decompiler

friday’s warcraft hunters union event was frustrating, funny, super fun, server-stressing, obnoxious, awe-inspiring, and flippin’ incredible and rolled into one.  as a proud new <whu> guildy, i (as flintlok) had an amazing time and took a ton of screens which i’ve narrowed down to my 20 personal favorites.  view them now (click to enlargenate):

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the secret event itself wasn’t scheduled to start until 6pm server time (7pm my time), but frostheim told us to show up a little early, if we could, for some photo ops.  this shot was taken @ 5:20 server, and we’re trying to spell out “whu” with our pets.  turns out to be more difficult and time-consuming when you don’t listen to directions… who knew!?

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the next thing frostheim wanted us to do was to line up along both sides of the road to kharanos and /salute him as he walked by.  it took several takes, due mainly to people who couldn’t follow simple instructions like, “no pets,” “yes, that includes vanity pets,” “stop dancing,” and “YES, PLEASE PUT AWAY ALL OF YOUR PETS!”  however, frostheim and his lovely assistant minibella were amazingly gracious during this whole processes, and i think it will provide some great footage for the next hunter video.

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for the next and final photo op in kharanos, they wanted a giant group shot of just the pets set up outside the thunderbrew distillery. so the rest of us were told to go inside and wait.  with the beer.  i shouldn’t need to tell you that hundreds of drunken dwarfs in an inn can lead to…  find out after the break!

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…fighting.  that’s right — in the 10 minutes or so that these ~250 dwarfs were penned up in the distillery many, many got the “duel-icious” achievement.  you can see eight different duel flags in this screen shot alone!  the duel-icious achievement announcement was second most popular in the chat, right after announcements of how drunk everyone was getting.

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finally, after enduring far too many drunken, A.D.D.-inspired brawls and /farts in the distillery, we were set in motion towards the target dummies in iron forge, where we had a bit of target practice and nearly brought the icecrown server to it’s knees (or at least it felt like we were).

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once our server-crushing target practice was over, we all piled onto the deeprun tram. some of us spent this short ride brainstorming where we might be headed, while some complimented each other on their choice of rare pet. still others, starting to sober up and with nothing to shoot at, went back to repeatedly delivering the /fart emote that the close-quarters situation so desperately cried out for.

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as soon as we hopped off the tram in stormwind, frostheim called for us to go to the harbor and hop on the ship to auberdine. it’s a good thing we’re small, ’cause there were many, many of us on that boat.  while it was still cramped, all were relieved to be traveling via a mode that was more… ventilated.

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thankfully, the trip involved no icebergs, and we made it to auberdine in one piece. however, auberdine was a breath away from being razed to the ground when one of my fellow dwarfs found that the strongest beverage carried by the nelf drink vendor was milk!

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there was little time to scrounge around for alcohol though, as our fearless leaders urged us to head south towards ashenvale. hundreds of dwarfs streamed southward, killing every targetable beast and humanoid within rifle range of the road.

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with a second boatload of union members still catching up, we rallied around frosthiem’s nelf cohort arust (the tall one in the shaft of light). with the dwarfs still stinging from the milk incident and many nursing freshly blooming hangovers, many-a shout of “kill the elf!” and “dirty hippie!” was heard from the rabble. however, no violence broke out (though i doubt this had anything to do with the 70 level difference between arust and the rest of us).

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fully regrouped, and with seemingly more and more members showing up (and in fact joining the guild) by the minute, we continued along the road south and then east. we stopped at one point where frostheim called out, “don’t shoot anything, we’re going to try something!” one evidently illiterate dwarf chose that exact moment to shoot something, to which frostheim said, “well, that’s ruined… ** GoGoGo!! **” and we were off down the road yet again. we may never know what was supposed to happen there…

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during another stop shortly after that, a lvl 80 undead death knight chanced upon us. i didn’t see the exact nature of his arrival — whether his pvp flag was already up when he found us or whether he had turned it on, thinking he could take us all out — but at some point his name went green and almost all of the warcraft hunter’s union opened fire. unfortunately, i got no screen shots of the firing squad, but i did get this shot moments later as we continued down the road with green name plates of our own, and no more hordie escort…

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as we drew nearer and nearer to orgirmmar, speculation ran rampant as to our purpose.  many of us thought — indeed hoped — we were going to attempt to zerg the horde’s capital city!  before we got there though, we stopped in front of bough shadow where we found out we were to take on the world boss dragon emeriss! this shot is of my cousin (eustatchius) and i posing directly under the lamppost, just before the action started.

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so here she is, peaking out over the edge of her pyramid-thing and wondering what the hell hundreds of lvl 10 dwarfs could possibly be thinking. hmm… just now noticing the dwarf along the left side of this shot is using a bow. he’s lucky frostheim didn’t /kick him for that!

