Terrible Twos

I was reading a blog post the other day over at Looking For More and they mentioned that they had been super busy with real life home stuff but that they weren't done with blogging, especially since they had their two year blogaversary coming up. This got me thinking about my blogaversary and when it was and after doing some searching I found out when it was. For those of you keeping score at home, yes I did not remember my own blogaversary. (Hell I can't even remember how old I am most of the time) Anyway, I started blogging on January 25, 2010 and yet somehow I am still blogging! At a slightly slower pace than my first year of course but that's not the point. The point is that I'm still here and still whining and ranting about things no one else really cares about and you all are stuck with me for the foreseeable future!

Seriously, I am as shocked as you all are that (1) I am still writing this blog and (2) that you weird people are still reading my blog. I would have figured you'd have all abandoned my blog by now, what with my slow post schedule, lack of interesting posts, and horrible attempts at guild recruitment. I suppose some of you just enjoy torturing yourselves and use my blog as the tool to do so.

So after two years of blogging about random things, I have decided to do something fun for my readers. What do I have planned you may be asking yourselves. Is it a pony? Could it be bigger than a breadbox? Is it steel? Are there locks? Will it come in a box? Is it filled with a pox? Well since I'm a bastard, I will keep you all in suspense for a little bit longer. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ok well that's enough of that. For my 2 year blogaversary I will be giving away not one, not two, but THREE custom icon images created by the awesome and very talented Liala. The icon can be of your WoW or SWTOR character. I don't know about you but I would totally enter this giveaway for one of those sexy icons. If you are not sure what the icons look like, check out Liala's Space Cadets website to see the ones she created for the Star Wars: The Old Republic companion NPCS. They are seriously cool.

So what do you have to do to enter this giveaway of mine? Will it be legal in all 50 States? Well it is very simple, all you have to do is just leave a comment with a link to the image of the character that you'd like an icon of. I will assign a number to each person as they comment and at the contest close I will randomly choose three numbers and those three people will get their very own icons!

The deadline to comment to enter the giveaway will be 11am central time on Friday February 3, 2012 and I will post the winners not long after that! Please only leave one comment entry and be sure to tell all your friends about this giveaway! And most important of all: Thanks for continuing to read my blog. <3

Here's to many more years of blogging about random shenanigans! /Cheers

How not to apply to a guild

With my Guild starting a Star Wars: The Old Republic branch, we have had some people apply to join the guild and for the most part the applications have been pretty standard and those people have all gotten into the guild. The other day we had one that was so outstanding that I just had to share it with everyone. When it came in, I had to read it several times to make sure I was reading it correctly. It represents everything that you should NOT do when applying to join a guild. It was so bad that my wife read the first few lines and instantly said Hell No to the app. I figure that I should rant about this guild a bit so if you have no interest in reading about an application to my guild, feel free to change the channel.

Now while I won't link the application here, I will be describing sections of it so you can understand how bad the app was. If you want to see the application you can head over to my guild site and find it for yourself. Here is a link to the blank application template, as you can see it has five sections but the info we ask is kind of important and we aren't expecting someone to write a paragraph for each question. Most people answer each question as best as they can and move on. The application shouldn't take long to fill out and most people fill it out rather quickly.

To all the GM's I've loved

I was talking to a fellow Guild Master about the nature of guilds and how they can wear you down and I was asked when the last time I was thanked for everything that I did or that I was appreciated? I had to stop and think about that and when I finally came up with an answer, I responded with "Not in a long while." This got me thinking: Why do I bother to be the GM of my guild if I can't even recall when the last time someone told me they appreciated anything I did?

That's a tough question to answer. Why does anyone do anything if they can expect to never be thanked or be made to feel appreciated. Well I know why I do it? I like to believe that I am a sane and rational person and I do it because I like providing a service to the people in the guild. Of course I also like to believe that one day Baron Geddon will drop the Left Bindings of the Windseeker for my pally. Clearly neither of these things are true. I lead because while I can be a follower, I prefer to do my own thing and the best way to do that for me was to start my own guild and along the way other people who enjoyed the way I ran things joined me on my quest to hang out and have a good time.

I had written those last two paragraphs about 3 weeks ago and had let them sit there while I figured out what else I wanted to say when I remembered something. One of my newer guildees had emailed me a guest post back in October for me to post while I was away getting married/on my honeymoon and I had forgotten to post it. I went back and read it and I remembered one the most rewarding things about being a guild master in WoW. Here is the post for you all to read and afterward I'll explain what that rewarding thing is(my edits will be in italic): 

A while back my awesome, cool, now MARRIED (congrats you two love birds) guildmaster posted a blog about why he continues to play WoW after 6 long years of badassery. So I figured hey, I should share why I love WoW after just a few months of playing…and against my better judgment I decided that I would let other people read something that I wrote.

               
Besides the amazing visualizations, the years and years of in depth actually INTERESTING storyline, the sheer volume of add ons, extras, perks, world events, mounts, achievements, professions, blah blah blah. Or besides the fact that Warcraft allows you to run around facing demons, monsters, rock giants, or my favorite murlocs as a night elf with a green Mohawk and a panther as a sidekick; the game is still at its core very much like many other games I have played before it.

So what brings me, the awesome JuJu(our guild nickname for him) into a game that allows you to see how much life you have spent into something (/played for all you naive folks)? Easy! It’s the friends you make. I have played Diablo, COD, Starcraft, Halo…I could go on forever… but you won’t find a better group of people to play with than in the AoA guild.

Consider this, macrame a connoisseur of google images, a motherly red head who will gladly trash talk everyone to shame on your behalf(my wife), a robot alien healer(a priest who's computer made her sound like a robot on vent), a druid whose nickname is based off of the best snack of all time(PBNJ), and a handful of other awesome guildies who answer all of your mind numbing questions without ridicule and you find yourself in the best four hours of gaming any fellow nerd can ever ask for. I honestly look forward to playing with such a great group of friends even when my day job is flying planes. So in short, you all make my day. I love you, and if you ever want a romantic plane ride over Florida or just a buddy to drink with and make fun of, I am your man. You make my life great and complete. So in short, it is the amazing people I play with that makes this game and not the game itself that makes me come back hour after hour…please continue to make the gaming world great all of you.

So while for me it is obvious why I play this game after already spent 14 days of my life on one character, I wanted to share it with everyone so they can realize that, holy shit we are playing with the nicest most interesting and awkwardly hilarious ragtag group of people you could ever find. It isn’t an amazing fantasy world where everyone is a hero, but rather a real life link to people who are truly amazing.

After reading that I realized that the most rewarding thing about being the guild master of my guild wasn't getting thanked by people for anything I did, it was that every now and than I got to participate in someones journey of WoW discovery. Hearing the pure joy that they experience when they run their first instance and down a boss or listening to them describe how the handled a quest by themselves. It's like watching your children grow up and experiencing the world. Sometimes you get a thank you out of it, sometimes you don't but it doesn't matter.

While my guildee above did thank me and my scatter brained self forgot about his post until recently, I would have posted this eventually because it illustrates that our guild is the type of place where people can have fun and enjoy themselves. That's all I wanted when I made the guild so long ago and I am glad that it is still true today. I will say this for everyone who is in a guild and not a guild leader, the next time they log on, you should tell them that you appreciate what they do. You can also tell them thank you. Or give them gifts...nice and shiny gifts like gold or mounts or pets! At the very least you can give them a nice hug.

Being a GM is very tiring work and sometimes even the best of us could use a nice compliment. Now that Operation Hug A GM has been initiated, I leave you all with this oh so funny classic WoW Machinima.

/Hug to all my fellow Guild Masters