Soul (Shard) Searching

My New Adventures

2011-11-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry to not post anything for a while - as many folks know, I've somewhat moved on from WoW. The guild's doing really well, now under the leadership of Aesgride, Baelic and Abeldin. It was a great run - four plus years of great times with great friends, but Ehr and I both hit a point where WoW just - didn't feel like the thing we wanted to do anymore, so we made the decision to move onwards. For now, we're taking a break from online gaming, and in December Ehr and I - along with Ashaani, Thoatria, Alordo, Giraud, Tyrdinn, and many other friends - will be making the switch over to Star Wars: The Old Republic. We've already established a Veritas through the pre-launch program, though we won't have a server assigned until the game actually launches on Dec 15th (for early access). As soon as I have that info, I can post it so folks know where to find us!

As far as the gaming writing, well - that's actually taking off relatively well for me. My exciting news is, I'm officially a columnist for Ask a Jedi (www.askajedi.com), which is a SWTOR version of WoW Insider - they cover class columns, advice columns, and other community news from around the web. I'm the author of Council Chambers, writing guild leadership advice and how-tos over there. So instead of continuing to write for my own personal side-blog, I'm putting all my creative writing efforts over there. If you'd like to take a look, feel free to hop over!

http://www.askajedi.com/category/columns/council-chambers/

Otherwise, thanks for the reading and support over the years! I won't be continuing this blog because most of my blogging will be over at Ask a Jedi - though I will update our TOR server when I have it for anyone that wants to stay in touch.

Cheers and happy gaming!

My Offline Adventures

2011-06-12T10:12:00.001-07:00

Right - so as folks obviously have figured out by now, I'm not super active in WoW these days, and blogging at all. I still log in about twice a week to raid, hang out with folks, and catch up on some things - but Cataclysm's definitely felt like a slower and less engaging world for me than the previous content, so I find myself working on gardening, needlework, work work, and other things many evenings now.

In any case - on top of wishing eveyrone a fond farewell or see you later from my WoW blogging days, for anyone that actually gives a hoot what I'm doing these days I started a travel blog. Now that I'm fully PhD'ed and concentrating on academic outreach of the not-dissertation variety, I'm doing a lot of travel and presenting my work at conferences. In March I went to Monreal and Slovenia, and this month I am off to Istanbul (not Constantinople) and Madrid. July takes me to Hawaii (though not for work, family reunion) and then August I'm off to Porto, Portugal. Since this is one of those rare times my offline life is actually *interesting*, I'm keeping a blog about my travels and journeys for anyone interested. http://clockworkduck.blogspot.com. If you've any curiosity about the person behind the toon and what she's been doing, feel free to stop by! Otherwise, if your main contact was the Nora in game - no offense taken, but the shared context has probably passed. So best of luck to all, happy adventures, and peace be with you!

Bucket List Updates

2010-11-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

Very quick post, updating on Ye Olde Bucket Liste I'd posted a bit ago.

- Shifting Sands - Completed, as of Sunday morning! Thanks much to all the friends who helped me out on this along the way. The quest chain itself was very cool, though the ending was a little....uninspiring, especially after all of the cut scenes along the way. Still, glad it's done.

- Zandalar Exalted - Completed! Those trolls *love* me now. I picked up all the leatherworking patterns, which I may or may not be able to make anymore once the mats disappear from game, and got the achievement. Yay!

- Horde Version of the Wrathgate - Getting close on this. I'm about a bubble and a half away from level 71 on my orc hunter, at which point I can begin the quest chain. I was working on it some last night, but it grew late and the Forsaken quests were creeping me a bit out (honestly, there's only so many dwarves I'm willing to torture and hang over bubbling plague pools, really about zero). So I took a break from spreading a plague that will kill all life to go sleep - and I wonder why I had trouble falling asleep last night! Tonight I should be able to get the last little bit to hit 71 though, and can push on into the quest chain itself.

In other news, I'll be fairly scarce for the next three weeks. Today the final copy of the dissertation goes in (huzzah!) and then Ehrengar and I will be enjoying two beautiful weeks in the Caribbean to relax and celebrate being a doctor. So needless to say, my internet time until December 4th will be - pretty much non existent. I'll come back with free time, lots of energy, and a brand new hex-core computer for the Cataclysm though, so what's not to love?

Cataclysm only a month away!

2010-11-11T05:20:00.000-08:00

Holy moo, has time flown by lately. Here it is already, mid-November and with Cataclysm only a few weeks away.

The good news is, I've managed to accomplish a lot of the things I had wanted to before the expansion, so I've been taking it a bit easy online. (That, plus I am still absolutely swamped irl and probably will remain so until at least mid-December if not the first of the year.) There's been a fairly significant shift in the U.S.'s child soldiering policies recently, so I've been hopping like mad both in trying to keep up but also corresponding with various groups and Agencies as a subject matter expert. It's very good for me, and interesting, but cuts into my offline energy level and WoW playing time. On the up side though, keep an eye out for my book! :D

In game, I successfully finished the Hero of the Zandalar achievement last week, getting my druid to Exalted with the Zul Gurub faction. We even found a Razzashi Hatchling while doing so, which is exciting. Still haven't gotten my mage the Polymorph: Turtle tome yet, but that's ok - it sounds like they're not taking it out of the game as much as moving it. I'll probably be dropping jewelcrafting on the original Shinorah to pick up engineering, just to have an additional farmer. Engineering makes a surprisingly good farming profession, since mining lets you scoop up ores and gems and engineering lets you zap motes for eternals. I never could get the RP of my warrior quite right, so after multiple race changes for her without finding her voice, I think I'll just retire her. Ironically enough, I think I liked her best as the original night elf Rhislayne, in spite of efforts to make her a dwarf, gnome, and who knows what else.

I'm nearly completed with the Shifting Sands questline as well. In fact, I've completed everything I need for it except for one stupid random drop in the Blasted Lands. I'll probably put aside some time this afternoon to go farming for that some more and hopefully get the book chapter to finally drop. Then I'll be able to complete that as well. It's been a line with some really fantastic lore, though very elf-centric. So I'm glad I've gotten to see that, regardless of whether I finish it or not.

Finally, I have an orc hunter I'm trying to get through the Horde version of the Wrathgate before the expansion. She's level 69 now, so I need to get her to 70 or 71 before I can begin their version of the quest line. I'm definitely interested to see how their side looks from a questing perspective, especially considering the betrayal from the Forsaken. I'll say honestly, I've never quite understood Horde lore per se. With the noted exception of night elves, I have a very good understanding of why the Alliance is just that - the Alliance. There's a considerable degree of mutual respect between the dwarves and the humans, and they've worked well together. So much so that they have a shared tram between cities. The gnomes, well - they've been taken in by the dwarves and share the same region, so that makes perfect sense to me. Night elves, it was clearly an alliance of convenience but they've always kept to themselves more or less - so they're definitely the weak link here. And draenei, well - as beings of good and light, plus with their experiences at the hands of orcs on Draenor, you can see why they're devoutly loyal to anyone who's - not in with the orcs.

The Horde though, it really seems a lot less like an alliance than it is "the races who aren't Alliance". The orcs and the tauren clearly have a good relationship, much like dwarves and humans. So this, I understand. But the Forsaken? It's pretty clear that none of the Horde leaders trust Sylvannas or her Forsaken, and with pretty darned good reason. They're emotionless and uncaring at best, and savagely self-interested and sneering at any of the living at worst. So - why would a reasonable leader like Cairne or Thrall think it's a good idea to protect and ally with them? The trolls, this feels like night elves. They're there because - well, they're there. Not particularly linked to the other Horde, just...pretty much focused on their own issues, but willing to help out as needed. And last, we have the blood elves, who....depending on the lore and history you read, aren't even particularly bad. I guess the justification there is that they're still so peeved at the night elves for their little disagreements over magic and the Sunwell, the logic is "anyone who isn't with the night elves?"

Either way, I'm interested to see the quest line if for no other reason than to try to understand the Horde's perspective better. Playing as an outsider Alliance right now through Garrosh Hold, it feels a lot like - "Well gee, I'm taking orders from this asshole that even his own advisers can't stand, and one of our own factions just sold us out and tried to kill everything living - orc and human alike. Gee, with friends like these....?" Either I've been Alliance too long to properly appreciate what makes Horde cool, or the lore writing for Horde's just been - poorly written and constructed in WotLK. Curious to see how it plays out.

Busy Busy!

2010-10-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

Somehow September came, and has already left. I don't know how. I swear, it was just here a moment ago when I looked. But now all of a sudden it's October - patch 4.0.1 is set to drop any week, Cataclysm only two short months ago, and there's still so much I want to do before then!

Most of this month - certainly the latter half - was spent around our annual real life gathering, Veritas Fest. This was the third year we've met up, and it was a fantastic time. Our turn out was slightly less this year due to the recent parting of ways of a couple folks, but it was still a great showing and an outstanding time! We once again attended the Maryland Renaissance festival, in tabards and pirate costumes (the weekend was Pirate weekend), and of course ran into other WoW players as people came up to talk to us and ask what the tabards were for. Turkey legs and mead were consumed, we did a lot of shopping and walking around, and got to see Charlie in his cutest little Pirate outfit.

We also managed to incorporate German Beer Night into this year's VeritasFest, which was awesome. Every year, the German military throws a huge Oktoberfest party out at Dulles for all of the German nationals that are working in the U.S. and can't fly back for the actual Oktoberfest. The morning of the event, they load up a plane full of fresh German food and beer, fly it out that day, and have it ready for the night's party. The event is huge, with two bands (a U.S.-based polka band and then the German Air Force band), tons of food, and of course - freely flowing beer. We feasted on fresh schnitzel with gravy, pretzel rolls, sauerkraut, and some of the best bratwursts you can imagine. Everyone had a great time, and I fully expect next year we'll try to coordinate German Beer Night with next year's VeritasFest as well.

I'm already missing everyone, and eagerly looking forward to next year's event. Think we're going to try and get together with some folks at the Steampunk World's Faire in the Spring, and I know we've got some West Coast guildies heading to Blizzcon sono as well. No wonder I don't seem to have enough time to write about things in game, with everything so busy offline!

First Thoughts on Archaeology

2010-09-17T09:06:00.000-07:00

A little over a week ago, archaeology went live on the Cataclysm beta servers. I, along with a few other guildmates from the guild beta, jumped in feet-first into this new profession that seems so near and dear to our guild-theme's heart. Thought I'd write up some of my thoughts and reactions to this first pass of the new secondary profession.

First - conceptually, it's a very cool idea and I think it has a lot of promise. You pick up the profession from Professor Harrison Jones in Stormwind, or Belloc in Silvermoon City. (Those who are Indiana Jones fans should recognize both names from the first movie.) Once you've learned the profession, you need to pull up your large world map - not the mini-map, but the continent-level one - and you see four shovels or trowels, marking dig sites. You fly to these, and then use your surveying tool to find pieces of the actual artifact or fossil. From levels 1-300, these are either troll, night elf, dwarf, or fossil fragments depending on the site you're excavating. You'll have a window that allows you to see how close to are into actually taking those bits and pieces and combining them into a new object, and from around 1-100 skill, you'll get skillups from both surveying as well as crafting. After 100, you only get skill ups from actually combining the fragments into objects.

The training guides weren't implemented in the game when this went live, so there was initially a lot of flailing and "How does this even work?" The esteemed Ghostcrawler provided a guide via blue post in the professions thread, so now people can either read that or talk to a friend to find out how archaeology works. For me, starting on the first day, it was *incredibly* confusing - but this sounds like it's in the works for a tutorial and just hasn't been implemented yet.

The early objects are pretty underwhelming, and honestly feel a little pointless. Archaeology is unlike cooking or fishing, where even low-level objects have some small use (low level fish can be cooked, and even non-buff food lets you regenerate mana and health). Instead, most of your early craftables are nothing more than vendor trash - and with very low selling value as well. I was hoping for more of an "on-use" effect, even a small and purely cosmetic one. So for instance, I had hoped the dwarven dice would roll or something if you clicked on them, the voodoo doll would dance if you poked it, something. Anything, really. Instead, you're just - basically spending a lot of time at low levels crafting items on a level with the "trash" grey objects you get when fishing in a zone that's too high for your skill level, things like weeds and bones.

You get your first "rare" item somewhere around level 100, a Fossilized Raptor. This is a non-combat pet, and it is cute and fun - like non-combat pets should be. Other items can be found at higher levels, and at this point also include bind-to-account epics for the 60-70 level set. This is a significant improvement from early news on archaeology, where it was believed to be entirely composed of vanity items or pets.

Unfortunately, archaeology feels a little too "grindy" to me right now. I suspect it won't be as bad for brand new players or rerolls who are starting out at level 1. Your archaeology dig sites will only spawn in zones that are of a level comparable to you, so if you're level 20 then only dig sites in zones for levels 1-20 will appear on your map. The good news is, since zones are designed to lead you geographically from one level to the next highest block, it means your travel time won't be so bad and you'll be having a lot of dig sites close to your present location. The bad news is - if you're at or close to the level cap, then you're of a level to get dig sites anywhere across the entire continent, and there's no rhyme or reason on which dig sites will pop up next. I've had to fly multiple times from the far north of the continent, such as a dig site in Winterspring or Hyjal, all the way down to Un'Goro or Tanaris if that's where all my remaining dig sites are. Given how large the original world contents are, this means you're flying a LOT. Lots and lots of time spent on flight paths. It took me roughly four hours to level my 81 druid from 1-100 in archaeology, and guildmates who have done archaeology seem to be reporting similar time constraints. So for high levels - plan on a lot of travel.

The other down side to the profession so far is the lack of specialization. Myself, I love dwarf and titan lore, but I'm really not a fan of night elves or trolls. I don't care for their lore, and I'm fairly ambivalent to their history. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to choose a specialty - the dig sites are completely random in terms of what appears. You will always have four dig sites per continent, and as you finish surveying one, a new one appears on your world map. However, there's no player control over these. You cannot choose a specialty in fossil, dwarf, night elf, or troll - so if you're actively trying to finish up a night elf object and wind up with all troll dig sites, you have to keep working on troll digs until the next night elf one appears. This too I find a little disappointing - I think it would add more flavor and fun to the secondary profession if players could choose what they wanted to pursue and ignore cultures they didn't want to explore. As it stands now, you can't - theoretically you can choose to only dig in zones that yield the artifacts you want, but if the RNG decides not to respawn those with the same race? You're out of luck.

Now all that said, some of the high level artifacts do look pretty cool - my personal favorite is the Ahn Qiraj mount, gained at the highest levels. In Outlands, after level 300 archaeology, you can begin creating orc and draenei artifacts, and vrykul artifacts in levels 375-450. From 450-525 you'll specialize in Tol'vir artifacts, and the developers have said that right now at least, these are where the "best" archaeology artifacts will be found. Thematically, this makes sense as the Tol'vir are supposed to be very powerful beings. The profession also has tons of potential in terms of expandability - eventually I suspect you'll have human, forsaken, gnomish, tauren, blood elven, worgen, and goblin artifacts to search for as well. Plus, they can always add additional artifacts of the existing races to the dig lists, so you'll have new dwarven, orcish, night elven, draenic, and trollish artifacts to find as well.

So in closing, I think the concept of archaeology is very cool and has tremendous potential, but the actual mechanics feel exceptionally grindy and could use some polishing before final release. In particular, the largest areas for improvement are adding some "on use" features to even lower level objects for entertainment value, as well as finding a better way of reducing the travel time costs for any player that isn't leaning archaeology as a low-level player.

Here Goes Nothing!

2010-09-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

I've been writing back and forth a bit with a few folks, both friends as well as "professionals" in the WoW world, about the number of guild leadership blogs out there and whether the world really needs yet another WoW blog. I've gotten a lot of encouragement and so far, it sounds like there really aren't a lot of guild leadership blogs in the blogosphere - or if there are, they aren't very well published. Everyone seems to know ChickGM and then the weekly column at wow.com, Officer's Quarters.....but those seem to be the main resources anyone recommends when asked about guild leading advice or discussions.

So.....with encouragement from friends and other officer columnists as well as good intentions, going to try and take a stab at focusing on a guild advice blog. We'll see how it goes. As I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to do something focused more on a useful resource for the community rather than just talking about my experiences and adventures. This is that effort - something I can still stick with no matter what I'm playing in game classwise, and something I do have a heck of a lot of experience at by now. Therefore....

http://gl101.blogspot.com/ was born!

Guild Leading 101. Nothing too flashy or exciting, but well - neither am I when it comes down to it. I think the name fits though, both me as a professor type as well as what it is I'm trying to do. Plus, the name wasn't taken! So, there we go. A grand, new adventure. Hope to see folks there! Advice, input, suggestions for entries all welcome.

One Warlock's Journal

2010-08-18T13:50:00.001-07:00

When I started this blog, it was as someone who wasn't sure what to do with their WoW life. I had a lot of things I was trying to sort out, and find my place in the larger universe. I didn't have any aspirations for followers, or a readership, or anything like that. What I wanted was a place to force myself to write, to try and quantify my thoughts and feelings into actual text, and in doing so try to make more sense of what I was *actually* feeling. Journaling is recommended by many people as a way of working through emotions and processing feelings, and so really - that's all this blog was ever meant to do. It was written by me, exclusively for me. The only reason I ever did it in the public sphere was the same reason some folks will get a "workout buddy" when trying to get back in shape. If it's you and only you, it's easy to make up excuses and procrastinate - not today, it's raining. Not today, I'm tired. A workout buddy creates a little peer pressure - the good kind, someone you have to 'fess up to if you decide to make excuses.

The workout buddy got me through my comprehensive exams. In that case, a group of us got together for weekly "study sessions", to talk about and break down that week's readings from our comps study list. It's not that any of us really needed anyone else to help us break down our interpretation of the readings or help us make sense of them. But what each of us found is - on our own, we all had a tendency to procrastinate on doing that week's readings. In a group though, when we'd have to email or text the others to say "Can't make it tonight", or even worse - show up and tell everyone "Sorry, I didn't do the readings this week".....the perceived embarassment at not doing the readings made us push ourselves to do them more. It's not like any of us cared or judged one of the others if we fell behind (and each of us did, at varying times). But that psychological imperative not to fall in front of others was so strong, it pushed each of us to avoid it at all costs.

That's why I made my "journal" public, really. I know 99.9% of the people in cyberspace don't care what I think or do, and that's fine. In fact, I prefer it that way! But even knowing a couple folks I'm friends with poke in from time to time is enough to make me keep plodding away and thinking about what's going on in my WoW life. And that - that makes me *THINK* about what is going on in my WoW life. What am I up to? Is it interesting? Am I enjoying it? If I'm feeling stressed, breaking it down into the written word helps me really pinpoint the true sources of that stress, which is tremendously helpful. It works for positive things too - when I'm happy, like I am now, it makes me really sit down and think about that, break it apart and analyze it. So I guess at the end of the day, I'm using the nature of this public blog to force myself to both continue writing, and in doing so continue growing, as a player and a guildmaster. In that, my thanks is to all those who plod through my random musings with me.

Enough about me though, for crying out loud. A friend of mine is going through a process of reworking his own blog, which is very exciting. I've been offering what muddling advice I have on it, but it's also gotten me thinking more about something else I tried doing once. Of all the classes I have played, I have probably loved the shaman the best, so much so that I was inspired to write a blog about it - something useful for the community, instead of just useful to me. Unfortunately, I only kept up with it for two months - I found that I just couldn't stay current with all the class updates and that other people (Bink, looking at you!) just do a far, far better job of this than I ever could aspire. However, the desire is still there - to share something of at least partial value to the WoW community, instead of just babbling about me, me, me all the time.

I've been pondering this for a couple months, really...but I think I have a decent idea, one I've toyed about in the past but was always hesitant to commit. I've always said that the one thing I was good at, moreso than being a shaman, or a warlock, or a raider, or a roleplayer - is being a guild manager. People come to me all the time for advice - how to start a guild, how to manage one, what to do with disciplinary issues in their own guilds. I talk with other GMs, comparing notes, giving and getting advice, brainstorming the best solutions to challenging obstacles. I even exchange emails with Scott Andrews from time to time, over on Officer's Quarters. So perhaps if there was ever a project to undertake in WoW, something that I could offer my voice and perspective in a useful manner and not just ramble about my own adventures or experiences....Maybe that's a way I could contribute.

Something to think about, at least!

What to do, what to do?

2010-08-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

So it's been a pretty hectic few weeks, as folks can tell. Between guild shifts, raiding team shifts, beta invites, and now finding myself honest-to-goodness, really in charge of our raiding efforts, I'm a pretty tired little camper. Don't get me wrong, it's a great job and things are going really well! Just - it's a lot of balls to juggle lately.

I've found myself enjoying some down time from WoW when I can squeeze it in. Now lately, that hasn't been a lot due to all of the above, but I'm hoping to take a night or two off over the weekend. My beloved BBD is going to be gone for the last two weeks in August, so I'm hoping maybe we can factor in a little couple time to go do something that doesn't at all involve a dwarf or a warlock. You know, maybe go to Mount Vernon for the day and have a nice dinner, or head out to the country and do some wine tasting (real Virginia countryside, not Northshire!). It would be absolutely lovely, and I hope we can swing the time.

Guildwise, things are going well. Everyone took the beta news well, we're waiting for the invites (or word of additional ones), and making fantastic headway into Icecrown - even beyond my expectations, which makes a guild leader proud indeed. Hopefully we'll find time, as a group, in the coming months to work on alts or focus some good time working on roleplaying and developing character concepts.

It's times like this where I wonder, "How do people ever get bored of WoW"? I know some do, and I certainly support the idea of taking a break when you do. I just - bored? I never seem to find enough time to be bored! There's always so much to do, so many things to see, achievements to earn, quest lines to finish, zones to complete, professions to close out, people to talk to, and places to go....

My problem never seems to be "I'm bored", as much as "Where are all the hours in the day?"

So for that really - thank you and kudos to Blizzard. No matter all the missteps (*cough* Real ID, I'm talking to you here!) - the game developers have really put together an amazing experience that's only made richer by the people I'm lucky enough to share that experience with. So bored? Nah, not me....Just trying to find a way to manage it all!

The Deciderer

2010-08-08T06:27:00.000-07:00

(The above is taken from a mis-quote that former President George W. Bush said in reference to Donald Rumsfeld. I certainly symapthize with any oft-quoted person on how one little mispronunciation can haunt you - and in this case I do believe it was a mispronunciation rather than not realizing "decider" is the correct word - but well - it's also still funny, too!)

Last week, I mentioned that our guild had won one of the 500 entries into the Cataclysm beta for guilds. Very excited! But of course - as with any exciting or good news, there's also a challenge to it too. In this case, well - I had a brief glimmer of hope in the first two days that we'd actually *just* have 10 parties interested. Heh heh heh. All in all I think we wound up with 21 who expressed interest.

Now - these 21 ranged all spectrums of players and activity levels, from the obvious people who would express interest to one who's not even currently in the guild anymore (from inactivity). So - it became clear that the process of winnowing down the list would be trickier than just having 10 people interested.

So how to be fair? This was the question plaguing me - and Ehr - all week. Among the options we considered:

1. First 10 to respond
2. Complete random drawing
3. Seniority (longest in the guild counting down til we get to 10)
4. Team composition (in case we need to do 10m raid testing)
5. Combined system of 5 seniority and 5 chance (random drawing) slots
6. Eliminating any spouses (figuring couples could share)
7. ....other options I've since forgotten to list here

Now - Ehr opposed the spouse elimination because spouses are still two separate people, not just people sharing the same account. (Keep in mind this was not to benefit us, as he and I both had secured spots - one required to GM by the contest, one to the essayist.) We all thought seniority - while good in an idea - wouldn't be fair to people who joined in the last year but were really active and good members. We ruled out team composition pretty quickly since - well, we don't want to play raid favorites. So for a while, we leaned towards the combined system, doing some random drawings and some seniority picks. But it still didn't quite feel right to me.

Ultimately what we came up with was an "eligibility criteria" and then a random drawing of those. Of all the options we considered, I feel this was the best balance of random dumb luck plus not handing out betas to people we barely knew. The issue in the latter was - not only do we have a couple folks who have been in the guild for about a week or so at the time of the contest (and thus while we dearly hope they stick around, we also realize we have no real feel yet for how well those folks will contribute in the coming months). But on top of that - as word of the beta trickled out, people logged in to the forums to submit an entry to me that I literally see maybe once every other week for 5 minutes. Now, I'm sure they're fine people and all but well - either they hardly have time for (or interest in) WoW at this point, *or* they're just alts of people who never disclosed their mains but are busy elsewhere, and were just checking us out on the side. In either case - I really didn't feel right having to turn away active, contributing members and explain that well, yes, I know you never even heard of this person or have ever seen them in game, but when we did the random drawing their name came up. Sorry.

As a leader, I always try to put enough thought into decisions that I can defend them when pressed. This is one of my greatest vexations with people in decision-making - people who make decisions, but when they'd be pressed to justify it, they can't. This makes me worry that either the real reason is something they don't want people to know (i.e. cronyism, nepotism, or something else unsavory), or there really wasn't a lot of thought put into the decision in the first place. Not only have I observed this in guilds (both in my own over the years well as friends in other guilds) but you see it in politics all the time when a decision-maker is questioned under duress. (If you're ever curious, watch a Supreme Court justice nomination hearing for Exhibit A.) Good decision-makers can defend their decision and the logic behind it. Poor ones, well - they struggle to do so. I don't always agree with the end decision of others or how they got there, but as long as they can articulate it - I can respect it. So until I'd come up with a process that I felt like I could defend and articulate when pressed - I kept looking. And - based on player input and my own ruminations, we finally came up with the eligibility system.

First we took the list of 21, and eliminated anyone who had either not made it out of the guild probationary period required of all new members (one month), or who were not active (playing a guilded toon two hours per week). Two additional parties who were both clearly eligible voluntarily withdrew their names just to be polite and to give others a better shot - so that left us 4 ineligible and 2 voluntary withdrawals. Unfortunately, that *still* left 15 eligible names....*sigh*.

