Choose My Adventure!

Ok so I have some free time (read: I am bored as hell at work and want to procrastinate) and I figured that I might as well do something creative since I haven’t done anything truly creative in years. I’ve decided to write a story based in Azeroth and starring the best mage out there: MY mage Jedem. The twist here is that I am going to try out a choose my adventure style for this story. I’ll write something out and at the end of each part, there will be 2-3 options. People can tweet or comment me what they think the choice should be and that’ll be what I write next. I figure this way I’ll get to flex my creative muscles and work with whatever is picked to make an interesting story.

Our story begins as most do: in the midst of a rain storm.

PUG Etiquette

As a smallish 10 man casual raiding guild, my guild tends to find itself having to pug a person or two for our raids when we don't have enough people sign up/show up for our raids. Now this doesn't mean that we are a horribad guild that couldn't down hogger or anything. It just means that recruitment has not brought in enough people who can show up to a raid. A normal raid night this expansion will often see us with eight or nine guildees online and ready to raid.

This situation leads us to pug a spot or two so that we can raid on raid nights. Sometimes I have a friend on my friends list that I can ask to come to the raid and when this happens, it's not really pugging as you are pulling in someone you know and not a complete stranger. But sadly there are times when our friends list fails us and we are stuck having to resort to asking for people in trade chat. This is not something that we enjoy doing but sometimes it's either pug or not raid.

For the Bloggers

Today I think I will talk about blogging. So if you only read my blog (and let’s face it...no one reads my blog) for only WoW stuff you may want to amuse yourself in other ways which I may or may not want to know about. Hmm dirty humor in the second sentence of a post...right on schedule. I think this will be the first in a series of helpful blogging tips so enjoy the first post and eventually I’ll get around to posting more.

So how do you rise to levels of blog fame where people flock to your blog posts in the thousands and hang on your every word? Well the first step is the easiest: start a blog! Once you have a blog you need to do three things: Find a subject to write about, write something, and get your name out there.

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.

To the winners

When I saw that my blog was going to hit the 2 year mark I thought that I should do something for my readers who have stuck around through so much of my random rambling and ranting. I figured that since you readers have stuck around with me this far I should do a giveaway as a way to show that I appreciate each and every one of you. I decided that instead of just giving one thing away I would do three so that more than one person could win. I enlisted the services of the amazing and awesome Liala to create a reward for whoever won the giveaway. I figured that her custom icons were so cool that they would be the perfect reward for whoever won.

When the contest closed I had 17 comment entries and of those 17, three were chosen to receive their very own icon. The winners were: Windsoar, Angelya, and Selly. I wish I could have given an icon to each person who entered the giveaway but sadly I could not. Also I think Liala would have killed me if I had tried commission her to create 17 icons. She does have a temper after all! (Please don't beat me anymore Liala, I'll be good I swear!)

Jedem: Through the years

The very nice and friendly Vidyala over at Manalicious wrote about a cool meme that involved posting a screenshot of your main from many levels ago along with a screenshot of it now to show how far you've come along. I meant to do this post the other day when Vid actually posted about it but of course doing things when they are relevant just isn't my style. So I dug through seven years worth of screenshots and eventually I found screenshots that made me both laugh and cry. Seven years of visual reminders of things that you've gone through tend to do that.

Anyway on with the show! I decided that I would tweak the premise of the meme and instead of posting a comparison of a character then and now, I am posting a visual timeline for my mage. Step back into the way back machine with me as we travel back to the year 2005. It was a good year: Facebook was still only for the cool kids in college, the White Sox won the World Series, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was released, and a young man who would go on to be known world wide as Jed, began to play the World of Warcraft.