Happy Hour at the Dungeon

It's kind of a tradition in MMO group content to find someone who's been imbibing some alcoholic beverages. I mean, it's typically an after hours activity, and if you're at home (or at an internet cafe) and you're of the right age, why not have a drink or two?

Unfortunately, it's also a tradition for people to over imbibe in group content.

There was one time back in January 2022 where our TBC Classic raid team was raiding Serpentshrine Cavern, and we were testing out a new Main Tank. He seemed competent enough, and while I could hear the occasional glug of a drink, I didn't think anything of it. I mean, I used to have a beer when I raided before my hospital stay, so why not someone else? Well, right before we were to take on Lady Vashj, we'd prepped for the pull and.... Nothing. The "new" Main Tank didn't pull. He didn't respond to our calls in Discord.

He had passed out right before the pull of the last boss in the raid.

Oops. 

We quickly scrambled and to a replacement MT to show, but no, we didn't kill Vashj on that raid. 

Oh well.

Anyway, I bring this up because last night I was taking a break and goofing around on the Anniversary servers, and I figured I'd get into an instance or two. If nothing else, they ought to be pretty standard runs for a Friday night. 

Have I ever mentioned my naïveté before?

On the first run, there were three guild members: tank, healer, and Enhancement Shaman DPS. The Healer was drunk. And by drunk, I mean "he was doing shots of tequila" drunk. Despite that, we were doing okay, until the latest shots hit his system, about 2/3 of the way through. 

How do I know this? He started speaking of himself in third person. 

At one point, the Shaman had died and I made a quip about reaction times and the Shaman replied saying "I'm laughing so hard I'm crying right now."

People died enough times that someone thankfully dropped a repair bot, so we could repair without our gear breaking.

Still, it was a fun run, if for nothing else that the Healer provided enormous amounts of unintentional comedy.

The second run was a bit different, because the Mage didn't speak English other than "GO" or "YAY" or "SAD" or "HAPPY".* Still, I could tolerate that were it not for the tank being inebriated, so he wasn't being that attentive to the Healer. At one point the Healer specifically said after a boss fight "brb bio", and the tank kept right on going. When the Healer came back and managed to rescue a bad pull, she pointed out she said "brb bio" and tank replied with "we didn't die".

::rolls eyes::

The tank made a couple of other bad judgements in the run, one we recovered from and one... we didn't. Luckily I was on Joan, and therefore I had Soulstoned the Healer just for such an emergency. The Healer then called out the adds that we had on that pull and the tank claimed innocence.  At least that didn't turn out to be a big row, but for certain the Healer split right after the last boss. Can't say I blamed her.

I guess it's a pick your poison sort of situation: if you make people laugh and you're obviously silly about it, that forgives a host of sins. But if you're pushing when there's no reason to, and because you're a bit drunk you're not quite as fast with reflexes as you think you are...

Hey, it wasn't my fault this time!!!

*At the end of the run, I asked for a portal in both English and Spanish, and no bueno.

#Blaugust2026