Like anything in life, it was exciting but also very difficult, especially when I had to write the "Sorry but..." letter. Ugh, that sucked. Granted, I've had to do a lot of not-fun things in WoW as a guild leader, but usually it involves having to deal with discipline of someone who's doing things wrong. i.e. - Feeling bad about having to confront the person, but knowing they'd done something to deserve it. This - this was puppy-kicking of the worst order. :( Unlike most of the issues I have to deal with, the parties I had to talk to now - they were all good people, so unlike discipline where I'm dealing bad news to someone who did something bad, I was dealing bad news to people who generally do nothing but good. UGH.

Happily, we have really top-notch members and while I know there was a LOT of disappointment, everyone appears to be taking it well. In the meantime - I already included a paragraph in the return submission to Blizzard about how beneficial it would be to the guild to be able to have a couple more slots if at all possible, to give us a little strategic depth in case one or two people were out of town or unavailable at times to test things. So I'm trying! I won't hold my breath because....as it is, they handed our 5,000 beta keys in this guild testing process. Even if they give 2 additional keys to each guild, well - there's another 1,000. But I'll keep trying and hoping, and maybe they'll add one or two more in the coming months.

Otherwise, heavy is the head that wears the crown, but - even though I feel badly for the friends who didn't get a good news letter, I feel confident that the way we handled it was about as fair as we could in terms of balancing out active, established members with just dumb random luck.

If It's So Hard, Why Keep Doing It?

2010-08-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

I got to thinking this morning, from a couple other blogs I read, about guild leadership. It's hard, being a guild leader. Thankless. And believe me, there are times when I've said "Oh hell with this, I give up." (Only once has it lasted more than two days, and even then I took a couple months off and came back.) Is there something defunct in my personality? I'll talk about that in a little bit, because believe me - it's something I think about from time to time. But I want to start first with the "Why is GLing so hard?" I wrote this elsewhere in a comment (which, as usual, was of course a huge wall of text because I can't ever be concise.)

I was a project manager in real life as well, and I bring a lot of those same skills to my “game” job. I remember the maxim of a project manager was: “If you’re doing your job well and good at it, nobody will ever appreciate or realize how hard you work because everything moves along so seamlessly and they never see the effort required to get that. If you don’t do your job well, everyone sees all the problems and immediately blames you. So – when you succeed nobody sees it or thanks you, and when you fail everyone blames you.” It’s very true, both for guild management and project management.

This is, in a nutshell - the challenge of being a good guild leader. When you make a mistake and things start falling apart or going to hell - people see it, and are quick to point the finger (rightly so) at everything broken. But when you're doing your job well? People don't see how much work that goes into it because it seems like everything's just flowing like clockwork. I' m a figure skater too....good skaters make gliding along the ice look effortless, like a fish swimming. Guess what? No matter how good you are, you are working your ass off! It's just - the best don't make it *look* like it's hard work, and it's only the ones who are not very good that make you realize what a struggle it is. So - when you're doing well, nobody sees or appreciates the work required, and they'll sure call you out fast when you don't. Thankless job, indeed.

Rather, I've spent some time after crafting my comments elsewhere to really sit down and think about why *I* do this. I know why Ehr does it. He does it for me. He never had aspirations to guild leadership - when he and Aimi and a few of our other friends (in game and irl ones) came up with the idea to form up a guild of our own, he went along with it because he just wanted to play with his friends. If I'd found a guild we could have joined instead and gotten what we wanted out of the game - he'd have been just as happy with that too, I think. At the end of the day, he really just wants to kill internet dragons with his friends. He may have found his own reasons since those early days of why he does it - but at the beginning, he just did it for me.

So - me. Why did I do it? At the time we picked up that charter, I had NO idea what I was getting myself into. I was too new to the game, and had no real understanding of what was involved. I always laugh that I drew the short straw when those of us forming the guild drew straws, but the truth is - there really wasn't a question of who would lead. I didn't *want* to or ask to, but when the group of us talked and said "Ok someone needs to actually run this place we're talking about - Nora, that's you. You're the one with the vision and who knows the most people." Even then, I had a sense of what I wanted a guild to be, and what I didn't, and I think everyone else just - wanted to play with their friends, but didn't necessarily have any idea of how to organize that or develop it into anything other than "a group of folks who just wants to play with their friends". I did - probably from that old project management experience I mentioned before. ;)

I never imagined the guild would last more than six months. I think I always figured it would be fine for the short term, but we'd eventually find a bigger guild to join or just - get bored of WoW and go our own ways. I certainly never dreamed that anyone would ever hear of us other than our direct recruiting efforts, that we'd have any level of server-wide reputation or recognition, or that I'd be doing this THREE YEARS LATER!!!! I suspect if I had any inkling, I would have run screaming from the guild charter and quit the game that day. Not that I have regrets (well, about forming the guild that is) - rather that I wouldn't have wanted to take on that much responsibility for other people's playing experiences for anywhere near as long as I have.

In the three years I've done this, I've been called just about every creative variation of "Evil effing bitch" you can come up with. I regale guild friends when we get together irl about some of the most colorful and exciting stories. I've been moved to tears by some of the terrible, hurtful things disgruntled people have said, either after I've booted them or when they've ragequit. I always joke that when things go well, everyone calls Ehrengar the guild leader. When they're unhappy and pointing the finger at the person that "ruined the guild", they call me the guild leader. It's something I have thought about extensively - am I really that difficult of a person? I can be high strung at times, and get wound around the axle about things more than Ehr does. He's better about tuning out the noise, putting folks on ignore as soon as they quit or he boots them and shrugging it off like water from a duck's back. I envy him that - but I also think that ultimately, it's my willingness to address issues and get involved that helps us to grow and continue, too. In the end, I think we're both vital to the leadership - his for his perspective and ability to just ignore the small stuff, but mine for my willingness to step in and get involved on the big stuff. And we balance each other - he helps me step back when I'm stressing over something inconsequential, I help him step up when his inclination is to just avoid the larger problems so as to avoid an argument.

In the end, it comes down to a few things, on the "why do I do it?" question. I still believe in the idea I had three years ago - a place where people *can* both raid, and roleplay, and do it with other adults without having to listen to dick jokes, fart jokes, or Chuck Norris one-liners. I want the freedom to raid as bad-assed as I can, but never have to do it more than twice a week and sacrifice all the *other* things I want to do with my life. And really - I do it for the friends.

You see, I've talked about how much I've been hurt guild leading, and all the terrible things I've been called, and those are all true. But there's other parts too.

On our year anniversary, the membership - without prompting - all brought me presents for running the guild at our weekly meeting. I'm sure someone came up with the idea, but it wasn't me or Ehr. It was beautiful, and I sobbed like a little kid at Christmas getting their favorite toy. I do it for every person who's ever thanked me for the guild - sometimes it's when they're saying goodbye for their own reasons, sometimes it's just a brief glimmer of the fact it really is a lot of hard work. Recently, we had a big guild split, and it would have been really easy to devolve into a cycle of self-loathing and beating myself up over it for screwing up again. But I've been overwhelmed and moved by the amount of support I've gotten from those who chose not to as well (and even one or two who did) - their faith in Ehr and I to devote *their* precious, valuable, in-game time to our dream and to make it their own too.

These are why I do it. Because - no matter through all the mud and muck, it's like looking for diamonds in that field in Alabama. In all the dirt and the hard work, there *are* diamonds out there waiting to be found. And when you do? There is nothing more beautiful, joyous, or special in the game. No thrill from defeating a boss can ever compete with that. No ranking, no recognition, no beta invites - nothing will ever be as precious or beautiful to me as the knowledge that for some people at least - I've helped make this World of Warcraft a little brighter, a little more fun, a little more special than it might have otherwise been. And no matter how many others have felt otherwise - as long as a few people still feel that way, the job is still worth it.

Shiny New Keys!

2010-08-03T15:57:00.000-07:00

A little over a month ago, I sent the following letter in to Blizzard for a World of Warcraft contest they were sponsoring. The contest was to write a short, 100 word essay on why your guild deserved to win beta keys for the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. (Trying to condense myself down to only 100 words almost killed me, no kidding...) So much to say about us!

My letter was,

Dear Blizzard,

of Moon Guard was established when The Burning Crusade launched and my husband and I started WoW. We've led the guild ever since, and will celebrate our three year anniversary July 9th. (What better way to celebrate three years than with Beta keys?) We've grown
from a humble guild of low-level players who barely knew what an instance was, to one of the top Strict 10 guilds on Moon Guard. Our members have experience in many facets of the game, a dedication to excellence and thoroughness, and a willingness to help make the game
the best it can be.

Sincerely,
Shinnorah of Veritas

Now - there's a bit of irony here, seeing as many of those who were really key in earning that ranking have since decided to part ways with us and form their own guild. But I still believe deeply in the guild we've been and the guild we can continue being - a place where roleplaying and raiding go hand in hand, where folks genuinely share friendship and camaraderie with the other active members, and where the emphasis is firmly on the people.

And well - it's fantastic to have some great news to share with everyone! Ehrengar automatically gets a beta invite of course, as the guild leader is designated as one of the recipients. After that, there are 9 other slots to give out. I figure it's fair that I have one, seeing as I'm the one who wrote the letter and submitted us for the contest of course. Aside from that, we'll figure out some system to award them fairly - not sure if we'll do a couple based on time and contribution and a couple randomly, or all of them randomly.

Either way, it's very exciting news! I can't wait to create my worgen druid, or see some of these gorgeous new zones....

Congratulations to Veritas!

Too Awesome for Words

2010-07-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

This is absolutely apropos of nothing. But - just......wow.

The sad thing is, this person's talents could be put to wonderful use, drawing pictures of my dwarven paladin in all of her awesomeness, or my bookish female magelock. But no! Instead, it's...

Chewbacca, on a giant squirrel mount, fighting Nazis.

Enjoy! And thanks to Geeksaresexy.com for the picture (where the spousal unit found it).

Letting the Dust Settle

2010-07-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in an earlier post (surprisingly controversial one as well, as it turns out) about a deal the officers had made for raiding. A number of people have asked me what it was, so rather than sounding like a broken record explaining over and over...

The Deal:

We have (or rather, had) two raiding teams. We will say for the sake of brevity that There Was Much Discord throughout this expansion about the model adopted, on all sides. That's not what I wish to get into now, nor likely at any point in the future. We'll just leave it as "there were two teams". Both teams were operating at less than full strength this summer, which is to be expected because - well, it's summer. The idea was proposed to make a deal of sorts, in order to defeat the final boss in Icecrown. In light of the current situation, with neither team full and a key member's work schedule changing - let us just focus exclusively on one team through the end of July. If you give us your full support - first pick of members, days to raid on, additional nights on the calendar, whatever we need - we'll push full speed through July but then either when the boss is down or the end of the month hits, we will take August off and make the other team the priority in the same way - first pick of members, nights, days needed, etc. That will allow the other team to be able to catch up a little more in terms of bosses and such, and ultimately get everyone to the Lich King. Thus, "the deal" was born. (The original deal actually called for the second team to be shut down during this period, but BBD thought it best to at least try to keep something for the others in the interim.)

It was a gentleman's agreement of sorts. How it was honored in the end I suppose is up for each person to decide for themselves. I know my understanding of what I saw unfold - but if I've learned anything in the past week, it's that the way I see a situation, or read an article, or how I view a person, can significantly different from how another might see a situation, read an article, or view a person.

It's all moot now. The aforementioned have since parted ways with the rest of us, save for a couple. For all but one, I wish them the best. For the one who decided it was a good idea to send my real life husband a series of hate-mail letters about his wife? May your actions someday return to you three-fold.

For the rest of us, we'll be alright. A number of former members have found their way back in recent days, and a few more have contacted me as well. (Saif, you'll have to ask me in game about the Best Thing Ever - you will appreciate it perhaps more than anyone but me.) It's almost like a fresh start in some ways, a chance to get the guild back to its original roots and the way we did things in Karazhan and Zul Aman, and I think in the long run that's a good thing. It's not that I'm happy about what happened, or why, or how. I lost someone who I'd considered a real life friend in the carnage, which is probably more of a personal loss than most of the guild. But the rest of us, we'll be ok. We'll still keep raiding in Icecrown, and holding our weekly meetings and RP events, and sharing pictures of the latest new pet in game, or talking about Cataclysm. We'll meet up at VeritasFest III, in tabards - some new faces from last time, some returning faces, and a couple missing I suppose - we'll enjoy turkey legs, and mead, and see who gets arrested by the Magistrate for not speaking French. We'll mourn the losses, and laugh with the friends who remain.

That's life really, when it comes down to it. Sometimes it's happy, sometimes it's sad, many times it's a little bit of both all at once. But it keeps moving forward, and so shall we.

Hunt-Tard!

2010-07-24T12:18:00.001-07:00

So.....the above doesn't look much like a hunter, does she? Well, it's not. It's a cross stitch piece from Mirabilia titled "Sabrina", done on 32 count linen. I posted this because well - this is the reason I have not been playing my hunter, or my priest, or any of my toons much recently. I've been an avid needleworker since I was 8 or so, and unfortunately have dropped my stitching habit significantly since beginning WoW. Lately, the itch to stitch has been back in full force after a couple years off, so I've found myself often wanting to spend quiet evenings with tv in the background, stitching away on a new project, rather than logging in to level an alt. I think my actual goal is not to give up either - not to quit WoW entirely to do needlework, nor to completely abandon needlework to play a character, but to find the happy medium between. And if I get *really* motivated, I can periodically post status updates on my cross stitch as it progresses from just a blank piece of fabric into a work of art!

In any case, I have two remaining goals before Cataclysm drops, outside of the obvious raid goals. I have at 80 a warrior, paladin, warlock, druid, shaman, and death knight. I also have three other toons, the original Shinorah (71 mage), and also a level 69 priest and a level 61 orc hunter. While I'm not overly worried about leveling the mage before the expansion, I would like to get the hunter and priest through to level 80 before Cataclysm. It's not that I have any intention of switching to either of those for a main toon - or even really playing either seriously in the expansion - but I would like to finish leveling then. Plus, I've always wanted to see the Horde side of life. Granted, I may do so through a goblin once those launch, as I'm very, very interested in playing a goblin (at least as an alt project). But since the hunter is already Horde, it's a good opportunity to take my time and gradually explore their quests as well. Plus, since my entire guild support network (and alt supply chain of professional craftspeople) are all Alliance, well - hunters are very self-sufficient so a perfect project for starting on a new server or faction.

A good friend of mine recently switched back to Horde, so I figure I would even have someone to talk to periodically while dragging my sorry self through Outlands (again) and Northrend (again). More than any other reason I play WoW, I play it for the social factor - so having folks to chit-chat with while I level and grind really helps make an otherwise monotonous task much more interesting for me.

The bad news is - I *COMPLETELY* fail at huntering. I don't know why. I mean - it's not that hard, right? Just click, attack, and let the game do it for you. Yet - I'm not sure why, but it just hasn't gelled for me yet. I'm not sure if it's the spec I have (beast master), or the pet I'm using (a tallstrider, whose name "Amirzar" is Draenei for - errrrrr - blue chicken. >.>) I have the heirloom shoulders and chestpiece (which by the way, look *AMAZING* on an orc). I also have the heirloom DPS sword, dagger, and two trinkets to help me regen mana and health. So she's pretty well set up. It's not that I die much, I just....I don't seem to kill things very fast. I had always thought the reasons hunters were so popular in WoW were a combination of very high survivability with a very high rate of DPS. My gear's good, so why does it seems like it takes me forever to kill things?

I also freely confess, I have no shot rotation so to speak. I just - well, mash buttons. There's really no rhyme or reason to it, I just - hunter's mark, serpent sting, arcane shot, then let the game autoattack. I suspect this is not a good way to maximize my DPS.

So - hunters! Help an orcess out. If you can recommend shot rotations for the leveling hunter, please do! Keep in mind I'm only 61, so not after a raid build or rotation. I just want to find a way of playing that makes me feel a little more competent at what I'm doing, and perhaps even more engaged in the game and the character.

In the meantime, I'll be afk stitching. :)

If We Won, Why am I So Sad?

2010-07-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

So.....our guild finally got Lich King down last night. Everyone's still on a high, posting screen shots and congratulating each other. Excitement is at an all-time high - probably more so than any other raid kill we've ever done. Our guild moved into first place on the Strict 10 rankings, our progression team is celebrating like it's 1999, and everyone is ecstatic.

....

Except me. And I don't quite know why.

I've been thinking about it a lot, trying to make sense of this. I know I should be just as excited as everyone else - and part of me is. I'm thrilled for our raid leader, because I know what a cross this was for him to bear. I'm happy for all the people who worked so hard to make this happen, and their sense of accomplishment. I don't begrudge anyone this victory, one bit. But I'm having a hard time reconciling my sense of sadness with everyone else's elation.

I know that it's not I wanted them to fail. It's not that at all.

I suppose part of it is, it doesn't feel like *my* victory? I mean - we're saying it's for the guild, but only one officer is even a member of that team. The rest of us hang back with the training team. I'm not someone who really cares about rankings, and in fact I've really grown to loathe them because of the way it seems to muck with what I think is important in the guild. So I don't take a lot of personal satisfaction in the first place spot.

I think, if I had to put my finger on anything, it's fear more than anything else that I'm really feeling. Not so much sadness as - apprehension?

You see, we made a deal so to speak. Neither team has been at truly full operating capacity since April or so. One team was down a healer and a DPS, and the other was down - well, probably about four regular spots. We didn't go down to one team because too many good raiders would have just been stuck for months with no Icecrown, so we shifted a healer and DPS over to the other team and then just did the best we could for the second with PuGs and alts. The second team, well - it's been rough. Our progression has completely stalled, because we've either rotated in new members, fresh alts or PuGs, and the quality has varied wildly. Some weeks, we've cleared through Rotface in two hours or less, a smooth and perfect ride. Last week, I was on vacation and they barely made it through Saurfang, and wiped on Gunship. So - to say we've been inconsistent is an understatement. But I haven't been willing to give up on the people who have been dedicated, so I have (perhaps stupidly) trudged along, fighting for their progression as well as my own demons of people who bailed on my team because they just didn't believe in it, or in me as a leader.

The deal was - we put all our guild resources behind that first team and support the Lich King kill, and once that's done then we'll let that team take a break and put our resources into getting the second team there.

Now the Lich King is dead. And I guess this is when we see if the deal actually works or not.

I'm skeptical. Afraid. I know how strong the raiding instinct is in a lot of those progression people, and how sweet victory probably tastes for them. They're on a high now - and all that burnout, I suspect will dissipate rapidly in the thrill of glorious success. Their team did it. They won.

I know they wanted to take a break when they were feeling frustrated and tired of that fight. But now that victory has been attained, I can't help but wonder - are they really going to let go? Will they make this ragtag team I try to manage a priority, or will they now be hungry to keep pushing rankings and progression, start working on heroics or Ruby Sanctum, and want to hang onto their current raid/time slots? I know if I was on that team, I wouldn't want to just quit now - I'd be ready to try my skills on new challenges, itching to take the Dream Team on to new and exciting things. The Raid Leader's been clear about offering his full support, and I believe that - I just have some real doubts about how much the other members will be on board for the plan. I can't help fearing that now they've earned victory, they'll want to keep on keeping on, just like I would want to if I was in those shoes - and that we'll be permanently down the members we've moved to their team, and left with whatever days aren't taken up by those raids plus guild meetings.

I guess in short, I'm terrified nothing will change. That all of the frustration and heartbreak our team has gone through during this period, all the sacrifices we also have made to help, will be forgotten or - well, more accurate to say - be appreciated but non-reciprocated. That we'll still be left, six or seven members, with our best and most talented people being pulled to help the other team and us getting the excitement of rolling in the latest alt someone's in the mood to play or the newest person to finish heroic grinding that wants to see Icecrown.

I know it's illogical, silly and irrational. I have trust issues in real life too - my husband certainly points this out, as have previous boyfriends and friends. It's hard for me to place confidence that other people will have my back, I guess. I shouldn't have these doubts or fears, I should have faith and excitement of my own. Call me a cynic or a pessimist I guess, or maybe someone who's just afraid to hope and believe. But when it comes down to it - everyone else is excited, as they should be. And me, well I'm just - scared....

Goblins!

2010-07-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

I'm planning on rolling a worgen, too. Part of me hates to admit it, considering myself no better than the droves of old Horde players that immediately went, "Oooh pretty!" and rolled blood elf. It's not that I want to do the next cool thing, quite the opposite in fact. But, I *love* Victorian. Victorian anything. I go to Steampunk events, have my sitting room decorated in Victorian themes, find excuses to wear outdated clothing and fashions any chance I get. And well - Gilneas *IS* Victorian London. So this, it must be done.

But I also plan on rolling a goblin. I have my name saved (Tawdrie), and high aspirations. Granted, she will be an alt - and in fact, the sad truth is I'm not really even sure I can play her on Moon Guard because I already have 9 toons. I'm torn between deleting my level 61 hunter, or just rolling her on Scarlet Crusade or Wyrmrest Accord. Decisions, decisions.

She will be green. She will have outrageously tacky red-orange lipstick, and in my mind those really long, thick fingernails (painted blood red of course) that only old ladies who have been lifetime smokers ever seem to get. Her voice will sound raspy, like Thelma Bouvier, in my mind. She won't take the cigarette out of her mouth before telling you to kiss her ass. And she will be unabashedly, unapologetically, mercantilistic.

I don't know why I am looking forward to playing these characters so much. What strikes me as even funnier is - I *ADORE* Kezan, yet it espouses so many qualities that I actually dislike in the real world. IRL, I don't smoke. I dislike billboards because I think it ruins the scenery, especially on a pretty drive in large parts of the open country. (Interstates I love, its just the billboards that bug me. Unless they have tacky advertisements to Luray Caverns or something, then it's kinda cool, 50s style kitsch.) I'm a moderate fan of protecting the environment - not to the point where I hop on a jetski and try to take out whaling boats or even eat all organic, just where I try to be responsible about recycling and not using animal-tested cosmetics and such.

So what is it that makes me want to embrace all of the behaviors I'd find so unpalatable in real life? Rather than wanting to play a druid or tauren that lives in harmony with nature as I try to, I'm all bouncing-in-my-chair excited for a Halliburton drone! I want to be "nothing but a cog in that giant corporate machine". I want to lounge in a pool that was made out of petrolaeum, lounging on a seakskin raft, working on my tan and drinking like a fish. In short, call me Jersey Shore I guess? (Even though, of course, I don't watch the show and would probably be appalled by the lifestyle...)

A funny quirk, really. Not sure why goblins appeal to me so much, or why I'm so gosh-darned-excited to play something so completely different from the person I am. But it just - sounds fun!

Fighting a Losing Battle

2010-07-19T08:03:00.000-07:00

Well....it's that time of expansion in WoW at this point. As stated earlier, recruitment is bleak. Most of the people who join are either guild-hoppers who barely last a week, or clearly alts (or folks just burned out on WoW) who join and then log in perhaps once a month. On top of that, our older members are seeming to be really fried lately - tempers are frayed, folks are sick of the Wrath content they've played for two years, and fights seem lurking just below the surface all over.

I'm not quite sure how one gets through this phase. I've tried offering some observations, and was lit into like a Fourth of July bonfire - so obviously, that was a poor decision on my part. I've taken to laying low on the forums, because it feels lately like no matter what I post someone will take Great Exception to it and just think even worse of me. It's hard to offer guidance and really lead as any sort of guild officer if people will just argue and fight over every misplaced word. So there's not a lot I feel like I can do to really even "lead" per se during this time. It's also very clearly an environment I'm not comfortable bringing new members into - between the ridiculously high turnover of new members going inactive or leaving, and the tension among so many of the older members, it's hardly what one might consider a warm and welcoming environment for people to join up.

So I'm a bit perplexed. On one hand, I really think Ehr or I should be taking point to actively steer the guild in the wake of all this turbulence and unease. On the other hand, as I mentioned - every time I try, it almost feels even worse. I'm not sure if I've just lost any sense of authority and legitimacy I once had, or if we're perhaps just not recognized as actual leaders anymore. Or maybe it's just me, and people still follow and respect Ehr. Of course - he's so busy with work and disinterested in WoW at this point, his preference in leadership is to just - wait for everything to blow over, and I'm not sure that's going to be any more effective than trying to get people moving in the same direction.

How do you really lead effectively in a situation like this? If we try to force a direction, people will leave. But in the wake of any effective leadership or clear direction, a lot are leaving anyway - inactivity, dodging raids, gradually withdrawing. I understand this is normal for this point in the expansion, but I still feel like what could make or break our survival in the next expansion is how we choose to handle the remaining months of this one. I don't want to force the direction of course, and I'm not even precisely sure what the direction should be. But I also think doing nothing and letting apathy rule the day will just cause people to drift further and further out, into places that feel more active and homey than ours does. At the end of the day, people join a guild to either have friends to talk to and do things with, or progression. When a place stops providing either very effectively, its days are numbered.

I'm just not quite sure the balance of being able to provide either very well in this environment as it stands right now. But I just don't really know how to course-correct to get things back on track either. It's a tricky thing, running a guild over the years and through different expansions.

Open for helpful suggestions, advice or inspiration!

Retention Woes

2010-07-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

So - I'm going to tiptoe carefully around an area that could be construed as a whine, because it's burning me out badly and I just feel like I'm at a complete loss. I'm an organizer at heart, a logistics mastermind who looks at trends, patterns, and makes sense of the Big Picture as often as I can. This though....this seems to defy any rational explanation I have. Thus, I will boldly toss it out to the World Wide Internet, and see what assistance I can get in trying to make sense of a recent pattern. That pattern, you ask? Well, it's new member retention (or in this case, lack thereof).

Now - mine is a pretty stable guild, one with an excellent rate of retention overall. Not saying everyone we've ever invited has been a perfect fit or sticks around, but for most folks if they do get through the application process and join up, they seem pretty happy. Throughout most of BC, I'd say retention was around 80-90%?

Then Wrath hit. Out of everyone we've recruited in this expansion, maybe 25-30% wind up lasting more than a couple months. It's not always gquitting - in fact, I'd say the majority are people who are around for a while then just fade into inactivity. But over the last month, it's literally been folks sticking around for 24 hours or less before hopping ship in a couple cases. WTH? How can you even get any sort of sense or feel for what a guild is like in such a short period of time? And note - there was no drama, inappropriate behavior, or anything in any of these cases to explain why someone would leave so quickly. It just feels like players are downright fickle... And as someone who invests a lot of time in every application and interview process, I'm getting downright exhausted and aggravated.

