'd never seen them or heard of their guild before, nor have I heard of or interacted with any of the 80s in said guild, so I'm at a total loss.

01:07 AM [Stranger]: Sexy man, your awesome.

01:11 AM [Altoholic]: o.O?

01:12 AM [Stranger]: Thank you for being such a good guy, you help this server far more than you could imagine. :)

01:12 AM [Altoholic]: For scaring away bads?

01:13 AM [Altoholic]: Or for hosting open raids every friday and saturday night?

01:13 AM [Stranger]: Both and more. Have a good night.

01:14 AM [Altoholic]: Fyi: I'm a chick. :p

01:14 AM [Stranger]: Doesn't make a difference, your still a good person. :)

Usually I don't spout my gender off, but being called "sexy man" was just a little weird.

I can't tell if they were being sincere or sarcastic.

Ups and Downs.

The last week or two have been somewhat eventful, full of ups and downs.

I guess I can start with the ups:

My guild has gotten a few more people, I really feel the push to go from 10s to 25s quite soon.

We downed Yogg last night.

Last week, my open Naxx25 run one-shot KT.

And of course, the downs:

Hey look, yet another WOW Expansion.

I'll be honest here, hearing the rumors about Cataclysm and then hearing them confirmed makes me more than just a little unhappy. I have been so caught up running my guild, which is just now getting off the ground, that I haven't been able to bring myself to do that god awful grind from 70-80 time four more times I need to in order to get the rest of my 70s to 80s.

We're working our asses off to catch up.

For what?

For another gear reset so we can run more recycled content.

Bliz still hasn't gotten us the things they said we'd get in Wrath (dance studio wtf), we still haven't even seen Icecrown citadel and they're already hyping up the next expansion.

What's the point? Why am I even bothering?

This has totally killed my motivation and my desire to continue playing. I'll stick with it because I want to punch Arthas in the face... a lot, but for me, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm may wind up being World of Warcraft: Cancelclism.

Additional instances cannot be launched, please try again later.

It seems for the last month, the server I've been playing on has been afflicted by the "Additional instances cannot be launched, please try again later." issue.

We have several complaints about our realm forums on it. I've even opened CS tickets asking for extra badges for defeating the door boss after hours.

Well I'm getting sick of it. I see several complaints on the Blizzard forums, but not all that many complaints elsewhere.

Step 1: Document the instance boss. Take a screenshot of when you start trying to zone in, make sure it includes the date and time, and when you finally get in. Write down notes too. Encourage everyone else to do the same.

Step 2: Save ticket conversations/responses. Encourage everyone else to do the same. WIM has great timestamps and records GM conversations rather well.

Step 3: File a well doccumented complaint with the BBB. Encourage others to do the same.

Step 4: A mass filing of complaints with a group like the BBB complaints creates a large amount of workload for whoever has to answer and address all the complaints. The workload = time = money. If answering a constant stream of such complaints is unprofitable, maybe they'll actually get to fixing what we're complaining about.

Honestly, Blizzard is failing to render services that we're paying for. They're failing to resolve this issue in a timely manner. We've had this problem for months. Technically we're in the right here. We've been extremely patient.

Step 5: ??? (Perhaps bliz will ban, you may want to do this at your own risk.)

Step 6: Working instance servers?