[Based on true stories.]

1. You read the forums and WoW blogs during your 10 minute breaks.
2. You see every exclamation point as an opportunity to do a quest. (This could drive you slightly insane if you make a living copywriting. Or you’re a college student with lots of essays.)
3. You see every question mark as an opportunity to gain experience.
4. The first thing you do when you play Guild Wars is roll a smiting monk and scream, “Why Blizzard, why are they more efficient in this game!?”
5. Your only active MSN conversation is a heated argument about how male Dranei cannot possibly look intimidating because they look more like a bunch of ridiculous Hulk cartoons.
6. You choose a dinner option that takes 10 minutes less to prepare and eat because that’s 10 minutes more of WoW time.
7. You wonder if you can hook your DDR pad up to your gaming pad so you can exercise and kill Horde/Alliance at the same time. (Which would be revolutionary. Obviously.)
8. You search in a frantic for your BlizzCon t-shirt to wear after you sweated the crap out of your Yoshi shirt while playing on that DDR pad earlier. Unfortunately, you still haven’t figured out how to hook it up to your gaming pad.
9. You look at your pet frogs and think about pads and think about gaming and think about WoW. Holy crap.
10. When your Dungeons and Dragons group suggests moving your session to a day where all the players can make it–with one less hour of playing time–you adamantly fight for this option so you can get one more hour of WoW.
11. You think it’s amusing that Guild Wars asks you to take a break after 2 hours of playing instead of potentially healthy.
12. You pull out the WoW fishing pole while you’re sorting through your Magic: the Gathering cards.
13. You have the Burning Crusade opening theme on your iPod.
14. You have the Burning Crusade opening theme on a playlist called “Shower Time.”
15. You set up your G-chat or Facebook status to a quote from the forums.
16. Your email signature includes a banner of your character or a forum quote.
17. You want to know why you’re limited to six-month payment plans. Two years for $10/month sounds awesome, right?
18. You’re pissed they put the World of Warcraft discussions on the smaller stage at BlizzCon. You also want to know WTF they were thinking when 80% of BlizzCon crowds around that smaller stage.
19. You have a name reserved for a Worgen or Goblin.
20. You eat pizza while playing World of Warcraft at least once a week. You might even complain about how /pizza isn’t an option.
21. You love the achievement system.
22. You have World of Warcraft installed on the laptop you brought with you to Hawaii. You even put your Wrath of the Lich King discs in your suitcase in case you forgot to upgrade it since your last vacation.
23. You wait in slightly painful anticipation for your opportunity to jump into the Cataclysm beta.
24. You wait in even more painful anticipation for presales of the collector’s edition to Cataclysm because you’ll be damned if you don’t get the noncombat pet.
25. You drank one of those disgusting mana potions they were selling at Fry’s. Then you bought another one and dared someone else to drink it.
26. You have a World of Warcraft trading card game collection.
27. You bought a loot card on eBay.
28. You have a blog dedicated to World of Warcraft.
29. You’re reading this post.
30. You’ve bookmarked this blog. You sly devil, you.

Tiny Update: Johanah is still on Cenarius (with that slightly different spelling even) and I’ve switched primarily to Holy PvP, which I still need to write more about. In the interim, I am playing my resto druid and leveling holy paladin on Sen’jin. I apologize for the lack of updates! (I also partially blame DDR.)

I thought it was due time to add something to the smite priest community and given that our spec is mostly for the rofls, another humorous post seemed fitting. If you have more to add to this post, feel free to comment!

Everyone and their mom and dog seem to be farming trash mobs in the ICC 5-man dungeons for their Battered Hilt. And for good reason too; this quest chain will not only get you one of the best weapons in the game (for many classes/specs, the best in slot), it will take you through some amazing lore and epic Azeroth travel.

Rather than write out yet another battered hilt guide, I thought I would point readers in the right direction for Battered Hilt information and how to complete the chain. Before you get started though, let me dispel three myths:

• The Battered Hilt no longer drops off skeletons in Pit of Saron. They fixed that in 12-15-09 to stop people from farming; and thank goodness, I was going insane.
• The Battered Hilt’s droprate is lower in Halls of Reflection. You can wipe and get more trash mobs forever, so it makes sense for them to do this. The change was implemented as of 12-9-09.
• Yes, the Battered Hilt’s droprate was increased.

Alright then! The following are the five best reads on the Internet right now for the Battered Hilt:

1. The ups and downs of the Battered Hilt from WoW.com
2. Battered Hilt: What? from the WoW forums
3. Battered Hilt: Do I have to? from MMOChampion
4. Battered Hilt and Epic Drop Changes from Spooncraft
5. WoWWiki’s Battered Hilt entry

Personally, I got my Battered Hilt right around Christmas (thank you, Santa) and I had to deal with a paladin QQ the whole instance about how he’s a tank and absolutely has to have that weapon. I politely explained I’m one of the main healers for my guild and then clawed at my face for 20 minutes IRL while I ignored the repetitious pleas for my recently won item. In other groups I’ve joined since then, I’ve had people get into similar “I need it more” contests and I just sit back and think how feral we WoW players all are.

And I lol at the people that pay real money for this thing. If you want to blow a ton of gold you’ve saved up on your WoW toon for it, that’s one thing — virtual money buys virtual things — but some of these Craigslist posts are ridiculous. Like this one:

Looking to purchase a battered hilt that you get from the new five man dungeons in world of warcraft, let me know if you have one and are willing to sell it for $35 send me an email and well figure out how to trade it ingame. Thank you. Please no scammers.

First of all: trying to buy WoW items with IRL money is a scam. So asking for no scammers is mind-boggling. Secondly, I know a great steak restaurant you can get dinner at for $35.

What’s your Battered Hilt story? Where have you read about this mythical drop?

I know I’m not alone in the masochistic pool of WoW players. As an example, I’m certainly not the only person with a Winterspring Frostsaber story to tell. Then there’s things like doing every one of those Holiday achievements for that mount that flies a nanosecond faster (shaman has it, thought of doing it twice for my priest gives me shudders), and the torturous experience I refuse to put myself through, Insane in the Membrane. (Fuyuko’s got an Insane in the Membrane Guide if you’re dumb enough to do it, btw.)

I do these painful, exciting things outside of WoW too; such as participating in rigorously demanding writing events like National Blog Posting Month. Johannah the Smite Priest was part of the event in November, and my now-retired fiction blog had partaken in it in the past in the well, to the point where I thought I was secure to move on from that torturous endeavor. Then they sent me an email.

January’s theme is THE BEST.

And don’t WoW players like to know THE BEST of everything? The best spec, the best piece of gear, the best thing to scream when you run into a clump of whelps to intentionally wipe your raid. Well, Johannah the Smite Priest is here to deliver! For the month of January, I’ll be exploring the best of every aspect of the priest raiding world. There’ll be some PvP spice in there too, for sure.

Before I embark on this dangerous journey that will tear out yet another sliver of my insanity, I am curious: what would you like to see the best of? Answer the poll or, better yet, leave a comment with a suggestion! THE BEST will begin on New Years!