So - my venting aside....I've talked a small bit to one or two other GMs who have run into almost identical problems. One is a RP guild only, one is a raiding guild only - and it got me to wondering if this is something that's larger than just our guild not providing a good experience or somehow failing new members. Is it something larger than that, a common problem other guilds are also experiencing?

I know this is a touchy subject to ask about, and probably nobody will want to say "Yeah, we're running into retention issues too" because well - if you're actively recruiting, the last thing you ever want to say is people aren't sticking around. We've had some really good luck with new members recently, but I'm still just surprised (and disappointed) in how many people just - poof-poof-poof all over the guild stratosphere.

Have other guilds been running into these sorts of things? Has anyone else noticed an upswing in the amount of guild shoppers or hoppers? Or is this really just something that's only happening with us and nobody else is seeing any sort of hopping or retention drop-off?

The Era of Garrosh

2010-06-22T05:57:00.000-07:00

Keep in mind, a fair bit of this is speculation. After all, Cataclysm is still under an NDA, and so most of what we can surmise about it is either based on leaks before certain sites were hit with the NDA, or the information that has been released.

Either way, over on a friend's blog (windpaw.wordpress.com), one of the comments in a recent post was discussing how evil the Horde has swung in the new expansion. Apparently s/he has a friend playing the Alpha, who is not enamored of the recent shift in Horde politics.

Obviously, we don't have all of the details behind Thrall's stepping down from his position as Warchief, or Garrosh's ascent, or Cairne's disappearance (murder?). What we do know is that Thrall is not Warchief anymore and Garrosh took his place. We also know that Cairne is succeeded by his son as leader of the Tauren. We know that the next battleground is centered around the concept of the Forsaken seeking to further encroach on Gilneas.

But for me, the most surprising "Aroo?" moment of the Horde's alleged dark turn is in allied factions. In WotLK, we had the Alliance helping the Alliance Vanguard as a faction, and the Horde had the Horde Expedition to assist. In Cataclysm, one of the Alliance factions that players can grind rep with is the Wildhammer dwarves. This makes sense, especially with the introduction of the shaman class to dwarves and the connection to nature that the Wildhammers have always had. As an Alliance player, I'm proud to assist these feisty but noble allies.

The Horde, though....they get the Dragonmaw. Now, if you're not a lore nerd like I am, well - these are *not* the kinds of orcs I'd want to play with. They picked the wrong guy to back in the orcish struggle to succession, and when Blackhand was killed remained loyal to Rend and Maim instead. If the names alone don't give you an idea for the types of characters we're dealing with here...

They also served Deathwing, and were the orcs in Blackrock responsible for imprisoning and enslaving the Red dragonflight while Deathwing had the Dragon Soul. This is the same red dragonflight that has played a key role in Wrath, assisting players throughout the expansion and protecting life on Azeroth. So - boldly speaking, I really don't understand this decision of having the Dragonmaw as a key Horde faction.

Now, having the Horde go a little darker, this does not bother me. In fact, it's a complaint I remember from a lot of players when BC launched and especially when they rewrote the lore over Muru to say that s/he was imprisoned voluntarily and not in fact enslaved by the blood elves. Some people play Horde because they like the aesthetic, or they don't like Alliance players. But others, well - they *like* the darkness, same as some people play warlocks because they want to be evil, dangerous, and sinister. So I personally think having the Horde embrace a bit more of a darker, dangerous, less goody-goody attitude could be a change for the better, and give a little more distinction and diversity between factions.

But even with Garrosh, even embracing a more pro-war and aggressive stance, I just for the life of me don't understand why they'd ally with a group of orcs responsible for enslaving the very dragons who just spend the last to years assisting them? If anyone else has an idea or better understanding of this, please clue me in!

Otherwise, I'll be very curious to see what - if any - explanation is given for this decision of the Horde's to embrace a faction that has up until now been one of the main enemies in an original raid.

Trivia Contest - The Questions

2010-06-19T20:17:00.002-07:00

So - these are the questions I asked in tonight's trivia challenge. They were taken largely from the game world, though also included some elements from quests, books by Golden, Metzen, and Knaak, and the manga. Enjoy, and see how many you can guess correctly!

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Trivia Challenge questions:

1. Who is the leader of the Church of the Holy Light?
2. What name did Deathwing and his descendents use while disguised as humans?
3. What is the name of the city militia in Darkshire?
4. What magical device is rumored to have caused the corruption in Duskwood?
5. What was Thrall’s calling or profession, before becoming warchief?
6. What race shares a common ancestry with dwarves?
7. What is High Tinker Mekkatorque’s first name?
8. Who is the current leader of the Sentinel Army?
9. What are the names of the known World Trees?
10. There is a statue commemorating the sacrifice of a hero of the Third War in Dalaran. Who is it?
11. Who created the Alliance of Lordaeron?
12. Who is the king of the Wildhammer dwarves?
13. Where was their former capitol?
14. What was the name of the dwarven civil war between the Dark Irons, Wildhammers, and Bronzebeards?
15. Who taught druidism to Malfurion?
16. What is the relationship of Tandred to Jaina Proudmoore?
17. Who currently leads Stromgarde?
18. Yorg Stormheart is an alias for what famous person?
19. What does “Kurenai” mean in Draenei?
20. Who are Arator’s famous parents?
21. Where are the Sons of Lothar located?
22. There are five statues in Stormwind memorializing heroes of the Alliance. Who are they? One point for each correct answer.
23. What is the full name of the tower in Deadwind Pass?
24. What was the name of Medivh’s son?
25. What was the name of the first Guardian of Tirisfal?
26. Where is the location of the Tomb of Sargeras?
27. What did the Blasted Lands used to be called?
28. Who taught fel magic (warlockery) to the orcs?
29. What are the names of the known Old Gods?
30. What is the name of the tavern in the Blackrock Depths?
31. Who was the first Death Knight ever created?
32. What is the Thandol Span?
33. What island nation lies south of Gilneas and west of Dun Morough?
34. What part of Gul’dann became an artifact?
35. What is the Helm of Domination, and who wears it?
36. What was created when Thorim threw his hammer down to the ground?
37. What is the name of the most powerful known weapon, once wielded by Sargeras before his fall?
38. Who took over Sargeras’s position among the Titans?
39. What is the other name for the artifact known as the Demon Soul?
40. What is Shalamayne?
41. What is the name of Cairne Bloodhoof’s weapon?
42. What object was recovered from the Tomb of Sargeras by Illidan?
43. What was the Black Temple called before its present name?
44. What are the three known titan halls called?
45. How many human kingdoms were there in the original Alliance of Lordaeron?
46. Where is the largest dwarven dig in Kalimdor?
47. Where is the Master’s Glaive?
48. Where are the Bones of Grakkarond?
49. What is the name of the Wrathgate?
50. The Waygate connects which two places?

Trivia Contest - The Answers

2010-06-19T20:17:00.001-07:00

Posting in reverse order so the questions will show up above the answers. Enjoy!
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1. Archbishop Benedictus
2. Prestor
3. The Night Watch
4. The Scythe of Elune
5. Shaman
6. Troggs, will also accept earthen
7. Gelbin
8. Gen. Shandris Feathermoon
9. Nordrassil, Teldrassil, and Vordrassil
10. Antonidas
11. King Terenas Menethil II of Lordaeron and Lord Anduin Lothar)
12. High Thane Falstad Wildhammer in Aerie Peak, or Kurdran Wildhammer in Wildhammer Keep
13. Grim Batol
14. War of the Three Hammers
15. Cenarius
16. Her brother
17. Prince Galen Trollbane
18. King Muradin Bronzebeard
19. Redeemed
20. Alleria and Turalyon
21. Hellfire Peninsula
22. Alleria Windrunner, Turalyon, Khadgar, Danath Trollbane, and Kudran Wildhammer
23. Ivory tower of Karazhan, will accept Karazhan
24. Med'an
25. Alodi
26. Beneath the Great Sea
27. The Black Morass
28. Gul’dan or Kiljadeen
29. Yogg Saron, C’Thun
30. Grim Guzzler
31. Teron Gorefiend
32. A bridge
33. Kul Tiras
34. His skull
35. The Lich King’s Helm
36. Thunderfall
37. Gorshalach
38. Aggramar
39. The Dragon Soul
40. King Varian’s sword
41. The Bloodhoof spear
42. The Eye of Sargeras
43. The temple of Karabor
44. Ulduar, Uldum, Uldaman
45. Seven
46. Bael Modan
47. Darkshore
48. Silithus
49. Angrathar
50. Un’Goro and Sholazar Basin

Trivia Contest this Saturday at 8pm in Ironforge!

2010-06-16T09:42:00.001-07:00

Good Gentles, your attention please!

Our society is hosting a trivia contest this Saturday, at eight bells in the evening in the Explorer's Halls of Ironforge. The contest will be relatively simple and straightforward. I will ask questions about various known personalities, history, and major world events to the contestants, and each person to answer correctly will get a point. At the end of the contest, the person with the most points wins a prize, as well as the esteemed bragging rights of being the Smartest Person in Ironforge. Well, that or at least the one who knows the most random information about people, places, and events.

If you would like more information, please leave a note here or send me a message when you see me about. Looking forward to seeing many new faces and sharing my passion for learning and knowledge!

In service,
Shinnorah Nightsbane,

((Open RP event, trivia contest, rules will be explained at the event. All trivia will be "IC" only, so things about the history of Azeroth, races, famous in game people like Jaina or Thrall, and trivia your *character* might be expected to know. So we won't be asking anything about Cataclysm, game designers like Ghostcrawler, non-Wow things about Diablo or Starcraft, or anything your character wouldn't have the faintest clue about.))

Time is Money, Friend!

2010-06-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

So....

I generally play one of three classes in WoW: affliction warlock (my way of channeling Aimi, perhaps?), elemental shaman, and protection paladin.

The last time WoW.com was hiring a shaman columnist, I spent a lot of time, effort, and energy into writing what I thought was a really solid application and submitted it. Needless to say, I did not get the position. The bad news was - nobody did, they actually re-opened the hiring date rather than pursue any of the people who'd applied in the last round. Yay, me?

Now, the last position was for resto/enhancement, neither of which is my "main" spec but still ones I paid attention to and played. This one actually is for an elemental shaman.

But I'm debating on whether it's even worth my time to apply or not.

Why, you ask? (If you didn't, ask! I would hate to answer a rhetorical question....)

From what I can tell, *every* writer that is hired is a "well known blogger in the WoW community". They're people who have huge and well-established blogs, where everyone knows who they are, and call hundreds of readers among their following.

Me, I have 12. And for the rare few who were reading my elemental shaman blog when I was keeping that up (sadly, deferred by dissertation) - then there's only 7.

I hardly think seven constitutes a "well known following".

Now - having an established WoW blog is not listed as a requirement for the job. In fact, good writing skills, age 18 or above, and some knowledge of HTML and Photoshop are the only "requirements". But I've always had the feeling this is one of those "expected" qualifications, especially looking at the hired columnists.

So I don't know...I just don't know. Composing an application is a pretty lengthy process if you want to do it well, complete with a sample column and separate writing sample. Rather than waste another weekend investing a lot of time into something that I might inherently not even be qualified for due to a lack of a blog, I just don't know what to do or whether I want to try again. (Note - while I did write asking for feedback on what I could have done to improve my application and received a "Got your email, I'll write soon" from Dan O'Halloran, I never heard back. So I don't even know what I can improve on from last time.)

Thoughts? Input? Would this be a colossal waste of time if I'm not a recognized name in the blogosphere? Or should I give it a shot?

Top 10 Things I Hope for in Cataclysm

2010-06-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

So I was inspired by reading some other top 10 lists, and decided to create my own. Sadly I doubt I'll be as witty as some others, but well - who knows?

10. Seeing Felwood either cleansed or completely trashed.

9. Learning what the Scythe of Elune is up to these days. Gilneas, anyone?

8. ANYTHING that makes Jaina stop crying and whining. Ice cream, perhaps?

7. A new demon!

6. A zone even half as cool as Duskwood.

5. Moar lore!

4. 50% fewer paladins in WoW.

3. 100% fewer blood elves. Also, a unique model for high elves that is neither night elf nor blood elf.

2. 75% fewer worgen. They haven't even been released yet and I already live in fear of the Bloof elf-ification of the Alliance. TYBN, Furries.

1. Stock trading through the Kezan Cartel. What do you mean my shares of Venture Trading Co stock just dropped 30 points?!

Argh Panic Flail!!

2010-05-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

So - there's just over two weeks before my PhD defense. No, there's no WoW achievement associated with it, but it's still a Major Life Undertaking nonetheless. We're talking 25% of MY ENTIRE LIFE has been devoted in part to this degree. I will have spent 8 years as a graduate student. 10 if you count the two years at UNL getting my first master's. Since tomorrow I will turn 37, that is in fact one forth of my entire life. Scary, isn't it?

Today I finally finished writing my conclusion, which means tomorrow I get to proofread it, finish my Senegal chapter additions, then deliver the entire copy out to the external readers. I'm terrified of course, but also excited. And nervous. Also, highly insane.

Not entirely kidding about the last part, either. This has become such a source of both stress and obsession (yes, I'm even dreaming about it) that last night I tanked a raid TWICE in RP gear before it dawned on me that even for an alt, my health was dropping awfully fast....*sigh* I'm sure it left a great impression on our new recruits!

I've noticed I'm a lot more moody than normal, which is fun. My ability to impersonate a duck and let things roll off my back is also sadly decreased while I try to steer the nerve-wracking waters of the final weeks before this 8-year journey comes to a close. I'm probably not actually insane by any medical definition of the term, as much as under tremendous stress. But most days this week, it feels like I'm a crazy lady!

So....it will all be over soon, for better or worse. I've contacted the department chair, Collegiate Dean, my dissertation chair, the original committee members, and made arrangements to deliver the final copy to the external readers. In two weeks, my entire academic life hangs in the balance on the fate of approximately 250 pages of child soldiering research.

....And I'm terrified witless.

(To save you all the agony of reading it, TL:DR says "Aid cuts make governments stop using child soldiers." See, aren't you glad I saved you all that reading?)

Is Blogging a Good Thing?

2010-05-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

To be fair, this has been a topic on my mind a lot recently - not at all from anything WoW related, but from a real world event. What started my pondering was a quote from Andrew Sullivan, one of the leading political bloggers in the blogosphere, in an interview with the Daily Beast regarding his "outing" of Elena Kagan (the Administration's current Supreme Court nominee, for those not in the know). The context was that Sullivan's been publishing articles stating that Kagan is a lesbian. The problem is - there's no evidence, other than her current marital status (single), to indicate she is. In fact, numerous of her college friends have come out and said that no, in fact, she is not in fact gay.(not that there's anything wrong with that) ;)

So - a famous blogger publicly makes an accusation outing someone who may or may not be gay, without any actual evidence aside from the fact she doesn't currently have a romantic interest of either gender, as far as I can tell. It's picked up by most media outlets and Kagan's homosexuality is being reported as fact. Yet - there's no actual, credible basis other than a blogger's hunch to say whether she is or isn't. Needless to say, even the suggestion she might be has conservatives in a tizzy and it's very likely to be the major issue in her confirmation for the Court.

So here's the key part of this non-WoW story. When The Daily Beast asked Sullivan about his evidence and the fact that he's reporting something he has no evidence for, his response was as follows:

"as a blogger, my job is to think out loud. It is not my job to report stories." As for information on Kagan's orientation, "one need have no 'evidence' beside the fact that she is single..."(sic)

When I read this, I was pretty horrified. I mean - technically, it's true. Bloggers aren't journalists, nor are they bound by any journalistic code of ethics or unions or editors the way that news journalists and reporters are. But at some point, what they say and think has become news - so much so that one guy's personal opinion about a Supreme Court nominee's sexual preferences has actually become national news and, in the worst case, could possibly be used to deny her ascention. (I have reservations about her suitability as a SC justice lest anyone assume this is my pro-Kagan crusade, but they have nothing to do with her sexual preference and more her lack of judicial experience.) Rather - it's left me really disturbed and unsettled how easily one person's "reality" - fictitious or not - can become "fact" in the modern internet era where any idiot with a keyboard and internet connection can be considered a subject matter expert.

Sullivan, sadly, is not an idiot with a keyboard and connection. He's a professional blogger, and he should know better than to do what he's doing and the impact that a blogger can have in the news-isphere of the internet. And so if even the professionals can be jerks passing off their opinions - without evidence or any actual logic to back their assertions up - then how can I expect WoW bloggers to be any better? (By Sullivan's logic, my friend Jonathan is also a raging homosexual because he works a lot and is desperately shy around women, thus not dating much. So apparently was my friend Dave for over a decade, before he finally did find someone and marry her.)

Given this, I've really had reservations about the actual benefit of blogs. Sure, there are some really good ones. But there are a lot of bad ones too. And as I saw this morning, and even engaged in a bit myself as a result - too often it's someone taking their private grievances or grudges and making them public. In a way, it's no better than someone going to the grocery store and screaming "So and so is a bitch!" - except thanks to the anonymity of the internet, people actually listen and will comment or be convinced rather than just thinking you're some lunatic screaming out loud in the grocery store.

Is this a good thing? More and more, I find myself thinking, "Not so much". I started this blog for the purpose of trying to write out my thoughts as I worked through the disillusionment I felt with WoW - the guild, my class, whatever the source of it was. The writing itself - the process of journaling and getting my nebulous thoughts out has been helpful. Professionals always recommend journaling as a way of divesting negative feelings and letting go of them. So that act itself is good, and catharic. It's the "making them public" part I have more and more misgivings about. If I ranted away on a Word doc that I saved to a folder and at some point deleted, the only person impacted is me. Nobody's reputation suffers, and it doesn't drag anyone else into a potentially messy affair. But blogs make everything public in a way. And that's when they become less a therapeutic exercise and more a means of hurting others.

I don't know how I feel about blogging, or the blogging community as a whole, in light of these separate but loosely similar events. I feel terribly about what's happening to Kagan and how easily someone has taken over the debate that should be about her credentials. I don't like how easy it is for anyone to use it as a personal soapbox to make up their own version of the "truth" and pass it off as fact to anyone willing to read. I'm definitely not enchanted with the blog I saw this morning and how little it resembled anything I've heard from any of the parties involved before this. Logically, I know there are some really good and helpful blogs out there - but how do you sort the wheat from the chaff, and how do you guarantee that the blog which is good one day won't become a personal vendetta the next, as it has with Sullivan?

Maybe it's as simple as only reading things about mechanics and not opinions or journal-style blogs like mine and most of my friends. I don't know. I need to figure out how much I want to even continue blogging, unless I can find a way to both retain the utility of this blog in the first place without discussing my thoughts or feelings. Since that was the point though, well...is it even worth keeping then?

I'm a philosophical one today, that much is for sure. And in any case, I need to stop pondering Sullivan and former guild members and get back to finishing my dissertation conclusion. So on that note - back to writing works based on hard evidence and fact without pondering unsubstantiated opinions.

Unpleasant Surprises

2010-05-17T05:43:00.001-07:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that a large core of my raiding team transferred Horde. It sucked for those of us left behind - I've been recruiting and recruiting and recruiting as much as I can, but it's a terrible time of year for it. Summer is always a slow time to recruit, a ton of other Alliance guilds are recruiting, and it's just too darned easy for people to get Icecrown 10 PuGs to really offer something significant to people as incentive to join a guild. So it's been pretty bleak, and it doesn't seem like we're any closer to rebuilding the second team we were than the day after we lost the people we did. Combine that with the fact that my defense is now only three weeks away, and that most of my time needs to be devoted to Projects Other Than WoW, and it looks like we'll just fold the second team entirely. It's not what I wanted and it's especially unfair to folks like Giraud and Ashaani, but I just don't see any other choice at this point.

Until this morning, I really didn't have major issues with the people who left. I understood (or rather, thought I did based on what they actually *SAID*), that they wanted things we just didn't provide. It happens - moreso in Burning Crusade than it has in Wrath so far, but when you're in a 10 man guild some people ultimately just decide they'd prefer 25s, or better progression, or the kinds of things we don't provide. It's a reasonable position. So when it was explained to me that the first person to leave really wanted to pursue the legendary weapon and couldn't do so with us, I took them at their word and wished them well. When his wife decided to transfer as well so she could raid with him because she wasn't getting achievements and wanted to keep up with him, I also took her at her word and wished her well. The third didn't even say a word to me - he was just gone. So there wasn't really a word to take, but I wasn't surprised - after all he was pretty close real life friends with the first person to leave as well as neighbors ooc, and they'd all joined together. It makes perfect sense they'd want to continue playing together - most folks would. They made their choice, they moved on, they found a new guild and were happily raiding away. Yes, it left us in a lurch and that part sucked pretty hard, but I'm not paying their subscription fee and I naively figured I could still consider them friends.

Then I read this.*

*I *know* I shouldn't have risen to the bait and replied. It's unprofessional, impolite, and completely pointless when it comes down to it. But well....sometimes you do things that you know are stupid anyway. At least I don't do them very often? (And unlike most people, I took full credit for my comments - right or wrong, I do have the courage of my convictions to stand behind what I say.)

This from a person who I had considered a very close friend. Who I'd talked to in texts regularly, who I'd commiserated about real life problems starting a family, belly dancing, everything under the sun. She was one of the only people outside of my husband who I could complain about the things I was unhappy about in the guild, or how frustrated I sometimes got with some things. Who I spent hours corresponding with in messages through our forums, and trying to deal with her concerns. To say that her accounting of the events in question leading to her departure is not reflective of my own memory is - well, the Understatement of the Century. And in fact, since I've run a guild for three years now and have learned to archive, log, or save *everything* pertaining to guild affairs, I have written records to prove that no, in fact the dissertation hasn't completely fried the last of my remaining brain cells and that I just remembered everything differently. There's just a list of complete, outright lies, half-truths, and deliberate misinterpretation of events.

I'm sure somewhere there are grains of truth. My perception is that there's a massive amount of passive aggressiveness that went on. Do I doubt that said tank/husband in question was unhappy tanking? No. But he never *TOLD* me - and in fact every time I asked either him or his wife, they said he was fine with it. I suspect that's a lot of the underlying issue in all of this - clearly they had problems and opinions. Clearly, they had grown very unhappy. Some of it, I understood - and in some cases agree with - but they're also things beyond my control. Yes, I also noticed how the only people that ever signed up for any non-Team I runs were the Team II folks (save one or two exceptions from Elio and Lal). It aggravated me too, to consistently not get the support for anything other than that one weekly run. I had also tried sponsoring raids to Ulduar, ToC, and Onyxia with next to no luck. But I also understand that you can't force other people to raid and that if there isn't enough support, you just have to drop it and move on for a while. So yes, many of the gripes and grievances are quite legitimate and fair.

But mixed in was just a wealth of venom and flat out falsehoods. I was stunned. People were unhappy, they left, they're happy now. I get it. But - why then try to go back and retroactively rewrite a completely new history to make it sound like they were shoved out the door and all but booted when that's not at all what happened? Why paint it so that nobody gave a damn when they left and had nothing but apathy overwhelming? Or that we forced people to do things that we didn't? Or that I'm all but harassing the one remaining member on a daily basis and all but forcing her to switch as well, when in every conversation I've had with her she's actually angry with the bunch of them for the way they handled things and is perfectly fine staying here? Of course....now I can't help but second guess that either. After all, two of these people consistently said one thing to me when the truth was quite the opposite, so maybe this person's just doing the same? Maybe she really is angry with me and was just trying to be polite when she was talking to me. Who knows anymore...

I don't get why people do that. Is it to relieve them of any guilt or responsibility for the consequences of their action? Did my former friend convince herself of this so that she wouldn't have to feel badly about the fact that their abrupt transfer left the rest of our team gutted and untenable? Or does she actually believe that's really what happened? And why do people have to be that way? Until that blog, I still considered them friends. I was hurt none had made any effort to stay in touch. I left the forums access up for two weeks in hopes of getting a PM to hear what they were up to, or even just to chit-chat. Crickets. I took great care in my writing here so as not to say anything that could be seen as potentially upsetting or at all critical. I made sure that as frustrated as I was with my own raiding situation (or lack thereof) and the impact it had on my remaining friends, that I didn't translate that into blaming the people involved in what led to it. And for what? Just to find myself defamed and ridiculed, libeled and slandered, in the public eye. Boy, do I love the internets!

So what have I learned? Because every experience in life, even the painful ones, can teach you things. And rather than just be angry and stew because someone who I'd thought was a friend turned out not to be, I'd like to try and see if there's a way to at least get some positive aspects out of the experience.

1. There are no internet friendships.
- I've been in this position too many times to really believe otherwise. This is not to say you can't make friends with people you meet on the internet - in fact, my husband and I just had a great weekend at the Steampunk World's Fair with a guild member who has become a real life friend. Any of the people I've met in person are probably safe enough to consider actual friends. But when push comes to shove, I think that's the defining line - no matter how close of a friend someone sees in game, it's just too easy for them to turn on you over guild politics or any of the other million sources for potential drama in WoW. Only if you've looked them in the eye should you really put any stock in the friendship, I think. Those are the ones that seem to last.

2. Log everything.
- This is pretty self-explanatory. Now in this case it's moot, since I don't need those logs or mails. After all, the decisions have all been made and all I'd be doing is clearing my name to people who probably know better than to believe everything they read from disenchanted and disgruntled former members anyway. But it's certainly reinforcement for logging. Always act professionally, *AND* always keep thorough records. That way if things do go south and someone accuses you of behavior you didn't engage in, you have evidence to clearly show what you did - or did not - do. I cannot tell you how many times this has served me well in the past.

