To Each Our Own

This is a guest post from Softi.

I guess you could say Matt and I are pretty much opposites when it comes to, well, everything! He’s a guy, I’m a girl. He’s Canadian, I’m Scottish. He’s raiding high-end instances, I have about a million alts and I’m unable to put the time in for much raiding at all. But I can’t help but really enjoy chatting to the guy, even if he does insist on calling me ‘Mom’ all the bloody time!

So I thought I’d see if I can help him out with a guest post while he’s busy with his studies. There’s another difference - Matt’s at university with a great sense of self discipline, I’m a stay at home mum who can’t stick to any sort of structure or routine to save myself, and oh I have tried!

Matt told us a couple of months ago why he plays WoW, so I thought I’d tell you how I came to find the game, although you might want to go get a cup of coffee first, or hot chocolate… diet coke maybe?

The hubby, who will be herein known as J, started playing the game not long after the EU release, around March 05. We’d just got married, I was heaving around a bun in the oven, and as you can imagine,didn’t have much money to do, well…. anything, and evenings were oh so long and oh so boring. I was a MMORPG widow you see. Before he got WoW J would spend hours playing Star Wars Galaxies (I still shudder when he talks about it), and I would sit watching TV being bored out of my head.

Anyhoo, one night he was working late and I figured after I’d watched some TV (again) that I’d have a try of that stupid game of his and see what it was all about. He’d told me that druids changed into animals. Great! I thought, I love animals, that will be so cool. So I rolled a Night Elf Druid, and after about 5 painstaking minutes of trying to come up with a name, I figured hey, why not try my own, so Marylin (now known as Softthistle) was born.

Almost 5 hours later when J came home, I was still playing. He asked where his dinner was and I think I probably grunted at him that he could do it himself cause I was busy (oh the shame!).

A few weeks later my character had overtaken his in levels and I was playing more than ever. J was not amused at me playing on his account all the time and stopped playing. Typical of course - I was better at levelling so he gave up *sigh*. So I took over his account completely, he had deleted his character and claimed he’d not be playing again, the tables had turned. He was now the WoW Widower, and I was the gamer.

GAMER… me? I have turned into a gamer. Over 3 years ago I started this game having never dabbled in more than playing The Sims every now and then. Now I even blog about WoW, well… I attempt to anyway. J eventually gave in and came back to WoW, of course I had to buy him a new account as by this time we wanted to play the game together. He’s still playing now, not *quite* as enthusiastically as I do, but we will play together once in a while, and at least when he’s talking about the game I now actually know what he’s on about!

I guess when it comes down to it, maybe Matt and I aren’t so different after all. We both play WoW, we both love writing, and we both blog about Warcraft. Who’d have thought that a game could offer the chance of meeting so many new people? Not me, or not until now anyway!

Guest Post: A First Look at a Feeder Guild

This is a guest post from Galadria. She represents half of the knowledge from the Light and the Dark.

We’ll start with a sample scenario. You are a member of l33t Guild, part of the raid core. Your guild is farming the lower bosses of TK/SSC and trying to down Vashj and Kael to get into Hyjal/BT. Since most of your raid core doesn’t need gear out of T4 content, it’s basically PUG. Whoever can throw a run together does whenever they happen to be in the mood. Since the raid core doesn’t want to have wipe fests, when they do farm that content (for badges or off spec gear) they tend to do it with each other so they can blow through it quickly. One day JoeRogue; who has been raiding in Kara for a while and gone on a few runs of Gruul and Mag, asks that oft dreaded question in Gchat:

This sets off a fevered discussion with much flaming from the raid core and much grousing from lower echelons of the guild. The core raiders don’t want to hear it, they’ve put in the time and effort to be where they are. The lower ranked players feel shafted, they never get a chance at better gear or to show the raid leaders that they can play competently.

Overlooking the fact that there seems to be a bunch of whining, it shows a problem I think a lot of guild at this level have. The guild is split between those that are part of the progression raiding and well geared, and those that are just getting Kara keyed or just out of Kara, and learning how to raid. These two groups have different needs from the guild. Both groups need structured, scheduled raid time for their level of content, lead by a competent RL to make things go smoothly. They just need different content.

