World of Warcraft is a fun way to spend your time online. But it’s all too easy to lose yourself in the game and forget the most important things of all: safety and security. In real life, these concepts are reinforced from an early age - whether we’re crossing the road, playing football or even just staying at a friend’s house. Whatever we’re doing, it’s crucial to ask ourselves: are we safe? Are we secure? If the answer’s yes, then it’s time to go ahead and have fun! If the answer’s no, however, we need to rethink what we’re doing. Because nothing’s worth being in danger. With that in mind, here’s a guide to staying safe and secure when playing World or Warcraft.

SAFETY AND SECURITY IN WORLD OF WARCRAFT - THE TOP TEN

1 - A Blizzard employee will never ask you for your password. They may, however, ask you for your bank details, social security number, breast size and favourite REM song. Do not tell them your favourite REM song.

2 - If somebody asks you for your password while playing World of Warcraft, that person is a Russian spy. Kill them at once.

3 - If you have trouble remembering your password, under no circumstances write it down. Instead, create an html document containing usernames and passwords for every website you use, and mark each with a direct link to the login screen of the site in question. Upload this to the World Wide Web and you’ll be able to access it from any computer with an Internet connection.

4 - Sometimes things happen in the World of Warcraft which make us angry, like being killed by an enemy or losing out on an item we had our hearts set on. It’s vital not to take this anger out on other people. Instead, try counting to ten or cutting yourself.

5 - If you get World of Warcraft in your eyes, wash with soapy water. If you swallow World of Warcraft, seek medical attention immediately. Never combine World of Warcraft with other cleaning products.

6 - While playing World of Warcraft, you may be approached by a paedophile. This is a very dangerous variety of sexual predator, which must be treated with great caution. When the paedophile asks you for cybersex, inform it that you are over 30, then give it the name of any players you know who are under 16. This will encourage it to leave you alone. When the paedophile ends the conversation, quickly draw a picture of what you think it looks like in real life and mail the drawing to the police.

7 - Staring directly at your computer screen can cause seizures. Prevent these by taking drugs.

8 - Murderers prey on people who are playing videogames, because they are not paying attention to what’s happening in the real world. For that reason, it’s sensible to always carry an axe.

9 - Do not use a mobile phone while playing World of Warcraft. Your tiny mind cannot handle all that technology.

10 - World of Warcraft can be an addictive game - but no matter how long you play for, you must never forget to take care of your basic human needs. Take a break every hour and have a drink of water, eat a small sandwich or piece of fruit, jog up and down the stairs for two minutes, go to the bathroom, leave the house to head to the shop, buy some items from the shop, hop back home alternating five hops on the left leg, five hops on the right followed by a star jump, get back in and change your clothes, read a book for ten minutes, call your cousin up to say sorry for last Friday, practice piano, learn to moonwalk, write a 1,500 word essay on the philosophy of mind, swallow your pen while singing Bible quotes to the tune of The A Team, run up your stairs as fast as you can, dive out the window and fly up into the air until all the people below are like tiny ants, then feel the pull in your chest and ask yourself what the point is, truly, deep down, why it is you cling on to life like a limpet to a dirty rock as the harsh, cold ocean dashes against your back, and cry, cry until your throat aches and your heart bleeds and your eyes run dry, then fling your body back towards the earth in bitterness and resent and helplessness and when you near the ground, just seconds before you hit, remember the first time you saw snow, and the way it felt, cold and wet and magical against your fingers, and smile, grin widely, pull up from the dive and land on your feet because it’s worth it, of course it’s worth it, there’s music and chocolate and fun and laughter and love, and run back into the house, race to your computer, sit back down and log in to World of Warcraft for another hour. Apologise to the rest of your raid group for going afk. Tell them your gran called.

Those are the ten most important safety and security tips for World of Warcraft players. Keep them in mind at all times - because you can never be too safe. Or too secure. Thank you.