3. As a guild leader, it may be better not to even try to make friends.
- Sad but true - especially for someone like me who largely plays WoW for the social aspect moreso than the raiding or dress-up factor. This is my window into social interaction. I like going out, doing things, making friends - but my husband, not so much. So WoW is where I get that. And I miss the luxury of making friends and being able to just talk to people - ESPECIALLY about Things Other Than Guild Business. But Harry S Truman (a fellow Missourian) said it best when he said "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog". This came from his observation that as President, nobody was ever really interested in you for you - as a leader, people come to you because they want you to lead, or fix things, or do things for them, or not do things for them. There's an agenda. It's not just to say, "Hey Harry, want to go get some coffee and talk? How's Bess?"

4. The viability of Strict 10 raiding.
- Right now, it stinks. This isn't the first time we've had people stick around until they're geared then leverage themselves into a competitive 25m guild, and it's a common problem for most 10m guilds. There's just too much prestige attached to 25s, the loot is much better, and that's where most folks view competitive progression to be. If it wasn't for Cataclysm, I would probably just give up myself and look for a 25m guild. It's exhausting to constantly be finding folks, leveling them, gearing them, and then having to start it all over after they bail for a 25. But it sounds like they're making a lot of changes in Cataclysm to offer both considerable benefits to guild members through the guild leveling system as well as standardizing 25m and 10m gear to the same item level. So we'll see how this works out in November.

5. Assertive leadership
- I asked, and asked, and asked again, and tried to accommodate people's preferences. All to no avail. If I'm going to get blamed for being a tyrant even when I am anything but, well - sometimes it's easier being a tyrant. Now, I'm hardly a real tyrant per se, but I might be better off just assigning roles to people in a raid rather than try to shift things around and around and around again to accommodate everyone's individual preferences. I've always said "Play what you want" but I have spent more time in WoW having to play Things Other Than What I Want (because what I like best is tanking yet I barely get to do it in our raids). So why not hold other people to the same expectation? Rather than be told one thing and learn another, I probably should have just made a decision on what I wanted those members to play and hold them to it. Plus, who knows - I sometimes think people respect you more if you're assertive and a little bossy rather than accommodating and therefore too wishy-washy.

6. When people start complaining, they're already out the door.
- I cannot tell you the amount of time, energy, emotional investment, and stress I could have saved myself if I just wrote people off when they hit the "constantly griping" phase. This isn't to say that every complaint should be ignored. But - there's a point where it shifts somehow. It's hard to explain, but I can point to it in just about every group departure I've seen. The player(s) go from participating and interacting to withdrawing, rarely participating in events, not talking to the Guild as a whole, and complaining more and more to the leadership. In my three years of doing this, there's a definite point in which the group shifts from seeing issues that need resolving and bringing them up to just being angry and bitter and getting ready to leave. Twice in the last four months when things got to this point with a group, we bent over backwards to hand them the moon in hopes they'd stick around. In both cases, all it seemed to do was delay their departure by a few weeks.

7. 90% of guild drama originates from women.
- I don't know why this is. I'm a political scientist and not a sociologist, so I don't understand group dynamics or gender breakdowns well. As a closet feminist I hate even noticing something like this - I want to believe we're all just the same and that there are no significant differences. But well - in both of these cases the last couple months, they originated from the ladies who got their spouses all worked up. And when I was regaling our friend at Steampunk Fair about the worst drama/people who flip out and decide to bash our guild once they leave, I also noticed that *every* story involved female players. WTF ladies? We're better than this! So guys, either start causing some serious drama or gals, do some zen breathing or handle your concerns better than gquitting and going nuclear in public fits of name-calling drama. :)

Mostly I'm just kicking myself. I'm a smart person - I saw this coming. I shouldn't be surprised that rather than acknowledge mutual blame or expect anyone to feel a little badly about the lurch we've been left in, they decided to make it all our fault so they don't have any unpleasant guilt to feel badly about. And I sure as heck should know better than to put much stock in online friendships. Yet time and time again, I go out and make the same mistakes, like some battered wife that just keeps being drawn to abusive men because they think it's going to be different this time. *sigh* For someone three weeks away from completing her PhD, I sure can be dumb...

Hooray for Duct Tape!

2010-05-06T20:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it took three alts and two new members, plus one very rusty tank (me), but we did manage to get into Icecrown and down some good bosses. In fact, until Rotface I believe we didn't even wipe! So things look promising, at least.

That's the good news! The less ideal news is, while word is getting around about the guild and I'm fielding regular questions about our recruiting nearly every time I'm online, they're always from melee DPS or people under the age thing. Argh! Seriously - are there no healers who play this game anymore?

I'm delighted we have enough depth with our alts (and willingness of their players) to be able to get the team running again, so at least we all have something to do raidwise. But I know it's taxing and tiring running the same raid on multiple toons, so hopefully we will be able to fill the last few holes shortly. WTB Healer, PST?

In any case - Duct Tape 1, Icecrown Citadel 0. :)

String, Spit, and Duct Tape

2010-05-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

Well - as most folks know by now, the Icecrown raid team I was on pretty much blew up a couple weeks ago. We'd been down two members already - one due to her work schedule and one due to a deployment - so I'd been trying to cobble together a combination short term/long term fix by borrowing a couple alts from our Icecrown I team. A third was accepted to law school and so won't have time to raid much going forward - wonderful and exciting news, but add another DPS spot to fill into the mix. So already, we were operating around 70% strength.

Then for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me, there was a Horde exodus. I say the reasons aren't entirely clear because every time I've asked or was informed, I've gotten different answers - that, combined with the "Don't worry, we'll leave our alts here and still help out when we can" translating into a stealth-transfer of said alts, and well....it doesn't take professional skills in elicitation to figure out there's more to it than just a desire to have hooves of the non-Draenei variety. As with the last tank/healer combo, they obviously had gotten pretty upset about something - but as they didn't address it with me or hubby, it obviously wasn't addressed and there's not a lot I can do about it now, except to keep focusing on what I'm working on.

Unfortunately, because of the fact this came pretty much out of left field with no warning nor no lead time to plan for it or recruit properly (just like it did the last time we lost two folks to the Horde), it all but gutted my raid team. So the short version is - since Exodus II, I haven't gotten to raid at all. And I'm trying very hard not to be bitter or angry (because that's not the kind of person I want to be), but well - it's not easy, especially knowing the people who left us are happily raiding away night after night and for the remaining five of us, we've gotten to cool our heels doing a lot of nothing while we try to restructure. *sigh*

So, I've been recruiting. Well, trying to at least. The problem is - seems like every guild on the server is also recruiting right now, so it's not exactly easy. We've gotten a steady flow of applications, but I'm rather particular in who we admit and most have been screened out either due to age (too young) or RP (generally lack thereof). There are a couple promising people we've admitted, but only one person who's truly Icecrown ready. Thus, we're more or less at the same spot we've been stuck at ever since this happened, with five people really itching to raid and still desperately searching for the rest.

In spite of it all, Ehr and I talked about it and we decided to go ahead and try to cobble together a run for this evening. I'm not sure if we'll pull it off yet - even bringing along two alts, we're still only at 8 people total. Granted we can PuG a couple DPS easily enough, but still - not something I want to rely on from week to week. Why did we try to get something going then? Well...when it boils down to it, a lot of it is morale. We want to keep morale up, we want to provide an opportunity for those of us left out to get to at least continue doing some sort of progression raiding, and I think you need to continue pressing on unless you want to just collapse entirely. We'd debated whether it's worth going back to just the one team we know we can support, but I don't see any way of doing that without creating some people that would wind up benched a lot. And we have too many good, dedicated, loyal and skilled raiders to just put them on the second-string list. So, we're going to give this a try tonight - even if it means I'm using spit, string, and duct tape to hold this semblance of a raid team together.

Wish me luck! Hopefully I'll have some good news to report tomorrow. Heaven knows I could use it - I've had enough of failures and false starts over the last four months to last me well into the next expansion.

Dissertating!

2010-04-21T04:01:00.000-07:00

Apologies for not posting more recently. On top of being a guild leader, part time warlock, part time whatever else I'm playing, and full-time professor offline, I'm also in the final, mad throes of finishing my dissertation. At some point once I've defended, I will link the final product if anyone cares to read it.

It's been a long, very hard road. I started my PhD back in Fall of 2002, moving away from the city and home I loved to a strange, alien place called Washington, DC. Didn't like it so much then, and while Arlington has grown on me I still don't consider myself either a Virginian or a Washingtonian. The first couple years were filled with classes, teaching assistantship duties, and re-learning how to be a student again. I did my comprehensive exams while my husband was in Afghanistan, passing both, and that summer when he returned we had planned to move back to the Boston-area. But, well - long story short, life doesn't always work out the way you plan. I wound up getting a full-time job with the government in the area, instead.

Unfortunately, the working-full time interfered with writing the dissertation. Two years, completely down the drain - my first position involved a lot of travel, so there was very little time to do my research. During that time, my original dissertation committee all but imploded - my chair, who I'd been working with since I started in 2002, left for a position in the University of California position, my law expert was denied tenure and pursued law school in Hawaii, and my other reader left for Georgetown. This left me with exactly 0 committee members. So there I am, trying to get started again - four years down, and basically at ground zero.

I'll spare you all the ugly details of trying to form a new committee, build new relationships, earn their trust and confidence and prove I would finish, come up to speed on a somewhat new topic from the one I'd originally been doing (the first was more about institutions and the International Criminal Court but I didn't want to be labeled an organizational theorist). Suffice it to say, it took a long time, a lot of hard work, and many nights of despair and feelings of imminent failure. But I soldiered on, shoved my pride aside for a while, and stuck with it.

Once I got through the prospectus part, it's been pretty smooth sailing - I'd hardly say that the dissertation has "written itself" - I've invested a tremendous amount of time and effort. But I've felt confident that I'm writing something theoretically useful as well as practical, the work has been interesting, I'm thrilled that I have an actual finding from my research, and no kidding, I've actually written a book!

Right now, the two hundred pages I currently have are with my core committee members going through the first draft proofread. My chair's read everything already, but the two other members are doing so. I'm still working on my last chapter, but there's a point where after all this, you start to lose a little steam. Most nights, I'm exhausted - I've looked at this topic for so long now, sometimes I feel like I'll go bonkers studying it anymore. And the topic is downright grim - I'm writing about child soldiers and why states stop using them. I've had to learn more about the conditions these poor kids face, and some of the most appalling things human beings can do to others, during the course of the research. In fact, my tongue in cheek working title has been "What Not to Do with a Machete". But, human rights research is rarely about positive topics - if things are going well, odds are there aren't war crimes happening, right?

All in all, while I'm thrilled this is coming to a close finally, and that the PhD is really, honestly within my grasp - it's also a huge amount of work heading into the home stretch and I've been both physically and emotionally exhausted. A day full of teaching, child soldiering research, and writing doesn't leave a lot of energy for much online at the end of it. And certainly not a lot of enthusiasm for writing *more* through a blog or the like! Eight pages a day is enough, thankyouverymuch. So I haven't been keeping up with the blog a lot lately, and my online presence - and definitely my ability and energy to coordinate events for others - is pretty much nil. But it's for a good cause!

The morale of the story is, while I feel badly for being so sparse to some degree, well - I've worked way too long, way too hard, and sacrificed way too much of my life to lose focus now, especially over a game. (I have officially been working on my PhD for 25% of my life in fact). So expect me to continue being sporadic and sparse, but know that I'm out there and as of June 8th or so, I'll be able to come back, be more active, and definitely take a more visible role again. And I'll be Dr. Shinnorah too!

Popular Demonics Hits Newsstands

2010-04-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.thedailyblink.com/comics/2010-03-29-040.jpg

Thanks to the Daily Blink for this fun and amusing magazine cover! I can't wait for issue #2.

Blizzard's Upcoming Warlock Changes

2010-04-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, warlocks will receive changes to their class talents and abilities. Outlined below are some of these changes. Keep in mind that this is an early preview and that these modifications are still under development, so you may see further adjustments to the listed changes as we get closer to launch. That said, here is a first look at these new warlock spells and abilities!

New Warlock Spells

Fel Flame (level 81): Quick-hitting spell dealing Shadowfire damage. This is similar to the mage ability Frostfire Bolt, in that the lower of the two resistances (in this case shadow and fire) on your target will be used for calculating its damage. Additionally, Fel Flame refreshes the duration of Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Our goal for Fel Flame is to provide a spell that's good for mobility and for use by Destruction and Demonology specs. Also, did we mention it uses green fire? Yep. Instant cast.

Dark Intent (level 83): Increases the target's chance for a critical effect with periodic damage or healing spells by 3%. When the target lands a crit, you get a buff to your damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times.

Demon Soul (level 85): Fuses the warlock's soul with his or her demon. This provides warlocks with a self-burst cooldown to use. The specific effects granted by Demon Soul depend on the demon chosen. Demon Soul lasts for a certain number of charges or until it expires (around 20 seconds), depending on the demon used. 2-minute cooldown.

Soul Shard Overhaul

This major change regarding Soul Shards was previously announced at BlizzCon 2009. Soul Shards will no longer be inventory items, but instead a new UI resource mechanic. Warlocks will have 3 Soul Shards that can be used during a fight and will not be able to gain additional shards during combat. Soul Shards will not be required outside of combat. Soul Burn will consume a Soul Shard resource, thereby allowing you to use the secondary effects of some spells. Soul Burn has no mana or health costs and is off the global cooldown. Planned secondary effects are outlined here.

Summon Demon + Soul Burn = summon the demon instantly.
Drain Life + Soul Burn = Reduces cast speed by 60%.
Demonic Circle + Soul Burn = Increases movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds after teleporting.
Unstable Affliction + Soul Burn = Instantly deals damage equal to 30% of its effect.
Soul Fire + Soul Burn = Instant cast.
Healthstone + Soul Burn = Increases total health by 20% for 8 seconds.
Searing Pain + Soul Burn = Increases the crit chance of Searing Pain by 100%, and subsequent Searing Pain spells by 50% for 6 seconds.

Next you will find a list of some of the warlock spell and talent changes for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

All warlock damage-over-time (DoT) spells will benefit from crit and haste innately. Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT's duration, but rather to add additional ticks. When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer "clip" the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell, similar to how Everlasting Affliction currently works.
Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will be converted into Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom. Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. Curse of Elements) on a single target.
Hellfire will no longer deal damage to the warlock.
Imps will lose Fire Shield, but will gain a new ability, Burning Ember, which is a stacking DoT.
The succubus melee range will be increased. The succubus will no longer have Soothing Kiss, but will instead have Whiplash, which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards.
Voidwalker Torment will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat. Suffering will become a single-target taunt.

New Talents and Talent Changes

Pandemic will now cause Drain Soul to refresh Unstable Affliction and Bane of Agony on targets below 25% health.
The ability Fel Domination will be removed (because Soul Burn accomplishes the same effect).
Demonology will gain a new direct-damage spell, Demon Bolt. Demon Bolt will add a debuff that improves the damage done by the demon to the target.
We plan to add a new talent, Impending Doom, which will give certain spells a chance to reduce the cooldown on Metamorphosis and Bane of Doom.
Metamorphosis will no longer be subject to demonic crowd control. Furthermore, abilities available only while under the effects of Metamorphosis will be altered to put more emphasis on the warlock's own spells.
Shadowburn will now do additional damage to targets below 25% health.

Warlock Changes announced for April 7

2010-04-07T05:31:00.000-07:00

They haven't been released yet, but I'll make sure to cover them when they are!

The things I'm most curious to see in warlock changes are:

- The New Soul Shard Mechanic. The devs announced at Blizzcon 2009 they'd be changing the way soul shards worked in a very interesting way. I'm very curious to see what this will be. My thought is something more akin to runic power than just consumables, but I'm very eager to see what they've come up with.

- New Demon. I believe at the same conference, the devs announced that they'd be adding a new demon to the warlock arsenal. Hmmmm....

Stay tuned! More warlock news to follow later in the day.

Death Knight II: Deathtards in Northrend

2010-04-03T05:24:00.000-07:00

I spent a week working hard on my new and aspiring Death Knight, and this morning I got her to Northrend. Woot! Still having a lot of fun with it, and definitely picking up some new tricks and combinations that I think will be very handy when I get the opportunity to tank some more instances. I think that, more than anything, is what I most look forward to. The DK has some cool tanking tricks that I miss when I play my paladin - namely two spell interrupts, which come in oh-so-handy. However, I haven't taken the time to tank very many instances. I think mostly I just did a couple Ramparts runs on my way to Northrend.

Now that I've arrived, I will definitely have to run some more things. I picked up a couple decent tanking swords, which I realize must have been re-itemized at some point in WotLK. At least, I can't imagine any other reason that a sword with stamina and defense bonuses would be now listed as one-hand versus main hands. Druids can't use swords, and what other tanking classes would need to dual wield? It was a pretty cool discovery though - my draenei got lucky with the Crystalblade of the Draenei dropping in Shadowmoon Valley, and I picked up the Crystalline Kopesh as a quest reward.

This morning, I'm en route to Howling Fjord. I would still like to head back to Shadowmoon Valley at some point and finish the quest lines there, as I never ran them on any of my toons. Unfortunately, the experience and the quest rewards in Northrend are just too good for this draenei to pass up.

Stay tuned for more updates from the frozen north as I continue my undead adventures! And if anyone has alts in the sub-80 range, feel free to send Ixallare* a tell if you'd like company.

(I recycled the name because I liked it for a draenei, and I renamed my shaman a while ago in preparation for her re-birth as a Wildhammer. So for those who remember the shaman Ixallare - it's not meant to be the same toon or any relation, just the re-use of a named I always liked.)

Another Deathtard in the World

2010-03-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

.....And it's ME!

Well, I hope I'm not a Deathtard, but I have recently rolled up a shiny new Death Knight. Now, this isn't my first flirtation with one - in fact, I've technically rolled around five or so. When they were first released, I rolled a night elf. Got her to 64, but it never stuck with me so she wound up deleted. Went through a dwarf one, never got her past 58. Think I did the starting quests at least one other time on Moon Guard (a gnome, maybe?), and then rolled a tauren DK on Shadow Council. (She's still hanging out at 58, alas poor Deadnettle....)

But, I've been wanting to try DK tanking for a while - after all it is my last class for the "get under the hood and figure its mechanics out" on my Great Tanking Study. So, it seemed time.

This time I rolled a Draenei, seeing as my shaman will someday be a dwarf. Interestingly enough, this one seems to have stuck with me. Granted, she's still only 63, but I'm having just an insane amount of good time with her so far. For one, the DPS is tremendously good - she can kill things in a mere fraction of the time my shadow priest in Outlands can, but also she appears to have next to no downtime between pulls. In comparison, it seems like every 3-4 mobs or so, my poor priestie gets thirsty. The DK though - no pausing unless the phone rings. It's just a pile of blood and bones in her cloven hooved wake.

I've done two instances as a tank, so far, and one as DPS. It seems to be going a lot better than my warrior attempts, though of course comparing Hellfire Ramparts to heroic anything is more than a bit silly. But, it's been a refreshing break from the regular heroic grind or raiding, so I've really been enjoying it. I'll keep folks posted how it goes as I get to Northrend!

Warrior Woes

2010-03-25T04:12:00.000-07:00

Well - the good news is, things seem to have settled down a bit on the off-line side of things so hopefully I can try to update the old online blog a bit more. Still have some major demands on my time (silly PhD dissertation!), so updates will continue to be sporadic through either June 8 or August 1. But that said, this has always been a good place to ponder everything and nothing at all pertaining to WoW, so...it doesn't necessarily require a lot of time or research, like my shaman blog does.

I've been working on my tank in game recently - or rather, tank 2 of my 3 tanking toons. I seem to have a plethora of tanks - working on my 4th as we speak. (Well, working theoretically - mostly I just rolled a DK and finished the starting zone so I'm not sure how much that counts as "working on a new toon". We'll see if I level her past 60...) I really enjoy tanking, so most of my alts seem to wind up as that flavor - that or ranged DPS. And in the happiest of fortuitous circumstances, one toon - the druid - is both! Too bad I've never been able to RP a night elf worth a damn. Human and dwarf I have down. Gnome, night elf, draenei - never can get the voice right in my head. For night elves and draenei it's the age/longevity issue that always hampers my ability to RP one, and for gnomes I suppose it's the whimsy that stumps me.

In any case, I've been working on my warrior. (Formerly Rhislayne, now Angharradd or "Double D" thanks to a combination of race change to dwarf and a friend's reference to the toon spelling that we all decided fits a dwarf lass's generous curves quite well.) My favorite tanking class is paladin - I just really enjoy the playability and the mechanics of it. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure if the guild has one more raiding paladin it'll explode in a burst of Light and Blessings. No kidding - we have 3 paladins on one raiding team and 4 on the other, so between 30-45% of both raid teams are paladins as it stands. No more room at the inn!

I'd talked a while ago with our main tank about what I should play if I do work on a tank, and we both agreed that warrior seemed a good way to go. After all, we don't have a single raiding warrior in the entire guild, and they do have a ton of cool tanking tricks. It's the Leatherman of tanking - if there's ever a tanking tool you might want or need in a boss fight, odds are good the warrior can do it. They can spell reflect, silence/interrupt, have multiple taunts, protections for top threat DPS, all kinds of tricks!

Unfortunately, I appear to fail at using them.

I don't know why I'm having such a rough time. Tanking, I know. I understand the theory, and while I've been a bit out of practice while playing the warlock, I hardly think that explains it. Single target tanking, I have down to a science. If I'm focusing on one mob, do your worst - you'll never pull it off me!

Two mobs, it becomes a bit more of a coin-toss. Sometimes I do well, sometimes it seems like I've barely tabbed to the second and thrown down my first sunder just to see happy mob #1 gnawing away on the resident mage or hunter. Mages are not squeak toys, Mister Mob! Now put him down and come chomp on the chubby little plate wearer.

Three mobs or more? Well - my warrior tanking really breaks down to kobold counting:

One, two, many.

Everything beyond two may as well be a hundred for as well as I can manage them. I've tried all kinds of things - I had an "AoE build" that focused on a lot of cleave and thunderclap that was supposed to make you the equivalent of a paladin. Not so much, turns out. I went back to a more classic raiding prot build and just try to really lay down a lot of devastates, thunderclaps, and shockwaves. Even then, it's dicey.

I guess my frustration is that I don't feel like I'm getting any better at the warrior tanking. I still just seem to flail and mash buttons randomly without a lot of deliberation on what to select. Now when I first started paladin tanking, there was a bit of that too - the panic factor of "Ohmigosh, loose mob! /flail". But within a month or two, I got the hang of it and consistently improved. I learned how to move, when to taunt, how to switch targets, all the good tanking skills. As a warrior though, I really seem to have plateaued out - I'm reading and researching, but I'm really not seeing the payout in game of actual, consistent improvement. Still lots of loose mobs, and I still feel like I'm panicking and hitting random buttons nearly as much as I did two months ago.

So, this week I decided to roll a Death Knight. >.> Not saying the DK will take over for the warrior or anything - in fact it's downright unlikely I'll even finish leveling her before Cataclysm comes out. (My poor dwarf priest has only gained 5 levels in the last year and a half.) I might practice tanking on my druid some more too. I'm just at a loss on the warrior.

I'm sure it's an excellent tanking class, I've certainly seen plenty of top-tier warrior tanks. I just - well, starting to feel like I will never be one of them for whatever reason.

Anyone out there who has master the Art of the Warrior - tips? Suggestions?

Sporadic Updates for a bit

2010-02-18T08:39:00.000-08:00

Lots going on for me right now. I'm out of town all week for work, and even when I get back home my schedule looks to be pretty tightly packed. I'd like to factor WoW into it if I can, even if it just means logging in twice a week or so. It's something I enjoy and I have friends there, so I'd love to continue making a bit of room for it.

That said, I have a lot of big things to juggle all of a sudden. I'm in the last 2 chapters of my dissertation, and I've gone too far to put that on hold. I may be having my parents come out to DC for a while and stay with me while I balance some other challenges, and that always inhibits my WoW time. I also have some really big decisions to make ahead of me over the next few months - not only the ongoing one of "What do I do about the Salem house", but now I'm trying to figure out what my family life looks like, whether I want to even stay in DC at all or move away, if I can still afford the house we're living in now or should look at something smaller and more affordable, and whether I can try to arrange for the ideal of keeping my existing job but having the billet transferred out near my family in St. Louis.

So lots of big questions to answer. Lots of big, life-altering decisions to make. WoW is a wonderful hobby, but often can become a terrible distraction as well. These are hard questions, and ones I'd love so much to just brush under the rug and ignore because well - they're hard. WoW's such an easy vehicle to do that - and that's why I'm really trying to manage my time online and not give myself the opportunity.

For now, I'll try to be around from time to time but well - if I'm not spending a lot of time online, then I probably don't have a lot to blog about. Well, least not about WoW. Maybe I'll go back to my real life blog that I started in Slovenia a year ago, maybe I'll just work on a personal and private journal. But either way - I think it's safe to say that the Adventures of Shinnorah the Warlock are going on hold for the time being.

Thanks friends. I'll stay in touch, one way or another. Take care and be well!

For the Alliance?

2010-02-12T06:05:00.000-08:00

I got to thinking this morning, over my morning tea - how and why do people wind up playing what they play? I've been especially frustrated recently over our server's ineptitude at PvP and our inability to hold Wintergrasp for more than 5 seconds. It didn't used to be this way...back in the first couple patches, the Alliance frequently had WG as well as AV. Then I think all our good fighters shipped out to Icecrown or something, and left a bunch of kids in charge.

Now, I know the cliche is to say "Horde's just better at teamwork", or some variation on the "Why Horde is ultimately better" theme. As an adult who plays Alliance, you'd be surprised how much this comes up or in what ways. Urban legends say that Horde players are more mature, because they're older (which, by the way, was a myth busted by Nick Yee in the Daedalus project - ages are roughly the same across factions). There are various reasons given as to why this is, different spins. We hear them all the time from a real life friend of ours who started as a human warrior with us, but has since found his footing as a Forsaken. And while my guildmates aren't the type to point out "Horde is better", pretty much everyone on my current raid team save my husband and I are in fact Hordies at heart. We're lucky that they're all willing to don those Alliance skins because they like the guild, but it's a group that definitely loves their orcs and taurens. (Fortunately I don't think any of them play a blood elf, or I'd have to /gboot. ;) Kidding! Well, mostly...)