Requirements

Kara (1-2 nights), Gruul (1 night), Mag (1 night), SSC (probably 2 nights), TK (probably 2 nights). If you stacked groups correctly, you could do Kara in 1 night and Gruul and Mag in the same night. That’s still 6 nights of scheduled raiding! I don’t see many guild leaders (in average guilds) being able to handle that.

As I see it you have a few options:

Option 1

Let the lower level players fend for themselves. They can probably make in-guild PUG Kara/ZA runs without much problem but Gruul/Mag is going to be a lot for some random person with a little initiative to get together. This may lead to unhappy players in your lower ranks. However, since they’re not part of your progression team you may not care if they come or go but I tend to think that’s kind of a crappy way to deal with the situation.

Option 2

Another option is to be up front with this group and tell them that you will not be scheduling any events at their level of progression and if they want to experience that content they should find a guild at their level to grow with. This is tough since a lot of these people will be friends of members of your raid core. I think it’s good to be up front and honest, and you’re doing them a favor by letting them know that you are not able to meet their needs. It can be up to them to find someone who can.

Option 3

What I think is the best option is to establish what I call the Feeder Guild. This can be a separate entity or a sub-set of your existing guild. This guild becomes a leveling and early raiding guild that prepares your lower level players for higher content. This option will take more work at the beginning to get started, but will be worth it in the end.

You’ll need to find someone (or a couple of people) who have the organizational skills and the drive to run the show. This person should be outfitted with the resources and responsibilities to organize your lower level raids for those that need/want them. It’s also a good idea to get a few of your higher level raiders willing to help out. Even a few above level players can make a huge difference in how smooth a raid goes. If you don’t have anyone willing to help, you can consider offering a small amount of DKP for an incentive with a weekly limit.

This is also a great way for your Raid Core to get their alts into the lower level raids. Just about every 70 raider that I know has and alt (or 5) and most of them have been at it long enough to have another 70. They always seem to ask to take their alts on Kara runs. Here’s a great opportunity to get them access into regular runs of lower level raids.

Splitting the raiding responsibilities between 2 groups means a manageable 2-4 nights of raiding for each group.

Each group can also handle loot individually. I know a lot of guilds tend to throw DKP out the window for lower level raids. Then the guy who’s been playing with your guild for a while can get unlucky on a roll and loose loot he’s been waiting for to a guy who just joined looking for some quick purples.

As with everything else, this is a highly personal situation. What works for one guild will not necessarily work for another. You may be really picky about who gets a ginvite and don’t have this problem since you don’t let anyone in that’s not geared well enough. You may let everyone and their dog into the guild, but don’t really care if they get any raid time. If however, you do have a similar situation, consider this solution.

Guest Post: Synergies Between a Priest and a Hunter

This is a guest post from Trackhoof. Check out his blog at Survival Hunters Anonymous.

Well, Matticus wanted a nice little guest post, so’s he’s gonna get one!

I felt it’d be appropriate, as he plays a priest, and I play a hunter, and I used to play a priest, to talk about the awesome, ass-kicking synergy the two classes have for each other.

We’re talking Tango and Cash, Mick and Keef, Jay and Silent Bob, Glenn Tipton and K.K Downing, Jet Li’s left foot and Jet Li’s right foot; some seriously awesome kind of teamwork that creates things that are truly awesome.

First off, you have Hunter + Healy-Priest. This is still a solid combination, but more Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston than Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone. The priest does their job, keeps everybody in good health, and makes sure they’ve all got plenty of team spirit.

The Duty of a Hunter

The Hunter, on the other hand, is the wrangler. If possible, assign a hunter to protect a priest, or any other healer, all the time; they’re amazing DPS, but even better at peeling loose mobs off healers and sending them back to the tank. While boss strategies may require a different approach than most trash pulls, if possible, have a hunter protect each healer.

Hunters have lots of high-threat abilities, but even more importantly, the ability to re-direct threat to where it needs to go; so that rogue add who’s about to smack down your priest will get popsicle’d and sent back to your sword-and-boardsman in the space of ten seconds. Priests do have Fade, and while that DOES help with aggro, it won’t help as much as a good hunter will.

