A decade of shenanigans

*taps mic*

Hello...is this thing still on? Crap it is! Uhmm...hi everyone. I bet you're all wondering where in the hell I have been this whole time! I mean my last post was back in January and since then this place has been deader than a bbq at the Firelands. Well I HAD planned to blog about stuff since than and honestly I did have things I wanted to write about but I didn't because something came up. What came up that could have kept me away from my loving and adoring audience? Well if you've been following me on Twitter, and let's face it most of you have not, you know that in February my wife and I adopted a beautiful baby girl. If you aren't on Twitter and didn't know what was going on, well now you do! I'm not gonna post pictures here because they are all over twitter and you can go there and look at them if you so desire.

Gotta heirloom'em all

They should have renamed the 6.0 patch to the Heirloom Patch. I say this because since the patch went live I've done nothing but try and get heirlooms from Garrosh Kills on all my characters. Some I've gotten through groups I've put together and some through awesome people on twitter organizing groups. I've yet to get one through the new group finder because sadly most of my groups fall apart after one wipe or because people think they can overpower mechanics and as we all know...that rarely works. At least I can cry myself to sleep holding the heirlooms I have.

So a lot of heirlooms, a lot of changes to classes, and a Halloween holiday event. Blizzard has definitely provided us with a lot of content in game to keep us busy until the expansion release date which is almost upon us. Throw Blizzcon into the mix and suddenly October has been a very busy month for most of us! With all this activity it's been fun to see people who stopped playing WoW, finally log back on after a long time. They are usually confused at all the changes and are often asking questions in guild as to how to do stuff or what things are.

Random Musings

Sometimes I think I should post more but I can't figure out what I want to write about and then when I think about a topic I can't find the words to convey what I want to say. This is why my blog posts have been...lets just say few and far between. It sounds nicer than non existent. I am sadly having this problem with a lot of projects I have going on. I just can't find the words I want to use. It makes me the sads.

In an effort to force myself to write something I have decided to just post whatever random thoughts I have floating around in my head and see if I can make a blog post out of them. Bear with me, it may not be the most cohesive blog post I've ever written but hey no one reads my blog for a well written post anyway. So...uhm buyer beware or something.

The new year

It's been a bit since my last blog post and a lot has happened since that time, both in and out of game. The last time I blogged I talked about how Blizzcon was awesome and how I had a great time and met all sorts of cool people. Wow, I really am a slacker when it comes to writing blog posts. =(

But we all knew that well before now so too late to pretend otherwise. So whats been going on ingame for your dear old Jed? Well I've been flexing like crazy in Siege of Orgrimmar! I've met a bunch of new and cool people and wiped repeatedly with them on bosses/trash/random falling deaths. Some of the people are from twitter and some are from friends of friends who are from twitter. Hell some of my raid team, I can't even remember who is friends with who and how they got into the raid. I just know that they are now people on MY friends list that I send invites to.

Honestly Flex raiding is one of my favorite things to come out of the entire expansion. We always have room for a few more people as long as they are either a healer or a dps, our tanks are pretty set and we have back ups in place already. So if you're alliance and you'd like to flex it up with Jed, we flex Wednesdays 5-8 PST and Sundays 3-6 PST. Hit me up on twitter or leave a comment and we'll get it all worked out.

In other ingame news, Ursin was FINALLY CONNECTED! While this is not a server merge, its the next best thing! We were connected with Andorhal and Scilla and since the connection we've been listed as a medium population server the majority of time! So if you've ever wanted to alt it up with Jed and the whole low pop server situation scared you away, that's no longer an issue! I've been slowly working on getting my flex team to roll an alt on Ursin or to transfer an existing alt over. So far it's been working and we've gained a few new members. Always cool to see people online and doing stuff in guild. =D

Out of game theres been a lot going on. The biggest thing is that I am currently living in Zurich, Switzerland. Yes, you read that right. Switzerland, the land of chocolate, hidden bank accounts, and beautiful locations! I've been blogging about it over on a different blog so feel free to head on over and check it out. I've posted a few posts already with some very nice pictures so hopefully you'll all enjoy them.

Next up, I am now selling that cool light up jacket that I wore to Blizzcon over on Etsy. For the moment there is only a black color jacket available but it's available in several different sizes. If these manage to sell I'll possibly add different color options. But clearly you folks need to buy all the jackets that I have available now. The jackets are pretty neat and the light from them is pretty bright without being annoyingly bright. The light wire also does not generate any heat so you won't have to worry about overheating while wearing it. It's what all the cool kids are wearing.