11 Comments

If you ask, most people would say that Monday is the worst day of the week, what with it being the first working day after a nice relaxing weekend, brutally throwing you back into a routine of getting up early and not getting home till late, leaving you with far to little time to do all the things you would like to spend your afternoons doing. However, could this just be an effect of years and years of indoctrination from the media? It starts with Garfield and then goes on as you grow out of cartoons (if you do) with various popular characters from movies and TV series, all hating Mondays. I myself have retained the love of Lasagna, but years of testing have made me come to the conclusion that the idea of Monday being the worst day of the week is a myth.

So if it’s not Monday, then what day could possibly be agonising enough to steal the title? Sunday is a good candidate. Why?, you ask, Sunday is part of the weekend! Yes, it is, but it’s the Sunday evening that makes it qualify. Those last hours of weekend that seem to rush past all too quickly. You want to prolong them, but you can’t. You want to make the most of them, but there’s nothing to do on a Sunday evening since most things are closed and you do have to get up early the day after, so you can’t go mad and throw a house party. Nobody would show up anyway because they’re in the same situation as you. This brings on a feeling of hopelessness and apathy, but for the most part these feelings only surface during the evening, making the rest of the day quite nice and pleasant, thus putting the Sunday relatively high up on the list of good days.

For obvious reasons it’s not Saturday or Friday. Granted, the first eight hours of the Friday can be excrushiatingly slow, but what comes after makes up for that. Thursday is not so bad since it’s almost Friday and the weekend is right there on the horizon. You can almost feel it wash over you. It can be argued though, that this very feeling is what makes the Thursday a viable candidate for the worst day of the week award. That’s not it though.

We are left with two days to choose from, Wednesday and Tuesday. Both are good candidates. I’ve always, with quite a lack of logic, thoguht of Wednesday as the longest day of the week since it’s got the longest name. Clearly, that’s not a viable argument. It is, however, smack in the middle of the working week, something which can be considered both good and bad. You’ve passed the halfway mark, but you’ve also got just as much left to go, which can make for quite a bit of distress. Maybe even more so if you had a bad start to the week. But this factor is quite situational, leaving us with Tuesday. But how can it possibly be worse than all of the other days?

Well, I’ll tell you. By Tuesday you’ve most likely used up all the energy and cheer you saved up during the weekend. That was all spent in an effort to make the Monday bearable, leaving you with only lack of sleep and poor motivation to get you through the day. And let’s face it. Those two does not exactly make for good companions. So you’re tired and don’t feel like working. It could be argued that this goes for most days, but the Tuesday’s positioning in the calendar makes those feelings grow and mate and spawn little evil offspring feelings such as despair, sadness and apathy.

Take a good look at your calendar. After the weekend you’ve got Monday. Monday is for remebering. Remebering just how awful it is to get up at 7am, go to work in the rain (there’s always rain) and then spend the whole day doing something you probably don’t enjoy as much as you would like to, possibly together with people you haven’t chosen and that haven’t chosen you. By Monday evening all of this has come back to you and by Tuesday morning it is still fresh in your memory. You snooze for 10 more minutes than you should have and then you have to hurry like a madperson to get in on time. Had it been a Wednesday, or even a Thursday you could have comforted yourself with the fact that at least you’re past halfway to the weekend.

And that is my main argument. On a Tuesday you can’t comfort yourself with promises of weekend fun, there’s nothing. You’re not halfway, the weekend is gone behind you and there’s nothing left of the extra energy it left you with at the start of the week.

That is why I hate Tuesdays the most.

26 Comments

BRUCECON 4

Weymouth, UK
14 - 16 November

It has been more than one year since the Bruces first braved the outside world to meet each other in the flesh. Yet time has brought little comfort.

For though we entered Weymouth a naive band of innocent young Internet fans, we left that place a shadow of our former selves. Those who survived, left broken. A band of ghosts.

16 long months have passed since that fateful weekend. We who escaped with our lives carry scars that will never heal. Scars that wake us screaming, tearing at our skin, begging for release from the horror, and the filth, and the darkness which gnaws at the edges of our minds.

It is pointless. There is only one way we can be free.

We have to go back.

12 Comments