So here I am, enjoying my tea, pondering factions. The thought's been percolating a while, but a post talking about goblins on wow.com is what started my creative juices. I'm pretty psyched about goblins - not enough to switch factions completely (I don't think), but I'm sure I will actually roll and try to keep up with one. My current Horde flirtations so far have been roll and play a few levels and then run out of time because I have so much to manage on my Alliance toons.

It got me thinking though about the larger questions of why people play what they do. Not the old, classic (and if you ask me, worn out) X is so much better and here's why. Not even the "Varian is a jerk" or "Garrosh is a loser" debates. But - as players, why do you choose to play what you play?

For me, I started as a human mage. My husband was initially a gnome mage, then rerolled as a dwarven paladin. In neither of our cases did it have anything to do with picking pretty toons, or some sort of "good guy v. bad guy" logic, because we were utterly unfamiliar with the Warcraft universe and had no pre-existing notions of factions.

The Alliance are classic D&D races.

Hubby and I are D&D players. In fact, that's how we met - through our friend's D&D campaign. When I started WoW, I basically recreated the character I was currently playing in our tabletop game at the time - Liadon Callister, Waterdhavian Mage and Harper Scout. Ehr's original character was not from the campaign (probably because he was GMing at the time), but his second was remarkably similar to his last D&D character, Synumbrae the rogue.

We didn't start WoW as a way to play D&D online per se, but - when we sat there, as bright and shiny-eyed new WoW players looking at the character creation screens, well - one half we recognized, and one half was sort of guys you faced in wandering encounters while you were trying to sleep. It's not that the Alliance races were prettier, or more good, or somehow better - it's that we *recognized* them from our D&D roots. We knew how to roll a gnome, an elf, a human, or a dwarf - we knew how to roleplay them from decades of tabletop gaming, and roughly how they interacted. Yes, there are some lore differences in game, especially with the night elves - but honestly, a lot of it is remarkably similar to good old Greyhawk.

Horde races, it's not that we immediately locked onto them as "evil" in any way, but they did remind us a lot of the bad guys in tabletop gaming. Orcs, trolls, and undead - these are things you fight against in your typical D&D dungeon crawl. We didn't have a lot of conception for how they'd interact in a civilized world - most of our previous experience was encountering them in a dungeon, fighting them, then taking a few coppers and some crappy chainmail off their corpses before heading into the next 10'x10' room to do more of the same. Tauren and blood elves (and draenei) were completely unfamiliar to us - so we didn't really have a concept there at all. In the end, we just stuck with what we knew.

Obviously, we've learned a lot about the gaming experience since then. I've read up on orc lore, seen most of the Horde cities, learned about tauren and blood elves and draenei. Me, I'm happiest playing a dwarf. I love their history, their voices, the way my toons look swinging a sword. I'm not sure what I will play in Cataclysm (especially since I'm having so much fun with my warlock, who sadly cannot be a dwarf). But I've never really been able to get into the Horde yet - perhaps with goblins, I might have better luck. With me now, I can say it's a combination of familiarity and aesthetics. Aside from not wanting to ally with blood elves or Forsaken, I always get lost in the Horde cities. Undercity's the worst - but even Silvermoon and Ogrimarr cause me trouble. Plus, while the tribal thing is kinda cool (especially Thunder Bluff), I like the overall aesthetic of the Alliance better. I know it sounds dumb, but I love the heraldy - the clean, elegant lines of the lion tabard, the blue and gold colors - they resonate with me and my sense of precision and order. (I'm also a cross-stitcher and machine quilter, I like neat and precise lines). The Horde heraldry doesn't appeal to me - curvy, jagged, strong red and black colors that I find a bit off-putting. It's a silly thing, but well - I like order, organization, straight lines and classic architecture. This also probably explains why I spend all my time in Ironforge and Stormwind and kick and scream if I have to go to Darnassus or Exodar (where I also always get lost and turned around).

Anyway - the question of what people play and why has always fascinated me. What do others play, and how did you get there? Did you start where you are, or switch? Was it where your friends played, or some other reason?

Affliction Rotation Comments

2010-02-09T05:18:00.000-08:00

On WoW.com this morning, they had a piece on Affliction Warlocks, titled Affliction 101 . I don't know if this makes me a good warlock or a bad one, but I didn't agree completely with the advice therein.

Overall it's a good piece, and certainly the glyph advice is pretty much universally accepted across the WoW board. If you play affliction in end game, the glyphs you'll want are:

Haunt
Lifetap
Quick Decay

The gems are pretty consistent too, though for someone who's getting paid to blog I'm surprised they didn't put in the extra 30 seconds to look up the gem names. (Speaking as a jewelcrafter, it's incredibly annoying when people come up and ask things like, "Hey can you cut the strength/stamina gem?" Our gems are listed by name - not stats. So please don't expect your local jewelcrafter to spend 10 minutes doing your research for you and try to look up the gem - know the name before you ask for it!) Anyway - jewelcrafter bitterness aside, the core gems are:

Runed Cardinal Ruby (red)
Reckless Ametrine (orange - use in yellow sockets)
Purified Dreadstone (purple - use in blue sockets)
Intricate Eye of Zul (green - use in blue sockets if you need more haste as well)
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (meta, requires two blue gems)

My additional caveat - I never socket for blue beyond the two required to activate my meta. Most of the sources I read recommend just gemming for as much spellpower as possible, and then socketing for spellpower/haste anywhere that wants a yellow. If you have a blue socket, use two for your meta gem, then just stick red gems and overwrite the socket bonus. Why?

Let's take a quick look at the math. Don't worry, I'll be gentle! ;) As a warlock, you get 30% of your spirit converted to spellpower through the use of Fel Armor. Say you get +6 spellpower as a socket bonus, which seems to be the average I've run across in my 10m travels. Using a Dreadstone in that blue socket nets you a total of:

6 (socket bonus) + 12 (gem) + 3 (spirit from gem) = 21 spellpower.

Using a straight Runed Cardinal Ruby nets you 23 spellpower.

So - the break even point for using a purple gem to keep a socket bonus is +8 spellpower as a socket bonus. Anything above +8, you definitely want to go with the Dreadstone. Anything below 8, just make sure you have two blue gems for your meta gem and go for the spellpower instead. With the current tier 10 armor, the Dark Coven's Regalia, you'll make the most use of your socket bonuses by gemming the headpiece (+9 spellpower socket) and the leggings (+7 spellpower socket) with your Purified Dreadstone, and then fill the rest with Runed Cardinal Rubies or Reckless Ametrines (red and yellow slots, respectively). Of the gear I have seen, the only one with a spellpower socket greater than 7 so far is the headpiece - so that definitely gets one purple. If you come across any other gear with an 8 or higher spellpower bonus, then socket the other purple there and regem the leggings with good old spellpower.

Now, about that rotation. On Affliction 101, they created a handy flowchart. Let's take a look!

I generally try to start combat by lifetapping *just* as the pull starts. This causes less strain on your healers, and lets you enter combat with the Glyph of Life Tap bonus active. You want to minimize your lifetapping as much as possible for maximum DPS though, using it only either when you *really* need mana, or just as your buff is wearing down. Otherwise, it's a GCD burned without DPS generated.

On Curses, the rotation to the left specifies Curse of Agony. In practice, this works for a 25m raiding guild and is the de facto for those situations. For 10m raiding, it is often different. Why?

In 10m more often than not, you'll be using Curse of the Elements, rather than Curse of Agony. Curse of the Elements increases magical damage to the target by 13%. (Warlock's lucky number!) Now in 25 man raids, you're typically going to have a Balance Druid or an Unholy Death Knight present, both of whom also apply a 13% magical increase that does not stack with CoE. So whenever you raid with a boomkin's Earth and Moon or an unholy DK's Ebon Plaguebringer, definitely use your CoA. But if you're like me, and you typically raid without either Boomkin or Death Knight, then you'll want to go for Curse of the Elements instead. It's probably a 50/50 DPS split for you, the warlock - but it helps out your mages, tankadins, retadins, shadow priests, or any other spellcaster causing damage to the bad guys. So hook a buddy up, and use that CoE for larger raid utility - unless someone else provides it. The other nice thing with CoE is that it has a much longer timer than CoA, which also means one less GCD to blow.

Otherwise, as specified, Affliction is a careful balance of juggling DoTs (Haunt, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, and Curse of Agony if used) and direct damage spells (Shadow Bolt, Drain Soul). For someone like me, who wants her DPS classes to keep her engaged and paying close attention to the environment, Affliction is *THE* spec to play. Destruction is much more like a mage, straightforward rotation with very little curse-juggling involved. Affliction on the other hand is a constant balance of DPS, curses, rotations, and DoT management. If you like having to really focus on the environment without a set rotation, then consider the affliction warlock! If you want a straightforward and clean rotation, then destruction is probably a better spec though.

Me, I'm glad I made the switch to affliction. I've found it a lot of fun, and very engaging.

Snow Day Projects

2010-02-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

In DC, we've received a historic snowstorm - which is a fancy way of saying that we're still in the process of shoveling ourselves out from behind over two feet of snow. And more expected soon!

On the plus side, in between shoveling trips, we've gotten to play a lot of WoW. The Federal government has been closed due to the weather, which means both hubby and I have the day off. I've been hard at work on a discipline/shadow priest who is now 65 and 400 tailoring, plus running my random daily and the Love is in the Air daily with my warlock. Hubby was playing with me a bit on his death knight, but then he rolled a gnome warrior and I haven't seen the DK since. (His name is Dartinyan - how great is that? I love the Muskateer/gnome pun.)

I've gotten a lot of practice healing as a disc priest, as I've found that's what most groups are looking for in Outlands. Most of the groups have been decent enough, though they've followed Jenn's Rule of Random Dungeons. Jenn's rule states that in any given random, there's usually one really good player, three adequate ones, and one complete tool. I don't know why there is, probably has something to do with the law of averages. But in my experience, most PuGs really aren't that bad and it's very rare to be in a complete train wreck of a PuG. But most PuGs will also have that one player who's just a raging idiot. So far, that's held pretty true in my Outlands leveling experience (except when I run with guildmates, of course.)

My personal favorite took place on a Blood Furnace run this weekend. Now - I'm not a particularly stellar healer (I'd put myself squarely in one of the three "average" player roles.) But I'm competent, and it's pretty rare for someone to die outside of a boss fight when I'm healing - at least at this level. Even on boss fights, it's more the exception than the rule to have anyone drop - but never the tank. So, we zone in to BF, the tank goes in and starts the first pull.

Chaos erupts.

As a discipline healer, I keep people safely ensconced in a shield most of the pulls - which then makes my job easier and allows me to focus on the tank unless something goes dreadfully awry. Which, in this case, something went dreadfully awry - but I wasn't sure what. All I knew was, I was struggling to keep the group up on the first wave of trash! I figured we must have gotten extra adds or something. Miraculously, I manage to heal through it and keep everyone alive - but it took pretty much all my tricks and potions to do. It had to be an extra pack, right?

Wrong.

Next pull? Same thing. Chaos - I'm scrambling harder to heal through the trash than anything I've run (including when I was healing Naxx or VoA on my druid). Adds are everywhere, zerging the DPS, the tank's health drops like a stone, and heals and shields are flying everywhere. When we manage to kill all the adds (without any deaths for a second round, go me!), I ask for a moment to get mana back.

While I drink, I decide to check out the tank's gear. Now I'm not a gear stalker, but *something* isn't right. He seems like he's taking a LOT of damage for the trash, and I was starting to fear what a boss pull would be like with him getting beaten up so badly from trash.

.....

As my husband would say, "Well there's yer problem!" The tank has on a pair of level 30 agility mail shoulders, a level 25 spellpower cloak from the Wetlands (I remember it from having leveled so many casters myself). In fact, nearly all of his gear was level 25-30 with a complete mishmash of stats - predominantly agility and/or stamina, but with some spellpower or strength thrown in.

So at this point, I ask in party chat, "Um, why are you wearing level 25 and 30 gear for a 62 instance?" One DPS looks and immediately drops group. The second one follows suit. Not to be left out, I wave and bid the remainder adieu, scampering to the safety of Dalaran where I curl up into a ball in the corner of the Silver Covenant Inn and whimper pathetically.

In telling my friends this story, we've tried to figure out what the heck was up with this case. My money is on a Recruit a Friend toon - when you level with Recruit a Friend, the original WoW player gets free levels to award one of their alts. Now - if you're maximing your free levels (as I did), you level from 1-30 and then spend them from 31-60, rather than leveling 1-30 and then having to earn 31-60. I did this with both my druid and warlock, which meant that at 60 both were still wearing largely level 25-30 gear since that's what I had on at the time I last played them. In my case though, I asked my husband to come help me through a couple basic Outlands quests to fix their gear, and crafted any missing holes as best as I could. I certainly wouldn't have gone and tried to run any instances. But, not everyone is so considerate I guess.

Anyway, I'd love to hear other people's Outlands horror stories or your theories on the malfunction of the mail-wearing paladin. Idiocy? New to WoW? CGF? What do you think?

Once More into the Breach

2010-02-03T07:24:00.000-08:00

Tonight is our third foray into Ulduar for the hard mode achievements. I'm really excited about it. It's funny - I never imagined I would become so engaged in content that's technically two levels behind the current raid progression, but I really have been. The team has come together really well, and we've gotten to challenge ourselves, our skills, our ability to communicate, and our coordination in effective and cohesive ways. Plus, the lore has been fantastic. Ulduar's a gorgeous instance, and only by looking at it with new, fresh eyes unclouded by frustration at Ignis trash and the like have I really been able to appreciate just how beautiful a lot of the scenery is.

The Algalon quest line is also very cool. I know we were all incredibly excited when we unlocked it, and spent a while roleplaying with Brann as we went through it. The room was gorgeous, and I cannot wait to see the Celestial Observatory once we get there.

Tonight we're working on a few more bosses and hew hard modes, so we'll see how they go. On the agenda for tonight is Crazy Cat Lady (Auraiya), I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare (Hodir), and Lose Your Illusion (Thorim). The good news is, I think all of these are within our reach - I can't say we will complete them all tonight, as it's going to be a fairly short run and we may have less than two hours total. But, we definitely have the skills to do them all soon, if not this week then next.

The down side is, after these three plus the Razorscale achievement (Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare) they all start getting really ugly really fast. I've never done Knock, Knock, Knock on wood but it's supposed to be a real pain in the backside. It incorporates all of the same coordination, killing adds, and so forth, but also involves Freya getting three additional buffs from her keepers. I suspect it will be similar to Flame Leviathan, which was surprisingly tricky for us. (In fact, while most people consider FL much easier than the Iron Assembly hard mode, we were able to down IA within only three or four tries - FL took us 3 or 4 times as many attempts overall, and multiple trips.) So I'm not looking forward to that - it's one of those "run around like crazy kiting and avoiding and touching your toes" kinds of things. Blech.

Firefighter and Alone in the Dark are going to be nasty, nasty fights too. I've made a couple attempts on the Mimiron hard mode with Ix, and honestly it felt a lot like the Blood Prince Council did this Sunday. There's just - all this craziness going on, stuff to avoid, stuff to DPS, and you barely feel like you have any idea what's going on before you're face in the ground. I just remember wiping, and wiping, and wiping some more, and that was going with a group who were largely in ToC 25m gear. So - it's not going to be fun. Plus, I've never ever seen the Yogg fight on regular, let alone hard mode - so it's not going to be fun explaining to a group how to do the fight when I've never even done it myself. That's always the hardest for me as a raid leader, conceptualizing and explaining fights until I myself have done them. That's probably why I initially was more comfortable in Naxx than Ulduar as a raid leader the first time, and why now I'm much more at ease leading hard mode Ulduar and ToC runs than regular Icecrown.

But - well, I muddle through Icecrown adequately, at least. Not well, and certainly not smoothly. (Apparently I apologize a lot and that can be annoying. Sorry! ;) ) But, on our first night in with my mediocre leading and an excellent group, we managed to knock out the I'm on a Boat achievement, so that was pretty cool! Then we all face planted against the Blood Prince Council, and that was less cool. See previous comments about Mimiron for how it felt.

I'll be out of town this weekend, so hopefully I can update on our progress before the trip. If not, then you'll be left in suspense until Sunday! Wish us luck, or to break a leg....or one of Thorim's or something.

Here Goes Nothing!

2010-01-29T16:10:00.001-08:00

Tonight we're going for our second run on the Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievement sequence.

I'm both excited and nervous. I've got a pile of 4"x6" index cards at my side, each one filled out with a different achievement and strategy tips. But, I feel prepared, and at least I know what I'm doing - well, theoretically. I've only done a lot of these once in practice, and just then as a raid member. But most of the strategies are pretty clear until Freya and Mimiron, and we've got a well-geared and very skilled group.

So - excitement! Heading into tonight's run, most of us only have Stokin' the Furnace achievement, though we've just recently started working on these. Tonight I'm hoping to get Orbit-uary, Heartbreaker, Disarmed (though apparently that one's fairly buggy), Crazy Cat Lady, and possibly I Choose You, Steelbreaker. (I want to do that one before some of the other easier ones because it starts the Algalon quest line, and that line requires the hard mode kills of the four Watchers.)

Wish us luck, and I'll update our progress tomorrow!

And just in case anyone doesn't know why we're doing this....
BEHOLD!
(This screenshot is actually of Ensidia, the top guild in the world. But that *could* be us!! Just...you know.....two patches later.)

Glory of the gulp Raid Leader

2010-01-29T06:11:00.000-08:00

For a few months, I was a raid leader during the summer. Much like guild leading, it's not something I ever aspired to do, or really saw myself doing - it just, well, sort of happened that way.

For those unfamiliar with the guild's foundings, my husband Ehrengar, me, two of our real life friends (Treestump and Shadowrook), and then our friends Aimi and her boyfriend, were all in a guild called The Kingdom Guard. Eventually it fell apart, and we left - about six or seven of us, hanging out guildless, trying to figure out the next steps. We looked at the guilds on the server at that time, and none really fit our needs. We decided the best option was to start our own - which of course, led to the debate about who gets the charter?

It's funny - there was never even really a debate about "who leads", as I think we all knew it would be a collaborative project between Aimi, Ehr, and myself. But none of us wanted to actually "wear the hat". They finally talked me into it, arguing that I knew the most people out of the guild and could thus liaison best (though Ehr tells me it was obvious even then who should really lead it - maybe to them, but not to me!) And well, as they say, the rest is history. It also involves a lot of funny stories about me flailing and panicking in those early days about how the guild would never last, how we couldn't seem to keep any members, and that we'd never be bigger than maybe 10 people. Ah, good times, good times.

Raid leading was a lot like that for me. I never *meant* to. I just - have a bad habit of stepping in and doing the things nobody else offered to take on. I do the same thing in tabletop gaming - I'm almost always the last to roll up my character, and usually I want to figure out what everyone else is playing first and then wind up playing whatever seems missing. So I suppose it's no shocker I do the same in WoW, too. But - the way I see it, the stuff still needs doing even if nobody else is doing it, so - well, *someone* needs to. Right?

This summer, we had a raid leader who was great at knowing the fights and her job in it, but she's a little on the shy side. This makes raid leading tough - RLing takes a lot of talking and discussing, and it's especially hard for people who are a bit more shy. She recognized it wasn't really the best match of skills, and so stepped out of the position. I asked around for a few other people to volunteer, but had no luck - another good friend who seemed like he would be great at it declined because he knew that he gets really mean and angry at people after things start going poorly, and realized that's a bad, bad thing for a raid lead. Nobody else seemed particularly interested. And thus, I stepped into the shoes.

My first raid was a train wreck. In fact, it was so bad, it led someone who we'd just recruited to quit the guild, because of the disorganization and my lack of preparedness. It was rough, and he was right - I wasn't prepared, it was my first night tanking as well as leading, I hadn't come up with a detailed plan for the night, and it took us about 45 minutes just to get started.

But, I learned. I asked our main raid leader for his help and advice on what to do and not do. I thought back to what other raid leaders have done and what I liked or disliked. I researched, I planned, I even wrote myself a word document to remind me all of the critical little details, like bringing fish feasts, setting master looter, and assigning assists. And, over time, I improved.

Raid leading, like guild leading, is half art and half science. Some of it can be learned - like using index cards, one for each boss, with summaries of strategies and abilities is a great technique that my friend Agathias from Brothers of the Fallen taught me. Some - like pacing - can't really be taught. You just have to develop a feel for it. Good raids move at a steady forward speed - not breakneck where you feel too scrambled and frantic, but where you're not spending half of the night on breaks, or waiting for someone to come back from afk, and where there's not a lot of dead time between pulls. Honestly, I don't know how you teach pacing - or even if you can. You just seem to either have a feel for it, or not, I guess? So yes - it's half science, things you can learn and research and study and get advice on, and half art - just things you "feel" and adjust accordingly when it feels out of balance.

Sunday, I step back into the ring as raid leader. (Well, *technically* I do tonight, as I'm running a Glory of the Ulduar Raider run, but that feels less formal than an Icecrown run for some reason.) I'm nervous, but excited too - I've never gotten to run Icecrown with my warlock, nor have I gotten to do it with my friends. So I'm anxious of course, but I'm looking forward to it too.

I'll never be Elio in terms of raid leading awesomeness, and that's ok - I'm not trying to be. I'm happiest as guild leader or assistant guild leader, looking more at organizational matters and planning the overall direction for the guild than I am at herding 10 cats in a raid. But I'm decent at it, so it's a role I find myself stepping back into for the short term as we go back to a two-team model. Sure I'm nervous - I worry I won't know the fights, or I'll make mistakes, or that I won't have explained things well enough. But, I've still got my word doc, and a few days to read up on and research the fights. And more important than anything else, I'm surrounded by a bunch of great friends and great players who I know have my back. Yeah, I'll make mistakes, and I'm sure we'll wipe a bit. But I know they'll be there for me, and they'll speak up if I say the wrong thing, and nobody will quit because I flounder a bit on our first night in as a new team.

That, more than anything, is really what makes the game - and this group - worthwhile.

Fear of Failure

2010-01-27T14:34:00.001-08:00

So - my husband and I were having an email discussion with a friend of ours who plays a holy (and now protection) paladin this afternoon. We were debating the merits of healing versus tanking, which we liked and why, and the complexities of Whac-a-Mole.

In our conversation, a couple interesting things came out. First - both of them loved healing and talked about the exhilaration of it, whereas even just thinking about healing left me in a cold, anxious sweat. Of course, the thought of tanking does similar things to my husband - you've never heard profanity until you have heard this man try tanking! (Or PvPing, but that's a post for another time.) So I think some element is that people gravitate towards what they enjoy most.

For me, I stepped away from DPSing because I didn't like how competitive it made me. I'm not a hugely competitive person, but for some reason DPS brings out that beast in me. If I'm not first or second on the meters, I get cranky and beat myself up over why, wracking my brain and getting completely obsessive about what I was doing wrong. If I'm second, then I want to be first. It's not that I look down on others, I just - don't like the way it adapts my perspective on the game. So I walked away from it to tank, and that fit me much better. I stopped being competitive, I stopped beating myself up as much over sheer numbers and really only scrutinized my performance if things were going wrong and people were dying. And I like that - I like living without numbers hanging over my head and measuring me up. As a tank, life's simpler - the mechanics are tougher, but it's much more like auditing a class than being graded. People either survive the encounter and you maintain aggro, or they don't. It's pass fail rather than shades of minuses and pluses.

But, in trying to explain paladin tanking to CV and explaining that warrior tanking was a lot more like Whac-a-Mole than paladin tanking, we got to talking about PuGging with a new tank.

Namely - us.

Everyone complains about when they show up to a heroic and someone in the party is all in blues. But - you don't get shiny epics when you ding 80 in the mail, like you do your Dalaran fireworks package. Nope - gotta earn them the hard way, and that means heroics. Yet, how do you screw up the courage to do so when you're new and everyone else in the battlegroup is going to expect a 30 minute power run?

The blogosphere is rife with articles about the LFG system, the impatience of people in heroics anymore, and some of the hostility and asshat amplification that seems to be following in the wake of this change. The LFG system is a good change overall, but that doesn't mean it isn't terrifying as all get-out for a new tank or healer who's just building a new wardrobe.

So, we commiserated about our shared terror and fear of stepping into the heroics queue as a new tank (he as his tankadin spec, me as my warrior). I still don't have an answer, and I still haven't yet mustered the courage to stick even so much as a toe into the heroics swimming pool.

What of you? Have you tried to PuG with a difficult and unfamiliar spec or toon? And if so, how did you handle the intimidation or criticism if any ensued?

Herding the Cats

2010-01-17T11:56:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite commercials is this one, from EDS. It's about how hard it is to herd cats, in a very literal sense. Well, anyone who's ever run a guild (or even a raid) can tell you that it's remarkably like what you see here - everyone wanting to do their own thing, and all on a couple brave or foolhardy souls to get them all working in the same direction towards the same end point.

This week has been a big one for Catherding in Veritas, as we've started tackling one of the largest sources of dissatisfaction people have been feeling. There had been a lot of folks that weren't very happy with the system we'd adopted for Icecrown, and between my vanishing act and then a number of other people deciding to pursue more Hordelike pursuits, the balance became pretty rocky. A lot of those issues were aired Wednesday, between the group meeting we regularly hold and then a sidebar I'd set up with a few folks to address more specific issues. Things were awfully tense and for a while we weren't sure if more people would up and leave as we tried to correct course with the ship, but hopefully the worst of it has passed. That, or I'm just blissfully oblivious that we're busy steering into an iceberg. ;)

In any case, it sounds like we'll be moving back to a two-raiding team system like we did for some of Ulduar and throughout Trial of Champions. We're still working out the details of how this will play out, and it's *tough*! People never appreciate how much work goes into scheduling a raid, determining who goes and who doesn't, and how you deal with both the desires of those who want to go as well as the constraints of what you need. Ask any raid leader in Wrath and they'll go on for hours about how everyone wants to play a melee class, but the raids still need a decent amount of ranged - all of whom seem to have abandoned their ranged classes for Death Knights and Retribution Paladins these days. So it's really hard to balance for any guild. Add to that the constraints more unique to our guild, which comes from the fact that we have a lot of real life couples and married partners who play the game together. Because we skew older than a lot of other guilds, a lot of our members are married. Many of us game alongside our spouses. It's always been a real strength of the guild that we have so many couples that play together, but when it comes to raid scheduling it can also be a really nasty ball of knotted string to unravel. Having been someone who raided separately from her husband for months because of what we needed to do to keep two teams going, I can say how thoroughly it stinks. But it's another complication to sort out, in addition to making sure you have the right distribution of healers, tanks, melee DPS and ranged DPS....