I've also started a Tumblr page where I've posted pictures of my car, Switzerland, and other miscellaneous things. So if you are on Tumblr feel free to follow me.

So that's what has been keeping me from writing blog posts. It was a busy end of year and so far this year is looking to be just as busy but I'll do my best to post more often here. So keep on keeping on people!

Virtual Flexing

A little bit ago I wrote about my low population server and I listed out a few things that I felt that Blizzard could do to help out not just my server but all low pop servers. Included in that list were the suggestions to merge servers and to open the current tier for cross realm raidability. Two weeks ago Blizzard released not just one but TWO things that I feel will help out all low pop servers when they go live in the 5.4 patch. The two things: Virtual Realms and Flexible Raiding. Do Blizzard developers read my blog and think I have great ideas? Probably not but at the very least they are finally doing something to help low pop servers.

Plight of the low pop server

I have been on my server since 2005 when it was first launched and in that time my server has gone from being a medium population server (ever so briefly) to being a low population server less than a year after going live. Since then, it has remained a low pop server. While at the time it wasn’t a big deal, the population on the server has steadily declined. During Vanilla, before paid transfers were implemented, most people rolled on a server and stayed on that server until they either stopped playing or found a reason to start over on a different realm. If you reached level 60 on a character, people tended to stay on that server because it was such a pain to re-level on a new server. Once paid transfers were introduced the barrier to leaving your server was removed. Players were free to transfer their characters to new servers to play with friends/coworkers/raiding guilds/etc.

Of course this didn’t affect the larger realms since the higher population numbers meant they could afford to lose some people to other servers without it affecting the overall population. Unlike larger servers, the smaller servers suffered because the realms couldn’t afford to lose so many people. As new people began playing WoW, most would pick the larger realms because the population made them more appealing than the low pop counterparts. Who wants to roll a new character on what appears to be an empty server when they can roll on a busy server that looks to be more fun? Not all transfers were off of low pop realms. Some people transferred to smaller servers to play with friends or because they grew tired of life on a larger server.The transfers in weren’t numerous enough to slow the tide of people leaving.

Days of Future Past

Today I am going to talk about several different things and hopefully it’ll seem like I have coherent thoughts when I write (I don’t) and it will all blend together to make a good post. (it won’t) So buckle your seat belts boys and girls and prepare for the trip of your life!*

*Trip of your life may not actually be the trip of your life. Mileage may vary. If this is the trip of your life…you may need to have more fun in your life!*

To celebrate WoW’s 8^th anniversary Blizzard released this video that mashed up a lot of the previous game cinematics and to me it is awesome! If you haven’t seen it yet you should open up another tab/window and watch it right now. Go ahead I’ll wait.

Looking Back and Moving Forward

We have a week to go before the 5.0.4 patch drops and about a month before Mists of Pandaria is finally released. Between then and now we have to do two things: relearn how to play our characters with the new MoP talents and secondly, decide if the new game changes have made the game more or less fun. Hopefully most of you are in the more fun category but I know that for a few of you, the game has lost its grasp on your interest. Don't worry my dear readers, I have played the beta and am firmly in the still fun category. I look forward to seeing everything Pandaria has to offer and having a great time with my guild running new dungeons, raids, and scenarios.

With so many new and exciting features like pet battles and scenarios, I believe that there is enough to keep me interested and playing WoW until the next expansion. I know some people are looking forward to one feature above all others, the pet battles! For others they are looking forward to Pandas and monks. 


But as I said, for some the game has taken a turn that they don't like. For some of these people the game is not the same game they fell in love with. For some real life has intruded (as it does) and while they sadly would love to play the game, they are unable to do so because of real life. Perhaps some have found a different game that now holds the place in their heart that WoW once used to occupy. They have decided to jump ship and are not looking back.

Projects and testing

Normally I try to push out at least two blog posts a month but this month has been a busy month for me. I've got a few projects that I've been working on and on Friday one of them together at last. What is this project you may be wondering to yourself. Well wonder no more for the curtain has been pulled away to reveal a brand new podcast! Aero, Orvillius, Nymphy, and I have decided to team up and do a podcast titled "Follow the Leader," which is focused on Guild Leadership, Raid leading, and other management issues in WoW and other games.

