First off, let me just say that this year was crazy. We were hoping to double last year's 140-ish gnomes if possible, but the turn out was insane. Even the day or two before the event, when I would sneak on to invite friends, there would be 2 or 3 gnomes all ready hanging out, chatting, leveling,
waiting, and asking for an invite. Never did we dream to have 500 participants.
Taken about 1 or 2 hours before the run. It got way crazy after this point.
The enthusiasm that the WoW community met the event with is always shocking. Sometimes it feels like the organizers just push things around, and much like horde of Gnomes, the event just magically happens. (It doesn't, we kind of live sleep
eat gnome for a few days.) I used to be active on Tumblr, but I kind of fell off with that. Yet, people reposted the banner aruond there, it flew around the livejournal community, we got Over 500 page views from facebook alone. People shared on their guild pages, their battle.net accounts, I saw a ton of hits from twitter. One WoWer even spread the message all around the forums for every server they played on. For the record, that person played on 47 servers, not counting Scarlet Crusade.
Our general forums thread alone was 15 pages long, and highly rated. (Though, my first post got reported, and some people warned me that I would get banned for attempting to crash a server. LOL)
My guild leader's computer glitched took pink hair too seriously. Where are their bodies?!
I felt nervous setting a $300 goal this year. Last year we raised a lot, but our goal was only $100. When you're dealing with small donations, $300 can be a lofty goal. We cleared it in less than an hour. So far, as of writing this, we've reached $345, and I know some people
still plan on donating, and I can't wait to see the total at the end of the month.
SeeD started a in guild tradition of Pink Tabards back in 2009, and this year, both SeeD and House of the Valar held their Breast Cancer Awareness events using the tabards to reward members for wearing them all month long. (Members gain virtual tickets all month each time an officer spots them wearing their tabards. At the end of the month, both guilds are raffling off a Vial of the Sands.) However, many guild joined in! Forge Camp Sunshine, Aegis Hestia, Freelance, & The Rat Pack (plus many more!) all donned pink tabards.
The race started out a bit too early. The gnomes saw it was time to go, and before we could even give a "Ready, a Set," or a Person to follow, they were off, more like a sea of pink! You can't really stop gnomes on a mission, so we had to mute guild chat, tell them wear to stop, and there was a breif PvP party, and then we were off again.
The Tram was dangerous. I mean, gnomes are small, but there's got to be an amount limit on how many of those things you can carry on one Tram! We ran through Stormwind, parked in good old Goldshire. And then faced the terrors of Duskwood, and Stranglethorn Vale.
There were some hordies with us, but a few got PvP flagged, and we mistook it for the hordies who trying to flag us, and our escorts picked them off by accident.
We're so sorry. :(
We managed to make it all the way to Booty Bay yet again, and we had a lot more 85s watching us. There were some stragglers. (I was one of them, but a gnome on a mammoth saved me!) And some gnomes died to roaming mobs. (I was one of them, but a friendly escort scooped me up). Some folks got lost. Some folks didn't quite know where we were going. I think a few people may have fallen in the whirlpool in STV. The lag was crazy.
At the end when we got to Booty Bay, we managed to wrangle every one on top of the bank, and we took screenshots yet again. Making a ribbon with 500ish people is not like 100ish people. It kind of looks like a ribbon. We got a lot of great screenshots. It's came out pretty, but man, taking screenshots and arranging people at 1 FPS is really difficult.
After that, a pile of us went on an adventure and said hello to Garrosh. The horde either helped or stopped us, but we were giggling like school kids over it.
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For a lot more pictures, you can check out the facebook event a member set up!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=185307291543592
We've been featured on wowinsider.com which is also pretty neat, on their Around Azeroth feature!
Emerald, leader of Forge Camp Sunshine, (who's a pretty cool bear) and he's the person who made last year's video made a video:
Hugglywuggles, of Forum and Youtube fame, also made a video for us! His video's a bit shorter, but apparently he rocks a gnome all year long:
As I mentioned, after all was said and done, the gnomes decided to have some extra fun, and paid the Horde a visit. We said hello to Garrosh, and are napping on his throne until next year.
Thanks for the great run you guys. Everything you guys did, from showing up, to donating, to spreading the word, to talking to people about awareness does a huge thing. See ya next year.
If you and your guild are looking for a free way to donate free Mammograms year round, you can click
this link. Just clicking on the button that says "Click Here" donates apparently. I've been doing it for years. It supports the National Breast Cancer Foundation, who gives low income women who can't afford mammograms otherwise, the chance to get screened. If you can check your guild website, or facebook, you can click on that once a day.
PS:
This was the most insane thing I had happen at the end of the run.
I got a ton of whispers, a lot of people sharing their personal stories, or thank yous, or whatever, and I don't want to post them here, but they're pretty special just to hear about . A few of my fellow organizers got to hear them too with people whispering them and whatnot.
But one person said they worked for Kevin Smith, and he asked them to make an appearance. But they also said that they Worked for Paramount, soooo.....I think it was a fake, LOL! But who knows!
