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When your raid is mostly older people, e.g., people more likely to have kids than to be in high school, and you're fairly casual in approach, then you're going to see people drinking while they raid. I almost always have a beer or two while raiding. It's relaxing and part of the sense of being social and hanging out together.

Sometimes people drink a little more than that. This is not always good for progression or accuracy in play, though, as you might expect. But you've got to enjoy the journey. The fact that you're playing a game that requires a little bit of concentration seems to keep people from really overdoing it. Once people realize they're a little tipsy and missing their buttons, they tend to step out and take the rest of the evening off. In the meantime, a little lubrication keeps things moving and helps maintain an atmosphere of fun.

Lately, we've been occasionally playing the "Everybody drinks when Licil dies" game.

Licil is a dps warrior who puts out a lot of damage. That means he pulls aggro a lot on the trash, which leads to a lot of needing to be rezzed. Now, pulling mobs off the tanks can cause a lot of trouble. When the ranged dps (mages, hunters, warlocks) pull aggro, the mob runs to them and then turns on the healers, who die, and that's not that funny (usually). When melee dps like a warior, rogue or enhancement-spec shaman, pulls aggro the mob spins, pwns them and snaps back to the tank. And if you're playing, everybody drinks.

Then the conversation might turn to what people are drinking rather than how to actually beat the next boss. "Jose Cuervo Black," "Jagerbombs," "Pina Colada's," "Southern Comfort." I'm a single malt scotch type of guy myself when I'm not drinking beer or wine (see, I told you I'm old). Note that it's best if you're in a pretty familiar area since discussing types of drinks is more interesting than reminding people which tank is getting which mob, who's in charge of crowd control, etc.

Predictably, on some nights people get more interested in drinking than actually killing stuff and you see the healers start arranging to not heal the drink target. Or tanks "missing" their taunt button. Last night after around 2am server time, Licil started running around taunting mobs and aggroing as much as he could just to make it as entertaining as possible. I don't even think he's old enough to drink, but he must have thought it'd be funny to get as many other people hammered as possible.

Of course, the "repeated applications of the ethanol debuff" (as Hawksy so eloquently puts it) leads to even more trouble with basic raid skills like the meaning of "stop dps" or "don't stand in the fire." But, whatever. We still killed a few things and optimizing the fun is not always equal to optimizing the amount of loot.

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