Our first episode went live on Friday and so far most people seem to like it. At least no one seems to hate it enough to tell us so, which I will gladly take as a sign that we are doing a decent job. Self delusion is a wonderful thing after all.

Another project that I am working on is the Mists of Pandaria Beta! I've copied my Mage over to the beta server and have been slowly working my way through the questing areas. So far Frost Mages seem more awesome than they are now. My only gripe so far is that Deep Freeze no longer does damage to mobs that are immune to it, which means its no longer a big damage dealer on bosses like it is now. =( I'll probably make a post with a ton of cool screenshots of the Panda Island because it is really pretty looking.

I've also been running Dragon Soul with the Guild and I am proud to say that we not only clear it in one night, we can clear it in an hour and a half! At least last week we did. I know we can def keep that up but I think we might be dipping our toe into a heroic mode or two this week. Hopefully it'll go just as well and if it does, I'll be sure to let you all know because I know you are all super interested.

Finally I've been helping many new guildees level up by running them through instances,  giving them crafting mats, and generally being a nice GM to them. We've had a nice influx of cool people join the guild from the twitterverse. If you are 18 years of age or older and are suffering from burnout due to end of expansion blues, are looking for a nice place to hang out, or are looking for a permanent home for the upcoming expansion, you should definitely check out my guild the Avengers of Azeroth. We're a nice group of adults who enjoy playing the game together and are always looking for more cool people to join us.

So that's what's been keeping me from posting more stuff...this time. I know I know, I'm full of excuses and Redbull. Clearly you nice readers will forgive me since you've stuck with me so far. <3 to you all.

Quality Control

Every day I log into my GM character and I go through a list of things before I start playing the game. First I check to see who is online so that when I say hello and I won’t wonder why I haven’t gotten a response back if it’s only me online. Next I check the guild info panel to see if anyone has joined the guild while I was offline or to make sure no one has mysteriously gquit in the middle of the night when no one was online. The last thing I do is check the Guild Finder to see if we have had any anyone try applying to the guild through it.

What is the Guild Finder you may be asking yourselves? Well Blizzard added in a Looking For Guild feature a few patches ago, that allowed guilds to list themselves as recruiting. If you are looking for a guild you’d type /gf, enter in your information in the screen that pops up, and you are presented with a list of guilds that are listed as recruiting. It shows you a guild’s level, achievement points, whether they are looking for in more people for PvE, RP, or PvP as well as a comment box with information about the guild.

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.

The Ground Floor

It has begun. Yesterday started the beginning of the Early Access time for people who pre-ordered and already all anyone will talk about is TOR. Not being one to shy away from joining the crowd...I was able to log into the game in the morning before work and make my sexy Sith Inquisitor before being forced to go to work. Because I was part of the pre-launch guild program, my guild has been officially created and assigned to the Juyo PVE-US East server.

We are Sith and we are proud!

Now since the game has technically not been released to everyone, it is the perfect time to decide that you want to play the game while it's still on the ground floor. You can be a trend setter with claims to having been playing TOR before it was the cool MMO to play. (Star Wars has always been cool so these claims may not work well)

Anyway... (my super awesome guild) is open for recruitment! We are a +18yr group of players who have been playing WoW together for 6 years and several of us are going to be playing SWTOR together. We are looking for like-minded mature SWTOR players who want to join a guild to have a good time ingame with adults who are fun and very sexy. (Sexyness not guaranteed)

If anyone is interested in joining such an awesome and amazing guild, please feel free to visit our website: www.AvengersofAzeroth.com and fill out an application in our recruitment forum. Don't hesitate to ask any questions you may have, either here in the comments, on our forums, on twitter, or by email. I will try to post a little more this month since I have the last week and a half off from work due to the holiday but I won't promise anything as it is a well-deserved (in my mind) break from work for me.

So in conclusion Star Wars is cool, WoW is cool, and anyone who says otherwise will get punched in the face! Now enjoy this fun classic video!

Walking on the Dark Side

November is upon us and with it comes the endless torture that is Christmas music. /shudder. Also with November comes the realization that Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out in next month, seven weeks from now to be more precise and slightly less time before the deluxe pre-order people get their early access. Now what does this mean for you? Well nothing if you have no plans for playing SWTOR, now if you are planning on playing it...you should be super excited as it is almost here.