We're making good progress, and I'm starting to become even a bit optimistic that we'll manage to find a solution that will work for the majority of people. I know not everyone will be happy - change is always difficult, and it's going to hurt both teams in terms of where they are right now in content. But I think that will rapidly improve, and with a little bit of compromise and teamwork I really do believe we'll get both teams up and running in another week or two.

Wish us luck!

Glutton for Punishment

2010-01-14T11:25:00.000-08:00

Well - I first started this blog as a means of figuring out what I wanted to do with myself in game now that I wasn't running a guild anymore. It's only been a few months (three to be exact), but the journey's come full circle. Last night, I went back and dusted off the old leadership mantle.

I know it's going to be tough going for a while. Change is hard, and there are some definite changes to be made. Not everyone's going to like them, and I'm prepared that some people will decide to leave. But in the end, it's better to do the hard right than the easy wrong, and truth be told we'd been doing the easy path for far too long because - well, it was easy and it maintained the veneer that everything was fine.

I've always been a big fan of blunt honesty, and there's probably going to be more of that in the weeks forward as we try to work on a course correction. I don't necessarily know what the course is yet - we've got some ideas on what we would like to do, but not necessarily how we get there - or who we can count on to help. I guess for now, I can begin by listing the heart of where we're aiming, and then update as we make our way there for better or worse.

1. Improve friendships.
People have really grown apart, broken into smaller and smaller and more insular groups and cliques. We didn't want to interfere because well - every time in the past we've tried, those involved just ignore you anyway and say they can play with whomever they want. The names change, but the response is almost always the same. But it's really created a sense of alienation for a lot of our members, and even feeling that way myself - I'm amazed at the number of people who have come forward over the last week and talked about how they felt like they had no friends in the guild anymore, or that they were a fifth (or fiftieth, in one person's typo) wheel and how they always felt left out of everything. So - we're going to work on that. I don't have all the answers and I know some of it is going to be met with resistance because hey - if you're *in* a group, you don't spend a lot of time thinking about how the people outside of it feel. (More on that later - there's a sociological experiment I was part of during my time as a DV counselor that taught me this lesson amazingly well, so I'll blog about that next time. It was fascinating!) Ehr and I also are trying hard, and asked others, to really participate more - make the effort to be social in guild chat more, even to those you don't know as well. Post in the forums more. We're going to do our best to lead by example, and I'm hoping it helps. Even last night, I noticed a distinct improvement in the level of talking, which is promising. But like a garden, it needs to always be tended to and nurtured - not just when you need it. ;)

2. More communication.
I don't mean this in the way of forming friendships - I mean it in the way of talking to people when you've got problems. I'm as guilty of this as anyone - I had issues with the guild. I mean, heck, those issues ultimately led me to walk away from the place I'd founded! But the only person I really spoke with them regularly about was Ehr, whether he was responsible or not. I'd had an ongoing clash with a member for over a year, but because I was so terrified of him I never confronted him over it, or told him how I felt. Granted, in this case I doubt it would have helped, but that's not the point - I never gave it a chance, I just let my feelings fester until they drove me batty. And I'm not the only one - a lot of people have had issues that they've felt but not gone to the people who were best in a position to fix them. And so they got worse and worse, until a breaking point was reached or so much resentment built up, it was impossible to get past. It's something I took my first step in working on last night, when I got a few folks together to talk directly to each other instead of through me. Not sure how well it went over - I think unfortunately I just wound up putting someone into a bad position and getting them defensive, but I had good intentions. And maybe if we can get people in the habit of speaking up sooner directly to those involved, it won't get to that point in the future.

3. Streamline.
We got too big. This is solely on me. I was the one who was always bringing new people into the guild, because I never wanted to turn away a good applicant. But we wound up so big that people didn't feel like they knew each other anymore, and a lot of the camaraderie was lost. Now - unfortunately as we've gotten smaller, it's brought a lot more of the clique elements to the front since they're that much more visible now. But I also know Ehr, Elio, and I had been spreading ourselves way too thin over the past six months, and I'm pretty sure we all burned out to some degree. For what Ehr and I want out of the guild - more communication, closer friendships, and less time managing overall, smaller is better for us. Running a guild of 80 people is a LOT of overhead, and neither of us want to take that on. So, we're working on reducing any overhead we can - slimming down ranks to eliminate any that aren't as important, trimming the roster so that it's really just composed of active folks that genuinely participate on some level, and those things should allow us to do a better job of really, truly getting to know the folks who remain and be more available to them when they need us. Also, it will hopefully give me some more time to design some good RP and interact in character with folks a lot more, which is something I have genuinely missed.

So - that's what I've got on my plate for this week. I'm sure more will follow, but I'm trying to keep the tasks smaller and more manageable, and finish the immediate ones before I take on new ones. Wish me luck, and to those still around - thanks for your continued support!

Shinnorah the Warlock - Fallin' (in and out of love)

2010-01-11T14:30:00.000-08:00

When I wrote this originally, we still hadn't heard word on the house. The good news is, we did hear late in the afternoon that insurance did give ServPro the go-ahead to proceed with repairs, which means our policy *is* covering it! YAY! However, the whole sense of helplessness and stress we'd been under over the last week and a half was really difficult. I found I’d been playing WoW a lot recently, seeking an escape from my fretting and taking my frustrations out on poor, helpless instance bosses while we waited for more news. And nothing says angry, disenfranchised, and emo like a warlock, right? RIGHT!

I used the subject header for this entry for two reasons. One, I've just always liked the Alicia Keys song. Second, it does sum up my relationship with the character Shinnorah pretty well; as my original character, she will always hold a dear spot in my heart. However, I’ve gone through ups and downs during that whole period – the original incarnation was a mage, a class I never really cared for in the first place and only leveled to 70 (in BC) since I was a guild leader. I rerolled her as a warlock later, based largely on the fact that my friend Terri *loved* playing her warlock, and always seemed so invincible whenever we’d group together. It just seemed like all of the fun parts about being a mage (DPSing, casting, the roleplaying aspect of it), but without the constant dying that I always seemed to run into.

Soloing as a warlock is a definite improvement over soloing as a mage – so much so that in thinking about Cataclysm and whether I might want to switch Shinorah back to a mage (since right now mages blow warlock DPS out of the water), I decided that nah, I’d hate leveling the mage. I’ve grown a bit attached to my pets – in particular Yaz (Yaznik) the imp and my “thug”, Thoggath the voidwalker. Having a succubus named “Dom” is pretty funny too – Domriana is her name, but dom is slang for dominatrix too – and well, you’ve seen the way those succubi dress and crack that whip, right? I also really enjoy never having to stop for mana. If I go out to level or grind, I’m out there moving pretty much the entire time.

For roleplaying reasons, I’d had Shinnorah be a destruction warlock, as this seemed the most magelike (and therefore, in line with her character). I switched to raiding with her for a couple months before my hiatus, but I didn’t really enjoy it. In fairness, I can’t blame the entire thing on the talent spec – for one, she wasn’t particularly well geared at the time of the switch because I’d been spending most of my energy on my paladin, so her DPS was mediocre at best. Also, I still has some passive aggressive feelings towards the character because I’d enjoyed playing my paladin, and wasn’t really entirely sure I wanted to switch at all – and even if I did, that I wanted to switch to the warlock instead of the druid. (Interesting to note, none of these feelings applied to any people – just to my toons, really. Specifically, the warlock.) So I wound up going through a period of increasing bitterness towards the character between being frustrated at not doing better DPS, not sure I wanted to play her in the first place, and then being bored with the spellcasting. The last raid I went on, we had a really rough time on faction champions and it seemed like I couldn’t even manage to juggle a fear or two; within the first 30 seconds of every attempt, I’d already be face-first in the dirt. I decided I just wasn’t cut out for the class, and took a break.

Recently, I’ve found myself going back to Noralock more and more. I came across an affliction lock blog, “Killing ‘Em Slowly”, and it really raised my interest in the affliction spec. One afternoon, I made the switch from destruction to affliction. Suddenly, I have stuff to do in combat again! And by stuff, I mean *LOTS* of stuff. Depending on which curse you decide to use, it can impact the complexity of your rotation and DoT meters (one will drop off frequently, the other is a long-term curse you don’t need to mind as much). I’m finding that affliction is a lot of fun – it’s tough on trash, and I’m still working on how to use Seed of Corruption or if I should just DoT all the individual mobs up and then wand. The mobility is fantastic – it’s the only casting class that can truly cast things on the fly, and getting to throw Dots while running in and out of combat is a hoot! I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by her damage output these days too. Now, affliction is theoretically supposed to be a little behind destroy atm, though close in T10, and it could just be a result of recent gear upgrades. But I also wonder if some if it is due to having a slow machine – I play on a laptop, and so spellcasting speeds can vary depending on lag and how many spell affects there are, which impact my graphics speed. As an affliction lock, my DoTs just tick away with just periodic refreshes, and that DPS obviously has no connection to my computer speed. So it may just be a better spec for my hardware resources. Or, maybe I’m just trying harder because I’m more interested and engaged. Whatever it is, it’s working for me.

The sad part of the tale is, I don’t really have anything to do with her per se. I was invited by someone from a PuG on Sunday to raid with their guild, as apparently they don’t have a single warlock, but that hasn’t translated into actual runs so far. And really, the whole point of gearing a toon is to raid with them; without a raid, she’s really just all dressed up with nowhere to go. So it’s hard to say what her long-term forecast is. Hopefully I can get a few runs in before Cataclysm drops; I’ve actually been having enough fun with her now that I’m seriously considering sticking with her into the new expansion. We’ll see what the coming months bring though, and if my interest stays steady or peters off after a few months. In any case, at least I’m enjoying it now!

Real Life Trumps WoW

2010-01-03T08:10:00.000-08:00

Short version, since I don't much feel like talking about it.

Had a major catastrophe happen in the real world, and I don't know how we are possibly going to manage or get through it. A pipe burst in the house we were trying to sell, flooding the property, causing the ceilings to collapse, and filling the basement. Since our realtor never notified us to connect heat until mid-December and then failed to show for the appt we'd scheduled with the gas company, our homeowner's insurance is denying the claim due to negligence - which means we'll have to find some way to either cover the repairs for the property ourselves or face whatever loss if the home is destroyed. We couldn't even barely pay our bills while the home was vacant and in sellable/rentable condition after 5 months on the market, so needless to say we cannot afford the repairs to bring the house back up to shape after this. And without homeowner's insurance, we're just....well, screwed.

Ian and I will be going to Massachusetts Tuesday. I dread getting there, but it's something we need to do. I suspect the next few weeks will be occupied with retaining a lawyer and trying to determine if the real estate agent and/or company bear any responsibility for the lack of heat/negligence, and trying to get a contractor or two to come out and give us an estimate on the cost of damages. I'm expecting it will be ugly. I'm growing more and more afraid that due to the severity and cost, we'll not only lose our house in MA, but may also have to move and sell our house in VA in order to pay off the damages from the vacant property. ABC After School Special, "The Homeless Professor"?

Needless to say, WoW won't be happening for us any time soon. So - no further updates til I can figure out how to get our lives back on track.

Guild Administration 101

2010-01-02T11:20:00.000-08:00

Alright, enough sitting around feeling sorry for myself. I still haven't figured out what I want to do, but in the meantime I may as well channel some of that brainstorming towards a more useful direction - how to run a successful guild! We all have something we're really good at - some people are the best at their class, or healing, or tanking, or knowing raid mechanics. Me, I'm one of the best people I've run across at actual guild administration and management. It's not very glamorous or something you'll really get recognition for, the way you do by being the best enhancement shaman or something, and there are no in game achievements for it - but a well-run guild is a rare thing indeed, and I have learned a lot through both WoW guild administration as well as various business and management classes I've taken in my professional life.

I thought for now, I'd start off with a list of the things I think we did really well in my old guild, as well as the things I'd like to improve or do differently down the road.

Things We Did Well:

Age limit. Since our earliest days, we had a minimum age required for membership. These can be controversial, as some players (usually those below the age) find it's unfair. It is, frankly - and age isn't a perfect correlation for maturity. But, it's a pretty darned good one and the drama we avoided by enforcing it was well worth the cost of passing on a couple good younger players. In our early days we used 18, and later increased it to 22. I'd now even consider 25 as a bottom limit.
Applications. I think our application wound up being a little too long and cumbersome, and I'd probably strip it down to the basics of roleplaying experience, character concept/background, raiding experience, and hours of activity. The roleplaying sections were always valuable, not just because we wanted to focus on roleplayers (truthfully, we really don't do a lot of roleplaying anymore), but because the grammar, style, and effort put into the response can really give you a lot of insights into the person applying. Do they seem like they're putting in a good effort, or just plowing through it in a hurry?
Focusing on 10 Man Raids. Now - this doesn't mean that *I* personally don't enjoy 25man raids too, but they really are a tremendous logistical undertaking. I've been in both types of guilds now, and I think for my purposes in game and getting a good balance of close friendships, free time to do things outside of raiding, and accomplishing some really good raiding goals and achievements, structuring the guild around 10 man teams is good.
Theme/Concept. Not that we were doing a lot with our roleplaying or theme and concept before I stepped down, but I always loved the history of the guild and the concept of being an explorer's society. Of the themed guilds out there, I think that concept gives a great, cohesive identity for roleplaying and still allows for a lot of dungeon running. Plus, it leaves a lot of flexibility for various playstyles - something that military or religious or racial themed guilds can't offer as well.
Balancing Social and Raiding Aspects. I don't know if this is something you can really "do" or plan for, or something that just happens through careful recruiting. No matter how good a bunch of separate raiders may be, if they have no sense of community or teamwork or loyalty between each other, then they're just a bunch of separate players with separate goals. For a guild to stay together through the bad times as well as the good, you need people who really do feel a sense of community and friendship with their guildmates. We tried to accomplish this by encouraging people to talk in guild chat, organizing regular social events in addition to raiding, and having weekly meetings.

Things To Improve On:

Size. For a while, I was really excited about how well the guild was doing and the fact we were one of the largest guilds in the Alliance. I think I let it go to my head a bit, and while we never grew for the sake of growing nor lowered our standards, there is a point where too many people on the roster just makes the administration way too unwieldy. In hindsight, I really think the best size is probably around 15 active people/accounts. For a 10 man guild, if you have too many more then people get edgy and unhappy because they don't get regular raiding slots, but it's also an incredible logistics challenge running two separate 10 man teams - and in my experience, they generally devolve into a competitive environment between the teams, and sooner or later one team feels like the "kid's table". If I had to do it over again, I'd really focus on just maintaining a size designed around one 10m team, plus a few subs or people willing to rotate, whatever social/non-raiding members want to participate, and then only go out and recruit new members when one of the existing ones stops playing or moves on.
Officer Organization. This is a tough one - with any volunteer organization, you run into a wide spectrum of activity from folks when you aren't able to pay them. I've tried different styles of officer breakdowns in the past - building teams based on a lead manager and then delegating authority into a Raiding section, Roleplaying section, and Administration section, promoting the people who seem suited to certain roles, allowing people to apply for open positions, and most recently asking people to apply in general and then assigning roles. I've learned a few things - first, you really don't need a huge administrative staff, especially in a small guild. You need a couple people who are willing to take an active leadership role, and make sure they know their jobs. Second, I don't think officer applications work very well - lots of people *want* to be an officer, but not everyone's really well suited for it. I think it's better to have in mind exactly what job needs doing, then keeping a careful eye on the members to see whose personality and playstyle seems to fit the needs of that job well. For instance, no matter how great or loveable or active someone is, if the job requires a lot of administration and organization and they aren't good at those tasks, then there's no sense promoting them into a position they won't be successful. And finally, you need assertive people to be officers. You don't want too many cooks in the kitchen, but you also can't get a kitchen to run with a bunch of sous-chefs unless a couple of them are willing to take over. Sometimes situations arise between even the most mature players - arguments in guild chat, fights between members, complaints from another guild leader - and while you don't want to jump to conclusions, you also need someone you can rely on to step in at the time it happens and solve the problem rather than just take careful notes and forward it to the guild leader later. After all, the entire point of having officers at all is to delegate responsibility and authority so you aren't doing it all yourself! So make sure you get a good balance of listeners and doers - too many doers fight amongst themselves too much, too many listeners leads to situations where nobody wants to step in and get involved.
Guild Bank. Ugh. Our guild bank is a train wreck. It's so disorganized and full of useless stuff that nobody really uses it - except to dump stuff they can't auction off for a decent amount. If I could, I would go into the guild bank, completely gut it, and reorganize it completely. Epic drops would be rolled for by main toons when they dropped, then at the end of the raid we could offer the item up for half-price purchase if anyone wanted it for an alt. Proceeds go to the guild bank, which allows players to make more use of the repair feature since there are more funds. Any epic drops unclaimed within a week get auctioned off, and proceeds into the guild bank. We'd stock flasks, frost lotus, and then the current crop of enchanting supplies, along with a decent supply of fish feasts, armor kits, uncut epic and meta gems, and other items useful for raiding. I might put aside one tab for crafting supplies, but otherwise break down and sell or auction off most of the existing stuff in the bank. Really - when is the last time anyone needed to use a mid-50s enchanting component or a stack of bruiseweed, anyway? And the additional funds garnered from auctioning off epic items while they're still popular would help the treasury.
Zero Tolerance for Asshattery. Probably more than anything else, this is what we could use the most improvement on. The problem is, our guild is full of nice people. Really nice, really conflict averse, people. We hate being mean to anyone, and having disciplinary talks or booting people is a mean thing to do. So - ever since the beginning, we did whatever we could to give people as many chances. I can't think of a *single* case in which it worked out well that we gave someone multiple chances. More often than not, what these disciplinary chats and multiple chances do give is the offending player opportunity to create more problems until you ultimately boot them anyway. My friend Endryel had told me a while back that she just boots someone as soon as they start causing problems. Obviously for longer-term members you can still give them a stern warning, but for newer members, we need to be far more proactive about holding people accountable and weeding out troublemakers at the very first signs of trouble. Especially in a small guild, one or two bad apples can really make an unpleasant environment in short order, and it's not worth the additional time, energy, and stress it creates having the officers prolong the problem by giving problematic players more time to cause bigger issues.

I'll write down more as I think about it, but that's what I've come up with so far. In short, I think a guild works best when it's smaller, more efficient, quick to fix problems and able to provide the most opportunities for the most members.

How to Pass the Time

2010-01-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Saturday now, which means my parents leave in another couple days. What that means is that I'll be able to go back and play WoW, if I am so inclined and in the mood to play. Honestly, I have been missing it lately - moreso than I was back when I took my hiatus in November. So I have to confess that I am looking forward to playing the game again.

The problem is, I'm not really sure what to do in it. As some know, I quit the guild I'd founded right before my account expired, in mid-December. There were a lot of reasons for this - I've had an ongoing "personality conflict" (I think that's the polite way of saying you see eyeball to kneecap with someone) that just wasn't improving. I'd hoped by raiding on a separate team or stepping down as an officer, I'd still be able to remain in the guild and just minimize my exposure to the situation, but well - turns out the player's fairly omnipresent and it's really hard finding raiding opportunities in the guild that didn't include the situation. So that had been building for a long time. A lot of the people I'd become close to over the years have stopped playing - some busy with jobs or family, some starting new guilds of their own, some leaving WoW entirely - and that's made it seem less and less like my home, too. I still have friends in game of course, but well - the former situation just seemed like it got in the way so much and I didn't know what to do. And sometimes, the frentic pace of something going on all the time wore me down as well.

Unfortunately, I don't know what to do with myself now. It's very hard, both emotionally and physically in game, to let go of the guild I'd originally founded. And I'd always been tremendously proud of it - both the original concept and idea we'd invented from nothing, but also the people who wound up joining and calling it home. It's a pretty cool thing, really, to see your idea become an institution on your server of 10,000 people or more. Even with the problems I had with this other player, at least I still had people to talk to, friends to group with, raids that I could have signed up for (if I was willing to go on raids with him). Now - it's just quiet when I log in. Nobody to talk to, nothing in particular to do, no raiding opportunities to go on.

My husband still leads the last guild, and he of course is devoting all of his time and energy there. That's what he should be doing, since it is a very successful and stable place with a lot of players who were very happy. But it means the likehilood of us getting to play together is still hovering at somewhere around zero, and that's really difficult. It's hard to play a game that you play with your spouse, but never actually getting to play together. And yes, I can PuG and such, but those are always such a mixed bag in terms of whether they're a stress reliever or a source of stress - I'm sure I will continue to work through my alts, though I've learned since Patch 3.2 that it's better to just focus on one toon at a time and gear them fully before moving to the next. Otherwise I'll wind up where I am now, with a bunch of sort-of geared toons and nobody really worth a damn for Icecrown.

I've gone back and forth on whether I want to try and start over, form a guild of my own and just let the past be the past. On one hand, it might be better to just let go of everything and make a fresh start. On the other - I miss people. Building a good guild is a lot of work, something I know full well having done it once before. I've learned a lot since I started Veritas, about what works and what doesn't, what things we should have done differently, what things we did very well, and what I would like to do in the future as a guild administrator. But knowing how I want to run things and taking the step to actually put them in motion is an entirely different animal. I guess I'd always expected that someday I'd work on the plans I had in Veritas, not with a brand new project. And I know if I start a new guild, then any hope of Ehrengar and I ever getting to play WoW together again will be lost forever. So I don't know what to do. It's like I can't go back, but I can't go forward either, and I'm stuck in this lonely, listless limbo.

On New Year's Day, I was talking a bit with Ehr and our friend Treestump about maybe asking permission to have a raiding coalition/channel for the non-progression raid content. I'm an adequate raid leader - certainly not as good as Veritas's raid leader, but not terrible either - and I really did want to go back and work on the Ulduar achievements. Reading a recent article on WoW Insider made me even more nostalgic and eager to work through those achievements. (http://www.wow.com/2010/01/01/ready-check-tonight-were-gonna-raid-like-its-2009-pt-iii/#continued) I never even got to see a number of the Ulduar fights, so it's worth going back and finishing that raid for me. I know there were people in the guild who had expressed an interest, either for the sake of collecting achievements or grinding towards the Iron-Bound Proto Drake, and we'd probably have close to enough for a full 10 man team. Ehr was really excited about the idea and thinks it has a lot of promise, but I'm not sure. I don't really even know how anyone in the old home even feels about me anymore - who misses me, who's glad I'm gone, who could care less.

Plus, there's already so much everyone needs to do in game - grinding badges, running heroics, putting aside raiding time for the progression raids, meetings, all kinds of demands on everyone's time. I don't want to count on getting a lot of support for an idea and getting all excited and worked up over it, just to get about 3 interested parties and never getting off the ground with it. I'm not sure....but it's something to think about. I'd like to make sure I have permission from the guild officers first - even though it's not a guild activity per se, I don't want to cause any hard feelings and I'm *terrified* about fostering divisions and factionalizing people the way some folks did a year ago when they spun off to start a new guild. It caused a lot of friction and bad blood between the parties, and I would never, ever do that willingly to the guild I created in the first place - even if I do someday work on a new project. At least a raiding channel wouldn't require anyone to leave their guild, the way I did.

I guess my bottom line right now, contemplating the New Year and my new experiences in WoW, is that being homeless really stinks. It's cold, it's lonely, and the game really isn't the same played individually as it is with friends. But, you can't change the past or live full of regrets, so the best you can do is make the best of what you have and keep marching on. I just need to pick a direction, set my little dwarven feet on the path, and go with it.

Happy New Year's!

2010-01-01T14:17:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year to all of my World of Warcraft friends and family! I hope we'll all get to share many happy memories together during 2010, having adventures and all sorts of stories to tell. Additionally, I'm very excited to share the new Azeroth we'll all discover in Cataclysm, and the opportunity to play new races and new class combos.

May you always have bag space, food and drink, plenty of ammo, great drops, and wonderful roleplaying stories in the coming year. :)

I've started my own New Year's Resoution for WoW a little early, which you can see at elemental-mastery.blogspot.com. I've always wanted to work on a Shaman class guide and blog for shaman, so I started it a couple days ago. I'm planning on adding one entry a week, so it's a little sparse right now but it will hopefully grow. And anyone who plays a shaman and wishes to perhaps help contribute, let me know! I've figured out how to add authors, and I'd love to have a good enhancement and restoration perspective as well. So - one New Year's Resolution already in progress, and more to come as well I'm sure.

So again, have a wonderful 2010 and I look forward to seeing everyone in game when I get back to it!

Ixallare, the Shaman

2009-12-31T11:18:00.000-08:00

Ixallare was the second character I ever created, the same week as I created Shinorah, my original character and mage. I've always loved the shaman class, ever since I started WoW, and I think the only reason I ultimately played the mage more than the shaman is because in our tabletop D&D game at the time, I also played a mage and was using a similar concept for them both.

Shaman have tremendous flexibility, able to fill a DPS role as a melee DPS, ranged DPS (my personal favorite), and a healer. Unlike druids, you can simultaneously cast your damage spells and your healing spells interchangeably; druids have special forms to get the most of your abilities and talents, whereas shaman only have their core form. In previous years, you'd want to switch out your totems but WoW's done quite a bit to consolidate totem use so that you're almost always using the same totems regardless of what talent tree you've focused in.

I also like the survivability of the shaman. One of my least favorite parts of playing a mage was how often I would die and have to "corpse drag". Especially in areas such as Zangarmarsh where many of the quests involve killing mobs in tightly-packed areas (and thus making friends quite easily), being a clothie can mean things turn ugly fast. No so with my shaman! Because I wore mail (and many casters will also have a shield), it takes a decent bit of damage to really knock you down. Plus, because shaman can really put out a massive burst of damage, the mobs are generally dead long before you are. And, in a real pinch, you've got the ability to heal yourself or toss up a brief decoy, in the form of an earth elemental, or drop down an earthbinding totem and scamper away to safety. Lots of tools at your disposal in a pinch.

