Wreck from Addicted to WoW sent us his interesting opinion on the Season 3 gear required ratings. Why, he asks, didn't Blizzard put rating requirements on all the gear? When season 3 starts, the season 3 shoulders and weapons will require a high Arena rating to own (2000 and 1850), and Wreck wants to know why only the shoulders and weapons got put behind a rating wall. Why not make all the gear that much harder to get?

As far as I know, the cited reason behind the ratings was to keep raiders from losing in the Arenas and still getting gear. The weapons in season 3 are terrific, even compared to the mid-endgame raiding gear, and so raiders were playing just their 10 games every week, saving up Arena points, and grabbing the hot weapons. Blizzard didn't want that happening, so they put the requirement on the weapons-- you have to be good to wield those now.

But the shoulders I don't quite understand. I've been told that the shoulders are the most obvious piece of "leet" armor, and that Blizzard, as Wreck says, really wants seeing those shoulders on someone to be a sign that they're really good in the Arenas. But shoulders? As a few players have said, give them a title or something if you want them to be recognized. There's good reason for putting the weapons behind a rating, but if you're going to put shoulders back there too, you might as well require the rating for all the pieces, or leave the armor out of it completely.

Does leet speak reduce your WoW playing enjoyment? Do caps lock and abbreviations set your teeth on edge? If so, Xkhan agrees with you and attributes it possibly to age. His list of pet peeves incites an interesting forum thread discussing in-game annoyances along with the etymological origins of some leet speak.

For example, did you know that GG stands for Good Game? While it is currently used sarcastically, for years it has been spammed at the end of FPS games as a show of good sportsmanship. Ah, playing CTF in Tribes II with the Hammer or something-or-other mod equaled hours of pure gaming pleasure. But I digress...

We've discussed pet peeves before and whether or not we are killing our language with leetspeak. Many mature players would prefer not to play with children who are incapable of forming grammatically correct sentences or playing their character properly. But do we get more upset with these annoyances the older we get?

Normally the WoW Raids & Dungeons forum is the conventional wretched hive of scum and villainy, with raiders complaining encounters have been buffed, other raiders disparaging the previous raiders' progress, and casual players making the 200th "Get out of your mom's basement" post the day.

But sometimes, like today, the forum produces wonderful and hilarious things. "My guild is so uber 1337 that ..." is full of raiders talking about how, in fact, their guild is so awesome at WoW it extends beyond the confines of the game itself. In fact, they're so uber 1337 that ...

• "We enrage at 50 percent." (Zifna, Resurgence Theory)
• "We use all our skills via typing. /cast Sinister Strike. Booyah." (Sternumus, Bringers of Blood)
• "On nights we don't raid, bosses farm herbs for flasks, and Blizzard actually pays us $13 a month." (Bobetski, Tempestus Fury)
• "Vael starts at 1% and in a bend-over position." (Saliya, Primeval)
• "Our loot table is an actual table with loot on top." (Shnap, SIEGE)

Can you beat this leet?