Why am I mentioning a competing MMO when I play WoW? Well because...I'm a Star Wars nerd. I can hide it from you all no longer. As such I will be playing TOR when it comes out. Will I be leaving WoW for TOR? NO I will in fact not stop playing WoW. I plan on playing both games until one or the other stops being fun or I run out of money to pay for both. Or I die from Nerdgasm overload.

Now I know to some people out there, it's blasphemy to play anything other than WoW and to said people, I am betraying everything I claim to love because of my plan. Honestly those people are crazy.  I love WoW and have been a fan of the Warcraft Universe since Warcraft 1 was released. Warcaft 1 was actually the first game that I had ever downloaded off the interwebs (that's what we called the internet back in the day) and I loved it so much I went out and bought the legal version. I still have the game and its instruction manuals somewhere in a box in the garage, that's how much I loved reading through the manuals to learn the story of the game. If Blizzard released Warcraft 1/2 for the iPhone/iPad/iWhatever I'd buy them in a heart beat. I remember playing through the Warcraft 3 campaign and geeking out at how awesome a storyline Blizzard had crafted. WC3 was yet again another game that I pirated and went out and bought a full copy after playing it a little.

Now that I have established what a Warcraft fanboy I am, let me tell you about my Star Wars fanboy cred. I grew up watching the movies, riding the Star Tours ride at the Disney MGM theme park, wishing that I could get a lightsaber for Christmas(still wish for this one), reading the expanded universe books, dressing up as Darth Vader for Halloween, and playing many of the Star Wars games that were produced. For the longest time I equated Christmas with Star Wars because certain channels would show all three movies on Christmas day and I of course would sit and watch as much as I could before I was dragged away from the tv to do other stuff. Even though I was vehemently against the idea of having to pay monthly for an MMO, I popped my MMO cherry with Star Wars Galaxies. I couldn't resist the idea of being able to play a character in the Star Wars universe. So many good memories there. /reminisce

Anyway back on topic, WoW holds a spot in my heart but my heart is big enough for some TOR loving. When the game comes out 10 of my guildees and I are planning on playing it and we've already created a Sith guild through the pre-launch guild system that BioWare has created which I find pretty cool. Not having to start on new server on launch day and hoping that your can get all your guildees online to sign a guild charter is definitely a bonus in my book. As I said we are going Sith so if any of you readers have an interest in playing with a super awesome guild when TOR launches, feel free to app at the link above.We could always use a few more fun loving peoples in our war against the forces of dumb lightsider(run by Stop and Asros) nublets.(run by Fimlys)

Will I be tuning this blog towards both WoW and TOR? Now that one I am not sure what the answer is yet. I am still undecided if I want to talk about TOR here or at all. As the launch date gets closer I will make a decision. Maybe if I see that my readers want to hear about TOR I would do it. I still have plenty to talk about in WoW, I just sadly haven't had the time to write quality posts due to work, saddening I know.

So to recap: I will be playing both WoW AND SWTOR, I may blog about TOR, I will definitely continue trying to blog about WoW, and most important Tacos are the most versatile fruit. =D

Looking for Trouble

Recruitment. The word most Guild Masters/Officers dread hearing. Why? Well because of the sheer amount of work that comes with having to deal with recruitment as well as the frustration that arises because of it. Whenever a guild loses a person, it is usually a blow to the guild, unless no one liked the person who left in which case a party may be necessary to celebrate their departure. More often than not it isn't a party. For many guilds, when one person leaves the guild, the rest of the guild will have to work extra hard to make up for that person.

The majority of guilds are a house of cards. Each member being a card holding up another card holding up another card and so on, ultimately forming up a complete house. If you take one card away from anywhere in the house of cards, the other cards have to bear an uneven weight and the whole house may come crashing down. GM/Officers are tasked with maintaining the house and keeping it in order and stable. When one person leaves, they have to scramble to cover for that person, whether it's a raider, an RP'er, or PVP'er. The problem is that recruiting is a difficult and sometimes long process unless you get incredibly lucky and find a person right away. It seems that this expansion, recruitment has become more difficult. What am I basing this statement on? Well other than personal experience, there are other bloggers who have blogged about what a tough time they have been having with trying to find people for their guilds. Buckle up kids, because this is going to be a long block of rant that is hopefully tied together by a central topic. Of course knowing me...it'll just come off as random ramblings but if you're reading this than you clearly are ok with random randomness.

