Boo

Sometimes I have guildies ask me about my guild note: "Go for the eyes, Boo!"

I suppose I can now just point them to this post :)

Meet Boo.


Boo is the most powerful druid in the game. Boo has been a class leader in a 40-man raiding guild. Boo has been challenged to duels from across the faction boundary. Boo has defeated numerous bosses, and served as a mentor to several druids, including Kae, for years.

Boo is summoned and dismissed through use of a [Prairie Dog Whistle].


Who is Boo??

Firstly, Boo is a miniature giant space hamster, companion of the berserking ranger Minsc, who served as a comic relief character in Baldur's Gate. Boo was a running joke throughout the games of the Baldur's Gate series, and present to provide "wisdom and moral support to Minsc." Minsc and Boo were my favorite characters in Baldur's Gate, so it was only a matter of time before the joke entered my WoW play.

The story of Boo as a druid goes back to my first days of raiding. I had picked up a Brown Prairie Dog off of the cross-faction AH, and loved the little critter; it quickly became my favorite pet. First, I made a simple emote macro that was:

/e tells her Brown Prairie Dog to attack %T. Go for the eyes, Boo!

Other players of the Baldur's Gate series loved it, and Boo became something of a celebrity within the guild. As Boo became a popular running joke, some of course wished to bully him and thus make themselves feel superior to his popularity or some such a thing (ahhh social dancing!), and they would attempt to emote attacks at him, etc.

This is where WoW-Boo diverged from Bioware-Boo.

In defending Boo against these crazy attacks, a story was woven that Boo was no ordinary prairie dog (nor even an ordinary miniature giant space hamster!). Boo became a powerful druid, one of few to have discovered the legendary Tunnel Form (which prompted some giggles on its own >_> ). Boo grew in power to finally becoming an Arch-Druid 10-20 levels beyond the in-game character level cap, and he usually looked down on the pitiful attacks with mild humor until the raid was distracted by needing to kill a boss.

Over time, he even became known to the horde that I PvPed against, and one even came to Ironforge under pretense of seeking to challenge Boo to a duel (the azgalor.org forums were amusing).


Boo: Druid Class Leader

During a switch in officers, it was Boo who became the new druid class leader... I just had to be bumped up to officer as well so that I could serve as his translator. Seriously. It's the only way I agreed to becoming an officer! The other druids were very supportive of Boo, and most perpetuated the joke.

Boo even made it into the holiday picture, which had an honorable mention in Blizzard's art contest for that year. Thus, Boo has even been on the front page of the WoW website :) The originally submitted version had no names, but I will share the named version here:



Haxx?

Boo preferred to stay in his small form for several reasons. For one, he was far too high level to really think much of the content, and just hung out with us for humor. For two, in the larger raids, he had to hide so that Blizzard would not think we were hacking the game by having a 41st person in our raids, and thus he could not contribute unfairly beyond being moral support. Oh, and what moral support he was! To paraphrase from memory,

Kae tells her Brown Prairie Dog to attack Nefarian. Go for the eyes, Boo!
[Guild]: GO BOO!
[Kae]: [Boo]: SQUEAK!
[Kae]: Boo says Nef's a pansy.

Oh, and there was a Boo 2. He was companion to a rogue in the guild, Sazoroth, and was known to wield a Maladath. There was some threat that Boo 2 was going to slice open Saz's smoke detector if he didn't change the batteries soon.



I don't include Boo in my serious character background developments, but he is a large part of my history as a player in this game.

Go for the eyes, Boo :)