By the time you have them in raids, Hunters should understand the basics of their class, but also understand their dual role as an assist; they are the kings of emergency crowd control.

If they have pets, even better. If they’re Beastmastery, you have something even better than regular crowd control; crowd control with teeth. Intimidation, Growl, and threat-building abilities will make a mob’s head spin faster than a merry-go-round with a jet engine.

Marksmen should be masters of the Scatter-trap, and Survivalists have the almighty trapping skills. Wyvern sting is not something I’d recommend for this if you need more time to bring the tank over, but if you slap a Misdirect and unload on the sucker immediately, it’ll more than do the job.

Discipline Priests

Now, second, we have Discipline priests. They have great survivability, but above rules apply. Hunter = bodyguard. But it’s like giving a bodyguard to somebody that can fend pretty well on their own, but still needs the help anyway. Like assigning Chuck Lidell to be Jean-Claude Van Damme’s bodyguard.

Shadow Priests

Finally, we have the most synergistic of the combinations: Shadow Priests and Hunters.

This is what I’m talkin’ about!

First off, Shadow Priests take less physical damage, and can still use Power Word: Shield. Score! That makes life easier for any Hunter providing emergency CC.

Secondly, they have Mind Flay. It slows the target down, and makes them easier to intercept. Psychic Scream is another good one.

Thirdly, and most crucially, they have Vampiric Touch, on top of massive amounts of pew pew. I havent done any straight-up number crunching on the subject, but trust me, the proportion of Hunters who want Shadow Priests in their raid groups for this very reason is staggering.

We, as Hunters, are mana hogs. We are the SUV’s of mana conservation. Pairing us with Shadow Priests is like driving along and having somebody fill up our tank while we’re driving. If we happen to be Survival Hunters, then that SUV just became a Hybrid.

So, in summation – Holy Priests, come with us if you want to live. Discipline Priests, we respect your crazy asses, we’re here to help. Shadow Priests, don’t waste mana. Raid with a Hunter today.

-Track

Guest Post: Heroic Pugs are Not Heroic

Matticus’ Note: This is a guest post from a friend of who has no blogging experience whatsoever but still did a great job nonetheless. I have another exam in about an hour. Thanks Brendan! Post has been edited for clarity and such.

First off, let me say I’m not a writer/blogger in any way, shape or form. I’m writing this because an idea popped into my head, and I’m tired of studying for finals. This blogging stuff is a nice change from the 17 credits of math I have this semester that engineers are supposed to know.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but my view of PUGs (Pick-Up Groups) has gone downhill since BC came out. It started out fine, pugging some people to get some experience while exploring the new instances in outlands. As a druid, and usually feral to boot, I wanted to get exalted with Cenarion Expedition ASAP to pick up my Earthwarden (best tanking weapon until SSC trash). I was in a small guild at the time and there were only a handful of us hitting 70 at the same time. It wasn’t easy to get a group to grind out Steam Vaults a dozen times a day for the required rep. I would turn to PUGs to accomplish this. For the most part, this went the same way to get revered with most of the factions. Even with quested items and random greens in most people’s gear, normal mode was still fairly easy. Subsequently, after doing countless runs of instances for rep, people would replace their greens with decent blues and fill out their dungeon 3 sets. More importantly, people would learn the instances, know what bosses/mobs did what, who to CC, where to go and such. By the time the rep was obtained to be able to hit up the heroics, people had knowledge/gear to stand a chance, and knew how to play their class.

This is all well and good, but then comes 2.3 and heroic keys only require honored. With pretty much any faction, you can obtain honored by doing their quests and 1-2 clears of each of their instances (sometimes even less than that!). What does that mean? People try to get into heroics still wearing their quested blues/greens, and not knowing what the heck is going on. It used to be a reasonable bet that when you pugged for a heroic, the people you got were somewhat decent, because they had done the run on normal at least a dozen or so times, and had decent gear. Now, you don’t get that confidence.

