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Monday, August 15, 2011

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.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Gnomeapalooza

On Sunday July 24, my awesomest, coolest, and sexiest guild will turn 6. Now I know that in some circles 6 years isn't that big of a deal but when it comes to the World of Warcraft, 6 months together is a big deal and going a year is great, 6 years is a lifetime. 6 years of raiding together, of joking together, of getting achievements together, and of rocking out like the superstars that we are. So to celebrate we will be having a race of death!

Who: You, me, my guild. Gnomes.

What: A race of death! Gnomish death race Outlands style which is even better then our normal race. You roll a level 1 gnome, take the friendly portal we create to Shattrath, and race to Honor Hold!

When/Where: Sunday July 24, at 2pm Pacific Standard Time on the Ursin-PVP server, Alliance side.

Why: Its fun, its a celebration, AND the winner gets a free vanity pet of their choice from the Blizzard Store!

Wait...what? Thats right! A free vanity pet from the Blizzard Store for the winner! The race Winner chooses which ever pet they want to have and I give it to them!

Now with the introduction of the limited trial account, everyone can make a level 1 gnome...for FREE! Regardless of whether you normally play on a US server, a EU server, or even if you aren't  playing but want to participate, you now can! If you would like to participate or know more info, please leave a comment, send an email, or DM me on twitter and I'll be more then glad to talk about the event. =D

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Full Circle

I believe the old saying goes "Some claim that life here began out there." With the 4.2 Firelands patch we've received a new raid instance, new daily quests, new arena gear, new valor/tier gear, and several new achievements. The biggest feature of the patch is the Firelands Raid instance where the last boss is Ragnaros. Yes...the very same Ragnaros that we fought oh so many years ago in Molten Core(but this time he is clearly stronger and more on fire. I guess beating him up and killing his numerous sons kind of pissed him off.


Last week my guild and I took a step into the Firelands to try our luck against the new raid bosses and to see if we could kill a boss or two. What we found was that there is TONS of trash along the way to any boss. There are also some nice BoE epic pieces that drop and a lot of rep to be gathered just by killing trash. In other words, this raid felt like Molten Core part 2. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of raiding Molten Core when it was relevant, let me tell you that it was a long and tedious raid at first. Most people entered MC wearing blues if you were lucky and greens if you had horrible luck with drops. Back in those days, green gear wasn't anywhere close to being as good as the greens of this expansion(Go go "of the eagle gear" for my mage!) Because the developers knew this, they made most of the trash you ran across in MC pretty simple to kill. Granted each type of mob had a special ability that made killing it unique. Lava surgers required you to either spread out or stack in melee(depending on your how your guild did it), Firelords spawned little fire adds that had to be killed quickly or they would spawn more adds, Corehounds had to be turned away from the raid so you wouldn't die from its fire breath or even worse they would fear you into other mobs and Molten Giants required the tanks having their back against a wall or they would get launched when the giant did its stomp.

Well that turned into a wall of text for explanations sake. Why did I go through all that typing to explain how mobs acted in a vanilla raid? Well as we were clearing trash in the Firelands I kept looking around and reminding myself that we were indeed NOT in MC. The zone had an MC feel to it and some of the trash was even the same trash from MC! First mob we pulled was a giant that had a stomp just like in MC, Corehounds still did the same thing, and Surgers are still a pain in the ass for healers. At first I didn't realize the clear connection between the two raids because I was so busy trying to hold agro since I was tanking on my pally but when we cleared our way to Lord Rhyolith there was a gauntlet event at the end of which we had to fight a some large fire elementals. After we wiped due to pulling the entire gauntlet to the fire elementals I realized that my chat was being spammed with  a lava spawn splitting into another lava spawn. I watched that fill up my chat for a few more seconds before I realized that I wanted to yell out "Spawn Spawn!" This being what we used to yell out in MC when a Firelord spawned adds. I was so giddy with excitement that I ran into the living room and told my fiancee who laughed because she remembered what an annoyance the spawns were. I started looking at the add packs we skipped and realizing that they were bigger, stronger versions of trash mobs from MC.