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there was a brief moment when all the shooting started where i thought, “we could do this! we could really do this!” and then i got put to sleep, and then kill’t (more on that in a moment). hmmm… again with the arrows (seen here entering from the right side of the screen). i’m proud of these brave few dwarfs who, despite peer pressure and general fear mongering, decided to show the rest of us that they’re not ashamed of their life-style choices. loud and proud, boys! loud and proud! “i’m a lumberjack and i’m ok…”

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so, back to emeriss. the first time a bunch of us died to AoE, the corpse run was [epic] and hilarious. and i don’t think many of us understood the nature (pun fully intended) of the debuff emeriss has put on us at the time, because when we got back to the spot we immediately rezzed to find our selves put back to sleep pretty quickly, and then kill’t again. 😀 what fun! finally, after several attempts to regroup the dwarven flood, frostheim called out, “ok, we’re going to try this again, with one change. and that change is… hrist!” in reply to this were many /yells of “the hate tank!”, “hateraide!”, and “oh !@#$, now we’re $%^&*!!”.

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and so, with the “assistance” of hrist, arust, and several other 80s, emeriss went down. i’d love to see the recount report of that whole encounter!  what percentage of the damage did i do?!

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afterwords, our attempt to assemble for a group photo was interrupted by a lvl 80 tauren shaman (not to be confused with L80ETC) named bloodsail admiral jankyshammy, who wandered into the crowd with his pvp flag on, and… well, with all us dwarfs still buzzing with blood-lust and ready to kill for a pint, i’m sure you can fill in the rest.  (flintlok got the [make love not warcraft] achievement from that guy!  thanks, jankyshammy!)

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speakin’ of drinkin’, once the group photo was taken — at least as good as it was gonna get — frostheim said to head to the dam in loch modan for the after-party, so we all hearthed (nearly simultaneously) back to thunderbrew and ran as fast as our stout little legs could carry us to where we knew there would be beer, dancing, song, and explosions. i like this shot in particular because it shows off the hunters union’s dedication to pet diversity; i think we have pets from just about every part of azeroth! i saw several turtles (like mine, sherman), lynxes, and dragonhawks which means many whu guildies braved the eastern plaguelands to reach eversong woods — no mean feat at lvl 10! time-consuming to say the least!

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after the fireworks (shown here), we all dove off the damn and went down the falls into the wetlands, jumping the whole way like some kind of drunken, bearded salmon.  unfortunately, at that time i had one hand on the keyboard and the other on the phone and had no chance to get a screen of the spawning…

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so there you have it! my screen shot account of the warcraft hunters union lvl 10 dwarven hunter mega-raid on emeriss! we laughed, we cried, we killed, we /farted, and we drank waaaay too much — even by dwarven standards.  it was a life-changing event that brought the social aspect of wow to a whole new place for me.  and none of us can wait to hit lvl 19 — the level cap frostheim announced for the next event, whenever that might be!  in fact, <dead hunters society> (our guild of death knight alts made solely to serve whu — flintrot is flintlok’s doppelganger puppet) is busily grinding away for mats, gold, and anything else that will make the next hunters union event even more ridiculous fun.

big thanks to frostheim, minibella, arust, hrist, my fellow lvl 10 dwarven hunters, and anyone else that helped make this thing the blast that it was.

-flintlok-

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ps – hilarious things seen on the city chat as the hunters union came rolling through:

• innocent bystander in iron forge: “this can’t be good”
• as we exited deeprun in stormwind: “oh noes, iron forge finally ran out of beer!  run for your lives!”
• as we jumped down the walls into stormwind harbor: “lemmings!  lemmings!”
• gnomish mage in iron forge: “invite please!”

lol… oh, that last one kills me…

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pps – finally, here are some mini-shots found within my screens where’s-waldo-style of <whu> members that were particularly cool to me (hopefully they know why they’re listed), stood out in some way, and/or commented on this post:

minibella was instrumental throughout ramp up and execution of this event, and remained cheerful and friendly in the face of many-a grumpy, drunken, and a.d.d. ridden dwarf.

alisaunder, wazohabat and i all went on a quest to tame a turtle in eversong forest (the only turtles tameable at level 10) and discovered the hard way that you cannot swim to the ghostlands/eversong, no matter what the map says…

metalbeast created this video of super hunter friday, which i enjoyed greatly (especially the footage of the “salmon run” at the end).

himh was the first commenter on this post. thanks, himh!

grundrong – aka hailphage – commenter below. (and you thought i wouldn’t find you! ha! i find needles like you for breakfast… or something…)

oldpain, commenter and fellow union member! (nice ears, pain!)