I'm tremendously excited about the opportunity to play dwarf and goblin shamans in the coming expansion. I think the toughest part of shaman for me - and the main reason I stopped playing Ixallare in the first place - is because I never really figured out just how to roleplay a Draenei. I have friends who do an excellent job with it, and the Draenei lore is very well developed and rich. But for me, it never quite resonated, the way dwarves and humans have, and I always felt like I was wearing a coat that just didn't quite fit right across the shoulders. Dwarves are my favorite of all of the races, and the chance of getting to combine my favorite race with my favorite class is thrilling to contemplate! So I'm really looking forward to that. It's true, the dwarven totems aren't terribly exciting, but really who cares - Dorf Shammies! Plus, this will allow me to still be part of the Dynamic Dwarven Duo alongside my husband, and might give me a fitting alternative or replacement to my dwarven paladin in grouping with him. In fact, I've even started writing the background story for my dwarven shaman that I will roll in Cataclysm.

The elemental tree is the one I've played most, though I leveled Ix as an enhance shaman. I like sitting in the back of raids, alternating lightning bolts and lava spells, thinking about which totems are needed for each fight, and adding a spot heal now and then if things take a turn for the worse. It's the Swiss Army Knife of WoW classes! Unfortunately, in WotLK they've done a lot to consolidate totems as well as reduce the need for special tricks in the various boss fights - or rather, special tricks that shaman can provide. For instance, in the Maiden of Virtue fight in Karazhan, shaman were indispensable in throwing down a Grounding Totem to absorb a spell, or in the dragon fight the Tremor Totem really helped dispatch of unpleasant fear effects. In Wrath, there really aren't a lot of fights like that, and so the Shaman class has become easier and easier for a player to pick up and master without too much work. I know this is a good change for the game overall, but speaking as a player who likes to stay challenged and feel really good and especially competent at my class, the simplifying of Shaman has left me a bit saddened.

All in all, it's still an excellent class. A good enhancement shaman can put up numbers to rival a rogue in melee DPS, an elemental shaman has a lot of added utility in some fights with decent DPS (though not top notch), and restoration shaman are in demand in every raid because of the amazing efficiency of their group heals. The only thing shaman can't do is tank, and well - while it's a shame since I also love tanking, the class is still an incredibly fun and rewarding one to play.

Angharrad, the Protection Paladin

2009-12-30T09:57:00.000-08:00

Still mulling over other what all to say about my current WoW status or future plans - probably because right now, while I have some ideas I don't really *have* a plan to speak of. So, I'll pick up an old subject I'd been working on - writing about character classes. Last time, I covered the Warrior class and how I liked it. Today, I will cover the Paladin.

When I first rolled Angharrad, she was intended as a tank - it fit my concept for the character, and I'd always wanted to try tanking. (I've never really wanted to do healing, both because my husband considers healing his favorite role in the world, and also because it doesn't fit my own personal playstyle of getting into combat and then just duking it out rather than hitting-and-running-and-hitting-again.) Unfortunately, around the mid-50s when I was starting to get groups with the character, we had at least two other people focusing on tanking characters and nobody healing. So, I switched her for about 10 levels to Holy, before switching back to Protection again later as people left the guild or lost interest in their tanks and switched to other toons.

I can't say I overly enjoyed my time as Holy. I probably liked it better than Retribution, the DPS spec, but I'm just not a healer at heart. That said, if I have to heal, Paladin's probably the way to go for me - after all, I have both the best armor situation for survivability, *and* I have the added benefit of living with an excellent paladin healer who can give me tips and look over my shoulder. But I was definitely happiest as a tankadin dwarf.

A lot of what I loved about playing Angh as a tank was getting to play with my husband Ehrengar. We both had dwarf toons, him as a healer and me getting to tank alongside him. Of all the toons and combos I've played, that combo just felt the most "right". It's when I was truly happy, actually feeling like a couple playing the game and a team instead of two people playing separate toons together. My hubby isn't really into team-playing as much, preferring solo leveling or raiding, and it's never seemed particularly important for him whether we played the game together, as long as we played the game at the same time. For me though, I really enjoyed getting to play as a couple, healer and tank, getting groups so quickly, knowing I could count on the person keeping me up, and doing my best to keep the one I loved ooc'ly from getting smooshed by loose mobs. It's probably the only time in WoW I've really felt like a true WoW couple, and accordingly, I loved it.

Because of that, it's hard for me to separate how much I specifically love the Paladin class, and how much I just loved getting to be part of a real partnership. Even though I have two other tanking classes, druid and warrior, neither was a part of that unit -the druid was a solo character, and my warrior generally grouped with Ehr's mage - so either of our roles were easily swappable. That said, I think the paladin mechanics of tanking are the most forgiving of the tanking trees. Aggro generation happens almost automatically, so there's very little you need to do to maintain threat. It's built into the spells, more or less, unlike warriors and druids. You still have to know what you're doing and customize abilities to the fight - for instance, should you include consecration into your rotation, or are you just trying to keep aggro on one mob and not damage others? I also like the way you can build your paladin tank for very different abilities - for instance, my friend Ashaani (and excellent tanking buddy!) builds her paladin for threat generation. It makes her a touch harder to keep up, my hubby tells me, as the damage is a wee bit spikier, but good Heavens *nothing* will ever get pulled off her. Ever. I, on the other hand, built my paladin to basically be a brickhouse - my threat generation isn't anywhere as good (though still better as a paladin than a warrior or bear) - but assuming I'm geared equivalently for the encounter, I won't drop. I've been in heroics where the entire group all wound up dropping (in this case, an undergeared healer during the last part of the Black Knight fight died from a shadowbolt and thus led to everyone else's dying). Even in spite of it, as a paladin tank I managed the fight - between taking manageable damage combined with the ability to toss a brief heal on myself now and then - and wow, did it feel great.

That's definitely a selling point for paladin tanks that warriors or druids don't have. I love being able to toss a quick heal in a pinch - granted, the wine and roses days of Lay on Hands are now past, but even without that there are some nice tricks in the bag. As of right now, paladin is definitely my favorite of the tanking classes. I'm not as wild about the other two trees of paladin, healing or melee DPS, but nothing beats Paladin tanking in my book.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What It Means to Me?

2009-12-28T11:17:00.000-08:00

I want to take the opportunity to write a little about the immediate events that precluded my decision to part ways with my gaming home, as it's been a tremendous debate in a number of the WoW communities and blogs I've read. Obviously I haven't been the only one in the WoW Blogasphere thinking a lot about these things or running into unexpected complications from the new PuG system. Also, it pertains more to the original "PuG" theme of the blog in the first place - nothing like getting back to the my roots more! (I think that may wind up being my theme going into the new year's - getting back to my roots, the core and essence of things in the game and in life that I've enjoyed best. But again, that can wait for another post.)

Patch 3.3 finally dropped about a month ago, and with it a huge change on how PuGs form. Instead of just PuGging with members from your own server, you now PuG across battlegroups. What this means for a server like ours, Moon Guard, is a sudden influx and exposure to much different players than typical from own own experience. Moon Guard is notorious among WoW servers for our casual pace and lack of progression - even our best progression guilds still lag well behind most other servers. For me, I've always liked our slow, "Sunday driver" pace - it fits well with the time I have to play in the evenings, and I find it fits my raiding style better. Even the raiding guild I've done stuff with is calm, patient, and diligent - they're certainly very skilled, but there's none of the yelling or frentic pace of many of the YouTube videos you see from other guilds.

However, in the month since it dropped, I've noticed changes even in our own player base. I was absolutely horrified when one of my former guild members was using an add-on to tear into first our PuG's healer (who was fairly weak, but still deserved more courtesy and politeness than he got from my guildmate) and then myself, for using a pulling spell one level below max rank. I just - couldn't believe it. This was someone who used to be a really laid back, nice guy, always helping others and passing on gear so his teammates could gear up too. Now, he's turned into this arrogant, rude person I barely recognize, hollering at people for making mistakes and then dripping sarcasm and condescention when I'd asked him to remove me from the add-on. How did the guild I founded - a place where respect and courtesy were written into the absolute core of all our behavioral standards - turn into the guild where people like that play?

"Respect toward others, be they friend or foe, is the basis for our community conduct policies. Do not deride others for the choices they have made in following their life's path. Each person's journey is theirs and theirs alone to walk, whether they take a straight line, a meandering path, or even backtrack a bit. You need not make the same choices as others, but show respect for their choices. " So - it's still there. *sigh* I'm not crazy for thinking it had been outlined, once upon a time. But somewhere along the line, something that was once a credo we really upheld seems to have become little more than words on paper - or electrons, as the case may be. I wonder what it is about the game that causes some people, like our raid leader, to still hold so much integrity in the way he treats others and runs things in spite of how much power he wields, and others who once shared a similar ethic change their attitude so dramatically that you can barely believe it's the same person? Why do some players change, and others don't - and, on another thought that has occupied me lately, why do the changes never seem to be for the positive in those who do change? Why does that happen, I wonder - is it the game? The environment? A person's own off-line experiences that cause the change? Maybe something to philosophize about down the road...

Anyway, back on topic. All of a sudden, our little quiet backwater has had the virtual equivalent of a stripmall move in. PuGs are a far more complicated and mixed bag now - I've been in some where the players seemed barely competent at all. I've been in others where people saw my il226-232 geared tank and asked why I was there since I clearly "wasn't geared well enough". I've been in a few groups where the session degenerated into shouting and name calling (though fortunately only once where I was involved, as a beartank that apparently didn't meet standards). Most of the time I've been the silent, unwilling spectator as the drama unfolded, with accussations hurled between the DPS who pulled aggro and died, the tank, and the healer, all about whose fault it was, what someone's gear level score is, how many blues they have, and who has killed what boss. The lack of maturity has really been eye-opening, at times.

In any case - I've had some very mixed sentiments about the new grouping system. On one hand, it's good - you rarely have to wait long for heroics now, and it's far more easier to gear up an alt or badge grind at any hour of the day. On the other hand, I've been exposed to a nastiness and elitism in the player base that doesn't exist anywhere near as much on our server, and PuGs can quickly degenerate into the type of things I'd previously only seen in battlegrounds.

The blogs I read are mixed, as well. Overall, while people seem to express a fondness for the system, more and more people are covering the Gear Nazis and the attitudes that some cop, especially towards lesser skilled or undergeared players. I'm going to link two articles from blogs I read, one from the Drama Mamas over on WoW.com, and then Grey Matter's rejoinder (which I think falls more in line with my own opinions, about finding balance between the high-end players and the newer ones rather than just blaming one side of the spectrum).

Enjoy!

The Mamas: http://www.wow.com/2009/12/18/drama-mamas-dungeon-finder-advice/

Grey Matter: http://graymatterwow.blogspot.com/2009/12/drama-mamas-and-second-look-at-lfg.html

For the Horde?

2009-12-28T10:20:00.000-08:00

As I suspect most of my readers will know, last week brought some pretty major changes to my gaming life. I'm still adjusting to it, and the fallout, so I think I will leave that topic alone for now. It's still hard to talk about, and the feelings still very raw and tender.

I know a number of my friends from the guild have switched Hordeside, though it's been split on whether they've left their Alliance toon guilded or faction changed all their characters. My friend Nolaara mailed me a few days before I quit that she'd decided to transfer her remaining toons Hordeside and start up a new guild, so I expect her friends are soon to follow if they haven't already. My hubby tells me one already has left - her real life boyfriend, I think, though I don't know on the other two. This also no doubt contributed to some of my own decisions - while I wasn't as close to Nola as I have been to all those who came and stayed with us in the Fall, or to Myrrhh and Skals, we'd still gotten along well and I'll miss her cheerful optimism and roleplaying.

The tricky part is, that now makes two guilds on the Horde that my friends have formed - and this of course makes my own choices a little harder, as previously my main decision was whether or not to switch any of my 80 toons Hordeside and play in the guild they'd formed there. Now even that guild has split a bit, with Nola's decision to form a more immersive RP guild and the original Horde friends remaining in the original guild they'd formed, and that complicates my own choices of course, on where to go and why. If push comes to shove, I'd certainly add Nola to my friend's list but otherwise remain in Claws - after all, I've always been a "roaming roleplayer", preferring to roleplay through guildchat so I could keep exploring and running stuff rather than sitting in a town square somewhere and *just* roleplaying. I'd been wondering about spending some more time Hordeside, but now I've got the same problem I have with my Alliance characters. Somewhere, somehow, I have to make a choice between my friends - and that's a choice I really never wanted to make in the first place, let alone be faced with it again now.

It's tough, seeing the people I'd considered friends scatter to the corners. I still miss Rhani and Aimi, two dear friends I'd made who both parted ways from WoW for real life reasons. Rhani now plays again, though I think the other faction on another server; Aimi may try another game but will not return to WoW at all. Other friends I've made have left the guild but not the game - Goradan and I have gotten back in touch, and he's happy raiding though has left roleplaying entirely. I think he's either a guildleader himself now, or a senior raid officer. I received a Christmas email from Lonetygr, which was a beacon of brightness in an otherwise pretty bleak gaming world for me, and a real life card from Lal and Elionene which was also really wonderful. But more and more, it seems the people I've become friendly with are scattering to the winds here and there, and the ones remaining either haven't become as good of friends or come with other complications. It's hard to know where to plan your course when the ship below you scatters in different directions.

Making Myself Useful

2009-12-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

So....I've created a list of the blogs I've used when researching out the various classes, specs, skills, rotations, and other elements that help me (hopefully) not suck when playing any of the gazillion alts I have. I'd like to think that I'm a classic "jack of all classes, master of none" type - I doubt I will ever be the best Anything in WoW, but I'd like to think I become good enough at anything I play to at least not be a complete liability.

A few times in my WoW playing experience, I've had really good friends who were just - well, not very good at their class. (Ironically, they always seem to be warriors too - wonder why?) As their friend, and guildmate, I'd try to be available and help out when they needed. But it often wound up being a pretty painful experience...I know in the case of our real life friend, we tried giving suggestions, pointers, tips, and advice - all of which fell on utterly deaf and disinterested ears. So it became this awkward, difficult situation when any of these folks would look for groups - do you suck it up and go with the friend you want to support knowing it will take hours and hours and a ton of wipes and repair bills? Or do you suddenly have to log off and take the dog for a walk or run some errands you'd been putting off all evening?

If anyone ever figures out the best way to handle that situation, please let me know. I never have. But, what I did take away from it was that I never want to be that person, nor put my friends in that awkward and difficult role of thinking to themselves, "Well it's Nora, and I really like her, but man does she suck at tanking!" So - I guess that's my maxim for my Stable Full of Alts. I don't have to be the best, just.....I try really hard not to suck. :)

For me, the hardest part of going on groups like the above was always the lack of a learning curve. I'll be blunt - I'm pretty sure as of now, I suck pretty hard at warrior tanking. My sum total experience of it has been keeping adds off my husband's mage when we grouped together and leveled. Neither of us have done a lot of instancing at all, though at least as a ranged DPS, it's much easier for him to now get groups at 80. For my warrior though, I need practice because a lot of tanking (like many things in life) comes from practicing and practicing and practicing some more until you've really gotten your feet wet and seen what works - and doesn't - for your playstyle. In my case though, I'm always pushing myself to improve (through both practice and research) to the point where I'm at least a solid and reliable tank.

Since you can't always get four willing victims - I mean, friends - to go along on your "learning curve" instances, sometimes you have to find other means of working on your skills. And no, it's not always PuGging - I'm talking about research! The web can be a wonderful asset in coming up to speed on a new class or spec, and learning some basic skills and rotations. Now, with anything else on the interwebs, you can't take everything you read out there as truthful, good, quality information; some of it is incredibly solid, and some of it is utter garbage. You'll notice I have no warlock blogs I follow - mainly, because the "main" warlock site, The Warlock's Den, is (in my opinion) very spotty at best and full of questionable, if not outright bad, advice in many areas. I've run into a similar issue with elemental shaman blogs - there just don't seem to be many shaman blogs at all, and the one or two I've found are either woefully out of date or just really poor quality.

Please note, I'm generally only linking things that I play. My beloved uses Banana Shoulders when he's in the mood to look things up (though even moreso than I, he's 95% experiential in his learning and customization of how to be a holy paladin) - but I haven't linked it since I'm a pretty dreadful healer and don't see myself ever healing on a regular basis. (Yes, this is true across all classes - of them all, I probably fail least at shaman healing but I'm pretty terribad in all of them.)

I welcome additional links or blogs that I can post here! So if anyone has some other good blogs they follow about class mechanics, talent trees, rotations, theorycrafting, or anything else that helps break down the WoW class experience, please add in the comments or email me and I'll add it to the list.

Could it be, Patch 3.3?

2009-12-02T05:59:00.001-08:00

Well, rumor has it (and by way of rumor, I mean WoW.com and my friend Elionene who will post updates in our guild forums) that patch 3.3 may hit next Tuesday.

I haven't figured out what that means for me and my playtime, per se. I know I'll definitely poke my head in - if it does hit on the 8th, that means I'll have almost three weeks of playtime before the account expires to check things and and get some heroics in. But it's tough to say - presumably if I do hop in, I'd be needing to do a fair bit of tanking (which I really do enjoy). Since my hubby's a healer, that keeps things easy on the healing front and it's always easy enough to pick up DPS - especially with the new dungeon grouping ability.

Unfortunately, my tanks are all a bit behind on the gearing curve. The worst of the bunch is my warrior, who I'd just gotten to 80 before I decided on a break. My druid isn't in terrible shape, but also certainly not fantastic shape - I'd been playing her primarily as balance, and only collecting the scraps of leather melee gear as I could when there weren't rogues or other people inclined to wear leather DPS gear. (Given the recent proliferation of DKs and fury warriors on our server, it was pretty rare for me to ever manage to get a piece of tanking leather since this overlaps with much of the DPS leather due to item standardization.) I could certainly dust off the paladin too I suppose - she's in the best shape of my tanks, but that also seems to be the class everyone else plays in our guild as a tank. Lack of diversity FTL!

For my own personal challenge sake, I'm leaning towards the druid or warrior. Druid since it's more likely I'd use her if I could go on a raid because it gives me a ranged DPS option. Warrior because really - that is the penultimate of tanking flexibility. But, druid tanking can be tricky, especially with my lack of hit and gear in my melee set, and my warrior is just miles below even the normal Icecrown 5 mans I bet. So we'll have to see.

Either way, my curiosity was definitely piqued when I heard about the patch coming out. I don't know that it's enough to draw me back in for the next six months, but I fully expect to log in some, check out the new instances and the new LFG interface, and maybe see if I can get my warrior in a bit more fighting shape for practice's sake.

(I suppose I should elaborate - since I'm not raiding right now, my purpose in playing toons is to delve into the mechanics and compare classes to each other in the hopes of settling on a class for Cataclysm. My desire to play my warrior and my druid is because I really haven't gotten to play or raid with either very extensively, whereas I got to do quite a bit with my paladin, mage, shaman, and warlock. Warrior in particular really has a lot of unique abilities within the protection spec that just require practice and time in the trenches to really master, and druid - while none of the specs themselves are particularly complicated, the fact that you have *four* specs - all of which are viable for playing - give that class its own level of complexity too. So that's what I'm hoping to explore this month.)

Catching My Breath for a Bit

2009-11-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

I haven't been as good about posting updates lately. It's not that I've been too busy or distracted, it's more that I've had less and less to actually post *about* lately. You see, this blog is supposed to be, primarily, a place for me to chronicle my adventures in WoW and trying to find a place in this virtual world as a non-guild leader. I've written a lot about PuGs, working through some of my alts, and had a lot of fun as I've thought about things to write and chronicle.

It's just that lately, I haven't really been playing WoW. As in, at all. I think I haven't even logged in for a week - which is unusual for me. The truth is, I've actually canceled my account - I do have every intention of coming back of course, but it may not be until Cataclysm. I'd gotten to thinking about it when a couple guildmates were asking why I've stopped signing up for raids, and if I might start raiding again with 3.3. Initially I had planned to, though I wasn't sure as which toon....but the more and more I thought about it, I realized that the whole Arthas storyline just hasn't felt very compelling to me. Truth be told, I don't really even care about defeating him or seeing the new raid - I feel very "meh" about the whole thing. Not really sure why, but I do.

And when I realized that, well - it just seemed a little silly to keep paying for something I don't really care to do anymore, even if it is a relatively low cost thing. It's like paying to go see a movie and then deciding to go shopping instead. Why pay for something you don't intend to use?

I knew I did the right thing when, as soon as I hit the confirmation button on the Account Management screen, I just felt - light. It's hard to explain, really - but I felt this wonderful sense of something. Relief? Freedom? Excitement, even?

I need to start telling people, I suppose (those who haven't read here). In fact, I think a lot of people probably already have a hunch, given the fact I went from logging in daily to not logging in at all. And I do look forward to coming back someday - and hopefully I will have that same sense of excitement returning that I did hitting the cancel button. And thanks for Facebook and our internal guild forums, I'll be able to stay in touch with all of my fantastic guild friends too - and that will help, as well. I'd miss everyone otherwise!

But for me, it's time. Hopefully the time away will help me sort out some good toon ideas and concepts and mechanics, too!

Rhislayne, the Mercenary One

2009-11-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

Since Rhislayne just dinged 80, I think it would be fitting to begin my character breakdown with a discussion of this toon. Of course, I'll have to add to it more as I begin tanking heroics and such with her. But for now, I'll fill in what I can about playing a warrior.

Rhis's concept came to be the way most things came to be for me - I picked something based on game requirements, and adapted a story to explain them. In this case, I had two factors for going with a night elf as my warrior - one, I didn't really have any active night elves at the time, and two I really do like the night elf fighting animation. As a tank, they look pretty cool - dodging attacks, weaving in and out. So I decided to make her a night elf; I know a lot of people have asked if I will change her to a dwarf now that race changes are live, but I'm not sure I will for the above reasons. Also I have to say - shadow meld is handy if the party wipes, since I'm also an engineer and can attempt a resurrection if I pull it off. This has only come up once, but it was still a neat trick!

I'm pretty confident I can rule out warrior as a main class though. While I actually like warrior a lot, I'm not sure that I like raiding as a melee DPS. In particular, I can't really think of a good case to argue for why we'd ever want to bring a melee warrior DPS to a raid in place of something else. Yes, they have a buff, but it's not a particularly spectacular one - plus, it has a ridiculously short timer on it, which means you need to remember to refresh it every 2-5 minutes depending on how you glyph. That's a *lot* to be thinking about, and it also means you're burning a GCD on refreshing a buff instead of DPSing. I've never found a fury warrior that isn't a raging idiot, so I have less than no desire to play that spec. Arms is a lot more fun, similar to a ret paladin in some ways. There's no set "rotation" (which tends to be a selling point in my book, under the "Keeps Me from Getting Bored" clause) - it's a lot of cooldown juggling and waiting for procs. That said, Arms DPS isn't balanced quite as well as it could be and I think there are much better classes for melee DPS - rogues, DKs, and enhancement shaman are all vastly superior options to a warrior DPS. So - that's not a great option.

Tanking, well - I haven't gotten to tank a lot of heroics yet, and I've never tanked a raid as a warrior. I'd like to try it at some point, but it's definitely a lot more to think about. For me, when I'm tanking I'm the opposite of DPS; in DPS, I *want* a lot to think about and juggle in terms of spells and rotations. As a tank, I'm the opposite - I've already got enough to think about worrying about loose mobs, kiting, making sure I'm holding aggro but not passing the main tank, etc and so forth; the last thing I want to do is add more to think about, juggle, and factor in. Warrior tanks have a vastly superior tool kit to bear tanks and paladins, no doubt about it. They have spell reflection, a series of interrupts, spell penetration abilities - it's really impressive. If I was on better terms with our existing main tank, I'd definitely encourage him to explore warrior tanking for the Cataclysm expansion, as I think he'd really like having the full customization and the vast array of options that a warrior tank has at their disposal. But well...maybe someone else will relay said thoughts, as it's unlikely we'll be sitting down for cappuccino and theorycrafting about tanking any time soon. =/

I'm not expecting to be a raid tank though, now or even in Cataclysm. We've already got 3 truly dedicated tank toons and one mostly dedicated, not counting me - so there's not really a lot of room there. Granted, not all of those may be around for Cataclysm, but I'm sure at least half will. Plus, I'm hoping that we may have the beginnings of a family of our own in the intervening time period, and from what I understand having guaranteed raid night availability is in conflict with having a minion. I love raiding and all but yeah - minion wins, hands down. :) So even if I wanted to be the main tank (or main off tank), I think it's a more reasonable and better-for-the-group decision to be available as a heroics tank but not demand a raid tank role.

This rules a warrior out as my main, which I'm fine with.

The dilemma for me is finding a class that meets all of my and my husband's needs, and that's a trick. Not only do I love tanking very much, but it seems like nine times out of ten, that's what he and I need for grouping. I still have some pretty vivid memories of when WotLK first hit and the frustrations we had at pretty much never getting instance groups because we couldn't find a tank. My husband's a dedicated healer, so we know he'll fill that role if he can, and DPS if we need something else. At the time we were leveling, we were behind the first group that hit 80 in the first week; neither of us are the kinds of people who can really play more than 6 hours at a stretch, so it took us a couple weeks to hit instead of a couple days. We could reliably find our friend Xavron looking for groups, and our friend Giraud - both DPS, warlock and mage respectively. So that was four - three DPS, and a healer. But every time we'd have a group and try to get an instance run in, no tanks to be found. Invariably, the people we knew who ere tanks were either offline, or only wanting to run heroics by then and not interested in running level 73 instances. I remember how incredibly frustrated we got - Ehr logged off in a temper on quite a few occasions he was so angry about the situation. It took him months before he was able to actually see all of the instances, and in many cases his first view of them was in heroics (unlike me, he does not care to PuG).

So that's one of my big priorities in terms of settling on a main for Cataclysm. I don't want to focus exclusively on raiding needs, but also what Ehr and I have as our regular, run-of-the-mill day-to-day needs too. And that has, at least for the last year or so now, typically been a tank.