It wasn't until these mobs that I realized that the Firelands felt like an updated Molten Core. Even though we didn't down anything that night, I had such a great time that raid. I know that eventually I will get tired of the Firelands but at least for now I will enjoy the raid because it reminds me of even better times raiding. I give the Firelands my seal of approval due to its fun and interesting fight mechanics, its awesome atmosphere, and its connection to MC. I can't wait until we get to Ragnaros and when I do...you can bet I'll let out a fanboy squee. This has happened before and this will all happen again. What was once old is now new and shiny.

So how is the 4.2 patch treating you all?

Thursday, June 23, 2011

One Twisted Guy

This Satuday June 25th I will be a guest on the super awesome podcast, The Twisted Nether Blogcast. Clearly they are desperate for guests otherwise they wouldn't be having me on. Since they record live, all of my faithful readers should come to their site and join the chat room and heckle me or ask questions or just listen to me ramble on about how alcohol and no pants leads to successful raiding.


Recording starts at 8 PST! So plan to be there to listen to me bore the hosts Hydra and Fim with my long and boring stories about raiding in the 80s, 90s, and today. Or something along those lines. See everyone there on Saturday!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Need if you need

Often in heroic randoms, you will see someone ask if it is ok with the group if they need on a piece of gear. That piece could be an upgrade for their main spec or even their offspec. If it's an offspec role, than if they are lucky, no one else needs the piece. But every now and then you will run across someone who doesn't bother to ask if they can need on a piece for their offspec, even after someone else says they need it for their main spec. This is a huge problem for healers and tanks. I have had so many upgrades stolen from my healers and tanks by people who are queued as a dps or a tank or healer.

The old saying "Need if you need" has lead people to assume that just because they CAN need on an item, that they are entitled to roll on it, even if it is not for the spec that they are queued as and it's an upgrade for someone's main spec. People see that they can need on it and figure that their own need outweighs someone else's need. It is both sad and infuriating when I see this happening in instances, the trollroics being the latest cause of this type of behavior. All you can do when someone needs on your upgrade is hope that the WoW loot Gods are on your side and that you out roll the other person. Of course you may have this happen to you several times in an instance and all I can say is Good Luck.

I had this happen to in Zul'Aman when I was healing it on my Gnome Priest. The Paladin tank was obviously not geared for pulling as much as he was and so people were dying because they kept pulling agro on mobs that he was obviously not actively generating threat on. One of the DPS was from the same guild as the tank and he started berating me for letting him die. I explain that "Mr. Pull more then he can handle" can't hold agro on everything and that we should use some CC. Of course I phrased it a little more diplomatically and didn't lay the blame on anyone specifically. I am assuming that the two of them were off in their own vent server talking trash about my healing. We managed to make our way to the Hex Lord Malacross when a healing ring dropped. It was an upgrade for me since I was still sporting two 346 ilevel rings so I naturally needed...and so did the Paladin tank. Maybe he thought that stacking spell power was still the way to go for Paladin threat. Thankfully I won the ring and he apologized for needing on it and I let it go since I had the ring.

We wipe a few times on Daakara because we had the Lynx and the tank didn't understand that he needed to taunt the boss back onto him when it switched to a different target. Finally we kill him and I see what I was hoping for the entire run: the Amani Scepter of Rites. Now this mace hadn't dropped any of the times that I had been there on my priest and I was naturally excited to finally see it. And that's when the bomb dropped; the tank needed the mace...and won. I asked him if I could have it because I was the healer and it was clearly a healing weapon AND a huge upgrade for me. Well that's when the Pally revealed that loot was based on turns or in his words "You won the last piece and now it's my turn to win a piece." He then drops group as I am standing there speechless and right before I drop group his guildee calls me a scrub healer and laughs at me.

If I could punch people through the internet, there would have been two little kids with black eyes somewhere out there. The sad thing is that because of the randomness of the looking for dungeon tool, unless I roll on their servers and chew them out in trade or through whispers, there are no repercussions for them. They can keep needing on gear that isn't for their main spec and if they win it, they'll have stolen another piece of gear from someone who actually needs it. All I can do is ignore both of them so that they don't end up in my random group again, and queue for another random trollroic where I can hope to get ZA so my mace can possibly drop. I was seriously tempted to roll an alt on their server though, that's how mad I was.