I’ve heard many stories (and experienced a few) in guild chat, of people pugging a couple slots for whatever heroic when there weren’t quite enough people online from the guild to do it with. There have been melee hunters that shoot their own traps, priests that only used flash heal (”lol greater heal takes too long”), tanks that can’t hold aggro on a single mob, mages who don’t know what a sheep is, pally tanks who consecrate on top of all the CC, and multitudes of other things. Even if you don’t get these kinds of people, there are simply people that don’t have the gear and they will get destroyed by the trash. In some instances, groups will not have enough DPS to burn down adds on bosses, making heroics all but impossible. Then there’s the issues of ninjas, people leaving unexpectedly, “know-it-alls” saying that their strat works and that t4/t5 group leader doesn’t know what he’s talking about… but those are just general PUG rarities that can happen anytime.

Now, this may sound like just a gripe with the heroic key rep change. It’s great for people trying to gear alts who don’t want to grind out the reputation to do the instances, and usually can be carried through by decent guildies. But that’s an entirely different story. The issues mentioned are more adamant to happen with PUG groups. And at least with people you know, usually there is some sort of voice communication being used, which lessens the pain of inexperience in one or two group members.

All in all, I tend to stay away from PUGs. For the most part, it’s just a repair bill waiting to happen. One of my friends who would accept a PUG invite on his main to anything from RFK to heroic Shattered Halls (one of my least favorite instances w/o a well geared Paly tank, or 2 Druid tanks), now thinks twice before pugging anything past normal difficulty. I refuse to do them, and I get at least a couple of tells a day asking to tank or heal PUGs. I usually let them down nicely, saying I’m not the spec they want (people go away so fast when I tell them I’m balance), or that I’m logging soon (which is usually the case).

This wasn’t really an informative post, just my personal gripes with heroic PUGs, which I’m sure more than a few people can relate to. Hopefully at least a couple of you agree with what I wrote, and it wasn’t an entire waste of time reading. But if not, I’ll go back to my horrendous amounts of number crunching engineering stuff and leave the blogging to the bloggers.

When Brendan’s not busy crunching numbers, he plays a horde Feral druid on… some server. I can’t remember. But thanks for the heroic insight!

Guest Post: Musings of a Mod

Matt’s Note: Today’s guest post comes from a friend and colleague of mine from Curse. Thanks to Indelible for his help! You may or may not find it… disturbing and/or depressing. I finished exam #2 yesterday. 2 down, 2 to go and it concludes Saturday afternoon. Then I’ll go back to my daily routine of a near post-a-day rate.

It’s Sunday. It’s 12.45. It’s that time of day when you’ve just got out of bed and the air around you feels fresh and exciting. It’s damn cold as well and I want to go back to sleep. I can’t however as I was asked by Matticus to provide him with a guest blog about something wholesome and interesting…

I have however, run in to one major problem…

What exactly is there left to talk about? We’ve had our token PvP and PvE blogs. We’ve got our class blogs and our spec blogs. We’ve even got our blogs about other blogs. The blogging world is just a sphere of repetativness. What one blogger covers one week, is another bloggers gold mine the next and we end up going round in these viscious circles that claim the lives of many a blogger.

I guess that is what I shall talk about then. To hell with TheoryCraft and, “How To…” guides. To hell with Top 5 lists and, “You should try…” blogs. I’m going to talk about… something.

I’ll think of something in a second…

What Now?

I’m not an expert. I don’t know who started the very first blog. I don’t know much about the political side of blogging. All I know is that blogs have gone from being an obscure entity deeply hidden in the depths of the Internet, much like forums and Paris Hilton, to one of the single largest outlets of moronic and arrogant point making. They are sometimes opinionated, sometimes interesting and fullfilling, mostly painfull and anger-inducing; probably one of the most testing media arms in the known World, closely followed by Sky News.

Sounds like the perfect place to succeed, right?

Wrong. Blogging has to be one of the single most time consuming and effort involved activities you could ever undertake as a passtime. On average, I spend about 1 to 2 hours a day on my varying blogging efforts, and that doesn’t include side projects I am exploring and moderation duties at Curse so blogging really does b(l)og me down…….

I’m sorry. I’m in one of those moods.

Now, this neatly leads on to why you are all here (because I’ve finally thought about something to talk about properly). Well, it does in my head. I don’t actually think any of the above has any relevance to what I am going to be discussing but I’ve had a long day (despite the fact that I only just woke up) and you’ll have to sift through the crap to find the good bits… like with meat and… stuff. You are all here to get your daily WoW fix. I know that I have started off poorly and it is getting worse. You are worried you will be seeing pink Tauren’ if I don’t hurry up with the WoW-speak, right? Well, you are in luck as that is about to start now as we compare…

I can only think of one thing in the world worst than reading a blog or worse than writing a blog when you have major writers block.