If only there was some sort of hero warrior/archer class! Then I could tank when I wanted to tank (heroics for hubby and I or others in need), and ranged DPS in our raids. So far, there's only one class that can provide both ranged DPS and tanking, which is what I'm looking at for Cataclysm. But, I may be able to get some more opportunities to try the melee DPS front and see how that fares, too.

One other thing I've learned through playing this character that has nothing to do with the class: mining/engineering is, without question in my mind, the most useful profession combination for the long-term. It isn't a min/max combo to give the highest DPS possible in raids, but it's incredibly useful for farming ore and elemental goods! So whatever I decide on for a main, pretty sure I will make them a miner/engineer.

The Many Faces of Me

2009-11-16T13:07:00.000-08:00

I have to confess, been a bit of a slacker in terms of updates lately. I haven't meant to be - just been enjoying a much needed breather from WoW for a bit. I think while I'm on break and waiting patch 3.3, I can update a bit about the various aspects and toons I play - and hopefully be able to make some informed decisions about which will become my main once Cataclysm hits.

Today I will add The List, and then from there can add a separate post for each.

The List of Alts (in order of creation, no less!)

* Shinorah, my original and very first toon. Human mage, languishing at 71. I haven't liked mage in a long time - the problem is, my playstyle just isn't compatible with the class. I'll start at ranged, but just stay there even when the monsters close. Apparently you're supposed to do things like - frost nova, blink, AoE. You know, avoid getting hit. Needless to say, I died leveling as a mage. A LOT. As in, 4 times per hour on average. It led to a lot of profanity and frustration on my part. The only reason I even leveled the toon to max level in BC is because she was my original and a guild leader, which meant she was recognizable and I kinda needed to have her around. Otherwise, she'd never have gotten past 43.

* Ixallare, my second toon - draenei elemental shaman, collecting dust at 80. This was my second toon ever, and honestly if it weren't for the fact I'd founded the guild as Shinorah, would probably have been my first 70. But I've always loved the playstyle (and survivability) of shaman far more than mage.

* Liadhan (nee Ellestriel) - 80 night elf druid. I love playing a druid at 80. I hate leveling a druid though! So this poor girl sat at 28 for about a year and a half before the free levels from Recruit-a-Friend allowed me to get her to 60. Then I just instanced my way as a healer through Outlands, and had my best friend's Death Knight drag me to quest with him through Northrend. She's probably my favorite character mechanics-wise right now, though I'm not a huge fan of night elf RP and lore. Changed her name when I used her briefly as a stealth character - I didn't like how puffy her lips looked on the toon when I started playing again, so I did a toon redesign and took the opportunity to pick a more unique name for her. (Our guild has an Allundriel, Ellyndrial, and Elenistyar - and trust me, Allundriel, Ellyndrial, and Ellestriel are impossible to tell apart in vent name-wise!)

* Angharrad, 80 dwarf protection paladin. She's been my main for at least half of WotLK, and I really miss her. I love RPing a dwarf, I like their walk best of all of the races in game, and it's really cool playing something so unusual. (You *never* see dwarven females in WoW.) I switched her main spec to retribution so I could get to raid with my hubby Ehrengar, and the toon hasn't been the same since. :( Sad but true, the girl's a tank at heart, and I haven't enjoyed her anywhere near as much since switching her to ret. I should do something about that...

* Shinnorah, the warlock version I rolled so that I could keep the character concept I love but not swear a blue streak every time I'd go out questing (which, in my case, means dying. A lot.) Amazing what a pet does for survivability! She's officially my current main, and it is fun RPing her. Unfortunately, warlock raiding is remarkably like mage in terms of rotation - it's very static, with little that changes between any given fight. I tend to like having to change what I do based on situation, which is why I love tanking I think.

* Rhislayne, recently dinged 80 night elf protection warrior. This is the only night elf I've ever actually enjoyed RPing - probably because I play her as someone who turned her back on what it means to be a night elf. She lives in Tanaris, drinking with goblins, carousing, and otherwise being a mercenary. I'm really looking forward to getting to try tanking some instances with her - I've done the tank thing extensively as a paladin, a bit as a druid, and I will say - warriors *definitely* have a very full toolbox in terms of tanking abilities. Now I just need to figure out what to do with them all!

* Lokhna, 60 orc beastmaster hunter. I'd originally rolled this up as a hunter version of Ix, but haven't played her since my RAF time ran out over a year ago. Last Monday, I transferred her over to Horde so I can try leveling and experiencing the Horde lore through Outlands and Northrend. So far, the Hellfire quests for Horde are remarkably similar to the Alliance ones. *yawn*

* Angharradh, 60 dwarven shadow priest (and current bank alt). Yeah I know - leave it to me to have a level 60 bank alt with maxxed out professions for her level. I might actually work on her a little bit once 3.3 hits, since they're adding a bunch of really nice buffs for shadow priests. Oddly enough, even in spite of the WoW quiz that tells me priest should be my favorite class, I've really never had a desire to play one. I only have this one at 60 because I rolled her as a healbot for my hunter and put her on auto-follow. Two 60s for the price and effort of one!

My Guilty PuG Pleasure

2009-11-09T14:12:00.000-08:00

I have a combination of characters I play - the majority are in my guild, , but I have two others; one is a semi-stealth alt that's unguilded, and another is a deep stealth alt that I use for 25man raiding. Most of the time, I play my guilded toons - it's where my friends are, and I get awfully lonely playing the other two. But sometimes, either when I'm sick (like now), or just in the mood to be antisocial, I'll dust off one of my other two toons and get in on some PuG grouping action.

This is when the fun can occur!

You see, one of the fun side effects of random encounters in a PuG is, well....I confess, it's a bit of voyeurism. Sometimes you wind up in a group with folks where you know them, but because you're on a stealth toon, they don't know you.

I've had this come up twice over the last couple weeks - once being in a PuG of a guild we'd formerly worked closely with, and the second was being in a PuG with one of our own newer recruits. Both are interesting to observe from an "outsider's perspective".

As an officer, getting the opportunity to stealth-group with our members is something I always relished. You see - I knew, as guild leader, that folks are usually on their "best behavior" when I'm around, trying to make sure everything's A-ok for the boss lady. But well - what are folks like when you're not around, right? I think it's a testament to our recruiting that, for the most part, most of our members act the same way in PuGs as I've seen them behave in guild runs. They are, by and large, polite, respectful, listen to directions, and generally the kind of folks you'd invite back. Every once in a while I'll be a little embarrassed - typically when I see someone bearing our guild tag running around in circles and bouncing like a ten-year-old - but fortunately that's not the norm. Anyway this past week I was in a PuG with one of our newer members, so I got the opportunity to do a bit of stealth-scouting in action! Of course, given that *I* am not an officer anymore, I'm not sure how helpful my observations are...but at least I can still enjoy them.

The week prior, I was invited to DPS a semi-PuG 10m ToC run by a name I didn't recognize. I said sure, and in fact was a bit excited by the fact that the person asking appeared to be a roleplayer. Woot! Well, imagine my surprise when I accept the summons and find an entire raid full of people that err...ah....well, we didn't end on terribly good terms with. (I still don't entirely know why, but well - sometimes drama just isn't worth seeking out. Something about letting sleeping dogs lie and all.)

Well, since I'm on a toon I know then won't recognize, I decided to go along and see how it went. And well - I needed the emblems. >.> I'd figured it would be a fairly smooth run, as I remember the players being fairly skilled. Turns out it wasn't - I have no idea what was so off. The players seemed like they should have been geared enough, in Burning Crusade they were skilled enough....but wowza.

The other good thing about being on a non-guilded toon? If you decide you've had enough and bail on the PuG, it won't reflect badly on your guild. ;)

Run a PuG, Get a Pug!!

2009-11-06T07:18:00.000-08:00

The details are still a bit vague, but as of Patch 3.3, you'll have a chance of getting this adorable little fellow by using Blizzard's new Random Dungeon Interfact. And really - if this isn't incentive to get you to try something new, exciting, and possibly hazardous to your health, well - what is?

Techno-tronic

2009-11-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening, I went along for a VoA 25m PuG. I'd initially had high hopes - unlike many PuGs, this one had vent! Now, in general I would consider using vent to be a good thing - it means for one, the organizers are at least serious enough about raiding to use voice communication to coordinate, and for two, I'd inferred it meant they would use that voice communication *to* coordinate.

There was my first mistake...

So I hop on vent, waiting for the usual tanking and healing assignments to be called out and who I should soulstone. But, no. Not tonight.

Instead, I'm treated with the dulcet tones of - TechnoTime.

One of the members of this guild has the nickname TechnoTime. In case you're wondering why, well - seems he's a big fan of techno music. BIG fan. And when I say big, I mean such a fan that not only did he insist on actually *playing* techno music in vent....

But when the raid leader asked him to stop and turn the music off, he proceeded into voice impressions of technomusic.

....

It was kind of like having that guy from the Police Academy movies in the raid, except less funny. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Winslow for those who don't know who I mean. Am I dating myself by referencing Police Academy movies? Or just embarassing myself? ;) )

So....yea. I'm sure you can all guess by now how stellar of a PuG *this* one was. But, looking on the bright side, I met a new server transfer who I was able to try and help guide towards a good raiding guild. Honestly, I'm not sure this was the right transfer for the poor lass - talking to her, I think she's pretty serious about raiding, and well...this server is *so* not the place for that level of raiding. But hopefully one of the guilds I recommended will work out for her, and she'll find a place to fit in and raid happily.

In the meantime - be warned, avid readers! Somewhere out there, in the wide wilderness of PuGlands, is a creature so fearsome, so terrifying, that the mere mention of his name will bring warlocks to tears!

I dedicate this entry to the one, the only - TechnoTime Guy.

The Wide World of Contact

2009-11-02T14:34:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, back when Angharrad was a holy paladin and I'd just newly dinged 80, I tried to run a lot of PuG VoA runs. I was working on gearing up, and I also wanted to get as much practice healing as I could - so running VoA regularly was a good way to do both of these. Also, it allowed me a chance to do some 25 man content which my own guild doesn't do, so that was an added bonus.

Along the way, I wound up getting to know some players from South America. It's funny, because we couldn't communicate very effectively - my Spanish is pretty much stuck at kindergarten level (Hi, how are you? My name is Jenn.) And, as it turns out in most of the cases, their English was limited to "Heal VoA?" But, one of the active raiders was fluent in both languages, so he usually handled any explanations necessary.

Even though I didn't speak their language, I wound up getting to be pretty good friends with the group of them. They didn't share a guild, and were from a few different guilds - many unguilded entirely. Yet I've found even in the PuG scene, there are little groups or such that form - people who have grouped together, had good experiences, and keep looking for you over and over again. When I was actively playing Angh, I'd almost always hear from this small band of South American PuGgers every week, inviting me to whatever they were up to. Unfortunately I wound up working on other characters for a little while - leveling up Shinnorah, and then gearing both her and my druid - so I haven't gotten to do as much with them lately. But it's been one of my best PuG experiences to date, so hopefully our paths will cross again some point down the road.

I've noticed a *lot* of PuG groups have large international components, and I'm not sure why that is. Certainly for some groups, it makes sense - especially those in considerably different time zones, it makes sense that the PuG pool is smaller at noon or 5am server than during peak hours. I've been running a lot recently with a group of Europeans on 10m Coliseum. But in this case, the time zone doesn't quite explain it. I wonder why there seems to be a disproportionately larger pool of PuG international players than in regular guilds? Something to ponder in another post...

Oh, the other thing I forgot to credit here as the other part of what can make PuGging awesome. I now can type all of the Necrosis defaults in Spanish. Thanks, Thhina! :) You never know when I might be on vacation in Buenos Ares and need the words, "Phlem spitting" or "Hellivator". (Un camino en el Infierno is Hellivator, in case it comes up - I think when I'd originally seen it in game, it was Hellivator. Appears they've fixed it!)

Some Days Are Better Than Others

2009-10-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

And the last couple days have definitely not been what one might call, "Good days". I'm hoping tonight might be better - I'd scheduled an event back when I had a guild job, which means I'm still technically running it, and so I'll actually have something important to do tonight. YAY! It's nice to feel needed. :) The event is a costume party, one I have thrown every year since the guild got off the ground, and I'm pretty excited. I sent out invites to some allied guilds and old friends, so hopefully we'll get a decent crowd. My own costume's not bad - I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I'm regretting not investing a little more time in trying to get an old BC raid run for a drop that would have really made it shine. Ah well!

Anyway, the whole "not having a job" has been really hard this week, for two unrelated reasons that have both hit home pretty hard. The first was two nights ago, when a good friend and well-meaning officer expressed what (to me, at least) felt like a bit of panic that I'd stuck my head in to check on our applications. When I'd stepped down, there was really no clear transition plan for who would take over all of my duties - not for lack of trying, as I'd been harping and nagging and begging for about 6-8 weeks prior to my resignation. Just - I guess a lot of what I did was boring, monotonous, administrative stuff that isn't exciting or glamorous, so nobody really wanted to take it on. I don't blame anyone. I mean honestly - who wants to wade through applications or tell that terribad DK, "Thanks but no, you're not our type". So the last I had heard, I should still keep an eye on apps - but it turns out they did find someone to take it over, which my beloved husband forgot to tell me. And when I'd mentioned to my friend (who also happened to be the person handling apps) about a misinterpretation of a rule I'd established when I had been officer, he replied with a pointed inquiry about what else I'd been reading in the Officer forums. It made me feel really uneasy - like either there was something there he was afraid I would see and was trying to protect me, or just upset that I'd been there at all. It sounds like after talking to him a bit, mostly he was trying to protect me from getting involved in work after I had retired, but still...it's like when someone says, "Don't turn around!" the first thing you want to do is turn around and see why they didn't want you to.

The second was Wednesday, during our guild meeting. My husband, who I adore, was in the other room laughing his butt off for much of it. Now - in *my* new universe, there was nothing particularly funny going on. The meetings would arbitrarily and randomly pause for stretches of time, nothing really laugh-worthy seemed to be said in our ooc channel, and I hadn't noticed any emotes or in character things that would be funny. Well from there, it started proceeding into him happily calling out from his computer, "You need to hear this, X officer just said this to Y officer" and laugh. Of course then he'd have to follow a couple minutes later with Y's retort. Pretty much the whole evening just boiled down to my dear husband regaling and parroting back to me all of the inside jokes that were being cracked on Officer chat for much of the evening. I know he did it thinking he was sharing good times and filling me in on the jokes, but what it really made me do was feel like more of an outsider than ever.

Now, I do want to make a couple things clear when I say this. Our Officers are, by and large, really great people who are very active in the guild at all levels and don't have attitudes about their rank or thinking they're better than anyone else. Once, in the early days of the guild, we did have that problem - three of our former (heavy emphasis on former) officers would only group with the other officers, and used officer chat as their own private "LFG" channel so they wouldn't be stuck grouping with people they didn't know. Those officers aren't with us anymore and for good reason, and this isn't the same situation at all. I think more of what it boils down to is that with only two exceptions, all of our officers have become real life friends and have met in person. Most of them even stayed at our house. So - it's less people trying to socialize away from each other, and more people who actually know each other just yanking each other's chain on the channel where everyone knows everyone else and gets all the inside jokes. But - while the intentions were good on everyone's part, it was still another pretty poignant reminder that I'm not part of that world anymore.

So yes, as we approach tonight's event, I'm not in a great place. It's been a rough week, full of situations that have made me feel awkward and uneasy - from grouping twice with someone who played a role in my decision to retire in the first place, to having my husband try to fill me in on all the jokes I was now missing, to suddenly have a newfound awareness of just how many of those random silences there must be each week, to feeling like an interloper in the guild I founded....Just a rough week, any way you split it.

I've been brainstorming outside-the-box solutions to try and reconcile a lot of the unease I've wound up examining this week. As I figure out more of them, I'm sure I will update here.

The PuG is Half Empty, The PuG is Half Full...

2009-10-28T10:57:00.001-07:00

I debated calling this post "A matter of perspective". One of the things I've found about PuGging is that how much fun you get out of it is really often in how you look at it. If you go into it with a sour outlook or expecting the worst, you'll notice all the reasons why it isn't as good as a preset group. But on the other hand, if you try to keep a smile no matter what happens - even the worst PuGs can become kind of fun!

This dates back a few months ago, when I was leveling a restoration druid (Liadhan) in Outlands. WotLK had been out a couple months by then, but the Outlands was still chock-full of Death Knights looking for groups - and, in particular, healers. Li had her branches full!

So I'm invited to heal a PuG for Hellfire Ramparts, the first instance in Hellfire Peninsula. It's fairly easy and quick - two big selling points for me - so I accept. The tank seems reasonably solid, even if he is a DK, and of course we have two DK DPS and the final DPS is a hunter. At this point, I'm just relieved it's not an all-DK group, like so many of them have been. But as we're going through, I notice that the hunter seems to be spending a lot of time just standing there. Now in fairness, they'd gotten a bit under my bark while I was flying over - using leetspeak (which is odd on our server since we're an RP server and it's pretty rare), being impatient, not showing a lot of maturity. In fact, the tank and I start chatting a bit about it in tells - in particular the increasing idiocy of our little huntard, the lack of DPS, the obnoxiousness in party chat. But rather than getting angry, he and I are both getting a kick out of it. After all, it was almost like textbook huntardom!

But then, there was the Crowning Moment of Awesome. We're waiting by the first boss, after having cleared the trash, and the tank is explaining what he wants us to do. I'm watching my screen.....and all of a sudden, I see a large mass of red heading around the bend.

Hmm. That's not good...

The mass gets bigger and bigger, like a snowball that starts rolling down a mountain and picking up more snow as it goes. As the mob of - well, mobs - comes around the bend, and of course aggros the boss, we're looking at somewhere between twenty and thirty separate mobs all racing right at us.

Led, of course, by a happy little wolf racing back to its Hunter.

It was the fastest wipe I've ever been a part of. By this time, we've wiped so much our gear is all red. The two other DPS are furious, yelling at the hunter for having his pet attack mobs across the hall, I'm sitting looking at my little red paper doll and broken body again...

And I just crack up. I mean - tears, pouring out of my eyes I'm laughing so hard.

I send a tell to the tank, and he's pretty much in the same state.

It's hard to explain to a lot of folks why we laughed in what should have been a nightmarish situation. I guess in a lot of ways, the sheer absurdity of the situation prevented anything except fury or hilarity, and we both chose to go with the latter. It's not that I wanted all the wipes, or the gear repairs, or to wind up taking so long on a place that should have been an hour - because I wouldn't have volunteered for any of it, had I known in advance.

But really, it was a choice, on both of our parts. Neither one of us said it out loud or intended to make the choice, it just happened that way. Rather than get angry or bitter, we both had a good laugh over it. And we both agreed that getting to first-hand experience that level of complete Huntardness - not a proxy story someone else relayed or an urban legend, but seeing it live in all its incompetent, instance-pulling glory, was well worth the price of admission (a few gold in repairs and an extra hour of our time).

So we laughed. We laughed hard. And then, well - we booted the hunter out of our group and finished the instance with the four of us. :)

And when it comes down to it - even now, close to a year later, I think about that story and the moment of dawning horror as we realized what was happening, and the hilarity as it unfolded, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Granted, I don't want to repeat it each week, but the mileage I've gotten from sharing that story - and the humor just remembering it every time I'm in a bag PuG and remind myself how much worse it could be - and I can't help but grin like an idiot. So sometimes, even a bad PuG has something to recommend it. (Future entries under the "Bad PuGs that Something Good Came out of" will include the story of how I met Elionene, our raid leader, and how the Hunter's Mark became an in-joke for myself and another member, Andranayl.)

Adventures in ArchavonLand

2009-10-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

So - in order to understand the humor inherent in this situation, you have to know a little about the past. Our guild's been pretty stable all in all, but anyone who's ever run one (or been in one) knows that from time to time, you weather a storm. Our last rough one was over a year ago (knock on wood, *knock knock*). A group of folks that we'd just met in person no less did some behind the scenes plotting and tried to stage a coup - or failing that, get most of the guild to quit and join their new guild. The good news is, they weren't hugely successful, but the action did definitely get them promoted right to the top of my "Want Nothing To Do With" list. And there they remained, people I'd just as soon forget about but twitched a bit whenever I passed in Dalaran.

Fast forward, about a month ago. I'm on my lovely little tankadin Angharrad, and I'm invited to tank a 25m Vault of Archavon run for some folks I've met PuGging before. They're nice folks, and pretty competent, so I'm happy to go along for fun, gear, and badges. I get into the raid, they assign me as the main tank, and the raid's rapidly filling up. All is well....

Until an all-too-familiar name appears in the raid all of a sudden:

"Risheid has joined the raid".

Oh, dear. Not just one of the parties involved in last summer's madness and mayhem, but one of the two co-conspirators, along with his wife! I briefly debated dropping, but well - it just seems a bit overreacting, given how long ago this was and all. I'm counting on the fact he'll be retadining, since he's currently in his ret gear. As least I can just do my thing and pretend he isn't there.

But then, the raid leader begins giving assignments. And well, wouldn't you know, he's been brought in as a holy paladin....a class known for single target healing, and excelling at tank healing. Guess who's tank....

Well, I'm sure by now you can guess where this is going. He of course is assigned to raid heal me, which he was probably about as thrilled as I was. But it went pretty well, all things considered - I think we only wiped once, there was no drama by any of the parties involved, I got healed (whew!), and everyone got their badges.

I think one of my favorite parts of PuGging is never knowing who you're going to run into, and when you'll come across someone you haven't seen in a while that you already know. In my experiences, they're both good and bad. I've been in groups like this, where it's awkward or uncomfortable and they're folks you'd prefer never to have run across again. But I've also been in groups to get a tell out of nowhere from an old friend I'd lost touch with ages ago, who wound up switching toons but recognized my name. It's just like trick-or-treating, really - you never know if you'll walk away with a wonderful treat, or an unpleasant trick!

The End, and the Beginning

2009-10-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

There are two things you should know first about myself, before you decide if you want to read further. First - I'm a serial altaholic in the World of Warcraft. I've tried to commit, I've tried to settle down and stay in a monogamous relationship with one dedicated, adorable little toon....but six months later, no matter how good my intentions, I just get itchy and start looking for something new. (Thank goodness this is limited to my avatars and not me in the real world, or my husband would kill me! ;) )

Second - I'm a recently retired guild leader. For all but a month or two of my entire WoW experience (which is now approaching three years), I've run one of the largest and most stable guilds on our server. A month ago, I retired and was demoted to regular old run-of-the-mill member. And now, just like the President of the U.S. who on January 21st finds himself without job or purpose going from The Somebody to just another nobody....I don't know what to do with myself anymore.

This is what has led me to create this blog - titled, in a bit of puckish humor, Soulshard Searching. My current "main character" (if one such as myself can ever be said to have a main) is a warlock, thus the Soulshard part of the title. The Searching part comes from my social experiment that leads me to blog - I've been utterly miserable since I stepped down, and I've realized that a large part of it is because so much of my identity was tied up in being a guild leader for so long, I just don't even know who the heck *I* am as a player or a gamer outside of that experience.

My friends and guildmates wonder what's going on with me. A few have even asked - why did I go from leading to now barely even raiding with the guild? Why do I spend so much time Pick up Grouping (PuG) instead of doing stuff with my mates? And will I stick around, or wind up leaving entirely?

I honestly don't have answers for a lot of that. But I've realized, in the course of the last few weeks as I move from PuG to PuG, or work on achievements, or try to figure out where my place in this vast virtual wilderness, that I *want* to explore the unknown, the strange, the mysterious and unfamiliar. I suppose in a lot of ways, retirement has forced me into a bit of a virtual Jack Kerouac role - living by wits, making my way through the world based on the kindness or callousness of strangers, experiencing my world through experience itself, and then writing it up to evaluate and learn from it. It gives me something to do with all this free time I find myself having, a purpose if you will, and my hope is by doing so, I'll learn a lot about my character Shinnorah, as well as perhaps even myself as a player.

So - here goes nothing! My Boots of Crackling Flame are now on the open road, and for good or ill I will experience the World of Warcraft through PuGs, wandering, and relying on nothing but my own skill and wit. Wish me luck!

Soul (Shard) Searching

My New Adventures

My Offline Adventures

Bucket List Updates

Cataclysm only a month away!

Busy Busy!

First Thoughts on Archaeology

Here Goes Nothing!

One Warlock's Journal

What to do, what to do?

The Deciderer

If It's So Hard, Why Keep Doing It?

Shiny New Keys!

Too Awesome for Words

Letting the Dust Settle

Hunt-Tard!

If We Won, Why am I So Sad?

Goblins!

Fighting a Losing Battle

Retention Woes

The Era of Garrosh

Trivia Contest - The Questions

Trivia Contest - The Answers

Trivia Contest this Saturday at 8pm in Ironforge!

Time is Money, Friend!

Top 10 Things I Hope for in Cataclysm

Argh Panic Flail!!

Is Blogging a Good Thing?

Unpleasant Surprises

Hooray for Duct Tape!

String, Spit, and Duct Tape

Dissertating!

Popular Demonics Hits Newsstands

Blizzard's Upcoming Warlock Changes

Warlock Changes announced for April 7

Death Knight II: Deathtards in Northrend

Another Deathtard in the World

Warrior Woes

Sporadic Updates for a bit

For the Alliance?

Affliction Rotation Comments

Snow Day Projects

Once More into the Breach

Here Goes Nothing!

Glory of the *gulp* Raid Leader

Fear of Failure

Herding the Cats

Glutton for Punishment

Shinnorah the Warlock - Fallin' (in and out of love)

Real Life Trumps WoW

Guild Administration 101

How to Pass the Time

Happy New Year's!

Ixallare, the Shaman

Angharrad, the Protection Paladin

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What It Means to Me?

For the Horde?

Making Myself Useful

Could it be, Patch 3.3?

Catching My Breath for a Bit

Rhislayne, the Mercenary One

The Many Faces of Me

My Guilty PuG Pleasure

Run a PuG, Get a Pug!!

Techno-tronic

The Wide World of Contact

Some Days Are Better Than Others

The PuG is Half Empty, The PuG is Half Full...

Adventures in ArchavonLand

The End, and the Beginning

Glory of the gulp Raid Leader