My dearest Downfallers,

I've hit a wall in the world...of Warcraft.  I haven't had the desire to log in to WoW much lately and have come to the very difficult decision to cancel my subscription.  All of my character information has been saved and I can come back to the game whenever I'd like.  I don't know if/when I'll be back, but something tells me that the upcoming xpac may suck me back in...

Downfall has come a long ways since the formation and I'm honored that I could be a part of that restructuring and creation of the community that we have today.  I'm so proud of all the members for being such upstanding players (most of the time at least*) and aiding in the development of such a strong community.  You don't find a group of people so devoted to a game and eachother that they're willing to pitch in to help a family in need, offer a couch to a person they've never met except in pixels and offer such assistance to almost complete strangers because of a video game.  Downfall is truly unique.

Kitten Brigade, thanks for having me back after a summer full of late closing shifts and letting me raid with you all again.  It was a great experience.  Keep kicking ass and kill Arthas for me, he's really ugly.

Downfall in general, it's been an honor to share the same guild tag, you all rock.

This is not a goodbye post, more of a "see ya later" post.  If you'd like to get ahold of me, you can always find me on Facebook and or txt message if you have my number.  I'll continue to check in perodically and see where Downfall has gone and what awesomness y'all are doing now.  My last day of my subscription is Jan 8, 2010 so I will try to pop in once in awhile to say 'allo.

Thank you all for an amazing 4 years.  I hold all of you close to my heart as friends and I am truly lucky to have been introduced to you (whether thru pixels or IRL at the guild meet up).  See you all for the next xpac most likely!

Love in DF,

Katibug

I came home from Blizzcon to find myself with no job :(

The company had to downsize due to the shitty economy, so now I get to play with the new talents alot more than I thought I would!

If you know anyone that's hiring, I'm a really fast learner and hard worker!!!

We gathered at Gares's and my hotel room to try to decide where to go.  We bought some Heineken and still tried to decide where to go.

We finally decided on "The Lost Bar" because Shinso had heard alot about it and it sounded like alot of WoW people were going to be there.  We left the hotel room thinking Shinso knew where to go and we took a left.  We should have taken a right....

We passed by the hotel lobby and found a group of Horde amassed in the hotel lobby, playing Arena's, on their laptops.  Ewiges said something to them and I don't think they appreciated it, lol.

We walked to the end of one block and decided to go the other way.  We walked the other way and started toward the Disneyland Hotel.  The girl from Washington was leading all the people from California, it was epic...

We walked and walked and finally talked to a security guard that pointed us the right way.  We made it to the lost bar in "record time"...  Once we made it to the bar, we picked the ONE table outside that the heat lamp didn't work at and the beer was $7.50 per 12 ounce glass and they didn't sell pitchers.  Gares and I chugged our glass of beer and we left the lost bar because the majority of us were poor.  We walked back toward our hotel and stopped at a Best Western to leech their google and try to find a bar.  We decided to hit up a sports bar that looked really close.

And so we walked, and walked and walked and walked and then we walked some more but could not find a bar for the life of us.  By the time we started walking back it was near 12:00 and most of us were sober.  We walked back to the hotel, stopping by a liquor store along the way and resorted to just drinking in the hotel room.

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Gares and I got to experience the thing we were warned about most, which was the lines!

The day before, Jinx was selling the talking Murloc pets.  They sold out in record time and were anticipating selling out again on Saturday.  They limited the Murlocs to one per person and the line was massive.  Luckily our good friend Shinso and his companion Jesse were already in line by the time we got there.  We waited in line for a good hour in order to get our Murloc and were triumphant in the end.  We each walked out of the line with a murloc in hand and smiles on our faces.

By the time we had purchased our Murloc, we went to the Dungeons and Raids discussion in the C hall.  While waiting for the panel to start, we met up with Ewiges, cleverly disguised as some dude's girlfriend named Itata or something like that.  He had met up with a guy who's girlfriend was bored with Blizzcon and Ewiges was able to join us thanks to him. 

Anyways, the new instances look pretty cool, but from where we sat, we couldn't really see all the details.  This is where I got told to "use my indoor voice" by some asshat sitting in front of me.  He told me that "he paid to get in" and all I could do was sarcastically ask him if he wanted me to tell everyone behind me to shut up too.  After the panel was over, one of his guild mates came over and apologized for the noob and told me that the guy was pretty low in guild and that he'd made a fool of himself.  No where else will you have someone apologize for their guild mate!

We made it to Anaheim in one piece!!

We took the Supershuttle to our hotel which turned out to be about 3 blocks from the Anaheim Convention Center and got ourselves checked in. We called Shinso and he was alreay there so we put on our nerd faces and walked quickly to the the Con.  We arrived at the Con at about 2pm.

Upon setting foot on the sidewalk to to Con we encountered our first people in costumes.  WOW they were intriquite!  People really put alot of time and effort into these costumes.

We waited in the wrong line for our badges for about 5 minutes before we were joined by Shinso!  Just for the record, Shinso is really Asian despite rumors in guild that he was pretending to be Japanese, lol.  He was joined by his friend that pretended to not play much WoW, Jesse (He knew WAY too much about it to not play!) and Lawrence who was the soft spoken, quiet Reign member that never really joined in on our nerd-rage rants.  Later that day, their friend Jason (Hoshiko) joined up with us after getting off work.

Friday was basically a tour of the area.  We didn't take part in any of the discussions, rather we walked around with wide eyes trying to take it all in.

The end of the night was when the festivities took place.  Jay Mohr hosted the event and was pretty funny. 

The costume contest was pretty spectacular, people really put alot of time and love into their costumes.  I didn't envy the people in full body paint.  The bubble-hearthing pally, the Eredari Twins, lots of Draeni, the Warlock costumes were amazing as well as the Tyriel costume.  The Draeni with the motorized turtle mount took the cake as she was in full Season 3 gear and rode in on a turtle.

The /silly contest was OK, but most of the jokes were terrible.

- What's the different between Superman and a resto Druid?  -- Superman has a weakness.

Well, it's the first day of Blizzcon!

Gares and I got up at 3am to check on earlier flights out of Portland to get to Anaheim earlier and catch more of the events.   We hopped on the 6am flight and were on our way!

The plane touched down and the bad news ball started to roll.  There was a guy that was trying to get his bag out of the overhead compartment and bumped my laptop out of the compartment right onto a girl's head.  It hit her in the face and then fell to the floor.  In an attempt to catch the laptop bag, the guy managed to rip his fingernail off a little and he started bleeding.  OI!

Gares and I walked to our gate and hung out for a little while and found out that our plane had arrived, but the flight crew was still in Jackson, Wyoming...  They left Wyoming about 15 minutes ago and the flight is about 40 minutes not including de-boarding.

So here we sit, stuck in Salt Lake City with a flight delay and missing the opening ceremonies.  Cross your fingers the bad luck ball stops rolling soon!

More info and pictures later!