I beg you, my readers, please don't ninja need items for your offspec when someone needs the item for their mainspec. With the Midsummer Fire Festival starting today, the Frost Lord Ahune will be available through the LFD tool and I know that people will be tempted to ninja need cloaks for their offspec. Please take a minute and think if needing on a cloak for your secondary spec is worth the aggravation and frustration that you are inflicting on someone who is queueing as their main spec and could use the upgrade. I know my words will probably fall on deaf ears for some people but I accept that. Maybe just one person will read this and change their mind about ninja needing.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Goodbye old friend

Amongst the many changes that are happening in Patch 4.2, we will be bidding adieu to a dear friend. Is it Tyrande or Chromie or Sylvanas or even the basic campfire? No...I'm talking about a closer friend. One that many people take for granted nowadays. This dear friend has been with us since Vanilla and I still remember what life was like before it. I am of course talking about the keyring. Yes...the bag that automatically holds all your keys. Yes, I am indeed for serious. According to the patch notes for 4.2 the keyring will be removed and existing keys will either be converted to gold, removed entirely, or moved to players' inventories. This means that the keyring along with most keys in game will be going away.

Why should anyone care about a keyring or instance keys being removed you may be asking yourself. Well let me fill in a little history for those of you who have always had a keyring in game. Way back in the dark ages of Vanilla Wow, you would sometimes come across keys for random things such as the key to Searing Gorge, the key to the City, the Crescent Key, or even the Scarlet Key. Now at the time, all of these keys were actual items that would go into your inventory since there was no keyring. Big deal you may say, its just a bag space being used. Well at the time 16 slot bags were the highest bag you could have unless you raided Onyxia's lair and were lucky enough to snag yourself one of her bags and even that bag was only an 18 slotter. Bag space was at a premium and if you planned to run an instance such as BRD, Scholo, Strat, or even DM, you had to carry the key with you in your bags. You had to work hard to get some of these keys and that usually meant a lot of time and effort but once you had a key...you were like a God amongst men! Well, you weren't really but you could be all super awesome and brag about being able to open doors. Sometimes you could even make some money just opening an instance door.

If you made the mistake of selling or trashing the key, more often then not...you could NOT get another one. If you were 60 in Vanilla WoW, you would often find yourself running Scholo/Strat/DM for gear/gold/fun and if you didn't have the key for the instance you were stuck outside waiting until some nice soul came by and opened the door for you. Now I don't know about the rest of you but I had some bad luck with groups being formed and no one having the key for the instance. IT SUCKED! A lot. Especially when no one realized that they didn't have the key with them only after everyone was waiting at the instance door. Unless you had a warlock with you, the group would often fall apart then and there because having to sit around waiting for the one person with the key to hearth, run to the bank and grab the key, and then take a gryphon/boat to the instance meant that you were sitting around for 20-30 minutes on average.

Why did I mention a warlock? Well at the time, instance stones weren't the summoning stones that they are now. Clicking on one would put you into a weird looking for group channel just for that instance which most people either didn't know existed or just ignored. Without the easy warlock summon, it was usually a long run. Warlocks also had the awesome ability to lifetap themselves to near death, agro a mob onto themselves, and die at the door. When they ran back to their body, they could rez on the other side of the door and use the lever, which all doors had nearby, to open the door for the group.

The day that the keyring was added to the game was the day that those of us who spent the time and effort getting instance key quests done, finally had available bag space! No longer would we have to run back to the bank and grab a key or hope that we would have bag space when the key dropped in Strat. The keys would all just automatically jump into our keyring. It was glorious. And soon the keyring will end its WoW Career and join the many outdated features of WoW past such as long attunement quest chains for raids, crafting resist gear for raids, having to wait until level 40 to get a land mount, being able to spec into all three trees almost equally, and being dismounted when you hit water.

Goodbye old friend, I will miss you. Whenever I run across a key of any sort, I will think fondly of our time together.

RIP Keyring (2005-2011)
RIP Most Keys (2004-2011)

Friday, May 6, 2011

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!