So since I don't have my WoW blog running, yet, I'm going to grace you with another Warcraft-related posts on this blog. Remember the Booterang? (See this post, and this post.) The little boomerang boot that you fling at disobedient orcs to get them back to work. They'll be sleeping, or wandering around, or be busy being quite angry... You click on them and they'll say thing like "whaaaaat?" and "something need doing?" and "me not that kind of orc!" and "leave me alooone!", like in the good ol' Warcraft games of old, and then you deliver a mighty smite to the head.

Enter the World of Warcraft Arena. A world of pure skill where the best fight the best in a ranked system similar to that of Halo 2, except that there is no incentive to lose and drop rank to kill the lowbies. Quite an ingenious system. Anyway! My brother (finally) got to level 70... And that means we have lots and lots of stuff to do now! Including a 2 vs 2 arena. We've been wanting to try one out since it came out with the Burning Crusade, but we weren't high enough and we didn't have enough people. But, finally! We're both 70 now.

So... We're 70... We want an arena team... We need a name. We were tossing words around and, naturally, I said "booterang". I love that word! I say it to myself every now and then and laugh at myself like I'm mentally insane. So I suggested that. Booterang! Booterang... What... We need another word. So here is a glimpse as to how my train of thought works:

Booterang... Boomerang... Boomerang... Those things the Boomerang Bros. throw in Super Mario Bros. 3... OH MY GOSH. BOOTERANG BROTHERS!

We initially settled on "Booterang Bros.", just like the official name of the Boomerang Bros., but the arena system doesn't accept periods in the title, and "Boomerang Bros" without the period made it look like we were gangsters or something. "We da Boomerang Bros, bro!" So we went with the full, cultured "Booterang Brothers".

Behold! The 2v2 Arena Team: BOOTERANG BROTHERS! We've played a grand total of 3 matches so far, and we've won a grand total of... zero. Isn't that awesome? I think we set some records... First match? The opposing team charged out of their pen and massacred us in about 2 seconds. Second match, it was an identical set up. Hunter and Druid vs Hunter and Druid. It was a race of who ran out of mana the quickest... Sadly, that was us, but it lasted about 2 minutes. Next time, we're going to be concentrating on the healer first. Third match was very similar to the first, in such that the opposing team charged out of their pen and massacred us in 2 seconds. Fun stuff... Not really... But my guild assures me that we'll eventually win some.  (To which I replied, "yeah, I hope we win some after we sink to a rating of 100." They all laughed. I don't know why.)

The interesting thing about arenas is that... The points you receive are NOT based on how many people you kill, but they are indirectly based on how many you win and lose. See, every time you fight someone, you win or lose... Duh. If you win, your team rating goes up! If you lose, you go down. If you beat a strong team (I'm guessing if, by some chance, they're the closest match to you at the time), you go up a lot! If you lose to a weak team, you go down a lot. You have to do at least 10 games a week. (A World of Warcraft week is from Tuesday to Tuesday.) If you do less than 10 games, you aren't eligible for getting points. If you do MORE than 10 games, you aren't eligible for MORE points than if you were to just do 10 games only. However!

Your points are determined solely by your rating. So if you do 10 games, and your rating is where you want it, STOP and wait until Tuesday, when you get your points. If you do 10 games and your rating is NOT where you want it, play more until it is where you want it, and THEN stop.

A little weird to understand at first. Like, say, our current rating is 1460. If, say, we're 1460 when we've finished 10 games, then we'll get 255 arena points. If we don't like being 1460, and we want to be 2000, then we have to play enough games to get a rating of 2000, where we'll get 801 arena points. You have to play AT LEAST 10 games. So if you're 2000 after 10 games, then you'll probably want to stop, because if you play 11, then you have a high chance of losing and then getting less points. (Arena points, by the way, are what you use to buy rewards.)

So with Microsoft proposing to acquire Yahoo for an incredible 44 BILLION dollars, Slashdot, of course, goes absolutely ballistic, frothing at the mouth, scrambling over each other to give their little opinions on how this would be such a horrid thing to have happen!

I abstain. I have no opinion on this matter.

I do, however, have something to show you within the comments! What could be better than a stereotypical anti-Microsoft comment? How about a comment that is anti-Microsoft and anti-Bush in the same sentence! Oh, you better believe it. This guy apparently has some inside information that tells him that Microsoft is getting special treatment from the Bush administration. How could this get any better? Actually... I know how it could.

"It was only a matter of time before Microsoft decided to try to get a final regulatory pass from the Bush administration before the inauguration of a less-sympathetic President in 2009... This is why you need to vote for RON PAUL! GIVE THE POWER TO THE STATES!"

We need to add something in there about how the sales of the iPod Touch are going to influence Ron Paul's rise, too. Think of it! Bush supporting Microsoft, Apple supporting Paul... And all in the same comment. I think that comment would hit the limit of moderation points in about 2 seconds, as it would cater to every single active reader on these geek sites. Oh! Can't forget a little blurb about the oppressed open-source movement, now can we?

If someone can figure out how to stick anything else in this comment, let me know!