Blogging - ’tis an art form.

Grinding… oh the horror…

Grinding - ’tis horrid. I hate it. I hate you for putting up with it. I hate me for hating you for putting up with it as I put up with it and put up with you putting up with it. Meh.

Both blogging and grinding are evil. Pure unaltered evil. They are fonts of the most sinister and horrid evil you will ever come across. They make the Devil look like one of the Teletubbies. Stand Illidan next to the personification of blogging and Illidan will cry like a baby. The personification of grinding is a stereotype and we all know what stereotype that is (you can see the fat man from South Park too :o) so I feel no need to add wit to my point.

They are both evil. There is no doubt of that. My girlfriend thinks I’m sad for playing PC games all the time. She thinks I’m even more sad for writing about those PC games. Mostly, she takes pity upon me. Both blogging and grinding are the evils that destroy social lives around the world but which one is more evil?

Grinding.

An Example… sort of

Oh this is fun. I want this flask, right? I need 25 Glowing Bits of Leaf (?) and 600 Roots of Lesser Drop Chance. I need them by next Wednesday. You’d think that was a fairly respectable amount of time to have to get yours stuff together, right? Well, you’ve never played Lifeless Gaming Online have you? I can tell you that Roots of Lesser Drop Chance only drop off Mobs of Lesser Spawning and, as the name suggests, it takes hours to find the things… and we haven’t even started on the Glowing Bits of Leaf yet.

All in all, grinding sucks. I needed 200 stacks of Netherweave Cloth. That doesn’t sound like a lot when you think about how many mobs drop Netherweave but I’m one of these people who finds the act of grinding hard to swallow. Let me put it this way…

Day 1

I woke up this morning - ’twas a nice day. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. Even the old woman out back waved to me as I stared like a lifeless, mindless automaton out of my bedroom window.

So I went downstairs, got a cup of Coffee, admired the back of my hand for a while and then…

Spent the next 7 hours of my life on Ventrillo, talking to the rest of my 5 man guild group. We’d arranged to go Netherweave farming in Netherstorm.

Good times.

Day 5

The sun wasn’t shining today. There were no birds.

I’ve installed sound proofing. The constant chirping was breaking my concentration. The black out curtains have limited the glare on my monitor. I was finding it hard to see the goddamn drops.

My girlfriend’s told me to get a job. I’ve looked around but no one wants to sponsor me to play WoW. She says that isn’t what she meant. I don’t know what she means.

Today is once again Netherweave day. We’ve all (25 man raid groups ftw) decided to go to Netherstorm again and make a day of it. Mark is taking his picnic set. Jack is bringing the fireworks. It should be fun, especially with the Leather Ball Sally crafted last night.

Good times.

Day 15

She left me. We were sitting in Orgrimmar chatting and she said she met a Nelf called MoreManly who had taken her heart away from me. I sobbed. She rofl’d.

She left me too. She said that a job wasn’t just going to walk through the door. I said that I was looking for sponsors but all the good ones had been taken. She said that that was the only reason she got with me. She took the kids.

We’re off to Shadowmoon to farm Primals. I have enough Netherweave for my Frozen Shadoweave Robe but Johnny needs my Shadowcloth for guild tailoring so I’m going to have to spend all of today farming Primals and Netherweave.

Good times.

And so on and so forth.

It is tragic; when your life is reduced to grinding. Your girlfriends leaves you and your kids disown you and yet the most immediate thing on your mind is Shadowmoon Valley.

The first part of this entry was really a look into my mind and the way I blog - chaotically with no clear purpose. The second part was almost entertaining and informative but was, mostly, High School humour.

I apologize.

It has been a long day but I would like to thank Matticus for allowing me to infest his blog with this poison. I’ve had fun.

Guest Post: Why Do You Play WoW?

