A little treat to pass the time: the Gnome Chef Roulette addon

So remember how a couple months ago I asked you guys about food and drink practices during raiding times.. and then I had a poll on my blog where I asked people to tell me what they tend to eat and drink during raids? Well, the results were surprisingly healthy (sort of!)!

For eating, the following were the top responses:
27%: I might eat a light snack such as a sandwich.
25%: I eat my dinner during the raid as I get home so close to start time.
25%: Nothing.
19%: Anything I can get my hands on that won't poison me or lacerate my disgestive tract.

Now some of us might be eating rubber tyres or stale biscuits while we raid, but a lot of us are also having something healthy like a meal or a snack or eating nothing at all. I'm a bit troubled by the high response rate saying that quite a few of us have dinner while we raid as that suggests that quite a few raiders are in guilds that actually start raids around that raider's dinnertime. At least anecdotally I know that for those raiders it's often an issue of having to race home from work to just get online in time for the raid start and barely enough time to throw something in the microwave or oven. It's a shame more of us don't consider starting later than the typical 8 pm start time, if that's possible.

For drinks, we had the following top responses, also moderately healthy, particularly the top response:
52%: Water.
38%: Soda.
17%: Beer and/or cider.
15%: Juice.

So while we are definitely engaged in drinking sodas or beer, a significant majority have water while they raid.

I'm glad to say that these poll results really do disagree with the stereotypical idea that all gamers are sitting around stuffing themselves with sweets/candy, crisps/chips, and guzzling a lot of mountain dew. Now I know some of you are doing that, but the reality is that not all of us are. To see the full results, please check out my poll archives: http://www.raidingresearch.co.uk/?page_id=840.

So to wrap up this little foray into all things food and drink-ish and to give you a kind of amusement to pass the time between raid pulls, I wanted to share this addon that was written especially for this purpose by addon creator Olog. Olog has designed some other addons that are used by his own guild and has written others that have been more widely used by the gaming community at large. This addon is called Gnome Chef Roulette and the idea is that you have a way to create gourmet dishes inspired by the “produce” available in the game itself! It’s a game of roulette as you’re going to have to trust your little Gnome chef pal to concoct something appropriate for the occasion. So get cooking and amaze your fellow raiders! Please avoid spamming, though, as you don't want to give your fellow raiders indigestion!

You can download the addon here: http://www.raidingresearch.co.uk/?attachment_id=1225.

Instructions: Just load it like any other addon and type /chef to open the window. It’s quite self-explanatory but people can either whisper to you or say !food and your chef will automatically produce something fabulous! (You can also just say !food yourself and you’ll broadcast what you’ve cooked as well.)

Enjoy and happy Patch 4.3!