Edit: A lot of people have been wrongly tying together "integrity" with arena compositions. Let me clarify: the integrity has no connection with the $100 challenge. The $100 challenge is just my attempt at finding out if people will try to run a combo that isn't considered heavily overpowered. Again, the $100 challenge and the "integrity" theme of this blog are not by any means connected, though I can understand why it looks like I may have tried to tie them together.

Lately, I've been sitting around, observing my surroundings, not just in game, but in real life. What kind of people do I associate with? What are their values? Do I want others to look at me and be influenced by who I'm friends or acquaintances with? We've seen the impacts of these judgments, especially in politics today.
You are the company you keep, a common cliche, with a lot of merit.

To stay relevant to my readers, I'm going to talk about WoW, not politics in this blog. But, more increasingly I've seen players, who often times themselves do not condone but actually find the actions of their in-game peers as reprehensible. For example, if someone in your guild stole loot from your guild, wouldn't that have a negative impact on your relationship with that person? Even if you were friends? (Unless, of course, you both have a vendetta against the guild you're in)

Likewise, if a friend of yours (or perhaps an acquaintance) was at your house and stole a piece of clothing, your wallet or perhaps a video game, wouldn't that have a significant negative impact on how you view that person? Couldn't it even sever your ties with that person?

I recall pre-BC, running a UBRS run, and the elusive Chromatic Carapace dropped off of Gyth. Sure, I wasn't an enchanter/engineer/whatever to actually use the item, but when a hunter on my server (I don't recall his actual name but I think it was Jayrye) stole the item because the run wasn't going as smoothly as he had hoped, I was immediately angry. Not just for his actions, but because he had stolen from others who could have used it without doing a fair roll. He had disrespected everyone in the run and violated our trust. (After all, he was in the group with us).

We all know people like this on our server. Often times, they get  blacklisted from the first action of ninjaing because they can't be trusted and are abominations.

Why is it, then, that our integrity no longer seems valuable to us with the release of arena? All sorts of players have done detestable acts, often times without regret, and manage to continue playing with other high-rated players.

Do you have any integrity?

I don't want to be too specific, but I have to drop a few names here.
Serennia, Neilyo, GC, Wojo and to a lesser extent players like Inactive for their conduct have been continually getting opportunities to play with other players because of their tenacity to win games and get to the top of the ladder.

Do the actions of any of these players mean anything? Are we all endowed with a sense of selfishness and greed to the point where we will overlook detestable acts people have done just to get money? Let's use an extreme example: would you associate with someone who murdered another human in cold blood and wasn't repentant?

I have to again point to our political figures. If they kept company like players in WoW do, they'd never get re-elected and would lose all respect from people in the country.

Now, I know numerous people that play with people in my aforementioned list among with others, and I still can't understand it.

My fellow teammates themselves keep playing with people like this, and I don't know why. They probably have no conscience or ethical standards to uphold.

Sure, I've played with Serennia, mainly because I'm not usually one to hold judgment unless I actually give that person a chance with me.
Serennia definitely met the expectations I had as someone who was self-aggrandizing, corrupt, inconsiderate and an outright jerk who didn't care what the means were to the ends.

I have to admit, however, that a lot of people, like Kurlanz and Brazetina, had the sound judgment to pull the plug on people that clearly had disgusting personalities.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm very tenacious when it comes to integrity. If you do something to me or to someone else and I don't see signs of repenting, you're going to lose any chance to associate with me.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have firm beliefs on ethics and conduct, and I feel that is what makes a society great. Having people who oppose and ostracize scumbags are what lifts a society up.

I may have my own character flaws, and I admit to often times going against what I feel is ethical. (Often times I may insult another player for being terrible, which is clearly not the way I really feel, but just a moment of anger where I lose some inhibitions)

What kind of a person are you? Do you hold these same views as me? Or are you all about winning games, reaching top ladder, and making money? This doesn't have to relate to WoW, it can relate to real life, too.

The $100 challenge

*Note: This offer is only valid for the top 20 players on the tourney realm.

I am offering $100 to any top 20 players that are using a druid to use another healer for the remaining portion of the tournament. However, the catch is that they can not create another team. They need to continue the rest of the tournament with a different healer on their main team, thus risking their chances at continuing the tournament.

This offer also extends to PMR, of which I will be offering $100 to any PMR to replace any class of their lineup for a different class. (IE: going from PMR to Priest/Mage/Warrior)

This offer will not hold if you use a druid healer, run any form of double healer or run PMR.

Why am I doing this challenge? To see if anybody has the guts to not conform to bracket compositions of 3v3 that are widely seen as overpowered or unbalanced. For example, I haven't seen a warrior since the start of season 2 use any healer except druids in every composition they run. The exception was Inactive when he ran priest/lock/warrior at the end of season 2.
The same goes for PMR - everyone runs it.

Offer ends 5/10/08, midnight.