Cata Cornered Puns

#Part 5 – Mists of Pandaria

This is the fifth part of my write-up about World of Warcraft. You can read the first four by clicking the links below.

• Part 1 - Beta and Vanilla

• Part 2 - Burning Crusade

• Part 3 - Wrath of the Lich King

• Part 4 - Cataclysm

An Unexpected Trademark

It was mid-2011. The final patch of Cataclysm was on its way, and Blizzcon was just around the corner. The subject of World of Warcraft’s next expansion had begun to gain traction once again, and as was tradition, the internet became awash with leaks. Some promised Old Gods, some foresaw Kul’Tiras or Zandalar or Nazjatar, Tel’Abim or Suramar or Sargeras – in short, players made every possible prediction in the vain hope that one of them might be proven right.

But none of them were.

No one could have predicted Pandaria.

It wasn’t until the user ‘Mynsc’ went wading through the US Patent and Trademark Office website in search of info about Titan – Blizzard’s ‘open-secret’ new game in development – that they stumbled upon a recently-filed trademark by the name of ‘Mists of Pandaria’. Among all the theory-crafting and scavenging for information, it had been there a week, out in the open where anyone could find it, and yet completely overlooked.

It was immediately dismissed by many users as a book, a figurine, an in-game microtransaction perhaps. They cast it aside and turned to the more realistic leaks. But upon further inspection, the trademark was for a game, distributed on CD-ROMs with instruction manuals and guides. It had to be WoW content.

Okay, the community said. Then it was a patch.

>”they don't trademark patches. If they never did before, why now?”

Then it had to be some kind of trading-card game spin off. Definitely not an expansion.

>”The international class used in the trademark is the same as they used for previous expansions. The timing and information for the Mists of Pandaria trademark matches that of The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm. If this i

In this series I'll be covering most of WoW's biggest controversies, dramas and scandals, as well as plenty of smaller, weird little tales. Any one of these is worthy of its own write-up, but I assume no one wants to see 50+ different World of Warcraft related posts. By the time I finished writing up all the weird shit from WoW's first release, I had double the character count of a single post. And WoW has nine expansions and several spin offs, not to mention drama at its parent company, Activision-Blizzard. So I have decided to split this post up into parts. As for the entries in this post, I’ve tried to put them in chronological order, but there are some dramas that stretched out over many years – and in those cases, I placed them where they started.

What is World of Warcraft?

While I’m sure almost everyone has at least some idea of what WoW is, I’ll give a little overview. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG developed by Blizzard Entertainment – a fantasy game which takes place in the colossal online world of Azeroth, where players can quest, fight, and interact with other players. There are two factions – the Horde and the Alliance – each had separate playable races, separate cities, economies, questlines, politics, backstories, and attitudes. The factions acted as the cornerstone for the game’s PvP.

WoW was an immediate hit when it first came out in November 2004. It followed on the heels of games like Everquest and Ultima Online, but completely reinvented the formula, with more player conveniences, far greater variety, graphical fidelity, and storytelling. It was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnating genre, and went on to dominate the MMORPG genre for two decades. Here is a video beginner’s guide to those who need it.

#Part One - Beta and Vanilla

‘Vanilla’ is the term players use to refer to the game upon its release. The game was unpolished, its community a wild west where anything went. The rules and expectations of MMORPGs hadn’t really been figured out yet, and so this is when a lot of WoW’s strangest dramas took place. We won’t be touching crazes like the hilarious Onyxia Wipe or Leeroy Jenkins or The Talisman of Binding Shard, because there isn’t really enough meat on the bones there. But they’re fun to go back to anyway.

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

The nurse asked the rabbit, “what is your blood type?”

“I am probably a type O” said the rabbit.

The doctor says it terminal.

Alot of great jokes get posted here! However just because you have a joke, doesn't mean it's a dad joke.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT NSFW, THIS IS ABOUT LONG JOKES, BLONDE JOKES, SEXUAL JOKES, KNOCK KNOCK JOKES, POLITICAL JOKES, ETC BEING POSTED IN A DAD JOKE SUB

Try telling these sexual jokes that get posted here, to your kid and see how your spouse likes it.. if that goes well, Try telling one of your friends kid about your sex life being like Coca cola, first it was normal, than light and now zero , and see if the parents are OK with you telling their kid the "dad joke"

I'm not even referencing the NSFW, I'm saying Dad jokes are corny, and sometimes painful, not sexual

So check out r/jokes for all types of jokes

r/unclejokes for dirty jokes

r/3amjokes for real weird and alot of OC

r/cleandadjokes If your really sick of seeing not dad jokes in r/dadjokes

Punchline !

Edit: this is not a post about NSFW , This is about jokes, knock knock jokes, blonde jokes, political jokes etc being posted in a dad joke sub

Edit 2: don't touch the thermostat

By now you all know the story. Had an insanely good legend wastes run with two people who run cata often and two people who run legend daily, all communicating on voice chat, so many boons we can ult constantly and Warrior Priest can keep the team borderline invincible. First citadel map went great, we climb the stairs of map two without taking a shred of damage, we're overpowered beyond belief. The first part of the final area goes the same way, killing pigs before they can even hit the ground.

And then the funniest thing happened.

Enter Illusionist, Relentless, Vampiric Minotaur.

Teamwiped in under 40 seconds. I cannot stress this enough, we were broken. Nothing could phase us. Except a minotaur that would teleport behind you into the corner you've wedged yourself, appearing midswing and hitting you 300 yards off the map. Doesn't matter if you're invincible when you've got a teleporting monster sized baseball team ready to hit a home run with each and every player. This is fucking ludicrous and has ruined the experience of, imo, the best game mode the game has to offer. That was our first run back after taking two weeks off for the holidays and I'm already burnt out. Wtf.