With a quickness

Doing a short but quick blog post today because there are a few things I wanted to talk about but none of them is enough of a topic to dedicate a whole post to it. When combined though, there is enough to fill a blog post which is always a good thing. So stick around see you can learn a thing or two from your good old blogger friend Jed. First up is the two new heroics: Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman.

When ZA and ZG were announced as being two raids that were being reworked for level 85, there was a lot of uproar. Some people were on the side that it was a good thing because those two raids were great and they had good memories and some people were on the side that it was a horrible waste of time to do that instead of making new instances for us.

Which side am I on you may wonder? Well...I can see both sides of the argument but I do tend to lean towards the pro-ZA/ZG side. I raided both when they were each relevant and I had a lot of great experiences in each raid instance. I LOVED the look of some of the ZG weaponry/armor and I am really glad that I can see it once again. The fights while updated and slightly changed, manage to retain the feel of the original raid fights.

Are ZG/ZA cop outs and merely recycled content to keep us busy until we get a real content patch? I don't think so. Each instance isnt just the old raid instance with every mobs health/abilities increased to 85. There are a lot of changes to each fight to make it new while still feeling like the old fight. They have also added a quest chain that leads you to find out how ZG and it's many bosses were brought back. So in conclusion...I bring da voodoo and roll hax mon.

Next up:
If you are a caster class that doesn't use spirit as a primary stat and you find yourself in Zul'Gurub/Zul'Aman and caster gear with spirit on it drops AND the healer says that it is an upgrade for them...FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DON'T NEED ON THE PIECE! Especially if it is a boe and you are not going to wear it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111ONE!! I ran Zul'Gurub the other day with two guildees and the epic boe spirit cloak dropped for us. I was happy because it was an upgrade for me so I needed on it...as did the warlock in the group...and he won it. I was shocked and quickly explained that spirit is useless to warlocks now and that it was an upgrade for me and I asked if I could have it. His response? He was going to sell it and buy a cloak for himself and that it was boe so sorry for me.

Now being the nice and kind soul that I am, I informed him that I hoped he could heal himself because I sure as hell wasn't going to heal a ninja. After he died he whispered the tank(my GUILDEE) and tried snitching on me by telling him that I wasn't healing him. Obviously he didn't notice that 3 members of the group were from the same guild. We booted him, invited in another guildee and continued clearing the instance. Close to the last boss the Loot Gods were very kind to me and the cloak dropped again and this time all my guildees needed on it just in case the pug warrior decided he didn't like heals too. The tank won it and traded it to me and I gladly equipped it and enchanted it. Wherever that fail warlock is, I hope a rhino mistakes him for a campfire.

Last topic: Raid Progression!
This week my guild downed the Ascendant Council in Bastion of Twilight! Woots! This now makes our guild 7/12 in regular content and I couldn't be happier with how well we are doing. While we didn't one shot the council we only had a few wipes in the second phase before every got the fight better and then we moved into phase three easier and finally downed it. We are still recruiting by the way so if you are interested in raiding 10 mans with a fun loving guild that enjoys goofing around together and downing bosses, feel free to apply to join! We are always looking for good people who are level 85 and looking to have fun. Gear is nice to have but it isn't a requirement to join the guild. We do have stat minimums you have to meet before you can raid but you can meet and exceed those just by running a few heroics. Have questions about the guild and or joining? Leave a comment here, post on our forum, or even hit me up on twitter.

*Edit*
Forgot to mention that I have some of the best blog readers ever! In my last post I mentioned that no one had ever come to my blog by searching for the term "Jed is a sexy beast" and that had made me sad. Since that post at least one person has come to my blog by using that search term lol. So to whoever you are out there that was nice enough to do this for me...a big /hug goes out to you!
*End of Edit*
And that's it for now, I think I may try to do more frequent quick blogs like this instead of waiting for a big topic to come along. Enjoy!

Jed Still Wants You!

Finally got around to making this so I'm gonna post it and link to the previous post regarding recruitment:

Now make with the applying peoples!!

Jed wants YOU!

As the title says...I want you! By which what I mean is that my Guild Avengers of Azeroth (US-Ursin PVP Alliance side) is looking for new members! I know, I know. How dare I use my blog to pimp out my guild, blah blah blah ethics blah blah immoral blah blah roleplaying crap. My answer to that is...I am not forcing anyone to join my guild, I am not forcing anyone to read my blog, and I am not doing anything other then letting anyone interested in joining a guild that mine is looking for more peoples. If anyone is interested they can read on after the break for more information and if you're not interested then don't click to read more.