Matticus’ Note: I posted a small, but brief plea yesterday for help with my blog. Leiandra has helped me answer my plea. My exams conclude on the 15th of December, therefore my personal posts will be drastically reduced while I’m busy raiding cramming for my finals. But I don’t want to leave my readers hanging. I’m looking for some guest posters to help me for the next week or so. If you have your own WoW blog, chances are I’ve read it or ran into it. This is a great opportunity for you to expand your viewership and receive exposure. Your posts (if I like them) will appear here and on Curse. Simply drop me an email (look right) and we can work something out. I spend 2 - 4 hours a day blogging and I cannot sustain that kind of effort for the time being. Anyways, here’s Leiandra!

With Matticus being busy with finals, I volunteered to help him out with a post or two so that he could hopefully pass his classes :). Just a few, quick comment about me for those that don’t read my blog: My mage’s name is Leiandra, and I am a Guild Master for a raiding guild on the Bronzebeard - US server. I’ve been in guild leadership since I first starting playing MMO’s (only with the release of EQ2), and have been playing Wow for about 2.5 years now. I’ve been the GM of Primogeniture for about 2 months now, but have been part of the final decision making process for much, much longer.

The latest inspiration for this post comes from a recent person that I have been recruiting. Most of the Bronzebeard raiding guilds tend to start around 5 or 6pm server time. Our raid times start at 8:30, so we get a lot of people that want to join because of work shifts or just general night owls (vampires as one of my Raid Leaders calls them). This recent recruit registered for an account on our forums, but never filled out an app. He then contacted me in game to find our more about our guild. His work schedule had changed and he wouldn’t be able to raid with his current guild, hence the conversation he had with me. He sounded like he was interested, but told me he had to think about it. A few days later, he told me that he just wasn’t being fair to us, because he would only raid with us until his work schedule changed. I thanked him for his honesty, and we put each other on our friends’ lists in case we ever needed anything.

A few nights back, I needed another member for a 5-man run. He was online, and I asked him if he wanted to come. After a fairly successful run in which he did a great job, I was curious if he still maintained his loyalty to his guild. He told me that it was really only one raid leader that he was still loyal to, and that person was actually okay with him leaving. He filled out an application on our forums, and then again, decided that he wanted to stay with his guild.

Some people might consider this frequent changing of one’s mind quite annoying, but I completely understood. Sometimes people move on from the game. Sometimes people change guilds. The only thing that’s constant is that each guild will change. I think the successful guilds generally roll with those punches, adapt, and move on. But when is it right for you, the individual player, to move on?

To answer that question, it takes some deep introspection on the part of each individual. Questions like “Why do I play WoW?” should be addressed. What is most important to you? Is it important to be with friends? Is progression your big thing? Are you just in a guild that nobody is online when you are? Sometimes there’s drama or fights… that can happen to. Do you just want to play solo for awhile? How much are you going to regret leaving your guild, if at all?

When I first starting playing Wow, I did so to play with my best friend and his brother. The three of us started a guild because we were tired of random guild invites. The guild grew as RL friends and relatives joined us or transferred servers. We were never huge, but at our height, right before the expansion, we were getting in to Zul’Gurub. A lot of us also PUG’ed and participated in other guild raids in almost all of the dungeons (I think Naxx was the only one not on our lists). With the expansion, and me being a night owl, a few of us decided that we’d break off into a more structured raiding guild and have more than just one guild run per week. It was a difficult decision to leave my guild of friends. I knew a few of them would come with me, and hoped others would follow. We had all been together for so long that I knew I’d still talk to them often, and hopefully group with them regularly as well. Well, the grouping thing hasn’t happened as much as I had originally planned, but I still talk to most of them nightly. My priorities, at the time of our new guild, were based around progression and seeing new content. I have a whole list of new, online friends, and I enjoy being in the guild I am.

My priorities are aligned with where my toons are and the guild they are in. Sure, there are ups and downs. It’s not like I always get my way, even as GM, but I’m happy where I’m at. Are you? Is it time to move on? Is there something better on the horizon, but maybe you’re just too scared to make the change? Or are you exactly where you want to be with the people you want to be there with? I hope most of you can answer “yes” to that last question. It’s just a game. Have fun. Be happy.

So did you like what you read? Then head on over to Leiandra’s blog. While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to Leiandra’s RSS.