Do your worst!

How the hell am I suppose to know when it’s raining in Sweden?

Mathematical puns makes me number

We told her she can lean on us for support. Although, we are going to have to change her driver's license, her height is going down by a foot. I don't want to go too far out on a limb here but it better not be a hack job.

Ants don’t even have the concept fathers, let alone a good dad joke. Keep r/ants out of my r/dadjokes.

But no, seriously. I understand rule 7 is great to have intelligent discussion, but sometimes it feels like 1 in 10 posts here is someone getting upset about the jokes on this sub. Let the mods deal with it, they regulate the sub.

They were cooked in Greece.

Two muffins are in an oven, one muffin looks at the other and says "is it just me, or is it hot in here?"

Then the other muffin says "AHH, TALKING MUFFIN!!!"

Don't you know a good pun is its own reword?

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

Said if she ever hosts a gender reveal party, when it comes time to pop the balloon she'll spray everyone with water.

Gender is fluid.

Because she wanted to see the task manager.

And boy are my arms legs.

But that’s comparing apples to oranges

Put it on my bill

Amy

Heard they've been doing some shady business.

but then I remembered it was ground this morning.

Edit: Thank you guys for the awards, they're much nicer than the cardboard sleeve I've been using and reassures me that my jokes aren't stale

Edit 2: I have already been made aware that Men In Black 3 has told a version of this joke before. If the joke is not new to you, please enjoy any of the single origin puns in the comments

They’re on standbi

BamBOO!

A play on words.

WAHEY!

As some of you are probably aware, I came back to Verm1 like 3 months ago and I've been playing it multiple times per week. The combat is still amazing as it used to be and there's no fluff around the core mechanics like Verm2 has. Also: It does not receive any more patches (awesome) but instead has a few very dedicated modders which you can contact via Steam group / Steam group chat. And there's no "sanctioned realm" that hinders what the community can do with what is essentially our game now.

What's even better: I stumble almost daily into a lot of new and old players that either come from Verm2 directly & wanted to see what Verm1 is about or are oldschool players that have played Verm1 for a couple hundred hours a few years ago.

So I decided to write a list of the main differences between the games, coming from someone who quit Verm2 back when Winds of Magic got released. So take everything here with a shit ton of salt. It's all written from a Verm1 player perspective.

Combat

• Verm1 has a completely different stamina economy. Most importantly, stamina does NOT regenerate during dodges in Verm1. This is the most important thing you have to get used to. This snowballs into a lot of side effects. Kiting becomes blocking + dodge jumping, just dodging and holding block will get you killed if you don't do it clean af. You can't push as much as you're used to either. Where certain weapons in Verm2 have 7-9 shields or even more, most weapons in Verm1 have 3-4 stamina shields. Some even have only 2. This reduces the amounts of pushes you can / should do even further. There is no block cost reduction bonus too, which means your block breaks way earlier than you'd expect. And if your block breaks, the only thing that can help you is the "Second Wind" trait which is why many people highly recommend it.

• Only a few weapons have the push attack mechanic. This means your pushes become weaker as it takes longer to follow up with an attack. As push attacks are essentially a way to stagger, then stagger + damage enemies, your damage output per second is lower in Verm1 if you push a lot. And if your objective is a DPS check (think Well Watch on Cata), the game suddenly "becomes" difficult. If you want to keep your push-heavy playstyle, I recommend the Devastating Blow and/or Improved Pommel traits.

• Verm1 has an input queue that needs mods like the "quickswitch fix mod" to really work. In vanilla Verm1, you will run into issues if you try to do t

Calcium, nickel, neon

My daughter, Chewbecca, not so much.

Pilot on me!!

Until he discovered it was extra sharp.

Christopher Walken

You can read my VANILLA, BURNING CRUSADE and WRATH OF THE LICH KING posts here.

This post is pretty short compared to the others. There were a number of smaller dramas like the banning of swifty or item duping or WoW closing in Iran, but I struggled to cobble them together into anything worth reading. I was getting into a bit of a rut with this post, so I cut my losses and posted the topics I've finished, rather than leave it unfinished forever.

#Part 4 - Cataclysm

The Leaks

Cataclysm didn’t just contain controversy. For the first time, an expansion was the controversy. So we need to go right back to the beginning to figure out how it all unfolded.

MMO Champion has always been one of the largest platforms for WoW discourse outside of the official forums. And it was here, on the 15th of August 2009, that Cataclysm was leaked. World of Warcraft was no stranger to leaks – there had already been half a dozen, each promising a different vision of WoW’s next expansion - but they were rarely this detailed, which lent these particular leaks a certain credibility.

In short, the premise was this:

The ancient dragon aspect Deathwing (one of the only big baddies left from the original Warcraft games) had broken free from his prison in the centre of the world, and had used his enormous power to tear Azeroth to pieces. The continents from WoW’s first release (Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms] were going to be totally overhauled with new visuals and new stories, as well as the addition of player-flying.

Five new zones would be slotted in around the world too, where players could level from 80 to 85. Each new zone had an elemental theme, which would continue throughout the expansion. They included the lore-heavy Mount Hyjal, the expansive underwater world of Vashj’ir, the dark and atmospheric subterranean [Deepholm]( https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

He lost May

Now that I listen to albums, I hardly ever leave the house.

And now I’m cannelloni